August 27, 2025 • 18 mins
Why do so many couples fight in cars? After a breathtaking but occasionally tense family road trip along the Pacific Coast Highway, I discovered something fascinating about car conflicts that completely changed my perspective.
Driving requires a unique blend of nervous system states - we need both calm groundedness (ventral vagal) and energized alertness (sympathetic) to navigate safely. But this delicate balance can easily tip toward dysregulation when fatigue, hunger, time pressure, or danger cues enter the picture. What I initially misinterpreted as my husband "being jerky" during our vacation was actually his nervous system working overtime to keep us safe while managing multiple stressors in an unfamiliar environment.
This revelation transformed my response from judgment to compassion. Rather than creating stories about why he was "ruining our vacation," I recognized what was happening physiologically and maintained my own regulation. This rippled through our entire family system, allowing us to navigate challenges more smoothly. When multiple nervous systems share a confined space like a car, they continuously communicate below consciousness - one person's dysregulation can quickly affect everyone else.
Understanding these patterns doesn't just improve road trips; it transforms relationships. By approaching behaviors with curiosity rather than criticism, asking "what makes sense about this reaction?" instead of "why are they being difficult?", we create space for connection even in stressful situations. Whether you're planning your next family vacation or just driving to the grocery store, this perspective shift might be exactly what you need to turn potential car conflicts into opportunities for deeper understanding.
- 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.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 0 (00:01):
Hello and welcome to the when Depression is in your
Bed podcast.
Have you ever been on a roadtrip with your partner maybe a
long drive, or even just a ridearound the corner to the grocery
store and things got a littleheated.
Maybe there was a comment abouthow fast or slow the car was
going, or maybe there was someconcern about how close your
vehicle was to the vehicle infront of you.
(00:21):
In this episode, I'm gettingcurious about some of the
reasons why partners are soprone to having car conflicts,
and if you're curious too,please join me for this episode.
I'm your host, trish Sanders,and I am so delighted that you
are here.
Let's get started.
In my last episode, I talkedabout how I was preparing to go
on a vacation to the CaliforniaRedwoods and I shared how I had
(00:42):
had a few weeks of veryturbulent times for me, at least
, that's how it landed in mynervous system and I was really
actively working to regroundmyself and rebalance and feel
centered.
And I clearly and consciouslyset an intention for my vacation
with my family, with my husband, also with my sister and my
nephew, because it was somethingincredibly special and I was so
(01:03):
excited for it and I didn'twant to bring a dysregulated
nervous system into the trip,because if you bring a
dysregulated nervous system intothe trip, you can think about
that as being reactive, being onedge, being tense, being a
little irritable there's a lotof different words you might use
to describe that.
But I know if I bring thatenergy into my trip, there was
no way that it was going to havea positive impact.
(01:24):
Maybe at best it would have aneutral impact, but I would
really lose some of theopportunity to enjoy myself.
And so I talked about that onthe last episode and I told you
that I would catch you up to letyou know how things went.
And so here I am today doingjust that, and honestly, so many
things happened that I couldtalk to you about, and the trip
overall was absolutelyextraordinary.
I was in awe for most of thetime just appreciating the
(01:49):
Pacific West Coast and the oceanand the mountains and the
California redwoods and theforests, and everything was just
really quite extraordinary.
But the trip itself actually hadquite a few bumps along the way
, really throughout, from dayone all the way to the end or
the last day coming home, and sothere was a lot of things to
talk about.
But one thing that stood outvery clearly to me first, just
(02:10):
after the vacation itself my ownexperience.
I was like, wow, I think thatthis is an important theme.
But then I went into the officeand I actually had two couples
that week who had their ownunique versions of a story, but
similar stories to me or similarareas of conflict that I had
had on my vacation.
And this theme that came upfrom my trip and also from the
(02:32):
two couples that I work with wasabout car conflicts and I
really started to think about it.
I said, gosh, let me getcurious about this.
And there's probably so muchhere and there's a lot of things
I'm already thinking about, butI want to just talk about my
trip firsthand and really someof the important things and
takeaways that I really learnedfrom this experience.
