This New Year, Stop Striving for a New You: Choosing the Pace That Lets the Real You Bloom

The pressure to reinvent can feel loud in January, but nature tells a different story: winter is for conservation, repair, and preparing the ground for bloom. We explore how to trade the exhausting “on or off” cycle for nervous system flexibility—choosing the speed that actually supports you. Instead of shaming who you’ve been, we honor the resilience that carried you here and build sustainable change from gratitude, pacing, and somatic awareness.

We dive into the polyvagal map—sympathetic activation, dorsal withdrawal, and ventral connection—and how blended states create options. Safely still (ventral plus dorsal) lets us rest without collapsing; flow (ventral plus sympathetic) helps us move with ease. Through a winter solstice ritual of 13 intentions and a community vision board, joy emerges as a guiding theme, alongside images of nature, beaches, and a snail carrying a clock—a playful reminder to slow time and savor presence. ADHD time anxiety, busy seasons, and holiday illness all become real-world prompts to adjust speed and protect energy.

By befriending the nervous system, we learn to notice signals early and shift into steadier rhythms. We offer two practical steps: practice conscious self-compassion to reduce inner attack, and choose learning paths that resonate—somatic work, breath practices, or resources like Anchored by Deb Dana. From there, we invite one meaningful step—toward rest, play, or action—that aligns with your season. You don’t need a new you; you need new conditions that let your real self bloom.

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Transcript

Welcome And January Pressure

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, and welcome to the When Depression is in Your Bed podcast. As the new year begins, there's often a pressure to become the new you. But in nature, this season is not about blooming yet. It's about conservation, slowing down, and preparing for what's next. In today's episode, I'm exploring a different option. Not becoming someone new, but intentionally creating the conditions so that you can bloom into more of who you actually are. We'll look into how having an understanding of the nervous system can give you more flexibility in how you move throughout your days. So you're not just pushing hard or shutting down, but choosing a pace that actually supports you. I'm your host, Trish Sanders, and I am delighted that you are here. Let's get started.

Why “New Year, New You” Hurts

SPEAKER_00 0:43

As I just mentioned, January often comes with a real push towards being the new you. You can find it just about anywhere you look this time of year. And I'm not really fully in support of such an idea of new year, new you for many reasons. First of all, I think that there's a lot of pressure on that to become this new version of you instantly. And it encourages people to take on habits or behaviors that really aren't necessarily sustainable. And then that's really just setting us up for disappointment. So even if the intention to start out is good or positive, it really ends up leading most people to feeling like they failed in some way, not too long after January 1st. I also think, even beyond the incredible pressure that people are put under this time of year to totally reinvent themselves, I also think that it really negates and is very critical of the old version of us. And I don't think that shaming and criticizing the person who has gotten us to where we are today is really a very helpful approach to self-growth. I think that honoring where we've been, what we've been through, how we've gotten through, even the hard times, and maybe not in the best of ways in every single moment, but honoring that person who has gotten us to where we are today and having even a level of gratitude for that person showing up

Winter As Conservation And Preparation

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every day, I think is really the best foundation for us to be able to set the stage and of course notice how we want to grow and expand and what areas we can improve. We're human beings, of course, where there's always room for improvement. I think that that's the fun part of life, honestly, is going through and expanding more and becoming more of who you really are. So I'm not in support of shaming last year's version of you. And I'm also consciously aware that this time of year is not for emerging as the brilliant brand new you. This time of year is about conservation and preservation. And it's not really a shutdown time of year, but it is a preparation for what is to come. And in honoring the winter solstice, the darkest night of the year, after which the light slowly begins to return a little bit more and more every day until the spring when nature is ready to awaken in all of her glory and really have that moment in the sun. And with this awareness, I have been trying to balance for myself what this means? Because I have a lot of big goals for this year, quite honestly, a lot of professional goals, a lot of personal goals. And I've been trying to figure out how I can honor myself in a way that really feels authentic and supportive and nourishing, as well as being able to move forward in these goals and make progress that I feel good

