Let It Begin With Me: Embodying Peace Through Nervous System Regulation

We explore how two opposing beliefs—“I have to do everything" and "I can't do anything"—grow from different nervous system states and how peace begins by shifting our state toward safety and connection. Using Polyvagal Theory, we offer practical steps to move from survival into grounded presence and how that approach can ripple out to create a more peaceful world.

• mapping sympathetic overdrive and dorsal shutdown to everyday thoughts
• why state drives story and limits choice
• using the nervous system ladder to find ventral safety
• gentle ways to slow down when doing feels safer
• small actions to lift energy when shutdown hits
• building connection with people, pets, nature, and self
• noticing and naming as daily regulation practice
• creating inner peace as a path to meaningful outer change

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 please share this podcast with anyone who you think may be interested or who may get something from what I have shared

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.

Transcript

Longing For A Kinder World

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, and welcome to the When Depression is in your bed podcast. When you look at the world today, do you find yourself longing for it to be different, more peaceful, more kind, more connected? At the same time, does the idea of changing the world feel really overwhelming, especially when some days it's hard to figure out just how to take care of yourself? If that resonates, you're in the right place. In today's episode, I'll be exploring some gentle ways to begin to notice and name how you can find your own path to creating peace within. Because meaningful change doesn't start out there, it starts inside our own nervous system and within our closest relationships. I'm your host, Trish Sanders, and I am delighted that you were here. Let's get started. Within the past month or so, I started noticing that I've been holding these two truths of sorts. They're not necessarily true at all, but to me they have been true for most of my life. And it struck me a few weeks back that they were sort of in direct opposition of each other in so many ways, even though through a nervous system lens, they have more similarity than they appear. But these two concepts have really been on my mind, and I've just known that there's something there that I wanted to talk about, and certainly something that I was thinking more about for myself personally. And then I ended up having an experience last week that sort of felt like a moment of clarity around this, and that's what I'm going to be sharing with you today. So the two thoughts that I've been noticing are around my general approach to life, I would say. And the first thought that I often have is something around the idea of I have to do it alone, where it's all on my shoulders, no one else can really be helpful, or if I ask for help, I won't get it, or if I ask for help, it won't be done the way that I need for it to be done. So I might as well do it for myself from the start and it's less hassle, kind of the idea of if I want it done right, I have to do it myself. I think there's also in there some shame at the idea of even having to ask for help, thinking that I ought to be able to do it myself. I should be able to do it myself. And if you've listened to previous episodes, you know how I feel about the word should. It's really just a sneaky little judgment hiding in our thoughts a lot of the time. And so this idea that I have to do it all on my own and how I have found more recently in my life how untrue that actually is. But I see how it really appears even now, so frequently in my life. I just now am much more conscious of it and I am better at catching it and noticing and like, hmm, what's going on there? But I also notice that I've had this other thought that, like I said earlier, is almost in direct opposition, or at least seems to be in direct opposite to the idea of I have to do it all by myself. And the second thought that I've been noticing that I hold is there's nothing I can do. And this idea I also notice not only is that I can't do anything, that there's nothing to be done, it has something to do with the lack of choices, perhaps, like I don't have options available, but it also has a lot to do with my own lack of self-worth or feeling good enough, like I'm not capable of doing the things that need to be done. I can't take on this, whatever the this is. And it goes sometimes, or it has certainly in the past, and I can see it pop up still from time to time, but it even goes as far as to almost there being a resistance to being empowered to do things. For an example, I've always known that getting more sleep would be beneficial to me in many, many ways. But the idea of actually going to bed earlier or taking care of myself in a better way has seemed unavailable to me. And I've talked about this in previous episodes, so I won't go too deep into it, but just to give some clarity about what I'm really referencing. And I started toying with these ideas and sort of holding them and thinking about how they have shown up in my life time and time again, and how they have really limited my success, my connection, my happiness, my self-care for sure, in so many different ways. And I started really thinking about where they were coming from, and certainly from a nervous system perspective, where those were showing up in relation to my nervous system states and what was really going on here. So before I jump into what I've been thinking about regarding my nervous system and these thoughts, I just want to do a very brief