(02:52):
And perhaps in other episodes Iwill continue to talk about car
conflict and how to haveregulated road trips, but for
today I just want to share about, like I said, what I learned
from my experience.
So my husband and I are nostrangers to car conflict.
The truth is we have had manyconflicts and even today we can
joke about car trips that werenightmares that we had, like 20
years ago, like, oh my gosh,remember that trip that we took
(03:14):
to you know, here or there, andwe can mostly laugh about it, I
would say I think.
But I know that sometimes incars myself and my husband
included, absolutely but couplescan really have a lot of
conflict, whether it's about thedriving experience itself, like
the speed, like how fast orslow someone's going, or the
directions, or an argument aboutthe event you're going to Like
(03:35):
are you running on time, are yourunning late, that kind of
thing, or it can be when you'rein the car.
A lot of conflict and tensionemerges.
There's a lot of reasons forall of that and I can really
dive into some more of thosepieces in a different episode.
But in our road trip, this timeto California, I noticed
something really fascinating.
At least it was fascinating forme because we were driving in
(03:58):
such an extraordinarilybeautiful place.
But it was also kind ofterrifying because when you're
driving along the Pacific CoastHighway, there are places when
you're on a pretty narrow road,on the edge of a pretty
significant cliff, you know, ordrop down to the beach, to the
ocean.
Also in the forest, same thingthere were cliffs, that we would
look down and we're like whoa?
(04:18):
My sister was with us and youknow the two of us were
passengers and my husband choseto do all of the driving, which
I think my sister and I probablyboth were pretty grateful for.
We both had thought we would dodriving on the trip but I think
that the conditions kind ofjust led to my husband doing all
the driving and again, I thinkthat we were appreciative of
that, given the circumstances ofthe driving.
(04:39):
It was just very unfamiliarterritory and I will speak for
myself I was definitelydownright terrified at certain
times not the whole time, and Ithink I could have done it if I
had to, but I was also gratefulthat I didn't have to and it was
really nice for my husband tobe able to take on that
responsibility so that my sisterand I could take care of the
kids and kind of tend todirections and, you know, help
(05:00):
navigate and different thingslike that.
So it really worked out welland we were super appreciative
of my husband taking on thisresponsibility and we were both
very verbal to him inrecognizing our appreciation of
him.
Especially on the first night itkind of got a little bit crazy.
A three and a half hour tripturned into a five and a half
hour trip, which was really long, after our whole morning of
flying into California from theEast Coast, and so it was really
(05:22):
a challenge to do all thedriving, but my husband did it.
And what I also noticed is thatthere were times that my
husband was really on edge andthis, of course, made sense to
me in different moments of thetrip.
Again, when he was doing a fiveand a half hour drive that we
thought was going to be a threeand a half hour drive, that made
a lot of sense.
When we were driving on thePacific Coast Highway in the
dark when we had expected to beat our destination before
(05:43):
sundown.
That was also a prettystressful situation.
I understood that he was alittle on edge, although in that
particular trip he was prettyfocused and he was really a rock
star on that particular leg.
But there were other times whena little bit of his edginess
caught me off guard and I waslike why is he reacting that way
?
And I felt confused and annoyedand aggravated in different
moments of the trip and Istarted to think about this like
(06:05):
what is going on?
He felt almost unfamiliar to me, like in many moments we were
sharing this awesome experiencetogether with our family and it
was just so extraordinary.
And then, in other moments, hewas acting the story.
I told myself he was acting alittle bit jerky and I didn't
understand why.
And then I started to reallythink about it because I got
curious.
I was like what's going on here?
(06:29):
Because this doesn't seem tomake sense to me.
But I believe as is part of theImago theory and it's something
that I hold as a personal valueand personal truth is that
everything that everyone doesall the time makes sense, which
is a pretty bold statement, andI'm sure talk about that in
another episode as well.
But if I believe which I dothat everything that everybody
does makes sense all the time, Iwas like what makes sense about
this?