Navigating Dorsal Slowdown Over Holidays

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about. And over the holiday season, if you've been listening to the last couple of episodes, I have mentioned that I had sort of an unexpected pull towards dorsal, which when I mentioned dorsal, that's the dorsal state of our nervous system. And that's a state of immobilization, withdrawal, shutdown avoidance. And I wasn't really expecting this experience to happen, but it did. It kind of came out of nowhere and it was very clear that my body was not in a pushing, striving, holiday hustle, bustle kind of place. Not in a full shutdown. I mean, there certainly were moments where I could have easily tipped into a full shutdown, but the slowdown was necessary and it was sort of supported by my life circumstances. My husband and my daughter were both really sick with a fever over the holidays, and it really wasn't a time to be busy. And so, even though, like I said, there were definitely moments where I had the fantasy of locking myself in my bedroom and hiding under the covers and napping from now until the new year, that is not what I did at any point. But I did listen to those cues. What was really underneath that? What was my body really calling for? And my body really was calling for some slowness. So I tried to take care of myself. I went to bed as early as I could, earlier than usual most nights. I slept in late several mornings over the holiday break, which was really lovely not to get up and do the getting ready for school and all of that kind of stuff. And I worked within this gift of time framework that I was given, where I had less on my to-do list and I was able to really take care of myself in that way. And above all else, I think I would add that I tried to have a lot of conscious compassion for what I was going through. Because, like I said, it was unexpected. I was not thinking that I was going to feel this dorsal shutdown over the holidays this year. I was actually very excited about the holidays and I had a lot of plans for things that we were going to do on the break. And I do think that partially because those things didn't happen, I was sort of left in this space of like, well, now what do I do? And there was some disappointment in there, and also perhaps not always knowing what to do when I'm slow. I can very easily tip into shutdown when I slow down, which I've talked about plenty before on the podcast. And of course, I'm sure it'll come up again in future episodes as well. And so without the push and the striving energy behind me and honoring that need to be in more of a self-care slowdown space, I really chose how to spend my time and energy as wisely as I could and in ways that were really in alignment with what I actually wanted to happen. And I ended up doing a couple of things that were really special and also just for me. I did several things that were lovely with my family, with my kids. I had some very special moments that I talked a little bit about, I believe, in the last episode. And those were all wonderful, but I also focused on what I could do that would make me feel nourished and sustained, not just my family unit, because both are important. It really isn't an either-or kind of thing. And so I did do two things over the last couple of weeks that really felt

Compassionate Rest Without Full Shutdown

SPEAKER_00 6:03

good for me. One of the things that I did was I celebrated the winter solstice in this ritual of creating an intention for the year. And I wrote down 13 intentions for myself for the new year, which really works for my brain because I very rarely have one goal in mind. I usually have a hundred. I think that that's probably a neurodivergent ADHD quality of how my mind works. And so it was really great that I was able to write down 13 different things. And then every night from the winter solstice through January 2nd, I picked one of the intentions. They were all folded up in a little bowl. So I didn't know what I was picking, but I just, with trust and faith in the universe supporting me, I chose one of my intentions and I burned it, not as a way of getting rid of it and ending it, but as a way of releasing it to the universe and asking for the universe support, letting it be out of my hands. But I didn't know again which one I was choosing. And then on the 13th night, January 2nd, I had one intention left. And then this was the intention that was for me to tend to. There were lots of intentions for wonderful things like abundance and honoring my body in more conscious, nourishing ways and feeling worthy and feeling confident and lots of other really positive things. And so it was hard for me to pick where I wanted my focus to be. But this process gave me this way of having one intention at the end of the 13th day. And that intention was to prioritize joy in my life this year, particularly by scheduling time to have fun and enjoy being with my kids. And I was so joyful when I saw that this was the last intention because all the other things, while very worthy of my time and energy, it was so clear to me that this was really something that will transform my year if I consciously pay attention to prioritizing the experience of joy. And like I said, especially connecting with my kids and of course my husband as well. But time flies by, and I can talk about this, I'm sure, in another episode. I'll make a note, but I'm a play therapist and I've always wanted to prioritize time with my kids. I value

