Clarity Rooted in the Nervous System: How Safety Helps You See Again

What if clarity is not just a mindset… but a nervous system experience?

In this episode, I explore the idea that clarity is deeply rooted in our nervous system state and that when we are living in survival mode, overwhelmed, anxious, shut down, or depressed, clarity can become incredibly difficult to access.

Drawing from both my personal experience and professional understanding of nervous system wellness, I talk about how depression can feel like sitting in the dark, while overwhelm can feel like being swept up in a tornado, both states making it difficult to see clearly, imagine possibilities, or know what next step to take.

Because when our nervous systems are focused on survival, our vision narrows.
 Our creativity narrows.
 Our options narrow.

But when we begin to experience even a little more safety, groundedness, and self-compassion, something important happens:

The light slowly starts to come back on.

In this episode, I share two deeply personal examples, one involving my journey with movement and caring for my physical body, and another involving the evolution of my professional path from therapist to coach, to explore how clarity often emerges slowly, step by step, through action, self-attunement, and nervous system safety.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why clarity is deeply connected to nervous system wellness
• How depression, shutdown, anxiety, and overwhelm impact clarity and decision-making
• The difference between survival states and grounded, connected states
• Why clarity often unfolds gradually instead of arriving all at once
• How perfectionism and all-or-nothing thinking can keep us stuck
• Why tiny, sustainable steps often create more lasting change
• The connection between self-compassion and clarity
• How action itself can create clarity over time
• Why nervous system safety helps expand creativity, possibility, and self-trust
• How learning to listen to ourselves helps us build more aligned lives

Sometimes clarity does not arrive as a giant lightning bolt moment.

Sometimes it begins with ten minutes on a trampoline.
Trying something new.
Taking one small step.
Or simply creating enough safety for the dust to settle and the light to slowly come back on again.

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 Why Clarity Matters

0:00

Hello, and welcome to the When Depression is in your bed podcast. Sometimes the hardest part of depression, overwhelm, anxiety, even major life transitions is not just the pain of the emotion itself, it's also the lack of clarity that can come with it. The feeling that you can't truly see yourself or your future or even the next step that you're supposed to take. And over the last few years, I have realized just how deeply clarity is connected to nervous system wellness, self-compassion, and feeling safe enough inside of ourselves in order to actually see. I'm your host, Trish Sanders, and I am delighted that you are here. Let's get started.

Clarity As Nervous System Health

0:40

Yesterday, I was talking to an old friend and we were having a conversation about clarity and how good it feels when things in life feel like they are finally aligned. And almost immediately, I knew that I wanted to talk about this very concept on the podcast because I think that clarity is deeply connected to nervous system wellness. When we're in chronic states of self-protection, overwhelmed, anxious, shut down, depressed, clarity becomes something that is very difficult and even sometimes impossible to access. And I know that experience

Depression Darkness And Anxiety Tornado

1:09

intimately. When I'm deeply depressed or even moderately depressed, to be honest, it sometimes feels like the lights are out, like I'm in the dark. Everything is unclear and foggy and uncertain. And because I can't even possibly imagine from that place what five or ten steps down a healthy road could actually look like, it becomes very unclear for me about what my very next step should be. And when I'm in a more sympathetic state of overwhelm, it feels completely different, but equally as unclear. It feels like I've been sucked into a tornado. There's dust and debris flying everywhere. I'm spinning, grasping at whatever's in front of me, trying to do everything all at once, really trying to survive. And in that state, I still can't clearly see what truly makes sense. I really just do whatever I can access in any given moment. And what I've come to realize over time is that clarity itself is rooted in our nervous system experience. When I have a little bit more ventral energy, the experience of my nervous system feeling safe. So a little bit more safety, a little bit more groundedness, things start to shift. It's like the light turns back on, even if it's dim at first. The dust begins to settle. There may still be debris everywhere, and there may even be some damage. There might be need for repair or for cleanup, but still I can see and my head stops spinning. And from this place, something else becomes possible too. Compassion. I can begin to be tender with myself about just how hard it is to be stuck in the dark or swept up by a tornado. And I can see clear enough to know that when we're dysregulated in those self-protective states of that depression or that anxiety, that shutdown or that overwhelm, I know that our options become limited. Our possibilities narrow. Our vision narrows. Our imagination, problem solving, creativity is less accessible, and our ability to choose narrows as well. I can compassionately understand that my system had moved into a place of survival. And survival states are not the place where long-term clarity can really truly emerge. And this is truly important and something that I've really learned over the past several years. Clarity does not emerge all at once, it emerges bit by bit, step by step. I think many people, myself included, imagine that clarity will come as some sort of lightning bolt moment where everything is clear and everything makes sense. And in my experience, that is not how it happens at all. It builds on itself. And often action creates clarity as much as clarity creates