How is this making sense?
What am I not understanding?
So I got curious and I realizedthat in order to drive,
(06:52):
especially for the extendedperiods of time, this was a road
trip.
It was, you know, five days ofdriving.
We went to multiple locations,there was a few stops every day,
plus driving to a differenthotel every night, and in order
to be engaged and alert and havethe energy to drive and the
motivation and even some of thefocus to drive.
That is a combination, if wetalk about our nervous system, a
(07:12):
combination of states, and ifyou don't know a lot about
nervous systems, this may soundconfusing, but it's incredibly
valuable information.
So our nervous system can onlyhave three states.
One of them is calm, safe andgrounded.
That's our ventral state.
And then the other two statesare states of survival and that
sympathetic, which is our fightor flight response, and dorsal,
which is our collapse, shutdown,freeze response.
(07:34):
That's kind of like the shortversion of our nervous system
state experiences.
And we can also have blendedstates and also we can have
regulated states, versions ofour survival states.
Again, this might feel a littlecomplicated, but basically we
can have a sympathetic statethat is in that fight or flight
to protect us, or we can havesympathetic that gives us energy
(07:54):
and helps us take action.
And in this case that's what myhusband needed.
He needed some of that healthy,sympathetic, regulated energy
to join with that ventral energy.
So the blended state would beventral and sympathetic, but
again, not in a dysregulated,self-protective way, but in a.
This is how our nervous systemis miraculous and can come
together in such a way to helpus meet the needs of a situation
(08:17):
, and in this particularsituation, the need was he
needed to be alert and engagedand focused and have the energy
to be able to make these longdrives.
So his nervous system camethrough, you know, he did it.
He did what he needed to do, hegot us everywhere we needed to
get to and that was prettyawesome and, again, my sister
and I were like so incrediblythankful for that.
However, because we were doing alot of driving every day and we
(08:40):
were very busy doing a lot ofactivities throughout the day,
we were also tired Not so tiredthat my husband was not safe to
drive, but you know he wasn't aswell rested and taking a
relaxing, easy kind of vacation.
It wasn't that kind of trip,and so that, combined with
probably lots of other factors,I'm sure lots of other little
cues of danger and even somehistorical cues of danger, my
(09:01):
husband does have some childhoodexperience about being in cars
that I won't go into right nowbecause it's his story to share,
but I do know that that's partof his experience in cars and my
guess is is why he felt reallymost comfortable being in the
driver's seat, literally.
So there were a lot of thingsgoing on.
All of these things created anexperience where sometimes my
husband shifted from being inthat really lovely blended
(09:23):
nervous system state of ventraland sympathetic, that really
helpful sympathetic to give himthat energy to do what he had to
do and stay engaged in driving,and he kind of sometimes tipped
over into that dysregulatedsympathetic state.
And I wouldn't say he was superdysregulated most of the trip
at all, but he would get alittle bit of that flavor, a
little bit more of theirritability or kind of a little
(09:43):
bit more of that little fightresponse, not big fight Most of
the time.
We did have some challenges onthe last day at the airport, but
that was another situation thatwas separate from this and
perhaps I will maybe invite himon to talk about that experience
because I think it was reallyfascinating.
But I'd love for him to sharehis perspective on it as well in
addition to just hearing mine.
But except for that last day inthe airport, which was unique,
(10:03):
he really just kind of got intothese little flavors of
sympathetic dysregulation, alittle bit of that edgy kind of
like friction kind of place.
But I started to realize like,oh, he needs this sympathetic
energy in order to be drivingand doing what he needs to do
and what we need him to do right, what we want him to do, state
(10:24):
already when he's a little tired, when he's a little bit hungry,
when we've been driving forseveral hours in the day, or
when some other cue of dangercomes up, it's real easy for his
nervous system to kind of tip alittle bit more into that
dysregulated, protective,sympathetic, fight or flight
experience.
And so when I started to viewit that way, I had what in
polyvagal theory, which is aboutour nervous system and how it
(10:44):
creates our entire livedexperience, how we experience
the world.
