The Conscious Crash: How Doing the Work Changes the Struggle

What happens when you have the awareness, the tools, and the language, and still find yourself crashing into dysregulation?

In this episode, I share a deeply personal experience I came to describe as a conscious crash, a moment where I could see my nervous system becoming overwhelmed in real time, but couldn’t stop the descent.

This experience was layered, a painful moment with my son that activated guilt and heartbreak, stress around falling behind in my work, and a familiar seasonal pattern of shutdown that surfaces for me in April. All of it culminated in a dorsal crash that led me to step away, rest, and move through several days of shutdown.

While much of this podcast explores growth, repair, and relational awareness, this conversation focuses on something equally important, what it looks like when those skills don’t prevent the experience, but help you move through it without losing yourself.

Building on previous episodes about intention, impact, rupture, and repair, this episode brings those concepts into lived experience. Because while repair is often thought of relationally, it’s also something we must navigate internally, especially when our own system feels like a cue of danger.

Through a nervous-system-informed lens, I explore what it means to stay conscious inside dysregulation, including how awareness showed up as a kind of “ventral narrator,” allowing me to witness what was happening without collapsing into shame, even as thoughts like “I’m a failure” and urges to "cope" arose.

I also share how this experience impacted my relationship with my husband Ben, how dysregulation shifted my perception of him into a cue of danger, created rupture, and how repair, while not immediate, still occurred. Through communication and a willingness to come back, we were able to reconnect.

A key turning point was shifting from empathizing with the story to empathizing with the state of my nervous system, recognizing that my system had moved into protection and asking what it needed to feel safer.

At its core, this episode offers a different perspective on growth, not as the absence of struggle, but as the ability to stay with yourself during it, with less shame, more awareness, and a path back to connection.

In this episode, we explore:

• What a “conscious crash” is
• How stressors can compound into dysregulation
• Why awareness does not prevent activation
• The difference between dysregulation and disconnection from self
• The role of the “ventral narrator”
• Why “not making it worse” is meaningful work
• How coping patterns show up, and what shifts with awareness
• How dysregulation changes perception, including seeing loved ones as cues of danger
• How it can lead to relational rupture
• Why repair may be delayed
• The shift from story to nervous system state
• How small steps support recovery
• What it means to stay in relationship with yourself
• Why growth looks like reduced shame
• How connection can be rebuilt

This episode is a reminder that being conscious doesn’t mean you won’t have hard moments. It means you can stay with yourself while they’re happening, and trust that even from dysregulation, there is a path back to connection.

