When Depression is in your bed

Writing New Stories: How My Brain Healed After Holiday Depression and Beyond

• Trish Sanders, LCSW • Episode 47

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The holidays can feel bright for some and unbearably heavy for others. I open up about a Christmas that nearly ended my marriage and trace how those memories slowly softened—not by accident, but because the brain can change and grow when it feels safer. This is a story that starts with depression and disconnection, then moves to the science of hope: moving beyond survival mode, neural pruning, and memory reconsolidation. It’s also a map for finding one supported step when the season overwhelms you.

I talk through the shift from scanning for danger to making room for joy, and how therapy—especially Imago relationship work—gave us tools to repair when words misfired and patterns felt unbreakable. You’ll hear about the tree I decorated late, a child’s wonder at a star, and a mason jar full of Xs and Os that didn’t land the way I hoped. Those moments didn’t vanish; they were rewritten by new experiences of safety and small daily choices that rewrote a story of connection over time.

If you’re carrying grief, holiday blues, or chronic stress, consider this your gentle invitation to take one step today. Slow down instead of speeding up. Ask for help. Set one clear boundary. Reach for safe-enough connection. Your nervous system can learn a different holiday rhythm, and your brain can compress what no longer serves while expanding what sustains. Press play for a grounded blend of story and neuroscience, and leave with practical ways to start your new chapter. If it resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find support here.

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's episode is a special message to anyone who might be struggling this holiday season. I'll share a bit of my own story along with some neuroscience to show why hope for better days is not just wishful thinking, but something that can actually happen for you and your brain. My intention is that this episode lands as a joyful inspiration for you and a reminder that you aren't alone. I'm your host, Trish Sanders, and I am delighted that you are here. Let's get started. I decided to record my last episode, Grief, Gratitude, and ADHD, What's Coming Up for Me This Holiday Season, in a very organic way, which tends to be how I choose my content most of the time. For me, this podcast is an ongoing conversation and I don't plan very much ahead. I really base what I talk about based on what I'm experiencing in my day-to-day real life. And after I recorded my last episode, it seemed like a natural next episode to continue talking about the holiday season. And my first thought was, wow, I have a ton to share on holidays and depression, being that my husband and I have both lived with depression for most of our lives, and we have certainly had many celebrations impacted in a very negative way because of that. As a matter of fact, we actually got separated the day after Christmas 11 years ago. So obviously I had stories to tell, right? Wrong. Well, sort of. As I started to think about what stories I wanted to share, it became clear to me that I didn't have a crystal clear memory of all of those really awful Christmases. And at first I was sort of confused because there was definitely a time when I could have painstakingly recalled every last heartbreaking detail of each one of those Christmases gone so very wrong. So what was going on? I realized it had a lot to do with neuroscience and the way brains work. Many years ago, when my husband and I were at our absolute worst in the deepest depths of depression that we experienced, we were both living in high alert. We were almost always in survival mode. I was super vigilant, paying attention to absolutely everything because being able to track all the details of what was going on was how I felt safe. I felt like I had to pay attention to everything that was happening for me and for my husband so that essentially we could stay alive. And back then, that's what I needed to do. However, thankfully, since then, things have changed so much. And now that my body doesn't feel like it's under threat constantly anymore, thank goodness, my brain has started to do what brains do when they start to feel safer. There's this idea in brain science about use it or lose it. And it's really true. What we don't continue to use, our brain naturally prunes. It's very efficient. We don't need to put effort and energy into parts of our brain that we're not using regularly. And so in time, in these 11 plus years, my memories have essentially compressed so that they don't take up as much space as they used to, which is really pretty awesome because that means that the threat is not present anymore. And so I don't have to keep those thoughts in the forefront of my brain. And as those memories take up less space, there's more space for newer, safer, much more enjoyable memories to take up. And this also means that this memory is now what it's supposed to be: something that has happened in the past. It's no longer something that when I think about it, it feels like it's happening to me right now, which is a very common experience of trauma for very many people. And I can tell you for a lot of years, that was my experience, that when I brought things back up, I could be transported right back to those moments, right back to that pain. Whereas today it doesn't feel that way at all. It no longer serves me to keep those things right there, front and center, in the forefront of my mind, reliving all of those details. It doesn't help keep me safe anymore. And as a matter of fact, that foggy, unclear memory that I have, or that summary of that memory that I have now is actually a pretty good indicator, at least in this case, that healing has occurred in my brain. And part of how that happens is that as I've told these memories of these really painful experiences, whether I was talking in therapy or talking with a friend or my husband, or even just thinking about them myself, my brain has been editing the story. Essentially, that's what memory reconsolidation is. And it's a way that the emotional charge that a particular memory holds gets edited or updated to match how it actually feels for me today