#78 The Road to Growth: How Relationships Change Our Expectations

What if the people we love aren't just shaping our memories? What if they're shaping what we come to expect?

Whether we realize it or not, every relationship is shaping what becomes familiar. And what becomes familiar gradually becomes what we expect.

In this episode, Trish shares a deeply personal story about an ordinary summer afternoon with her fourteen-year-old son that led to an extraordinary realization. As she reflects on years of parenting with ADHD, she explores how our capacity doesn't just shape what we do. It shapes how available we are to the people we love. Over time, that availability becomes part of what their nervous systems learn to expect.

But this episode isn't about guilt or getting parenting "right." It's about hope.

Because the same relationships that help shape our expectations can also help revise them.

Through storytelling, practical neuroscience, and the lens of The Road to Reconnection™, Trish explores how familiar patterns are formed, why they make perfect sense, and how repeated experiences of safety, follow-through, and repair gradually create new expectations for ourselves and the people we love.

Healing doesn't happen because we convince ourselves to think differently.

It happens because relationships create new experiences that slowly become the new familiar.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why what becomes familiar gradually becomes what we expect.
• How our capacity shapes our availability, and why availability matters more than we often realize.
• How repeated relational experiences shape our nervous system's expectations about ourselves and the people we love.
• Why children and adults alike develop predictions about what feels safe, possible, and available.
• How curiosity can interrupt familiar relationship patterns and create space for something new.
• Why we can't argue ourselves or others out of old predictions, but we can create experiences that make new predictions possible.
• How one conversation, one repair, and one moment of follow-through can begin repaving the road toward greater trust, connection, and hope.

Growth rarely happens all at once.

It happens one conversation.

One repair.

One new experience.

One new piece of pavement at a time.

Because the relationships that shaped our expectations also have the power to help us rewrite them.

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 Core Idea

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, and welcome to the When Depression is in Your Bed podcast. Lately, I've been thinking about something that feels incredibly simple and incredibly profound. Whether we are aware of it or not, every relationship we have, especially our closest ones, is shaping what becomes familiar. And through how our nervous system functions, what becomes familiar gradually becomes what we learn to expect. The more I've been thinking about that, the more I realized it explains so much about how we experience ourselves, the people we love, and even what becomes possible in our relationships. I'm your host, Trish Sanders. I'm a licensed clinical social worker, relationship therapist, and coach, and the creator of The Road to Reconnection. I am delighted that you are here. Let's get started. One of the things I've been thinking about a lot lately is just how deeply our relationships shape us. Not just through the big moments, but also through the thousands of tiny, ordinary moments that we experience every day. Little by little, our nervous systems are learning what's familiar, what's safe, what's difficult, what's available. And over time, those familiar experiences become expectations. And those expectations become predictions. And those predictions eventually end up influencing how we experience and respond to ourselves, each other, and the world. And here's the really hopeful part. Relationships don't just create those predictions, relationships can also help revise them.

A Summer Screen Time Moment

SPEAKER_00 1:34

And just this week I had an ordinary moment with my 14-year-old that showed me just how extraordinary this process can be. So let me tell you about what happened. It's summer, and my 14-year-old has a few things planned throughout the week, but for the most part, he has a lot of free time each day. And his preferred way of spending a lot of that time, not surprisingly, is to be on a screen. So I walked into his bedroom and lo and behold, he's sitting there on a laptop. And I just said something to the effect of like, hey, how about we think about something else to do that's off of a screen? I'll be back in a few minutes to check in. So I left and five or so minutes later, I came back. And part of me was expecting to find him doing something else. But yet when I walked in the room, there he was, same position, still on his laptop. And a part of me immediately was like, wait, are you serious? I literally just asked you to do something else and told you I'd come back. And here you are in the exact same position as you were before. However, because I've been thinking so much about predictions and relationships, and I've been deep into creating this coaching program that supports expanded capacity and change, I had a moment of self-reflection that was huge. Supported by all of this information and additional perspective, I didn't get frustrated. Instead, I got curious. And it hit me pretty immediately. This had nothing to do with my son not listening to me or being avoidant or even about my son's seeming preference of video games as compared with just about anything else. I realized that over my son's entire life, I have helped set up a prediction and an expectation in him. I don't think my son expects me not to care about what he's doing, but I do think that he expects for me to get busy. His system has experienced me so many times asking him to do a task, whether it was homework or moving his body or reading or emptying the dishwasher. There have been countless times when right after I asked him to do something, I got sucked up into what I think of as the whirlwind of life and I got pulled into something else, and I became less available to him. Not because I didn't love him, not because I didn't want to support him in doing another task that I thought was important and could support him in his own well-being, but just because for many years that is just what happened. Living with ADHD has often meant that my intentions and my availability to fulfill those intentions have often not been a match. In all of those previous moments, I had meant to come back, I had meant to follow up, I had meant to check in again, but so often I just didn't have the capacity to do it. My capacity shaped how available I was to show up. And over time, that ability helped shape what became familiar to my son. And eventually, that familiarity became what my son expected from me. That moment was humbling and honestly a little bit sad. And it was also incredibly hopeful because I realized that relationships don't just shape expectations. Relationships also have the ability to help us revise those expectations. I've been thinking a lot about this as I've been creating my coaching program that I've been referring to over the last few episodes, The Road to Reconnection. One of the ideas I've been developing is that our capacity doesn't just shape what we do, it shapes how available we are for the people we love, including how available we are for ourselves. And over time, that availability or lack thereof becomes what our nervous system learns to expect. And as I stood there talking to my son, it was so incredibly obvious that the very framework that I've been working on developing and getting on paper was unfolding right before my eyes. And suddenly this wasn't a conversation about how my son can spend his summer. It was a little glimpse into how relationships can shape us and how they can help us begin to change as well.