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

Welcome And A Vulnerable Share

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, and welcome to the One Depression is in Your Bed podcast. There are moments when all the things you know, all your insights and awareness, and all the tools you have still are not enough to keep you from experiencing what you're going through in a particular moment. This week, I found myself in exactly that kind of place. It was a kind of crash that felt both familiar and unfamiliar to me. I was conscious enough to see what was happening in real time, yet, even still, I wasn't able to immediately shift things. And as I've been sitting with all of this, I started to realize that I think that there's something important here. I'm not sharing about what it looks like to have things all figured out, because I certainly don't. However, I realized that I could share what it looked like and what it felt like to stay present with myself, even when things fell off. So I wanted to share openly today some details about what I was met with this week, along with what I'm still continuing to learn from it. I'm your host, Trish Sanders, and I am delighted that you are here. Let's get started. The topic of today's episode felt strangely more personal to me than other things that I've talked about on the podcast. And I was curious with myself to try to understand why exactly that was, because the truth is that I've shared about myself pretty openly and every episode for over a year. But what I noticed is that some of the most challenging things I talk about happened a very long time ago to me. And in many ways, it feels like ancient history, even if there's still remnants that come up in my day-to-day life. And the things that I talk about that are more present are often experiences I've had that really demonstrate my growth or progress in my relationship with myself or with my partner, Ben, or in my life. And there are experiences where there might have been a bump or a conflict, but I was pretty quickly able to respond really well. And I feel really good about how I've learned to handle such things. And so I share about that. But the experience that I had this week was different. It was a much heavier and honestly very dysregulated experience. And I wasn't sure if it made sense to share or not. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I don't do this podcast to try to present to anybody that I have evolved past the point of being human. I do this podcast to help create less stigma and shame around being human and all that that encompasses being conscious as well as still having moments of hardship and struggle. So I'm going to share very openly about my experience with you this week. So what happened? Well, last week I experienced what I started thinking about as a conscious crash. It was a moment where I went down a slippery slope very quickly. It seemed sort of out of left field, even though I could see in the moment all the cues of danger that kind of tipped my scales so quickly into me going down into what I would describe from a nervous system perspective as a real full dorsal crash. And that means that my nervous system experienced many cues of danger that felt heavier and outweighed the cues of safety that I was experiencing in a moment. And because my nervous system was experiencing so many cues of danger, my system went into extreme self-protection, the immobilized state of dorsal, which is the state of shutdown, avoidance, and withdrawal. And in the moment, as it was happening in real time, I could see what was happening. The most obvious trigger was the fact that I had an experience with my son that really felt heartbreaking to me. And I don't want to talk in too much detail about it, but I'll just say that he was in a place where he wanted to give up on something that he was working on because it felt overwhelming to him and he himself was going into a state of shutdown. And I related so strongly to what he was going through. And as a very quick secondary feeling, started to have feelings of guilt as a parent, feeling like I hadn't equipped him well enough to handle this challenge in his life. In addition to that, I was also, again, very clearly dealing with some other stressors, including the fact that I have been noticing over the last several months that I've kind of been missing my own self-imposed due dates on different tasks in my life and work and feeling like I've been not accomplishing what I had hoped to accomplish or thought I was going to be able to accomplish. And I felt like I was really falling behind. And this is sort of like a strange trish fact, maybe, but every April for decades, I seem to go into this dorsal shutdown state. I could easily point for many years to the fact that it's tax season here in the US, and I tend to feel very overwhelmed during tax season. And as we get closer to April 15th, that comes up. But even before I own my own business, April for some reason has been a time of the year where I go into a crash. And this goes back to me being a teenager. So I'm not exactly sure I've never quite cracked the code, but it seems like this time of year, for some reason, ends up being a time when I have some challenge going on. And so all of these things came together in this moment and I crashed hard. I went to bed around three or four o'clock in the afternoon and I didn't get out of bed until probably around 10 o'clock the next morning. And in truth, I can't even remember the last time something like that happened in such a significant way. I would say it's been at least 15 years, if not more. And while