We would say that I got context,I had more of the picture, I
had more of the understanding ofwhat was happening.
It wasn't that my husband wasgoing from being awesome and
fantastic and fun and great tobeing a jerk.
That wasn't really what washappening.
His nervous system wasresponding.
In certain moments it was alittle bit more prone to being
(11:04):
dysregulated, which made sense,and I was able to have a lot of
compassion for that because Ireally understood what was
happening.
So I didn't talk to him aboutthis hardly at all on the trip
because we were really go, go,go.
There was not too much downtime.
As a matter of fact, I would dothe whole entire trip again,
but I would do it in at leastdouble the amount of days so
that we could have more downtime.
But being that we only had fivedays to be able to make this
(11:26):
trip, it was pretty amazing andI'm really grateful that we were
able to have that experience.
But, again, not a lot ofdowntime at all, and so I was
able to use this context to beable to see more clearly and
regulate my system enough sothat, to the best of my ability.
I certainly wasn't perfect in myself-regulation, but I was able
to self-regulate far betterthan I would have been if I was
(11:48):
telling myself a story like oh,why is he being such a jerk?
This is our family vacation.
We should be enjoying eachother.
Why is he so on edge?
I'm not doing anything wrong.
I offered to drive.
He said that he was gooddriving, so why is he
complaining?
He wasn't complaining aboutdriving, but just, you know,
whatever the story, plenty ofdysregulated stories that I
could have made up had mynervous system been in a
dysregulated state, because, ifyou remember your stories,
(12:10):
follow your states.
So whatever nervous systemstate you're in, I call it
goggles.
You have goggles that coloryour experience and so if I was
in sympathetic, I would have hadsome sympathetic, fiery goggles
.
I would have had some fightresponse in me, like I don't
even want to be on this tripanymore, let me get out of here.
Or I would have had.
I often call them depressiongoggles, but dorsal goggles of
shutdown, like sitting quietlyin the car, feeling disconnected
(12:33):
, and I really didn't have thatexperience at all because, I
mean, sometimes there were likelittle moments of friction, but
for the most part I was reallyable to use my intention that I
had set before I went on thetrip which I talked about in my
last episode of of.
I really wanted to be presentand I wanted to truly enjoy this
vacation as much as I could.
One because, of course, I wasgoing to this really beautiful
(12:54):
part of the United States thatI've never been to and I really
wanted to enjoy that andappreciate it.
Even more than that, I was goingwith not only my family, my
husband and my kids, who I adore, but also my sister and my
nephew, so I really had a carfull of some of the absolute
most important people in my lifeand I wanted to truly enjoy
that privilege and that gift and, in order to make the best of
(13:19):
it, that really translated forme to me regulating myself and
me finding my grounding and mybalance and doing what I needed
to do so that I could hold spacefor my husband and for
everybody in a way that feltgood for them and felt good for
me and truly I think it made ahuge difference in our trip
because, like I said, eventhough there were several
(13:40):
challenges along the way, wereally were able to get back on
track, not just between Ben andI, but just overall with the
trip.
So, even with the challenge ofthe first night driving so long,
we were really back on track bythe morning and that's kind of
how it went the whole time.
We were not literally off ourschedule again in the same way
that we were the first night,but there were other things we
had little metaphorical detoursbecause of and we were able to
(14:03):
deal with them and get back ontrack again, literally and
figuratively.
Deal with them and get back ontrack again, literally and
figuratively.
But I know that if I would havebeen dysregulated, and
unconsciously dysregulated, andI would have gone into a
self-protective response.
I would have felt prettyjustified and been telling
myself all of these stories thatwould have contributed to us
probably not being able to getback on track as quickly as we
(14:23):
all were able to, and thisincludes my husband, my sister
and all three kids in the car.
Nervous systems communicate withone another, so we had five
different nervous systems in onesmall space in the car,
constantly communicating witheach other, and there were so
many different cues of safetyand cues of danger and there was
a lot of regulation and momentsof dysregulation going on,
because this is part of thehuman experience.
