When Depression is in your bed

The Ventral Narrator: A Grounding Voice for Nervous System Regulation

• Trish Sanders, LCSW • Episode 37

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What if the most transformative part of a “conscious life” isn’t the serene moments—but the messy ones where you feel flooded, triggered, and ready to explode? I share a raw, real story about a birthday plan gone sideways, how a sold-out ticket spiraled into rage and self-blame, and the small, steady thread that kept me from making the night worse: a ventral narrator offering compassion and gentle reminders through a more grounded lens.

We break down the nervous system in practical terms—ventral regulation, sympathetic fight-or-flight, dorsal shutdown—and why blended states matter when life hits hard. You’ll hear how I moved from “I failed my kid,” and blaming my partner for the failing, to being in a place (within less than 24 hours!) where I felt grounded enough to connect and repair with my husband.  I'll also share the surprising insight that sometimes calm reassurance doesn’t soothe an activated body. Matching a bit of the other person’s energy—naming the sting, acknowledging the frustration—can build connection faster than jumping straight to zen. We talk about how having that ventral narrator, who can offer far kinder self-talk than the hopeless dorsal dweller part that can get swept up in self-blame, can transform a moment of dysregulated reactivity, and how to ask for the support you actually need in the heat of the moment.

If parenting guilt, partner dynamics, or inner critics tend to hijack your evenings, this conversation offers a map: notice the state you’re in, name the unmet need, and choose a tiny next step. Conscious living isn’t about perfection; it’s about shortening the distance between rupture and repair, savoring gratitude alongside growth, and trusting that you can learn in real time by deeply attuning to yourself.

If this resonated, follow the show, leave a review, and share it with someone who could use a gentler way through big feelings. And before you go, try one simple experiment today: take one step—any size, any direction—toward the life you want.

- If you and your partner are ready to co-create the roadmap to the relationship of your dreams, join us for the next in-person "Getting the Love You Want" Weekend Couples Retreat!

For support in how to have deeper connections and better communication in the relationships that matter most in your life, follow the host, Trish Sanders on Instagram , Bluesky or LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_00:

