When Depression is in your bed

Becoming Who You Already Are: Identity, Growth, and Celebrating Along the Way

• Trish Sanders, LCSW • Episode 41

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Growth doesn’t wait for a finish line. This episode leans into the messy middle—where self-care becomes more consistent, mirrors from friends provide a much needed self-reflection, and you realize you’ve been practicing a new identity long before you felt “ready.” I talk about the milestones that surprised me, like releasing 40 podcast episodes, and the realization that our self-growth can be inhibited when we (unconsciously) keep ourselves stuck in old identities. I begin to wonder about what can shift when you embrace growing into your new identities now and celebrate who you are today instead of waiting until you fully "arrive".

I open up about living with depression and choosing a different lens—one that holds the weight of despair while insisting on hope, possibility, and choice. That’s not sugarcoating; it’s strategy. By tending to the nervous system, slowing down conflict, and inviting co-regulation, new options appear in relationships and daily life. Along the way, feedback becomes a powerful relational growth tool. When listeners and colleagues reflected back “I learned something from listening” or “I see light in you,” it was a mirror that helped me acknowledge and integrate lost parts of myself. Community is more than support; it can be a catalyst for identity change.

You’ll hear why celebrating progress as it happens matters, how visibility can become safe, and why small steps—taken today—beat perfect plans tomorrow. If you’re navigating mental health, relationship stress, or the long arc of healing, this is a grounded invitation to claim more of your true self, not someday, but now. Join our community, share your reflections, and let’s keep building spaces where authenticity and hope can breathe.

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. Today I'm talking about something that I've been discovering as I travel on my own journey of self-growth and healing, which is the importance of celebrating who you are becoming as you're becoming that person. And if you're on your own journey of self-growth, please join me today so we can celebrate together. I'm your host, Trish Sanders, and I am delighted that you are here. Let's get started. As my commitment to my own self-care, and I mean deep, true, profound taking care of my mind, body, and soul self-care, as my commitment has grown over the last several years, I would say especially over the last five or six years, I have had experiences that have been indicators to me of the changes that I have been making. So as I've been taking better care of myself, I have noticed things shift in my life. And that has been absolutely lovely. And over the past year, I've been noticing more and more of these things popping up from time to time. And over the last several months, things have been happening with more frequency. So I've been noticing more and more the impact of the conscious life that I'm living and the choices that I'm making. And I am not doing it perfectly. I just really want to say that because I make lots of mistakes and things are not always amazing and wonderful, and they're never perfect. However, the impact of the choices that I have made become more and more clear. And last week I had a bunch of incredible experiences that really started to make me question, quite honestly, who I see myself to be at this point in my life and who I actually am showing up as in the world. And even a bit about how other people are seeing me and being able to be seen by other people and be in relationship with other people has really been impacting how I see myself and these people that I've been interacting with have been true mirrors to me and have helped me see myself more clearly, I think, than I ever have been able to see myself before. And who I see myself to be, my identity has been shifting. And it's been such an incredible experience, truly heartwarming, I would say, heart-filling. My heart feels full of joy and gratitude for the experiences I've been having. And I've been having this mostly internal celebration of how far I've come. And it felt really special to share it because it's so deeply connected to my experience of creating this podcast and who I have become through having this podcast over the past 10 months. So I wanted to share with you about these experiences that I have had. Again, they've been popping up from time to time over the past several months. But this past week there was just this flood that I couldn't deny. And I really welcomed it because it was truly beautiful to start to see myself in this new way. And perhaps in some ways it's an old way. Maybe it's in part who I've always known myself to be, but it's definitely not how I've identified for most of my life. So the very first thing that I wanted to share is that last week I released my 40th podcast episode. And there's a lot of really cool milestones. Some that I've hit, some that I will be hitting. I'll be hitting my year podcast anniversary in January. So that's not too far away. But the 40th episode had some special meaning to me because I very clearly remember being part of an online coaching group right around when I had just started the podcast. And I don't recall if it was after I had just released the trailer or if it was after I had released the first episode, but it was right there in the very beginning. And we were being asked in that particular group to share our accomplishments, to share things to celebrate. And I remember