Rituals: 13 Intentions And Joy

SPEAKER_00 8:03

play so much. However, even though it's such a high value for me, I often find myself not having enough time for play because I'm busy doing other things. And there are worthy things to do. Most of the time, there are work things or life things that need to get done, but joy often gets pushed to the side. And so that experience really helped me to focus my intention and my energy. And it also gave me a framework for prioritizing what's really important to me. The other thing I did that felt really special, and I briefly mentioned this also in the last episode, was that I did join an online community that I'm a part of. And we had a vision board party, and I made a vision board, which is not something that I do. I've probably done maybe one other time in my life, but there was a space that was being offered to do that, and I decided to take advantage of it. And it was really a very powerful experience. And it didn't take a huge amount of energy, but it was a way for me to focus my intention on what I really wanted this year. And after I put together my board, I was able to look at it and say, hmm, what do I notice here? What's coming out? What are the themes? And there were several themes that definitely came forward, including having joyful connected moments with both of my kids. That definitely was on there very clearly. But in addition to that, there was a lot of nature, especially beaches. And it's interesting because I would not describe myself as a beach person. I did not grow up going to the beach frequently. And I certainly have been to the beach, but I'm not somebody who, like I said, would consider myself to be a beach person. However, over the last few years, I have been to several different beaches and several different places. And I've really, really enjoyed being there and just walking on the sand, picking up shells, walking through the waves. It was just a very peaceful experience. I kind of understand why there are beach people out there, maybe in a way that I hadn't understood before. And it was surprising to me because, like I said, I don't identify as a beach person, but there are all these images of beaches on my vision board and other nature things, like being among trees and things like that as well. And there was such a clear connection, certainly to nature and spending more time in nature, but also how to do that is that I need to slow down. And I actually found a little image of a little snail instead of a shell, he has a clock on his back. And it was the perfect image. As soon as I saw it, I was like, that's it. I need to slow down time for myself. And as someone with an ADHD brain,

Vision Board Themes: Nature And Play

SPEAKER_00 10:23

I often feel that time is going too fast. And that's also a very sympathetically rooted nervous system experience. When your nervous system is in a sympathetic fight or flight response, you might not feel it as fight or flight per se, but it can be that experience of I don't have enough time, time's running out, there's too much to do. And I am very, very frequently in that space. And I often feel like time is going too fast for me. And most of my life I felt very out of control about that experience. And over the last few years, I have started to be able to work with myself and with time in a different way. And to be able to focus on slowing down and how to do that this year also felt really connected and aligned to who I am today and who I'm becoming. I will also mention that on my vision board, it wasn't just slowness that showed up, but also being more intentionally active or being more intentionally in movement. And I won't say being more productive because I think that rest is incredibly productive and absolutely biologically necessary, as a matter of fact. But there was such a clear call towards being playful in a physical way. I had a picture of me playing Frisbee at a conference with colleagues and friends that I went to a couple of years ago. That was a really special moment that I connected to and having more adventure, traveling was big on my board and working towards more of my career goals and moving into spaces that are new to me as a therapist, moving into the coaching space and moving into speaking and doing presentations. I had the honor of being a presenter this past year at the Imago conference in Chicago. And so all of that came up on my vision board. And I realized so clearly that what I'm