nervous system review. I have lots of previous episodes on nervous system functioning. If you want to go back and look at some of those, and it's something that I talk about quite a bit, but just in case you haven't heard any of the other episodes, you won't be lost today if I give you this little bit of framework. So the framework that I use is from Polyvagal Theory, which was developed by Dr. Stephen Porgis. But a lot of the language that I use and a lot of the framework that resonates for me is from Deb Dana, who has taken Dr. Porgis' theory and really made it very accessible, clinically speaking, in her work as a therapist. When Deb Dana talks about the states of our nervous system, she uses the image of this ladder. And we have three states for our nervous system. And at the top of the ladder, she puts ventral, which is our safe enough, grounded, connected state of being. That's our only safe state of being for our nervous system. The other two states are survival states or self-protective states. And so in the middle of the ladder is our sympathetic state, which is a mobilized sense of protection, like something's happening to me and I need to do something about it. Many people refer to that as our fight or flight response. So that's our sympathetic state. And then down at the bottom of the ladder is what's called our dorsal state, and that's an immobilized response to threat. And what's happening there is that the threat that I'm facing is overwhelming, or I don't have the resources, I'm too tired, I'm not strong enough, I don't know what else to do. So in order to protect myself, I shut down, I collapse, I withdraw, I avoid. And in thinking about these three states and the nervous system ladder, one of the things that has been just an absolute game changer about how I look at really everything in my life, personally and professionally, is that the way that we interpret the world, the stories that we make, the meaning that we make about what's happening to ourselves or each other or the world is connected to the state our nervous system is in at any given moment. So that means that if you're in a ventral state, that safe, connected state, when you look at the world, you might have a hopeful perspective or be able to have access to problem solving and things like that. But if you're in that sympathetic fight or flight mode, you're going to have a very different perspective. A different lens will be on. It'll be more of that fight, attack, or kind of run feeling like the world is out to get me or I have to do it myself, which I'll get into in just a moment. And then if your nervous system is in the dorsal state, you'll have yet a different lens on. I've referenced those as depression goggles in past episodes. Then you might have a perspective looking out at the world of things are very hopeless and I'm powerless and I can't do anything about it, which again, you might start to hear where I'm going with the thoughts that I've been noticing about myself. And so it became apparent very quickly when I started to really think about these ideas that the thought that I have to do it all myself, that no one can help, if I want it done right, I have to do it on my own, or people are unhelpful, or no one really gets it, those kind of thoughts are often very sympathetic driven. So that means when I'm having that thought, it's a good indicator that my nervous system is in a sympathetic place, which means that I have experienced some sort of threat somewhere and I have gone into self-protective mode. And that place, while biologically is important, it's good that we have this sympathetic fight or flight mode because when we're facing danger, it's great that we have the impulse to either run and get away from it or fight it and attack it and stop it from hurting us or from threatening us, right? But emotionally speaking, and in the grand scheme of life, holding on to an idea that you have to do something all by yourself and that there's no one there to help you, and it kind of feels like the world is against you, as a matter of fact, is incredibly unhelpful. And it can really prevent you from getting support, getting help. And I think for me, something that I would say that is so very clear to me at this point in my life, and I do think this is probably true in a general sense for many other people, but just speaking to my own experience about it, when I'm unsympathetic, because I'm in that really heavily self-protective mood, I cover up all my vulnerabilities and I don't want them to be seen. And if you think about being in battle, of course, you cover up your vulnerabilities. That makes sense. However, it really gets in the way from having a connected experience because you're not showing your vulnerabilities. And if you're not showing those soft, tender places, those real places in you, if you're covering those up because you think you're ready for battle, you're really missing out on important connections in your life. And of course, that could be intimate partner connections, it could be family connections, but it also could be friends and other supportive people in your life that could really be resources for you. And then in the other thought that I had mentioned, this sort of idea that there's nothing I can do, I can't do it on my own. I don't have the resource, the power, that is very much a dorsal thought. So when your nervous system goes into that dorsal shutdown, it's because it's overwhelmed and you don't feel like you have the resources to take on whatever the challenge is. And again, biologically, this is actually a really good thing because we do need to shut down and move into a place of rest and restoration at times for us to