in the present moment, as opposed to it holding the exact same emotional charge that it held when it actually happened. So basically, when I remember these past experiences, I no longer am back in this, oh my gosh, this is a huge cue of danger. I need to find safety right now. I need to protect myself. I need to be in survival. Now, when I pull up these memories, they feel much softer. They no longer hold a charge of a cue of danger. And I experience it as part of the story rather than something that I have to do something about for fear that that'll be the end of the story. So the really good news is that as my old memories have gotten compressed, there's been space for my new memories to take up. And there hasn't been a need to rehash the old painful experiences. And I haven't experienced those things in the same way in several years. And so it doesn't mean that our holidays are perfect and that everything is constantly wonderful, but I don't experience the challenges that come up during our holiday season as a threat to my survival anymore. They're just frustrations or things that need to get figured out or things that I want to talk to my husband about so we can figure out how to do better together. So when I first noticed that I couldn't remember every last detail of all those holidays, I was a little bit worried and thought, oh my gosh, what am I supposed to talk about on these episodes? Because I don't want to just talk about depression or grief or holiday blues in a general way. There's a lot of information out there, there's a lot of good information out there, but I really wanted to bring my own personal experience. So I was a little bit at a loss. But I realized that it wasn't necessarily helpful to try to recount the complete horror stories that I've lived through and that I might be able to offer something else that could potentially be a lot more valuable. And that really is the experience of my healing journey and how far I have come in the past decade plus, and the neuroscience that helps explain what makes it possible to actually be able to move on to a more joyful place in your life. So I do still think it feels fitting to share with you what I do remember about 11 years ago. But what I really want you to hear in today's episode is that things can and do get better. So if you're struggling this holiday season, there is a path towards finding self-care and safe enough connection that can lead you to eventually having a completely different holiday experience than you may be having right now. As a matter of fact, all the pain and struggle and hurt and heaviness that you might be dealing with right now could very possibly become a distant memory to your future self. It could be a ghost of Christmas past, perhaps, or a ghost of Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or winter solstice past, or maybe it'll just be a ghost of December's past. I truly want you to hear and believe, maybe even start to know that it's so much more than a nice thought. It's actually how our brains work. When you're in survival mode, when you feel like you have to protect yourself, it makes total sense that you have to keep everything right in front of you and pay very close attention because that is what feels like it's keeping you safe right now. It consumes you so that you don't miss anything that could be a threat or a danger. And that essentially helps you stay alive, or at least it feels like that's what it's doing, even though it actually might be consuming the life that you have right now. But based on how brains and nervous systems work, it's actually trying to help. But we can work with our brains and with our nervous systems so that we can actually heal trauma, chronic stress, deep relational disconnection, and any other wounds that we might be carrying with us. So all of that can be a part of our story, not the main characters, not who we are. And we can begin to write something totally new, something that is in alignment with our authentic selves and our true wishes for the life that we want to live and how we want to celebrate our holidays. And for me, I look back on that holiday certainly as a very hard chapter. And quite honestly, that chapter is when things really started to change. The nightmare Christmas of disconnection that my husband and I had 11 years ago was the pivotal point. Things got so bad that we had to do something differently. And we did. So I will share with you what I do remember about my holiday season that year. Things were definitely a nightmare. Ben and I were totally disconnected, and part of what I think made it even worse was that we were both trying to be connected. So in our own different ways, we were both reaching out and trying to engage, but it just wasn't working. And that made it even harder because both of us, I don't want to speak for Ben, but I can say for myself, and I imagine he felt the same way, was that I felt like my efforts were failing. And that was really giving me an experience of I don't know what else to do because I feel like I've tried everything. And one of the moments that I remember, I'm pretty sure from that Christmas, but to be honest, it's a little bit blurry. So it could have been from a different year, but I don't think so because my son was really small. And I ended up putting up the Christmas tree with just him a few days before Christmas because Ben and I just couldn't get it together to get the tree up and decorate. But I felt really strongly that we had to have a tree so that Santa could put the presents underneath for our son. Because even though Ben and I were suffering so badly, I wanted so much for our son to have a joyful holiday. And it was so painful for me putting up the tree without Ben. It felt so incomplete and there was such a gap. I tried to put on a happy face for our son. I don't know how successful I was. I think I was successful, but I don't really know how it landed for him. But I remember so clearly this moment when I put the star on top of the tree and my son said this adorably sweet thing, something only like this little tiny young person could say with all of his wonder and awe. And he looked up at the star on top of the tree and he said something like, Wow, now I understand the magic of Christmas. Santa will definitely be able to find our house now. And in that moment, despite