Small Movement Steps Create Clarity

3:37

action. And I want to give you a few really concrete examples from my own life. For many years, I have known that movement is incredibly important for my mental health and my nervous system wellness, especially as someone who's neurodivergent and who experiences depression. Now, during COVID, while the entire world was shut down, I was able to string together about a year and a half of time where I was consistently able to move my body in ways that felt good. And my mental health and my physical health for that matter was really doing incredibly well. But once the world opened up and I started to leave my house again, my schedule got packed. Not that it was particularly slow during COVID, but it definitely went back to the full, full days of scheduling for me and for my kids. And my consistency completely fell off. And I noticed that I had this story that during COVID, I was able to be consistent only because I had more time. And that belief honestly kept me stuck for a really long time. Because every time I would try, I would hit a wall. I would go for a walk or do some yoga or ride a bike for a week or two, and then I would fall off for a month or two, and I would reinforce my inability or seeming inability with that story. Well, I had more time during COVID, and that's why I can't figure out how to do this and get consistent again. But luckily, I eventually realized that what I truly needed was a structure that fit into my already existing life, which was in fact busy, but not truly too busy to fit in something that was as important to me and necessary for my wellness as movement for my body. But in classic perfectionist form, my first go-to was to try to schedule movement seven days a week, which, surprise, didn't work out very well. I was able to catch myself with some compassion and a bit of humor. And instead of beating myself up, I was able to try something new, something smaller, gentler, and much more realistic. One of the first things that became clear was that I needed to start small and easy. So for me at that time, I decided that 10 minutes on a trampoline in my living room three times a week was going to be where I would begin. I didn't need to even put on sneakers or leave my house, and there was absolutely nothing complicated about bouncing around in the living room. And once I created enough consistency that that felt safe and manageable, and I proved to myself that I actually could be consistent and I could carve out just a little bit of time for movement, I started getting more clarity. Not all at once, but gradually about what worked with my body, what really felt good, and what really felt aligned with my values and how I wanted to take care of myself. And I got clear on what truly fit into my life as it is, not as I wish it could be or how it might be in the future. And I got more clarity on what felt sustainable. And over time, that evolved into a three-time a week strength training program, 30 minutes a day, that feels deeply meaningful and important to me as a woman in my 40s. But I did not see that whole vision when I started. The clarity emerged bit by bit over time as I compassionately stayed connected to myself, enough so that I was able to keep going and continue to get more and more clear about what I wanted and feel safe enough to take action to meet that.

Career Clarity Through Trying Coaching

6:36

Switching gears a little bit, I've also had a very similar experience with clarity professionally. For pretty much my entire life, my career vision has been to start a family wellness center. And over the last 10 plus years of working with couples, it's become more and more clear that as much as I love working with teens and children and parents, and will probably always have an element of that in my work and do plan to get back to doing more of that in the future. Something about working with couples and people in relationships specifically has felt really significant and meaningful to me and has been calling to me more and more. And then over time, more clarity emerged. Working with depressed couples was really my niche because I knew it so incredibly well from a personal place. That clarity eventually led to me doing this podcast. And then doing this podcast eventually led me to consider expanding my therapy practice into a coaching practice. And when I made the decision to move towards coaching, something about it felt so incredibly clear. But as I took my first steps into the coaching world, there was so much that also felt really unclear because I know how to be a therapist. That's what I went to school for. I've done it for years, but coaching felt very unclear and new, and I wasn't sure I knew how to be a coach. And there were moments that I was questioning myself and my vision and the choice that I was making, wondering if coaching was really what I was supposed to do or if I should reroute back to my traditional life goal of having a family wellness center under a therapy model. But again, with more safety, more self-attunment, more support, and more compassion, more clarity came. And I think that that is such an incredibly important point because I think that many people believe once I'm totally clear, once I can see the whole picture, the whole vision, then I'll take a step towards it. I definitely have felt that way. And part of this is my perfectionism and my neurodivergence, that the coaching world, there was so much that felt unclear and so therefore felt scary that I was like, I can't do anything until I understand everything. And that kept me stuck a lot of the time, or I would make a little bit of movement and then fall back, very much in line with my exercise routine and my movement routine. I would take a step, but then I would fall off for a really long time. But the truth is that we often become clear by moving, by taking action. We try, we make mistakes, we learn, we adjust, we listen to others, and we listen to ourselves. And this process of learning and growing and reconnecting to ourselves again and again is, I think, how we build our truest, best lives that are most aligned with who we are and the values

Survival States Shrink Your Options

9:03

that we have. So what I hope lands for you from this episode today is that clarity is not just an intellectual experience, thoughts that come together in a perfect way inside your brain. It's biological, nervous system-based, emotional, relational, and embodied. And when our system is in that self-protective mode, when we're dysregulated, when we're overwhelmed and anxious and in a state of shutdown or depression, clarity is very hard to access. Not because there's something wrong with us, but because our system is trying to protect us. And when we're trying to survive, we don't have clarity for this big grand future. Thinking about the future and what we could do five or 10 steps from now is really not helpful in survival. In survival, we actually do have to figure out what to do now to keep us safe. And shutdown as a survival mechanism helps us by hiding until the danger has passed. So taking action doesn't really make any sense when we're in shutdown. We're actually protecting ourselves by being inactive, right? Hoping for the danger to move past us and survive another day. And when we're in sympathetic and we're just trying to grasp at whatever's in front of us, we're just trying to see what is most efficient. And stopping and slowing down and planning doesn't feel like it would be particularly helpful, even though in reality it would be. But in survival, we're just doing what we can do to again make it through to another day. And understanding this creates self-compassion, which matters so much because shame rarely, if ever, creates clarity. Safety is what creates clarity for us. And often clarity does not come in giant lightning bolt revelations. Sometimes it comes in 10 minutes on the trampoline or asking for help or taking a step or trying something new or hard, taking a moment to notice what feels more aligned, or slowly learning to trust yourself. And over time, those tiny moments start to come together and create a path that you couldn't fully see before. So if you're in a season of life right now that feels foggy or confusing or unclear, I hope you remember that clarity is not something that generally comes when you try to force it or push it or make it happen. Clarity often emerges when your nervous system actually feels safe enough to let the debris settle and let the light go back on so that you can actually begin to see again. And sometimes you don't know where your second or third step from now is going to lead. But if you take the first step, you'll often find that another step lights up. And for me, that has not only been something incredibly hopeful that has carried me through a lot of tough times, but it's also in this moment something that I feel so incredibly proud about because I have been able to cultivate enough self-compassion that I have been able to have clarity and create a path and a vision that becomes more and more clear each day. And I hope that for you as well. As our

One Step Invitation And Goodbye

11:52

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.