I was absolutely not in any imminent danger, there was no risk of harm. So I just want to be very clear about that. I was definitely having some really dark thoughts, mostly of the I'm a failure at life kind of variety. And I was really feeling stuck and I was beating myself up pretty hard. I will also mention that as much as I crashed, I was also aware that my kids were taken care of and it happened to be spring break. So the next morning they didn't have to go to school. So there was not a quote unquote reason that I had to get out of bed. My children were well cared for and tended to, and I knew that. And I do think that that probably allowed me to have this crash, which may sound strange, but I actually felt thankful for that in retrospect, realizing that I had the support and resources I needed to be able to go into that full crash. And again, I'm talking about one evening and into the next morning, and then several days of hardship that continued after that, which I'll describe more as I continue to talk today. But being able to go deeply into that place that I needed to acknowledge really helped me move through it and is really contributing to the learnings and the takeaways and my growth edges that I've been discovering through the whole process. And as I referenced in my intro, I want to make it really clear that even as a therapist, as a coach, as somebody who has been in therapy since I was 10 or 11 years old, with all of my resources, all of my insight, all of the tools that I have, all of my conscious awareness, I still wasn't able to stop this experience from happening. My awareness didn't stop the dysregulation, but I really understood what was happening to my system and why it was happening. And that really helped inform what I needed to actually heal through this experience instead of just push through the experience. And I want to really name this because it can feel, at least I can certainly say it has felt for me. Sometimes you feel like I've done all this work. Why am I still facing this challenge or hardship or having this tough moment? And sometimes that can contribute to feeling like a failure. And again, that was very much where I was feeling for the most part was that I was definitely in I'm a failure mode. Although that particular flavor of failure did not come up for me because I had what I've called before my eventual narrator, which is that grounded voice. The very fact that it was present for me is why there was no imminent danger for me. I wasn't so disconnected from myself that I couldn't be present with myself. I was just aware as I was going through the experience, like, oh, this was really hard. This really hit a place that's tender and painful and it hurts a lot. And I knew that I needed to acknowledge it. And that really made a world of difference. So I want to name this to be very clear that when you develop a sense of awareness and you become more conscious as a person in this world and in your relationship with yourself and with others, you won't stop your system and your body from becoming dysregulated. We are human and this will still occur. But how you come to it and what you can make of it changes, and that's what makes all the difference. And in the first few days of what was pretty much a complete full week of real challenge for me, I employed the technique that I talk about often on the podcast of trying not to make it worse. And I did that in part by also knowing that I truly needed to not initially at least try to make it better. That wasn't what I needed. And I was actually very clear and I did reach out to some people I didn't fully isolate either. Again, a good indicator that my ventral system was still at least a little bit there, even though it did feel kind of distant. But I was able to reach out and say to people, like, I actually don't want empathy. I try hard, I get that what I'm dealing with is, you know, understandable. I understand that not everything's my fault. I get that, but that's not really what I need. I need to just feel this for a minute. And so I allowed myself to rest. Again, that first day was very literally in bed for uh, I don't know how many hours, but many. And then I tried to be as light as I could on my productivity that week. I didn't take on extra tasks. And also I want to really highlight the fact that I let the thoughts that were there be there. I didn't waste energy on trying to make them go away. And at the same time, I also didn't grab onto them so tightly that I was like doubling down on how bad I felt. I just was as present as I could be with myself. And even though, like I said, I was very much in a place of like I'm a failure at life and work and parenting and just overall on adulting and being human, I let myself acknowledge those thoughts. I let them be there and I let them exist, not necessarily fully believing them, just noticing them and allowing them to be there. And I also didn't shame myself for having them. Again, as I said, the flavor of shame that was not there, which was pretty nice as I'm saying that to reflect on this idea, was not that I hadn't done enough work and I was suffering again. It was more just like, hey, I had a hard moment and this is where I'm at right now. And honestly, that really truly helped me be with all of this in a way where I didn't feel worse. And it helped me to grow through the experience to actually not only start feeling better, but to identify a need that I was having or an unmet need that I was experiencing and figure out and be really thoughtful about how to take care of myself in the way that I truly needed. And there's another part of this