Time Anxiety And Slowing Down

SPEAKER_00 12:00

longing for, which is probably something maybe I've always been longing for, is this experience of balance of the being and the doing. The ease and the flow, ease and flow actually both came up on my vision board, is some of the words that I put out. And I think that realizing that made me really aware that I have often functioned with two settings historically, either on or off. And those are very deeply rooted in nervous system experience. That sympathetic fight or flight mode of our nervous system is the mobilized state of survival. There's a threat, so I have to do something. It's the push, it's the strive. And we don't always realize that we're in survival. It can often feel like being busy, having a to-do list that's too long, feeling like we can't slow down, we can't stop. There's so much to do. I'm very familiar with the overwhelming chaos of that nervous system experience. And then the off is the dorsal state of our nervous system, the immobilized experience of protection that we can't protect ourselves. So we have to withdraw, conserve energy so that we can prepare to hopefully fight again another day. But that's an absence of energy place. And so I have very much fluctuated, as I know is true for many people, between that on and off. And it's been becoming very clear to me over the last several years, especially as I've worked with my nervous system, that these two modes don't really serve me in any way. Because when I'm in the more extreme ends of sympathetic energy, because there's really a continuum of sympathetic energy as well as dorsal energy and ventral energy, which is our safe connected state as well. But when I'm in the more extreme states of that sympathetic drive, I'm not really getting things done in a way that feels good or satisfying in any way. I'm doing a lot of busy work, being busy. Life is happening. I'm getting life done, but it doesn't feel good and it's incredibly taxing. And I then, in fact, crash at the end of the night because I'm so burnt out. Then I'm in an off position and I'm not really getting good rest and I'm not really feeling taken care of or nourished or restored in any way. And then I get up again and do it the next day. And I have talked about that quite a bit on several episodes as well

Balancing Being And Doing

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in more detail. But I'm not really satisfied in life when I'm feeling stuck bouncing between those two survival states, even though I can certainly honor why I'm stuck in those survival states. And I think that honoring that has really been a part of my journey to be able to release and move through to a new experience, an experience where I have connected more with that ventral grounded energy that I wasn't so very aware of or connected to. It was always there. Our nervous systems, they have access to all of our states, but we can be more disconnected, certainly, to our ventral experiences. Some of us are more disconnected to sympathetic state, some of us are more disconnected to our dorsal state. You might not know what depression feels like, or you might not know what high anxiety feels like. And, you know, obviously we're all different and unique, but we all have capacity for our nervous system to have all three of those states. And there is a lot of similarity, even though we are all unique beings and how we experience those states. And I've been realizing over the last several years, and I've been evolving with this experience of having more nervous system flexibility and not being so stuck in either that kind of push drive or that complete shutdown. But over the last few weeks, it was so clear to me that when I honored what was coming up, that need for slowness, I didn't go into the extreme dorsal shutdown. As I mentioned, it's easy for me to tip into that. I'm not gonna lie, I know that tip over into being under the covers and not wanting to get out of bed. I know that feeling well. And of course, I also know that feeling in my husband as well. But I didn't go there. I didn't tip over into the extreme. I stayed pretty much in that restored place of being able to get the rest I needed. And as I did that, which means that I had some dorsal energy blended with some of that ventral anchor that is needed for it to be a nourishing and restorative experience, right around New Year's Eve, I ended up starting to feel really like myself again. And I started having a little bit more energy and feeling some excitement that I had not been feeling very much through Christmas in the last few weeks of December. And from that place, I really started thinking about nature and this time of year and what's really happening and how, even though we think of winter as a time of

Beyond On Or Off: Flow And Stillness

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shutdown, winter is not a full shutdown. It is not a time of complete avoidance or withdrawal or death or a complete lack of energy. Certainly there's a slowdown, there's a conservation of energy. When you think about hibernation, there's a conservation happening there. But there's things that are happening in the soil and there's preparation for what's to come. It's a time of reset and rebalance so that we can be ready when it's time for us to bloom. And so as I started to contemplate about these things and get curious about what that meant for me, I really started thinking about how it didn't feel right to me to think about embracing or even trying to embrace a new version of myself this year. I don't think that I want a totally new me, but I do think that I need a new way to move in the world or better yet, more options of how to move through the world, what speed to move through the world on, not just on and off, not just hyper speed or complete shutdown stillness. And I started to reflect on the last few years and how my body has experienced I've truly lived through a much greater variety of speeds. My body has not only been in extreme on or extreme off. I have had different flavors or different shades of sympathetic energy and dorsal energy. And I think about Deb Dana, who is a polyvagal clinician, and she's absolutely amazing. I adore her. And she has a term for the blend of dorsal and ventral energy that she calls safely still. And I think that that's such a beautiful experience that I've really reacquainted myself with over the last few years. And also what I would call flow is the blend of that sympathetic drive energy with that anchor of the ventral safety groundedness. And so to think about moments of how I can be safely still and how I can be in flow more consciously and more often is really where I ended up finding myself and really finding my focus and where I want to put my energy this year, and certainly at the root of how I want to show up this year and the spaces that I want to grow into for myself. So for me, this