(14:44):
This is true for everybody.
And when we came home, myhusband and I were able to start
really addressing it and divinginto it, and I think that we
will probably continue to reallydive in and pull apart
different moments of this trip.
And the way I think about it isthat we've had a lot of great
vacations in the past.
I think we it is that we've hada lot of great vacations in the
past.
I think we've gotten better atvacationing.
We had really nightmarevacations early in our
relationship because we didn'tknow how to vacation together,
(15:06):
but we've also had a lot ofchallenging road trips, both
short and long, and I reallyfeel like this experience was
super valuable in helping us beable to have what I'm thinking
of as more regulated road tripsthat can feel better for us as a
couple, but very much us as afamily and whatever other
nervous systems are travelingwith us in the car, because,
(15:27):
like I said, sharing space withnervous systems, they're going
to be communicating at a levelbelow consciousness.
I've talked about this onprevious episodes and I will
absolutely talk about this morein future episodes, but I just
wanted to share today, really,my takeaway of how driving in
many different ways and again,we can talk about this in a more
comprehensive way in futureepisodes but driving is
(15:47):
something where there is oftenneeded that blend of ventral and
sympathetic energy in order todrive safely, to be alert, to be
engaged, to have motivation todrive a long distance or
something like that, and,depending on all the other
factors going on, it can bereally easy for the driver or
the passenger to becomedysregulated, and I think that
that's a really big reason why acar can be such a source of
(16:10):
conflicts for so many partners.
Again, two of my couples, onthe week that I came back from
my vacation, both shared storiesof car conflicts that they had
on their vacations, and I justthought that it was really
fascinating, and that's why Iwanted to talk about it with you
today, and I look forward toexploring it more with you in
the future, because I thinkfiguring out how to have a
regulated relationship in such away that works for me and my
(16:31):
family is a priority, and it'salso a priority for me to share
this information with others,because I think that that's how
we improve the world by havingregulated relationships, and, of
course, that also means, inpart, having regulated road
trips.
So I look forward to talkingmore next time.
As our time comes to a close, Iask you to keep listening for
just a few more moments, becauseI wanna thank you for showing
(16:53):
up today and I want to leave youwith an invitation.
As you hit, stop and move backout into the world on your own
unique wellness journey In orderto move from where you are
today to the place where youwant to be.
The path may seem long orunclear or unknown, and I want
you to know that if that seemsscary or daunting or downright
(17:15):
terrifying or anything else,that is totally okay.
Know that you do not have tocreate the whole way all at once
.
We don't travel a whole journeyin one stride, and that is why
my invitation to you today is totake a step, just one, any type
, any size, in any direction.
It can be an external step, itcan be observed or measured, or
(17:38):
it could be a step you visualizetaking in your mind.
It can be a step towards actionor towards rest or connection
or self-care, or whatever stepmakes sense to you.
I invite you to take a steptoday because getting to a place
that feels better, more joyful,more connected than the place
where you are today is possiblefor everyone, including you, and
(18:02):
even when depression is in yourbed.
If today's episode resonatedwith you, please subscribe so
you can be notified when eachweekly episode gets released.
I encourage you to leave areview and reach out to me on
social media at trishsanderslcsw.
Your feedback will help guidefuture episodes and I love
hearing from you.
Hello and welcome to the when Depression is in your
Bed podcast.
Have you ever been on a roadtrip with your partner maybe a
long drive, or even just a ridearound the corner to the grocery
store and things got a littleheated.
Maybe there was a comment abouthow fast or slow the car was
going, or maybe there was someconcern about how close your
vehicle was to the vehicle infront of you.
(00:21):
In this episode, I'm gettingcurious about some of the
reasons why partners are soprone to having car conflicts,
and if you're curious too,please join me for this episode.
I'm your host, trish Sanders,and I am so delighted that you
are here.
Let's get started.