that I did want to name, even though I honestly felt kind of conflicted about sharing this part, but I came to the decision that it felt important to share because I don't think that I'm alone in this experience. And even if it feels a little vulnerable or scary to share it, I felt that hopefully it would have value to somebody. And what that is, is that I noticed myself in this experience really wanting to lean into things, behaviors that I knew would not be helpful for me. For example, eating more than I would have, I definitely had far more Girl Scout cookies than I usually would have. And I also drank wine most of the evenings that week. And I want to be very clear, I'm not advocating for behaviors such as this. I just realize that if I don't name what is a real part of my own experience, it doesn't change that. It doesn't take it away from being a part of my experience. And it also, I think, leads to shame, certainly in myself, but also shame for other people who may be experiencing the same kinds of things. And I felt it was important for me to share how I experienced this, not as a way to justify what I did, but also not in a way that shames where I was at and the behaviors that fit for me at that time. I realized that I didn't want to feel better yet. And that's why I was leaning into these old behaviors. And what was very interesting to me was that as familiar as they definitely felt, there was also something that was unfamiliar or new about what I was experiencing. And as I thought about what was happening for me, I realized that what was different is that these behaviors weren't serving me in the same way that they used to, which largely has been about numbing me out and keeping me disconnected from myself. But actually, I was very conscious in the entire experience. Like literally, as I was taking the cookie out of the container, I was like, hmm, I'm eating this because I feel really bad right now and I still want to feel bad. Which, for better or worse, was just where I was in that moment. Again, that ventral narrator saying, Gosh, you feel pretty awful right now. And you're doing this because that's where you're at. And having this awareness allowed me to stay present and connected to myself, even when I was doing things that I wasn't so proud to be doing. And it actually ended up bringing a sense of enormous relief because I also realized that this behavior wasn't the normal that it used to be, quote unquote normal. It was something different now. And whereas I used to see myself as someone who did these things or who didn't have control over these things, like, you know, I would eat when I was stressed out and I didn't have control, so to speak, to stop doing it or the shame that I would have that would come around those behaviors. I didn't feel that way this time. I was able to look at it not as who I was or as a character flaw, like I'm someone who can't control myself, but actually of like, hey, this was just a moment. And it was a behavior, again, I wasn't very proud of, but also it didn't define me and it wasn't who I was. And framing this as just a moment and just a behavior and separating it from who I saw myself to be was incredibly powerful. And it really allowed me to continue again to grow through this experience. And I will also name here that part of this experience of looking at what was happening for me also was an awareness that when our nervous system goes into dorsal for biological reasons that I won't touch on in detail right now, but I've talked about in the past in other episodes, it is actually biologically difficult, or I should say it's a biologically slow process to come back from a dorsal state. And so I was aware of that. I was like, okay, so I feel like eating a bunch of Girl Scout cookies today. This isn't going to last. I'm not actually stuck here. It's just slow progress to getting back to where I would be much more happier to be. And that also really helped. Now, of course, when I was experiencing all of this internally, all of this conflict with myself, you would expect that this would spill out into my relationship with Ben. And of course, it did. But even that came with so much consciousness and so much awareness as it was happening. I couldn't necessarily change what was happening, but I was able to communicate about it. And I was able to tell Ben in the first couple of days that I recognized that he was trying to help me. I saw him reaching out and trying to offer support, which he was doing. I just was also aware that my nervous system was experiencing him as a threat. And in part, that's because, as I've talked about before, the depression goggles that someone can wear, the sympathetic goggles that the way we interpret the world is based on the state of our nervous system. So I was in a dysregulated state. So my lens was a dysregulated lens. And so I was misperceiving him, even though he was trying to be helpful. I saw him as a cue of danger still. And there were also other things that I was aware of because a lot of what I was struggling with really is rooted in my own ADHD and my own neurodivergence and how sometimes that does make it a little hard to show up in the world the way I want to. Uh, sometimes more than a little hard. And Ben also struggles with a lot of this. And the story I told myself was that if I communicated to him about these challenges, he would either feel frustrated himself, go like, oh my gosh, I know this is so hard, and that wouldn't feel supportive to me, or he would be a little bit more compassionate and be able to be softer and gentler with me, but also not necessarily offer strategies or