someone in the group had shared that they had released 40 podcast episodes. And I was in awe. And I remember so clearly thinking to myself, wow, they're a real podcaster if they've released 40 episodes. And as I've been creating and releasing episodes, I have realized that I still haven't really identified myself as a podcaster. Like when I think about myself, I'm not like, oh yeah, and I'm a podcaster. And so as I came close to my 40th episode, I've been reflecting on this experience. Because I had this perspective of looking at someone from the outside and thinking, oh, that's who they are. They do podcasts. That's what they do. I realized that maybe I need to re-identify as someone who is a podcaster who does podcasts. And it helped me to start to embrace this new identity and this new part of me. And along with that, I've also been having more and more experiences recently in both my professional and my personal circles of people giving me feedback that they've been listening to my podcast and they've been letting me know what they like or what resonated for them or the things that they've appreciated or learned. And it has been a big shift for me because for many, many months now, I have mostly just been putting my podcast out into the world, which has essentially been a big black hole and not having any idea how it's landing, who's listening. I've had very few people tell me what they think of it. And over the past week, I've had several people tell me that they've been listening. And the experience of being heard and seen in this way, I don't know if this sounds dramatic, but it has literally taken my breath away. I haven't known how to respond to people when they give me usually positive feedback about what they think of the podcast. Part of it I've realized as a depressed person, I have often felt invisible and certainly not worthy, but I've come to realize that being heard and seen in this way has been truly healing for me. And for me to put myself out there in the world in this way has been a huge growth experience. And it wasn't so easy for me to do. And I had to do a lot of work with the fear of being seen, the fear of being visible and what that meant to me. And that has all been happening preparing to launch the podcast, and then certainly over the past 10 months of actually doing episodes. And it really has been such a source of growth for me. And it has absolutely been contributing to who I see myself to truly be. And then I also had this experience last week. I was talking with one of my dear friends, who's also a colleague of mine, and someone else in our professional circle. And the person we were talking to asked what the name of my podcast was. So I told them it's when depression is in your bed. And they half-jokingly responded with something like, Oh, that's so depressing. And in that moment, I was filled with this energy, if I can say that, and this clarity. And I responded something to the effect of, like, yeah, I get it. Depression can be a very heavy topic. However, that's not how I talk about depression. It's not depressing. That's the point. I don't know how well I explained myself in that moment, but looking back, I did have this moment of clarity that, oh, this is my mission in doing this podcast, that I hold a perspective now on depression, on how to respond to depression in yourself and in your partner in a very different way than I did 10 years ago or 20 years ago. And the podcast as I do it is really what I wish somebody would have told me all those years ago. And maybe if I would have been able to connect with it then, which I'm not sure exactly if I would have been able to or not, but had I been able to connect with this information and shift my perspective, I think I would have been able to be more hopeful and certainly would have been able to do things differently in a way that really would have benefited me and my relationship, and of course, my husband as well, and even our kids for that matter. And I realize that depression certainly can be heavy and can be painful and difficult. And I know the darkness and the despair and the hopelessness. And there have been parts of my life that have been an absolute nightmare. So I'm not trying to minimize depression in any way. I've been there, I've lived it, I know it. And I also see the other side. I see lightness, I see hope, I see possibility. And the information that I have today and the perspective that I hold today is something completely different that I think allows people and empowers people, certainly has empowered me and I think my husband as well, to be able to make new choices and have access to things that felt completely inaccessible before. And this perspective shift has helped me to change my life. And I realized that I wanted to start this podcast because if I can help anybody else change the relationship that they have with themselves andor the relationship that they have with their partner, then I definitely want to do that. And as much as I love being a therapist and I'm super excited going into the world of relationship coaching as well, it costs money to do those things. And I'm happy to support whoever I can in that way. But a podcast is available and accessible to everybody. And if something that I share can help somebody, then that feels like a part of my life's purpose. And that's really why I'm here. And that's who I see myself to be. Somebody who has struggled a lot, who has come to the other side. And I don't mean my life's perfect by any stretch. It is far from perfect because at the end of the day, I'm still human, but I've grown so much and my life looks