ADHD Overwhelm And Availability

SPEAKER_00 5:05

So I want to talk a little bit about my own personal experience, about what I mean when I say that capacity doesn't only shape our behavior, but it also shapes our availability. And that availability eventually shapes what people, again, including ourselves, come to expect from us. The truth is, as I've talked about many times before, one of my historically familiar states over my entire life was one of overwhelm. I often felt like there was too much on my to-do list, not enough time to do it all, and time just felt like it was moving too quickly that I could never seem to catch up. So of course, this experience affected how I parent. Even though for my entire professional career, I've been a play therapist who specialized in working with children and practiced from an attachment and relational perspective. I knew the importance of my presence and availability for my son. And yet, in so many moments in my life, I wasn't able to show up for him the way that I truly, deeply wanted to. It wasn't because my son wasn't a priority, and of course it had nothing to do with how much I loved him. I just often had such limited capacity that it shaped how available I was for him. And over hundreds of ordinary moments over many years, his nervous system learned something that made perfect sense. Not only did he develop expectations about me, that I was very busy and I always had work to do and there was always something else that pulled my attention, but he also started developing predictions and expectations for himself. It felt easier and safer for him to stay in his room on a screen than to take action and do something that seemed like it could be hard. And staying just where he was became the safest place for him. Because staying there, he knew exactly what he could expect. And I don't think that this is only true for children. I think this is true for all of us.

Choosing Curiosity Over Frustration

SPEAKER_00 6:37

In our own unique ways, we all develop roads that feel safer for us to travel. And in this moment where I had expanded awareness about why my son was still in the exact same position that he was when I had left him a few minutes before, I was able to show up with compassion instead of frustration. And this allowed me to not move into a reaction that I may have moved into in the past. I didn't lecture him or shame him or criticize him by saying that he should have been doing the thing that I asked him to do. I was able to really validate his experience. I told him that I completely understood why he was still on his computer. And I connected it to our long history where I got busy and swept away in the whirlwind of life. And I told him that I completely understood how, even though he was my absolute priority, how so often my behavior didn't always reflect that exactly in the way that I wished it had. And I also shared that I've been working so much on myself so that I'm in a different place than I've ever been before. And I have greater capacity to be present for him and available in the way that I've always wanted to be. And this didn't mean that I was going to check on him every five minutes for the rest of the day to make sure he was off his screen. It meant that I had the ability to show up in a way that was going to actually support him in feeling safe enough to begin stretching into something that feels a little bit new, a little bit unfamiliar for him, so that he can figure out how to take care of himself in a way that really feels caring and authentically aligned with who he is and what really makes sense for him. And in doing so, the expectations and predictions that we both have for ourselves and our relationship and each other can start to change. And the beautiful thing is that this was not something that I did or that he did. The relationship created an opportunity for a new experience, one where I was able to show up, one where he experienced support instead of pressure, and one where neither of our old expectations were fully reaffirmed. And I think that that's a place where healing can begin. It wasn't a moment of fireworks where a giant breakthrough happened and everything changed all at once. But rather it was the moment when one small experience gently begins making a different prediction possible.

How New Experiences Change Predictions

SPEAKER_00 8:38

The more I've reflected on this, the more I think it applies to all of our relationships. Our capacity shapes our availability. Our availability shapes what becomes familiar. What becomes familiar gradually becomes what we expect. And those expectations become predictions. And in turn, those predictions shape how we interact with ourselves and with one another and with the larger world. And in addition to all of that, relationships also provide us new opportunities for new experiences. We can't argue people out of their old predictions. We can't prove to them that what they think is going to happen is not what will actually happen. But we can create new experiences that gradually make new predictions possible. And those experiences, repeated over time, gradually begin shaping what's familiar. And little by little those new experiences begin changing what we expect. And that's how our predictions begin to change. And that's how our relationships begin changing as well. Slowly we begin to be able to repave a new road for ourselves and for our relationships. Not perfectly and not all at once. One conversation had in a new way, one repair, one validation, one moment where we're able to follow through. And every time we become just a little bit more available than we were before, we're offering ourselves and one another something incredibly valuable. We're offering new evidence. Evidence that maybe our future doesn't have to look exactly like our past. Evidence that maybe our old predictions don't capture the full story of what is possible in our future anymore. And because relationships helped shape those predictions, relationships can also help revise them. One piece of new pavement at a time. So every time we show up with more ability to validate, have a conversation, repair, follow through, every time we're just a little bit more available or we have a little bit more capacity, we're laying another piece of pavement until one day when that new road that we paved becomes what feels familiar. And then that sense of familiarity eventually guides what we come to expect. And I think that there is something incredibly hopeful about that. And I hope that there's something in today's conversation that feels hopeful for you too.

An Invitation To Take One Step

SPEAKER_00 10:52

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

SPEAKER_00 12:10

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.