how dark everything felt in my life, I remember so clearly this little moment of brightness, this little moment of our son, of his joy, and knowing that maybe things weren't the way I wanted them to be, but there was something that was still enough and not everything was going totally wrong. And as I said, I remember so clearly wanting to connect with Ben and wanting to reach out and wishing that things could be different. And I actually made him for Christmas this little mason jar. I think I might have talked about on the podcast before, but it was a little jar that was filled with little X's and O's. And I wrote something on it like this is a jar filled with love. I gave him this jar of love to try to communicate to him how much I loved him and how much I wanted to connect. And to me, it felt like this huge grand gesture. And when he opened it on Christmas Day, it just didn't land for him. I don't really know why that was. Maybe he just wasn't in a receiving place, or maybe it felt like pressure to him, or maybe the way that I sent it was not quite the way that he needed it to be sent. I don't really know, but I remember feeling so incredibly crushed in that moment. Now I feel very differently about it, but I do remember feeling like, oh my gosh, I tried so hard to show him that I loved him and it still failed. So what else are we supposed to do? Because Christmas was so disconnected and so painful for both of us. Ben decided to go to his parents out of state for the weekend. And in the nine years that we had been together at the time, he had never gone away to his parents' house without me and certainly without our son. So I was really taken aback. Like, what is going on here? And I think I experienced it as an abandonment, as a rejection of my efforts. I was trying so hard to connect with him and here he was leaving. And when we talked on the phone that weekend, I ended up saying to him something that I didn't actually mean the way that I said it, but it landed in a particular way because of the words that I did in fact use. And even though they weren't what I quite meant, and I really wanted to take them back once I realized how Ben heard them, they ended up being exactly what I needed to say because it totally cracked open the way that we were doing things, our old patterns and the place that we were stuck in. So when I was on the phone with him, what I said to Ben was that I had left to my mom's house and I had brought our son and that I left permanently. And those were my words. And so, not surprisingly, that landed to him that I meant that that was it, that was the end of our relationship. I wanted a divorce. Now, in truth, that was really not what I meant. What I really meant by saying that was that I had left with my son and gone to my mom's house many times before that, but I'd always come back after a day or two because I didn't see how we could work on our relationship, and Ben didn't see how we could work on our relationship if I wasn't in the relationship, if I wasn't home with him. So I always came back. So what I actually meant in that moment was that I had left until we actually did something different and until we really got some help. And as a matter of fact, I had known about Imago therapy, which is something that you may have heard me talk about on the podcast before. Of course, I am now a certified Imago Advanced Relationship Therapist, but I was not then. I only worked with kids and teens back then, but I had known about Imago therapy and I had read the Getting the Love You Want book and I really believed in it. And so I came back to Ben the day after saying that to him with a list of Imago therapists and the next Getting the Love You Want workshop that was happening in the new year. And when I came back to him, I was like, okay, so here's the plan. We're gonna go to this Imago therapist and we're gonna go to this workshop in a few months. And he was like, What are you talking about? And I was like, What do you mean? And he's like, We're getting divorced. And I was floored. I was like, what are you talking about? And I quickly realized what had happened. And I tried to tell him in that moment, no, no, no, that's not what I meant. Like, I get it. Permanent sounds like it means permanent, but I didn't mean it that way. I was upset, I was distraught, I was just saying things not exactly as I meant. But he was already committed and he was clear that we were getting divorced. And I was heartbroken and even more disconnected than I had felt the week before, which almost seems unthinkable because it was so painful the week before. And here I was feeling even more alone and even more isolated. I was nauseous for days. I could not eat, which by the way is not usually how I respond to things when I'm upset about something or stressed about something. I definitely usually move towards food. So the experience of being so nauseous that I couldn't eat was totally unfamiliar to me. But I think now and looking back, it was such an experience of my full dorsal shutdown. My nervous system was in such a collapsed place that the ability to rest and digest, which is what our regulated dorsal allows us to do, was just not working. I was so collapsed and immobilized that my digestive system wasn't even working and I couldn't eat and I was sick for days. I remember spending New Year's Eve at my aunt's house with my sweet little son sleeping on my chest, trying to balance gratitude for having my amazing kid and my supportive family, and also wondering what the heck I was gonna do in the new year. And I had no idea what to do, where to go, what my next step was. And I felt completely trapped. And the experience of knowing how much I wanted to be connected with my husband and how much I wanted things to work, and in that moment, thinking that that's not what he wanted was totally devastating. I did come to realize that within a few, I don't know, days or weeks, I guess, that he wanted things to work too, but he just believed that we absolutely couldn't, that we had already tried everything that we could possibly try and nothing was working. And he used to say to me back then things like, we're just incompatible, I'll always love you, we'll be good co-parents together. We're just not meant to be married, but I didn't give up. I was able to find an Imago therapist that we