completely different than it ever has before. And I feel like what I have learned through my own journey and my own process is something that I can perhaps share with other people. And if you can connect to a piece of what I share and it helps you improve your life in any way, then I'm here for it. That's exactly why I'm here and why I'm sharing this podcast. And then another experience I've had that I think is sort of in line with that is that I've been getting feedback recently from some people. And it feels a little bit weird to say this out loud because it feels a little bit like I'm bragging or I shouldn't be saying this. There feels like a little bit of embarrassment and shame that creeps up, but I will still say it. I have been getting feedback recently from people that they see some sort of light in me. And as somebody who has spent so much of my life embracing the darkness inside of me and has felt so surrounded by darkness and depression, for people to be telling me that they see the light in me has been mind-blowing. And I think for that reason, because it has seemed to be the polar opposite of how I've identified for so much of my life, but also because there is a part of me that has always held on to hope, even though sometimes I have felt very disconnected from that part of myself. I have always held on to hope for myself that things would be better, that I was going to get to the other side of whatever it was, the depression, the hardship, the challenge, the whatever. And then in my relationship, I've held on to hope for us, for Ben and I. And something has allowed me to do that. And I even in this world have so much hope for what can happen for the future that we can create together. And if I can bring a message of hope to people, whether you're dealing with depression in yourself or you're living with depression in your partner or both of you, or even if you're just feeling overwhelmed and stressed and maybe even traumatized in the world that we're living in today, if I can share a message of hope and bring some lightness into these really dark kinds of times, then that's really what I want to do. And I feel that that's who I am. Whew. That feels really strange to say in such a direct way. And this is why I've been thinking about who I am and my identity and how important it is to celebrate. And going back to the podcast example, I have not embraced this identity of me being a podcaster. It's sort of a parallel to my experience and all of these other ways about who I am. Because I think in my head, to be a podcaster, maybe it meant I had to have a certain number of episodes, or I had to have been doing it for a certain amount of time, or maybe it meant that I had to have a certain amount of subscribers or a certain amount of downloads. I'm not really sure. I didn't have it so clearly defined, but I know that for all of this time, whatever I defined a podcaster to be was not me. I hadn't achieved it yet. I hadn't gotten there yet. I wasn't accomplished enough yet to identify as a podcaster. And all of these experiences that I've been having over the last months, and like I said, particularly last week, I really had just the most amazing experience. I was fortunate enough to be a part of the MAGA Relationships North America conference that happened last week in Chicago. And I was able to be in this community of people that are just so incredible and has been such a healing place for me and such a healing community for me over the past decade. These people and these experiences that I had when I was able to share time with them, they were able to be a mirror for where I am today. And I've had other experiences recently that have been very similar that have helped me see the progress that I've made, not through my own eyes, but from how other people who I respect and trust and love, how they have seen me and how they have noticed my growth in ways that I had not yet noticed or had not yet embraced. So this idea of celebrating who we're becoming as we're becoming it has really been on my mind lately because if I waited until I had, I don't know, X amount of episodes or X amount of downloads before I call myself a podcaster, I think I'd be shortchanging myself. And in reality, I don't think we fully arrive. There's always more in Imago, the type of a relationship therapy that I do. We say is there more and we say there's always more. And so there's always more that we can accomplish. But as a mom, you know, yeah, there's more that I can do as a mom. I'm growing all the time in being a mom and being the best mom I can be. But I'm definitely a mom, right? And as a wife or a partner, there's certainly more growth that I can do, more than I can accomplish, more than I could achieve, more spaces that I can grow into and be an even better version of the partner I am for my husband. But a lot of the time, I think, and I'll just speak for myself and as a depressed person, I think that there's this idea of being a not depressed person or what a happy person might be, or the happy version of yourself, or the person who no longer struggles with depression, who that person is. And that person can feel so far away from where you are. And it can feel so far away that you think you'll never get there. And I know that feeling, and I know that hopelessness and feeling defeated and the impossibility or what seems like impossibility of getting to where you want to be. And yet, knowing all of that, I am here today at a place in my life where I don't know if I'll ever fully become any of my identities, but I do know that I am and what I would describe as more of my true self, more of my