things that would feel helpful because he himself struggles with similar things and I just didn't want to go there. Like that wasn't the space that felt supportive to me. And so the avoidance and kind of like the pulling away from him felt safer in that moment. And I was able to tell him that, which is really important because I wasn't blaming him and I also wasn't pretending that I was okay or that things were going along as usual, right? I was able to name what was actually happening in real time for me. And that really, I think ended up being helpful for both of us. There did come a moment when Ben, in one of his attempts to reach out, I tried to share with him what was happening, but that didn't go particularly well in that moment. Uh, I ended up kind of exploding on him, not necessarily directly at him, like anger towards him, just exploding with honestly a lot of anger towards myself and sharing how stuck and hopeless I felt. And that display, again, this is like what I often talk about is nervous system to nervous system communication, and how what my nervous system was communicating in that moment was really a threat to him. It was overwhelming and probably scary. And his nervous system ended up going into the self-protective place, and he became a little bit avoidant and kind of backed away, which wasn't great. I wasn't thrilled about what was happening. I was aware in the moment that my internal dysregulation was, in fact, causing dysregulation with him, and that made sense. But I was also longing for support and I wanted him to be able to come and comfort me and support me in that moment. And I realized he couldn't. And again, while I wasn't thrilled that that was what was happening in the moment, I did understand. And again, I didn't make it worse. I didn't buy into these old stories that I very clearly in very much real time recognize were old stories of like he's not capable of being there for me, and he can't really help, and he can't be supportive of me, and he just hides when I need him, and all these old stories. I was very clear, like, oh yeah, these are old stories. They don't really ring true for me anymore as these blanket statements. Again, much like my behavior before was not my identity. This was another example relationally of how his behavior was not the definition of our relationship or his identity of who I saw Ben to be anymore. He's come such a long way, as have I, and as has our relationship. And I was able to say, like, okay, this kind of sucks. It's not what I wish was happening right now, but I also understand it. And it doesn't mean that he's not going to be able to be supportive forever. And I was able to name for him, like, hey, was I scary today? And are you kind of being avoidant? And he was able to own it and say, like, yeah, kind of. And in truth, from that point, it only took about a day for both of us to be able to try again and to move towards each other to be able to reconnect. And some of that reconnection also included me saying to him, Hey, I'm actually not feeling safe enough to reconnect here, in part because he wasn't able to be supportive when I exploded, which is fair. But I was able to say to him, I don't feel comfortable and safe being vulnerable and reconnecting with you. However, I want to reconnect with you. And he was able to hear that and say, like, yeah, that makes sense. And when he was able to hear me, that was a cue of safety in and of itself and helped me move a little bit closer. And so repair wasn't immediate, it was just delayed, but it was in process and we were moving closer and closer towards it. And we were able to get there. Now, I want to bring up something that I find to be absolutely key. And it is also foundational in how I look at myself and my clients and the work that I do. And I'm sure I will talk about this more in future episodes. It's something that I think about quite a bit, but I just want to name here because it was so important in my actual lived experience. As I mentioned earlier, I talked about not wanting empathy. I was able to move from empathizing with a story, all of these narratives about me being a failure or then not being able to be supportive or not being able to be there when I needed him. Those old stories, which would have been easy to empathize with, or when I talk about grabbing onto them more tightly, in part that's what I mean as well, like believing them. And I've had therapists, dear friends, family members for decades empathize with those kinds of stories, like, oh yeah, it's so hard, you're doing so much, you're beating yourself up, that can be really tough, or yeah, Ben's not able to show up for you in that way, and empathizing with the narrative. And while sometimes in some circumstances, we do need a bit of that kind of empathy. I personally have realized how much it has kept me stuck. So I have shifted from empathizing with the stories to what I think of as empathizing with my state. And I was able to say, it makes sense that I'm in this dorsal state of shutdown because there were so many cues of danger that they outweighed the cues of safety for me in that moment. And I felt off balance and my nervous system understandably went into a self-protective place. And that allowed me to not just have to think, like, is this thought true or not? Because when you're dysregulated, you may very well believe a lot of things that are not true at all. Like, I am actually not a complete and total failure in life, parenting, work, and being a human. That is definitely an overstatement for sure, not accurate. But when I was really down in the depths of that darkness, and if I was