get ready again for the next day or in survival for the next battle. But life really shouldn't feel like a battle every day. That's not really healthy for our systems. Of course, I'm very aware that there are places in the world where there literally are battles every day. And I'm not speaking to that experience. I would say that I don't want anybody in the world facing battles every day. And that's really what is kind of at the core of this. Like, how do we do that? How do we create a world that's safe and peaceful? That's really at the core of what I'm talking about today. But I just want to acknowledge that I'm talking about people who are not in actual life or death situations, that it's not necessarily helpful for us to be in this shutdown place. But so much of my life, and as a someone who has lived with depression for so much of my life and been being in a relationship with my husband for over 20 years, where he has also lived with depression, this shutdown state is something that I'm very, very familiar with. And that powerlessness and that isolation. And I think powerlessness and isolation comes in a different form when you're in sympathetic as well, or at least for me, it has come in its own form. But when I am overwhelmed and I'm in that collapsed place and I think that I can't do anything about anything, or it feels like I would need a miracle for anything to get better or to change, or that I'll just wait and that one day magically I'll wake up and feel better or be able to do something that feels hard today. And I think when you're depressed, again, for myself, that sort of does happen in time. But it historically for me, it has taken often months and months for me to get through a period of feeling powerless and like I can't do anything about something. That day when I wake up and I go, oh, I feel like I have energy, I feel like I can do that thing that's felt hard. And that does happen, but the windows historically, again, for me, have been very brief. And so then I can take some action, but then I would often fall back into either a sympathetic place or a dorsal shutdown again. And then the patterns would continue. So as I said before, I've really been thinking about this and noticing how these thoughts still show up. And of course, my nervous system is still my nervous system, and it's just doing what it's supposed to do and what it's designed to do, which is to protect me and take care of me. And it works with my brain to do that. But if I just let that process happen without noticing or without being more conscious of what's going on, my nervous system can really easily misinterpret cues, especially old cues, like things I've been through in the past. And so my brain, when something happens, I go, Oh, that seems familiar, that is dangerous, or that is overwhelming, or yes, this is another situation where the burden is on you, you have to do it by yourself, or going into that shutdown place, like, oh my gosh, I know this place. I really can't do anything. I rather pull my head under the cover than take a nap. Life just feels too hard. And so, because I've had these experiences for so much of my life, I have a lot of wiring that this is my reality and these are very familiar states for me. It's pretty easy still. There's such a shift in how I've been able to stay much more anchored and ventral, that safe, connected place so much more of the time. So it's not exactly the same as it used to be by any means, but still I noticed that those thoughts come up. But now instead of falling into believing them, I have really started to shift a lot more of the time just to noticing, like, oh, that must mean that I'm in sympathetic, or oh, that must mean that I'm in dorsal. So, like I said, I've been really thinking about these things and what does this mean? What do I do about this? How can I share something that's helpful with people on the podcast? And then I just so happened to go to this holiday choir performance that my grandmother was performing in. And it was so lovely to watch her singing. And the last song that they sang in the performance was Let There Be Peace on Earth. And I was standing there watching her and listening, and something just clicked inside of me because the lyrics, which you may be familiar with the song, but the lyrics are Let There Be Peace on Earth and Let It Begin with me. And my grandma was just singing with such love and passion, and I connected so much with what she was saying. And in that moment, I had this light bulb go off. Like, oh, that's what I've been thinking about. That's the thread that connects these two thoughts for me, or at least what I think. There's probably more that I'm not noticing or that might resonate for somebody else. But what I was noticing for myself was that this is the thread that if we're in sympathetic that fight or flight, I have to do it all myself, I can't ask for help, no one else can be trusted, or no one else can do what I need done, if we're in that place, or if we're in dorsal shutdown and we feel like we need a miracle for anything to happen, and we certainly can't do anything about the situation, or it's just too hard and too overwhelming. So why bother looking at it? If we're stuck in those states, of course that's going to show up in the larger world, right? If so many people are being threatened or having experiences that they're perceiving as threatening, which is a whole other branch of this conversation that we could go into. But it doesn't matter if there's a real or actual threat or a perception of threat, our nervous system reacts the same way. And I think that so many people right now, especially, are in that place. Again, whether there's a real