Hello, and welcome to the When Depression is in Your Bed podcast. When you think of your better life, your better relationship, or your better self, do you imagine fairy tale perfection or some version of totally blissed out zen? While choosing to live a more conscious life may in fact result in having more moments that feel like that, in reality, we're human, and your day-to-day life may not always be your absolute happily ever after. Yet living a more conscious life can in fact be pretty sweet, especially when dealing with the conflicts that can arise pretty frequently in our regular lives. If you want to hear more what that could look like, please stay tuned. I'm your host, Trish Sanders, and I am delighted that you were here. So let's get started. I just want to acknowledge that if you've been listening to my recent episodes, today was supposed to be a continuation of my conversation that I've been having about rest, and I decided to change that last minute just because I had an experience and I wanted to record and talk about it while it was still fresh in my mind. So I will get back to my conversation on rest next week, and I will be addressing practical ways that you can include restful and renewing practices into your daily lives. So please do tune in next week for that conversation to continue. For today though, like I said, I had this experience and it was so profound for me that I really need to share about this because for me it was such an example of the work that I've done and what I now get to experience, like what my conscious life looks like in such a different way than it used to look. And as I mentioned in the intro, my everyday life is not a fairy tale. Although I have to tell you, I really truly find so many more moments happening for me where I literally pause and I look around and I think to myself, wow, this is my life. This is the life that I get to live, and this is the life that I've created for myself. And sometimes I even say it out loud, depending where I am or who I'm with. Like when I was in Sedona, which was a big moment, and I was just standing in the awesomeness of the beautiful Sedona Red Rocks, and I was like, wow, I get to be here. This is my life. So that was a pretty big moment that was pretty awesome. But I have those moments of pause and appreciation and gratitude more and more. Like over the summer, when I was sitting poolside at the town pool, watching both my 13-year-old and my six-year-old try the town swim team for the first time, and just getting to sit there and watch them and experience them and support them in this new endeavor was a moment like that for me. And then even in tiny, tiny little micro moments, when I get out of the car going to the grocery store, and I can close my eyes and just for a brief second feel the end of summer or beginning of fall sun on my face, I can have those moments like, wow, I have a life where I get this. I get to appreciate these beautiful moments, big and small. So I do want to say that, you know, if there was an advertisement for living a conscious life, I would absolutely say you will get so many more moments where there's gratitude and joy and bliss. And of course, that's a really good reason to make choices to shift and move into living a more conscious life. However, we are humans and humans are imperfect and we are never going to be happy constantly. That's not how we're designed. And it also wouldn't really be good for us because we have feelings as signals. So we know we have a need that needs to be met when we're not feeling happy. And so, in order to be happy constantly, I think maybe we would have to have no needs or to have a way of having our needs met constantly, which is just not realistic for anybody. And so the process of being conscious is to be able to tune into what's happening in your body, in your heart, in your mind, in your soul in any given moment and figure out what the needs are or the unmet needs, what is causing this feeling of upset or anger or hurt or rage or sadness or anything, right? And so I think that in these moments where conflict arises and hardship comes up, I notice that I'm responding to them differently or experiencing them differently. Or a lot of the time, one of the big things that I notice is that even though the moment is still pretty hard, I have a lot more awareness of what's going on, what my unmet need is, what's underneath it, or at least I can get to that awareness much more quickly and I can make a repair much more quickly. And sometimes that repair is really with myself because sometimes I could still be pretty mean to myself. And historically I have been very, very unkind to myself in the messages that I send, the self-talk, especially as a dorsal dweller, someone who lives so frequently in that amobilized, withdrawn, avoidant, closed, collapsed part of my nervous system, which is when you're stuck in there, depression. In other words, I have had a lot of negative self-talk because when your nervous system is in that place, you see the world through that lens. I've talked about it before, depression goggles. And when you have on depression goggles, the outside world looks pretty bleak. But when you look at yourself, when you look in the mirror, you also look pretty bleak and pretty negative. And so I've talked myself in pretty awful ways over the years. Uh, and I still sometimes fall into that. And I'll tell you a little bit about that today because this was definitely part of my experience just last week. But my whole relationship to that is different, and I can make a repair with myself and move into a different state of being with myself. And then I also can make repairs much more quickly with my husband, which is what this story is about, and also with my kids, which I'm sure I'll share stories in the future as well. So without further ado, I'll jump into my story. So just a little background my son is about to turn 14 and he decided he didn't want to have a birthday party, but we talked about what we wanted to do to celebrate, and we decided to go on this weekend trip and bring a friend. And he was really excited about it. I told him that we would get him and his friend their own hotel room that would