New Year, New Speed Settings

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is not new year, new you energy, but rather new year, new speed settings or having more new speeds on the dial, perhaps energy. That's how I've been thinking about it. Having flexibility and choice, being able to turn the dial to the speed that really works for me instead of only having two options. And if this resonates for you on offness experience, like you either are one or the other, and you also would like to have a variety of settings on your speed dial, but you just don't

Two Tips: Self-Compassion And Learning

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know how. I will give you two tips. They're not magic answers by any means. As I have mentioned, I myself have been growing into this space for the last several years and will continue to grow into this space, as I said with intention this year, certainly. But first and foremost, treat yourself with as much love and compassion as you can muster. Now, I will say this is a little bit tricky because love and compassion, self-love, especially and self-compassion really emerge when your nervous system is in that ventral grounded place. And so if you're stuck bouncing between sympathetic energy and dorsal energy, finding some self-compassion may in fact be a little bit hard. That's okay. Try to even have compassion for that. Because if you're beating yourself up about where you are, then you're really attacking yourself and your nervous system and your body are just going to continue to feel the need to be in more self-protection. And so it can be a really vicious cycle, I know. But if you can say, okay, this is a biological thing that's happening. And my body and my nervous system are just doing what bodies and nervous systems do. And now I know that. You might not have known that before. I did not know that a few years ago. As a matter of fact, if people talked about nervous systems and brains, I often went into a little bit of dorsal shutdown thinking like, ooh, that's overwhelming. I don't know about all that brain stuff. I can't remember. I have challenges remembering all the names for all the brain parts of the brain. And I would kind of go into a little bit of a scared shutdown about it, which really kept me from embracing and learning what I could. And I don't need to know and remember the name of every part of our brain in order to understand our nervous system. And really understand better yet my nervous system. And you don't have to understand all of those things either to befriend your nervous system. That's another deb Dana term, such a beautiful way to look at it, I think. And so if you can know that this is a biological process and you're not doomed and there's nothing wrong with you and you're not hopeless by any stretch, know that you want something different. And that's a beautiful place to start. And treating yourself with, like I said, as much love as you can gather for yourself and as much understanding. You will set the stage for a much better year if you can connect to self-compassion and self-love just a little bit more often. And then step two is you may have already guessed, get to know your nervous system. You can read Anchored, which is a book by Deb Dana, a fantastic read, highly

Invitation: Take One Step

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recommend. You can find a breathwork practitioner or a somatic practitioner or look up stuff on YouTube or Instagram or TikTok or wherever your social media is. Go to the library even and get a book, whatever you connect to, whatever makes sense for you, and learn about your nervous system and how important it is and how it shapes your world and how you can protect it. Certainly, you can listen more to my podcast. You can connect with me. I'm getting ready to launch a pretty exciting coaching program in a very short while for couples and their nervous system health. And so there's a lot of options out there. Whatever feels like it makes sense to you, I recommend you do that. Actually, attuning to what feels like it makes sense to you is a nervous system exercise, what really feels right. There's a million options, which might feel overwhelming, but there's a lot of really good ones. And what you connect to really informs the next step that you should take. And if you can connect with your nervous system and take care of it and move into being able to have more of that nervous system flexibility, which means being able to move through your different nervous system states without getting stuck, without being stuck and on, without being stuck and off, but actually moving as life circumstances really call for and as really feels good for you, that's what nervous system flexibility is. And as you do that, your life will transform. I know mine certainly has over the last few years. And in closing, I just want to offer a message to you. And if it lands and it resonates, please take it and carry it with you. And if it doesn't land, that's okay too. But even though it's the new year, I want to say to you, it's not about being a new you. It's really about choosing and intentionally creating the conditions in which you can bloom into the real version of you that you've always been and that you were always meant to be. And that's really what I'm wishing for you this year: a chance to discover and grow into the real you. And of course, as it is the new year, I'm also wishing you more joy, more regulation, and more peace now and always. 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

Subscribe, Review, And Share

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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.