actual threat of war or some other terrible thing that is really threatening you or potentially could be threatening you, or if it's just watching things happening or feeling scared, even if it's not something that's directly happening to you, our nervous systems go into the same self-protective mode and our brain can start making the same interpretations that are familiar to us. And a lot of the time they're through those lenses, that sympathetic lens or that dorsal lens. And when you're looking at the world through a lens of self-protection, although it's important that we have those lenses, because sometimes we do need to protect ourselves, and then it's really good we have those lenses. Those are not lenses that allow us flexibility or problem solving or creativity or hope for that matter. And that's really what dysregulation is. When we talk about nervous system dysregulation, it means that we have moved out of a regulated state, which is anchored in ventral, that's safe enough place, to moving into somewhere where we don't feel safe anymore for whatever reason or reasons. And we are dysregulated, and of course, that is not a peaceful experience. And if a group of people, whether that's in a town or a state or a country or in the world, if a group of people are largely feeling dysregulated, not peaceful, then of course the experience of that physical world, that physical place, is also probably going to be a state of dysregulation and not being peaceful and not feeling safe enough and not feeling connected. And from my perspective, I think that that's really where the world is right now, is that we're really very dysregulated. And I so very much want to be someone who contributes to changing the world for the better. But I also, like I imagine many others, do get overwhelmed about the big world. Like, what can I do about huge social issues and huge problems in this world, like war or global warming or sex trafficking or world hunger or child abuse, the list goes on and on and on of all of these big, scary, horrible things that I don't know myself what I can do about all of those things. And so if I stay in that survival place, I might do nothing, or I might be kind of feeling like I have to do it all myself. And who by themselves can take care of those giant things? No one person can do that. And so the message that I want to share today is really to think about how you can create peace in yourself, how you can begin to move from any dysregulated place that you might be in right now. And during the holiday season, there's often a lot of dysregulation that might not come necessarily from real danger, but from so much chaos, from so much overwhelm, from so much that you have to do, there's so much busyness going on and not enough rest time and not enough downtime, which also contributes to dysregulation and makes it harder to come back into regulation a lot of the time. So, what can you do to begin to create peace for yourself today? So, as I said, if you're noticing these thoughts of that you have to do everything alone, that nobody can help, no one does it right, no one else gets it, kind of these sympathetically driven thoughts, these mobilize like do more, be more, strive more, add more to the list, take more burden on yourself, take on more responsibility, those kinds of thoughts. Those like very, I would say pressured thoughts, they feel very pressured, very overwhelming, very chaotic to me. Those are sympathetic thoughts that mobilize I'm feeling threatened, so I have to do something, right? Do more, do more, do more. And the idea is that if we do more, we would feel safer. However, we often can get stuck in the cycle and not actually get to the feeling safer or feeling better part. But if you can notice that and honor that and think about like, well, what do I need to feel peaceful, to feel more peaceful in the situation? And answers may vary, of course, from person to person. But in truth, a lot of the time when people are going so fast and pushing so hard, what they actually need is to slow down, which feels counterintuitive a lot of the time. But what does it mean to just take a break or take a rest or take a moment to yourself? Or what does it mean to ask for help, to connect to people who might be resources for you? And this is sort of cliche to say, but I think that it really does capture a lot of the essence of the sympathetic experience. But how do you move from doing into a state of being? And that is often quite a challenge because a lot of time for people who are very sympathetically driven and who have a tendency towards being in that space, a lot of the time the idea of slowing down feels unsafe. And so that's why they keep going and pushing. And again, I have other episodes that I've talked about this. I'm happy to talk about it more in other episodes, but just to know that it's not necessarily so easy to say, oh, okay, well, yeah, I am noticing that I do have this sympathetic charge. Let me just slow down. Why is this hard? Like, why isn't it happening? Why can't I take a break? Just know that that's understandable and it's part of the pattern that you may have developed in time to feel safe. But if you're if it feels like, hmm, I don't necessarily know if I want to hold on to this pattern, then just be curious and ask yourself, where is a place that I could possibly slow down? Or is there someone that I could connect with that may be a resource or helpful to me? And in the dorsal experience, if you're somebody who has that tendency towards that dorsal shutdown collapse avoidance, then if you think about the ladder that I had mentioned earlier, you want to want to think about moving up the ladder, that dorsals