be connecting to ours, and they could have snacks and play video games and kind of hang out. And we were also going to do this activity for the day that we needed tickets for. And he was super excited about it. And I was like, yes, this is awesome. We have a great plan. And for whatever reason, part of it was my own ADHD brain, and part of it was also because I got sick. And when I went on to buy the tickets, they were sold out. But we found another option that was an excellent second choice. And when I went on to buy those tickets, they were available for the date that we wanted to go. However, like I said, because of all of those reasons that I just mentioned, and maybe some reasons I don't even totally understand or have total awareness of, I didn't buy the tickets as soon as I realized they were available. I probably just got distracted in the moment or I was tired because usually I'm doing things at 10 or 11 o'clock at night before I go to bed. And I probably just said, Oh, I'll buy them tomorrow. And then, like I said, I ended up getting sick for several days. And when I finally felt better, I was like, okay, let me jump back on and grab those tickets. Now we're going into the story of the night where I got really dysregulated and it was a really hard experience for me. So I go on to buy these tickets, and now this second choice is sold out. I even talking about it can like feel just like a wave of heat in my body now. I don't have the rage anymore, but in that moment, my whole body was flooded with this overwhelming rage. And the trigger was definitely and clearly, even in the moment, that I felt like I had let my son down. He was so excited to do what we were doing. And I really felt excited to be able to provide this experience that my son was excited about. And to think that I was not going to be able to provide that for him was crushing for me in that moment. And the rage flooded, and it was so quick. And what was so interesting for me is that I was so intensely dysregulated. However, I wasn't at the absolute furthest end of the spectrum. And what I mean by that is when I talk about our nervous system, we only have three states. We have ventral, which is our safe enough, grounded, often calm, but regulated place. And we can have any feeling from that place. But oftentimes when we experience a big hard feeling because of our old experiences, often in childhood, we go into one of our two protective states of our nervous system, either sympathetic fight or flight, which is what I went into in this experience, or as I mentioned earlier, that dorsal, immobilized, shut down, collapsed state. And so we only have three states. However, we can have blended states, which is sort of what I'm talking about today, that I had such a strong sympathetic fight or flight charge. However, there was still just a little, little tiny bit, like just a little drip, or I felt like it was a little thread of ventral energy connecting me to that grounded place. So I didn't totally lose it. I felt pretty intensely, I have to be honest with you. But the whole time it was like I was having two experiences. One of this really intense rage, which was first directed at myself and then also directed at my husband. But I'll tell you more about that in a second. But then I also was able to have this kind of like ongoing narrative from this ventral space, I'll kind of walk you through it. It was like a bit of a blend. It was like a sympathetic and ventral, just a little tiny bit of ventral, but it was still a blended state. Also, within each of our states, we have a spectrum or a continuum. And so if you imagine the fight or flight state, a little bit of fight or flight energy with regulation might not feel like fight or flight energy at all. Maybe in the most regulated form, some ventral and sympathetic energy together might be what I call a flow state. Like, oh, I'm just getting things done. I have energy to make things happen and I don't feel overwhelmed or chaotic. But as you go more and more into that sympathetic continuum, you get less and less of that ventral grounding and you start to experience perhaps more overwhelm or feeling chaotic or going into anxiety and then maybe anger and frustration all the way into rage, that real intense fight or flight energy. So I was definitely in the higher end. But again, like I said, there was still like this thread of ventral energy for me. And having that, I was able to kind of narrate my experience to myself through that ventral lens. So let me explain. So again, I realized that I didn't get tickets. The amount of rage was so intense and immediately inwardly to myself, I'm like, oh my gosh, I have failed my son. We had such a good idea for his birthday, and he was feeling excited about it, which, if you know, 13-year-old boys, it's not always easy, at least for my son, to get them excited about something. And he was so excited about this plan. So I had this like heartbroken feeling that I let him down, which then very quickly paired with that rage experience of like I was this horrible parent. And then just as quickly, I had this surge of blame energy towards my husband, which I didn't say anything to him. This was all internal, like it was his fault that we didn't get the tickets. In my head, I was like, he was tired the night I wanted to buy the tickets, and that's why we didn't buy them. And if he wasn't tired, we would have sat down to buy the tickets. And I had this whole narrative about how who cares if we're tired, we need to get stuff done. And this is an example why if we don't do what we have to do, even when we're exhausted at night, then horrible things happen. So I had this super intense story going and I had this ventral narration going on, saying, like, okay, you're really dysregulated right now, Trish. You're not really a horrible parent, and it's really not Ben's fault. And yet, this is where you are right now. And so I was able to say, because I had just this thread of ventral energy, I was able to say to my husband, Ben, I am feeling so angry and dysregulated right now that I didn't buy the tickets. I actually can't talk to you right now because whatever I say will be very unhelpful. So I'm just gonna