like, hmm, is this a true thought? Then I'd be like, Yeah, it's actually true. I'm a total failure. Like, no ifs, ends, or buts about it. That's the truth. And so empathizing with the story can kind of get you into this stuckness. And empathizing with the state helps you then shift, like, okay, I see what state my nervous system is in. I know if I'm in dorsal or in sympathetic, which is your fight or flight state. If I'm there, then that means that I'm feeling unsafe. What do I need to feel safer? What is a step I can take to feel more grounded, more connected with myself, more connected with the people who I love. And the conversation changes. And that is exactly what happened for me last week. And eventually I was able to make choices like, hey, you know what? I think I should be eating more healthy food rather than Girl Scout cookies for lunch. And I went and I got some healthy prepared food because I didn't have the capacity to prepare something for myself, but I knew that eating better would be better for me and it would feel better. And it in fact did. And I was able to get outside and not necessarily prescribe a certain exercise routine or a certain number of steps or anything specific. There was no pressure around it. It was just like, hey, let me move my body, let me get some fresh air, let me be with some people, let me go to the park with my kids and have some fun. As I mentioned, I was able to reach out to people that I trusted. I did not completely isolate. I also, as I mentioned, was able to reach back out to Ben when I felt ready and in ways that felt safe enough, even when I wasn't fully safe to be completely vulnerable. Again, I was able to name that and move towards connection with him and figure out what felt safe enough for both of us so that we could repair. And I also was able to, just circling back to the very first thing I shared about what was happening for me that led to this very slippery slope and deep crash, was that I felt like I wasn't able to support my son. And so I moved into thinking. Hmm, what could I do to support him in this? And I will add that not only did I want to do things that felt good for me, I wanted to do things that felt supportive to him. And I also didn't exclusively think about things that I only could do. I thought about the other supports that he had in his life, including himself. And I supported him in thinking about what would feel helpful for him, again, including using himself as a resource and the other people in his life. And he actually did some of that all on his own, talking to friends and trusted people in his life that helped him process that was totally separate from me. And again, as bad as I felt for a few days and as tough of a time as I was having, I was able to see him doing that. And I felt so incredibly proud because that experience alone was directly in conflict with my original thinking that I didn't prepare him at all and I have failed him as a parent. He didn't have these skills because he actually was using his skills and it was super awesome to watch. And so I took these steps, not perfectly at all. They were not linear, but they were intentional. And in time, I did come back into connection with Ben, with my son, with my life, with my own self. And I came back into connection with more understanding of some places that are still really tender in me and some needs that I have that I want to address and take care of and nurture so that I can continue to grow and be the best version of myself I can be and show up in this world the way I really want to. So as this episode comes to a close today, here are some things that I truly hope that you can take away from listening. You can be conscious and still crash. You can be aware and still have moments of struggle. You can feel completely off and honestly pretty awful and still be doing truly deeply meaningful, profound work for yourself and those around you. A moment or a week of hardship does not negate the work that you've put into yourself. Stumbling a bit does not bring you back to square one. It pretty much just means that you're human. And to remember, fixing things is not always the work. Sometimes not making things worse is really valuable. And it's key to stay present with yourself while whatever's happening is happening, because that's when you're gonna get the real-time information about what you truly need. And in the language of Imago, as I referenced before, there's this idea that conflict is growth trying to happen. And that's exactly what I experienced this week. Some pretty intense internal conflict that, of course, not surprisingly, spilled over into relational conflict. And while I wasn't exactly thrilled that it was happening, I understood that it needed to happen. And I knew that something was trying to shift within me. And by giving myself some attention and some care, I allowed some of that shift to start to happen. And the more I tuned in and slowed down to be with myself, the more I was able to take steps towards reconnecting and repair with myself and those that I love. And in doing so, I was able to get to a place where I was able to have so much more clarity and which again was incredibly reassuring because as I started to feel better, I started to feel more and more like myself. And I was able to say, ah, this is who I truly am. That was just a hard moment, and it gave me what I needed to grow to the next version of myself. And I hope that in listening today, perhaps you were able to come to more and more moments for yourself where you're able to do exactly the same thing. 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.