did start going to while we were separated. And Ben did tell her that we had two feet out the door of our relationship, but I kept calling and calling and calling. And so he was looking back. And I also convinced him to come to an Imago getting the Love You Want workshop that was happening. And that's a whole other story that I much more clearly remember. But we registered and we unregistered because he changed his mind and then we re-registered and we did actually get there. And one step at a time, I figured out from New Year's Eve of having no clue what I was going to do next, and for the next almost six months, figuring out piece by piece, little by little, what I was gonna do next. And quite honestly, I was simultaneously figuring out what I was gonna do next if we got divorced and what I was gonna do next to try to not get divorced. But I did, in fact, figure it out. And every step that I started taking 11 years ago has really led me to where I am today. And I have kept taking steps, and there have been plenty of other moments where I had absolutely no idea what to do. None of them were as devastating and painful and disconnected as that moment, but there certainly has been plenty of disconnection and pain and struggle since, but in ways that were much more manageable, even if they were overwhelming in the moment. That was definitely the worst Christmas that we ever had. And I also want to say the progress wasn't always linear. It wasn't like things just kept getting better and better and better. Our progress has definitely been a winding road, which I am very honest about. But yet I've always reached for connection and been committed to connecting with my husband and figuring out how to do that. And for me, that has always made sense for it to be with him. If I was somebody else or he was somebody else, maybe I would have made a different decision at some point. But it still keeps making sense to me. And so I still maintain this commitment. And through this process, I have figured out not only how to take better care of my husband, but also how to take far better care of myself. And then just as a trickle-down effect, how to take much better care of our kids. And all of that learning, all of the new connecting, all of the self-care, all of the new relationship care, all of those experiences, including the challenging ones that have come along the way, those are all new memories that have been stored. And those really have come to define my story, the resilience of it all, my resilience, our resilience. That has come to be the defining factor in my story so much more than the pain. The pain happened, it had to happen. The disconnect was there, the depression was there, the emptiness, the isolation, the not knowing what to do. It was all there. But like I said before, the story didn't end there. And that's really why I have this podcast because I know that there's so many people out there who feel like they don't know where to go from here. And I'm somebody who found my way through and it wasn't by accident and it wasn't always easy, but I didn't give up. And that is certainly in a general sense, but it feels very tied to the holidays for a lot of reasons for me. Of course, because we got separated around the holidays, but I think that for me it was such an experience of I wanted to celebrate life with my husband. That felt real and I felt sure of that. And like I said, that's what I wanted, and that's what made sense for me. That might be different for you and for your relationship or your future relationships, but that was my reality. And over all of these years, I have continued to make new memories. And here we are in this new holiday season, and it is not perfect, as evidenced by my last podcast episode: Grief, Gratitude, and ADHD. What's coming up for me this holiday season? It's certainly not always easy, but there is a lot more connection and a lot more joy. So, in case you are struggling this holiday season, in whatever way you might be struggling, and if it helps to hear it, please know that you are not alone. You're not the only one. And you actually, whether you know it or not, can begin to write your new story, your new holiday season story today. Holidays don't always have to be heavy and painful. This is a season of believing and a season of magic. And I don't know if it sounds trite or silly or cheesy, maybe, but if you believe in yourself and you believe in your own magic, but you can create something new from here, and you can begin to give yourself care in a new way that can absolutely lead to a better future and certainly more joyful, more celebratory holiday seasons that look so much different than how this one might be looking for you. And you might need support, and finding safe connection can be a challenge, but there's therapists and professional help and healers. And if you have friends or family that could be potential resources, I encourage you to reach out. And take one step of what will be many steps, but can lead you to a really new place so that the ghost of holidays yet to come can actually have a very different experience than what you might be feeling right now. And to know that it's not just a wish, it's actually neuroscience and how our brains work. And so often, especially with depression, we're fighting against our brain and against our nervous system. And that's really what's causing the problem. So I encourage you with every ounce of my heart, my nervous system, and my brain to please take a step today, find a step of self-care, whether that means slowing down, which often during the holiday season, we can feel like we need to speed up and do so much more. But taking a step towards slowing down or connecting or doing holidays in a way that feels right to you today, which may be very different than what feels right for you next year or the year after. But taking a step towards safe connecting and anything that might bring you a little bit more joy and maybe just even a little tiny bit of holiday magic that actually can start today. And I hope that you can find a step that makes sense for you and take it. And I want to wish you happy holidays. Even if they're not feeling so very happy, I am sending you joy and love this holiday season. And again, a reminder that you aren't alone. 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.