go to sleep because I have to come back to this tomorrow. I can't think clearly right now. So that is evidence that there was some ventral energy present because I was able to actually say that out loud, even though in my head I was going all over the place. And my husband responded with really a beautiful, ventral, very grounded response, which was something to the effect of like, oh, well, you know, we'll just figure out something else and we'll just get those tickets that are released later. Uh, I'm sure it'll all work out and everything will be fine. And many times that would have been a lovely response. But in my very charged, sympathetic fight or flight place that I was in, I really didn't want to hear anything about that. Yet I did have this little ventral narrator saying, you know, he's probably right. It's probably gonna be fine. But I didn't want to hear it right now. That's not where I was at. So I went upstairs to my room and I shut the door and I did a couple things. I sent like an email or something, and I was sitting there filled with all of this sympathetic charged energy, which is mobilized energy, is like do something. It's fight or flight. You want to attack or you want to run. So sitting in my bed, I wasn't feeling very restful. I wasn't quite ready to go to bed, even though my body was tired. But I was filled with all of this adrenaline from this incredible rage response that I was having and this dysregulation that was occurring in my nervous system and in my body. And then I was sitting there with these dysregulated stories, and I was, again, aware of this sympathetic story. And I was like, oh, Ben should have come and followed me in here if he really cared about me. And then, of course, it expanded. Like if he really cared about me and our son, he would totally come in here and make it right. And then I still had this ventral narrator saying, Well, you told him that talking to you would end badly, and you told him that you needed to rest because you were so angry and you needed a break, and you came upstairs telling him basically not to follow you. So if you really wanted him to follow you, you probably should have told him that you wanted to talk, or you can go downstairs and tell him now that you want to talk. I was having this like internal dialogue, and my sympathetic fight or flight ragey part was like, absolutely not. I am not ready to go talk to him right now. And then my ventral narrator was like, Well, then it's probably a good idea that you're still taking a break, right? And it was this really bizarre experience. I've never quite had such, I don't know, like such a real-time prolonged experience because I was so angry that we let down our son. Honestly, most of my really strong feelings these days do come from parenting things, like when I feel like I've let down my kids in some way or I haven't been the mom that I want to be, the mom that I think that my kids deserve, that I want to be for them, I can very quickly go into I failed, I'm a failure, I'm awful. And that's probably like one of the most slippery slopes for me. A lot of other things I can respond to with less intensity, but when it comes to my kids, again, not what they're doing that I react to them that way, but like when I feel like I've let them down as a parent, or with my husband, if I feel he's done something that has a negative impact on my kids, that's also tends to be a big trigger for me. So I was having this really intense experience about all of this. And yet the whole time I had, like I said, what I'm calling this ventral narrator that was kind of like giving me a different perspective, even though I wasn't ready to hear it. Just like when Ben said, this very ventral response of, Oh, yeah, we'll just get the tickets that are released closer to the date. I didn't want to hear it. That's not where I was at. So I did eventually settle down. And the next morning I still had just a little flavor of like, I don't want to talk to him. I'm still mad at him. And then that night I said to him, Okay, I'd like to have a dialogue about what happened last night, if you're open to it. And he said, Yeah, sure, which was wonderful. And so I was able to tell him, so this is what happened last night. I noticed I had this reaction when we didn't get the tickets and I felt like we let down our son, and he was so excited about his birthday plan. And I felt like I let him down. I have very strong reactions when I feel like I've let down our kids, or I can have a very strong reaction when something happens that I interpret in that way. And I was able to tell him I was telling myself all these dysregulated stories that I knew in the moment weren't accurate, but I believed them and I felt like they were true. And I told my story I was telling myself was that it was your fault, and I was totally blaming you, and I was so angry. And then when I came in the room, I wanted you to come in and I was so mad that you didn't follow me. Yet I also was aware that I told you that I needed a break and that I wasn't really going to be helpful in any kind of communication. So I totally understood why you didn't follow me. And I just kind of laid it all out on the table for him, and he totally was able to hear it all. And I did also say to him, I also was aware that you were probably right that everything would work out one way or another, but I just wasn't ready to hear it. And then he shared his experience and he said, Oh my gosh, I actually thought you went upstairs and went to sleep. If I realized that you were awake still, I would have come up, which in that moment really I have to say landed in a very caring way for me. Not that he should have known, but for him to say that if he knew that I was awake, he would have come to me. Because for us, that's a very old story. And I can remember going back 20 years in our early relationship when we would have an argument and I would be awake, upset, and he would go to sleep. And I could go back into my childhood experience, I'm sure, as well, and pick up even an earlier thread. But just with Ben to know that we're at a place where he's like, oh no, like I wasn't ignoring you that you were upset. I just really thought you were