whole self, more of my authentic self than I've ever been in my entire life. And I got here on purpose. It wasn't an accident. And I think that that's really worth celebrating. Even the progress that we make by accident, or when we look up one day and we go, huh, this is new. You know, I didn't always respond this way, or this is better than it used to be. Those are also moments absolutely worth celebrating. But for many years, I've been working on myself and who I am. And thankfully, I've had these beautiful mirrors in this incredible community and communities that I'm a part of, which are also not accidental. I've been very actively creating community for a long time, and it didn't seem to be working for many, many, many years. And as much effort as I was putting into creating community and connecting and trying to find a place where I felt like I belonged, I was struggling to find it for a really long time. And I finally feel like I have communities and people that I connect to and I really feel a sense of belonging. And I realized that if we hold on to who we have always seen ourselves to be, we don't allow space for the new version of us to emerge. And again, for me, it became so clear through this journey in podcasting because I didn't see myself as a podcaster. I didn't see myself as somebody who was really sharing their voice in the world with a message that felt important because to me, I was just talking into a microphone and it was going into the void for a long time. And now that I'm starting to get feedback, I'm like, oh, wow, okay, I guess I am doing this. Like, this is real. And as people have started to show up and share how they see me, and I'm open, by the way, to feedback, even if people think that I should do things differently or things they want to see more of or less of, that I'm certainly open to all sorts of feedback, but I've been getting the most delightful feedback about how people are experiencing me. And it feels aligned with a part of myself that I have been disconnected from for a really long time. And it's helping me to integrate that part of myself and loosen my grip on some of the ways that I've seen myself in the past that have not been as helpful or as accurate. So today I am celebrating and embracing my identities as I fill them out. I'm not sure that I'll ever get to a place where I think I have fully and finally arrived. And I think maybe I hope I never get there. I sort of have this idea that the universe is ever expanding, and I think that as humans, that we are also ever expanding, and that that's to me what I would call a life well lived. And so I don't want to wait to celebrate and acknowledge myself until I've finally arrived at whatever imagined version of myself I wish I could be or think I should be. I want to start celebrating today because that really supports my growth process and it allows me to be exactly who I am today in process, imperfectly. And maybe it allows you to claim or reclaim a little bit more of who you actually are and who you're actually becoming. And maybe it'll give you a little bit of permission to let go of an identity that you're holding on to that maybe isn't serving you as much anymore. And the last thing that I want to share is that as I'm talking about these parts of myself who have always been there, I think that I haven't been able to fully embrace. And I've talked about this before, I think on my very first episode actually. I talked about the idea of a sunshine warrior. It's a little figure that I actually made because I have an extensive miniature collection because I do sand therapy. And I took this little happy face figure and I taped a mace onto his hand, like a medieval weapon onto his hand, and I called him the sunshine warrior because I've always said that happiness is the only thing worth fighting for. And I think today I have a very specific view of what fighting means, of what it means to fight for happiness. But I still stand by that I think that putting effort into being your whole, full, authentic self and the nervous system piece feeling safe enough to be that person and embrace that person and allow yourself to become that person is really, I think, just the best thing to put energy into because when you embrace your whole self, then you allow others to embrace their whole selves and you have relationships that feel better. And when you have relationships that feel better, you create a family that feels better and a community that feels better and a country that feels better and a world that feels better. And that is my hope. And I want to be able to do what I can to contribute to that. And if you want to be a part of my community, all are welcome. And I welcome your feedback. And I'd love to be in conversation with you. As wonderful is an experience as it is to make episodes and put them out into the world. Hearing from you is a really valuable piece of this experience for me. And so to be able to open up that line of communication, I invite you to go to regulatedrelationships.kit.com forward slash sunshine. And you can put in your name and your email address, and then you can be a part of my community and we can have conversations that help support you in becoming the you that you really want to be and help you have relationships that you really want to have. And as you discover more and more of who you are and you reclaim your true identity, we can celebrate all along the way. In the show notes, there'll also be a link if you want to join my community so that we can have more conversations and more celebrations together. 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.