at the bottom, actually getting some of that sympathetic movement, not in the same pushing, striving, pressure, push, do, but just a lift of energy. How can you find some more grounded peace by perhaps finding a way to safely do something to take care of yourself? Or even finding a way to safely move into connection with others. Others could be a pet or nature, by the way, just it doesn't have to be a person. It could certainly be a person if you have someone that you want to reach out to, but just to know it doesn't have to be. And even just moving into connection with yourself and taking care of yourself and giving yourself what you truly deserve, something that feels good, that feels loving, that feels warm, that can be a way of helping yourself feel safe when you're in dorsal. And I think that kind of the idea of moving up the ladder, that nervous system ladder that I referenced, you're moving towards how do I feel safe enough? How do I feel more grounded? How do I find safe connection? That's really what's at the top of the ladder. That's what we're reaching for with kindness, with compassion, with love, knowing that it might not be so easy to reach for, even if in our minds we think, well, yeah, of course, it's what we want. We want to feel better, we want to feel connected, we want to feel love, we want to feel like we have help and support. A lot of the time, because we have been living in often survival place for many, many years, it doesn't mean that those pathways are cut off. But because we've had this experience for so long, we have very well worn neural pathways that keep us sort of stuck. This is a lot of the time the effect of trauma or chronic stress, those sorts of things. But to know that if you can notice these and name them, that you begin to have power that you didn't have before and you can actually begin to move out of that isolating experience. The I have To do it all on my own, or there's nothing I can do, I'm all by myself in this, and actually begin to stretch and reach into where are the resources that are available to me? How can I feel safe enough to move towards something new that could end up feeling better? And of course, what you need and what could help you feel more grounded, safe enough, more ventrally anchored, can definitely vary from moment to moment for person to person. This is really an exercise in self-attunement and opening up the door to hope that there actually is another possibility, even if you don't exactly know what it is yet. But to be able to say, I'm noticing as evidenced by perhaps the thoughts you're having, oh, these are some dorsal thoughts, or these are some sympathetically charged thoughts. I'm really in that fight or flight place, that pushing, striving, overwhelm place, or oh, my thoughts are indicating that I'm in a little bit of collapse, shutdown, avoidance kind of place. My nervous system is communicating to me, what do I need? And again, you might not know the answer in your brain right away, but your nervous system actually is filled with wisdom. And a lot of time we need to practice dropping into our nervous system, into our body experience and asking, what do you need right now? What's one thing that would help you feel safer? And again, I've talked about this before. I myself have been extremely disconnected from my body for most of my life. And so this has been a practice I've been cultivating for a number of years and I'm still working to cultivate. So again, even if it sounds like something you want to try when you first try it, you might be like, I got nothing. I asked, no answer. And maybe there isn't an answer right now. But if you can just come from that gentle, compassionate place of like, okay, nothing came up right now, and I'm gonna keep inviting these questions. And I'm holding on to this idea that there is a choice that might be hidden from my view right now, but it doesn't mean it's not there. It just means that perhaps the lenses that I'm looking at the world with right now, looking at myself, looking at others, looking at my relationships, even looking at the holiday season, may just be sympathetically charged or dorsally charged. And that might be kind of skewing my perception right now. And as I stretch into finding ways to feel safer, new opportunities and new options may begin to appear. And that certainly has been my experience. And to really know that the thoughts that you're having in your head are certainly a part of your reality because they're real, they're your thoughts, they're happening, but they don't have to create your reality. Being able to notice them opens up this whole other possibility that you can do something differently. Your thoughts are really indicators of what nervous system state you're in. And when you notice that you're in survival, you can start to get curious about what could help you feel safer. So I encourage you to find ways to slow down or ask for help, certainly to take care of yourself in tiny ways and big ways now and always, because I do believe that we can have a lot more peace on earth. And the path to get there is, in fact, by beginning with creating peace within ourselves. And so that's what I'm working on this holiday season. And I invite you to do the same, especially, of course, if this resonates for you, because peace is not just some lofty conceptual impossible, unachievable thing. Peace is actually something that we can help our nervous systems feel and achieve. And that is truly accessible and truly possible for all of us, even in small ways. And the more that we all find peace within, the more we can all create peace outside of ourselves. 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.