sleeping. Like he didn't realize that I was upstairs in our bedroom, awake and angry. But to hear that he would have been there for me was really, really beautiful. And I also was able to tell him, and this was such a cool experience for me to have, but I was able to tell him that when I initially said to him we didn't get the tickets, and he responded from that really grounded place, that felt more dysregulating for me. Like I wanted him to sort of join in my frustration about all this, not in the self-blame, either blaming me or him blaming himself, but being able to be like, yeah, that sucks that we didn't get the tickets. I just needed a little bit more energy. And when I say that it was a really great experience for me to have, what I mean is that sometimes either this happens with Ben, and it also happens with my son, who's almost 14. And it also happens occasionally with my daughter, who's six. But when they are in a state of sympathetic dysregulation, they have some of that charge, some of that energy with them going on in their nervous systems, in their bodies. I sometimes come to them too grounded, I think. Not all the time. I certainly can get dysregulated too, but sometimes I come from this very grounded place and it doesn't land well for them, particularly with my husband and my son. And being on the other side, being the dysregulated, sympathetically charged person and having been come to me with that grounded, regulated energy and me being like, no, like that's not what I want. Like, join me in some of this rage. And again, not exactly the same level of rage, but having some of that, a little bit of that frustration actually would have felt more connecting for me. And that was a really cool experience. Cause like I said, I'm often on the other side and learning that perhaps joining people, and I know this intellectually as a therapist, but living it was really cool because it's important to match somebody where their energy is at, where their nervous system is at. It was a learning for me, an experiential learning of what that's like, and needing someone to meet me with a little bit more energy. I didn't really want the grounding in that exact moment. And maybe if he had been able to meet me with that energy, perhaps I would have been able to feel connected and maybe we would have gotten more grounded more quickly together. I don't know. But I also wasn't able to communicate to him in that moment that that's what I needed. But I was the next evening able to tell him. And so he said, Oh, you could have told me that. I could have gotten on board with that. I could have gotten annoyed that we didn't get the tickets too. And I said, Oh, well, thanks. And the next time I will try to let you know, right? Maybe I could have said, I don't really need regulated grounding right now. Can you like join me in my frustration a little bit? And maybe that would have been helpful. And so maybe next time that happens, I'll be able to communicate that to him a little bit better. And he can join me in a way that feels more connecting because, like I said, he didn't know and he couldn't have known. And it's not his responsibility to know what I haven't communicated to him. He doesn't have to guess or figure it out on his own. That's really not very realistic. And it was a learning experience for both of us about how we could handle situations like this differently in the future. In closing, while amazing moments like being in Sedona or feeling the sun shine on my face are really treasured moments, and I do try to consciously notice and name those moments and savor them and really feel the gratitude that I have for them. It is also in moments of conflict and hardship when I'm having some big feelings, my nervous system is dysregulated, I'm in this self-protective mode that I also want to notice and name that that's what's happening. And I also want to savor with deep gratitude the experience of how far I've come and how much work I have done to be able to experience myself and my world in such a different way and be able to make repairs so much more quickly and really learn from the conflicts instead of just getting stuck in the conflicts and prolonging them, which is certainly what I used to do and what Ben and I together used to do for a long time for many, many years. So even if living a conscious life isn't always totally a storybook fantasy, I do think that even and maybe especially in those moments of conflict, choosing to live a more conscious life is pretty awesome and extraordinary in its own way. As our time comes to a close, I ask you to keep listening for just a few more moments because I want to thank you for showing up today. And I want to leave you with an invitation as you hit stop and move back out into the world on your own unique wellness journey. In order to move from where you are today to the place where you want to be, the path may seem long or unclear or unknown. And I want you to know that if that seems scary or daunting or downright terrifying or anything else, that is totally okay. Know that you do not have to create the whole way all at once. We don't travel a whole journey in one stride. And that is why my invitation to you today is to take a step, just one. Any type, any size, in any direction. It can be an external step that can be observed or measured, or it could be a step you visualize taking in your mind. It can be a step towards action or towards rest or connection or self-care or whatever step makes sense to you. I invite you to take a step today because getting to a place that feels better, more joyful, more connected than the place where you are today is possible for everyone, including you, and even when depression is in your bed. If today's episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you can be notified when each weekly episode gets released. I encourage you to leave a review and reach out to me on social media at trish.sanders.lcsw. Your feedback will help guide future episodes, and I love hearing from you. Also, please share this podcast with anyone who you think may be interested or who may get something from what I have shared. Until the next time we connect, take care of yourself and take a step.