In my last episode, I talkedabout how I was preparing to go
on a vacation to the CaliforniaRedwoods and I shared how I had
(00:42):
had a few weeks of veryturbulent times for me, at least
, that's how it landed in mynervous system and I was really
actively working to regroundmyself and rebalance and feel
centered.
And I clearly and consciouslyset an intention for my vacation
with my family, with my husband, also with my sister and my
nephew, because it was somethingincredibly special and I was so
(01:03):
excited for it and I didn'twant to bring a dysregulated
nervous system into the trip,because if you bring a
dysregulated nervous system intothe trip, you can think about
that as being reactive, being onedge, being tense, being a
little irritable there's a lotof different words you might use
to describe that.
But I know if I bring thatenergy into my trip, there was
no way that it was going to havea positive impact.
(01:24):
Maybe at best it would have aneutral impact, but I would
really lose some of theopportunity to enjoy myself.
And so I talked about that onthe last episode and I told you
that I would catch you up to letyou know how things went.
And so here I am today doingjust that, and honestly, so many
things happened that I couldtalk to you about, and the trip
overall was absolutelyextraordinary.
I was in awe for most of thetime just appreciating the
(01:49):
Pacific West Coast and the oceanand the mountains and the
California redwoods and theforests, and everything was just
really quite extraordinary.
But the trip itself actually hadquite a few bumps along the way
, really throughout, from dayone all the way to the end or
the last day coming home, and sothere was a lot of things to
talk about.
But one thing that stood outvery clearly to me first, just
(02:10):
after the vacation itself my ownexperience.
I was like, wow, I think thatthis is an important theme.
But then I went into the officeand I actually had two couples
that week who had their ownunique versions of a story, but
similar stories to me or similarareas of conflict that I had
had on my vacation.
And this theme that came upfrom my trip and also from the
(02:32):
two couples that I work with wasabout car conflicts and I
really started to think about it.
I said, gosh, let me getcurious about this.
And there's probably so muchhere and there's a lot of things
I'm already thinking about, butI want to just talk about my
trip firsthand and really someof the important things and
takeaways that I really learnedfrom this experience.
(02:52):
And perhaps in other episodes Iwill continue to talk about car
conflict and how to haveregulated road trips, but for
today I just want to share about, like I said, what I learned
from my experience.
So my husband and I are nostrangers to car conflict.
The truth is we have had manyconflicts and even today we can
joke about car trips that werenightmares that we had, like 20
years ago, like, oh my gosh,remember that trip that we took
(03:14):
to you know, here or there, andwe can mostly laugh about it, I
would say I think.
But I know that sometimes incars myself and my husband
included, absolutely but couplescan really have a lot of
conflict, whether it's about thedriving experience itself, like
the speed, like how fast orslow someone's going, or the
directions, or an argument aboutthe event you're going to Like
(03:35):
are you running on time, are yourunning late, that kind of
thing, or it can be when you'rein the car.
A lot of conflict and tensionemerges.
There's a lot of reasons forall of that and I can really
dive into some more of thosepieces in a different episode.
But in our road trip, this timeto California, I noticed
something really fascinating.
At least it was fascinating forme because we were driving in
(03:58):
such an extraordinarilybeautiful place.
But it was also kind ofterrifying because when you're
driving along the Pacific CoastHighway, there are places when
you're on a pretty narrow road,on the edge of a pretty
significant cliff, you know, ordrop down to the beach, to the
ocean.
Also in the forest, same thingthere were cliffs, that we would
look down and we're like whoa?
(04:18):
My sister was with us and youknow the two of us were
passengers and my husband choseto do all of the driving, which
I think my sister and I probablyboth were pretty grateful for.
We both had thought we would dodriving on the trip but I think
that the conditions kind ofjust led to my husband doing all
the driving and again, I thinkthat we were appreciative of
that, given the circumstances ofthe driving.
(04:39):
It was just very unfamiliarterritory and I will speak for
myself I was definitelydownright terrified at certain
times not the whole time, and Ithink I could have done it if I
had to, but I was also gratefulthat I didn't have to and it was
really nice for my husband tobe able to take on that
responsibility so that my sisterand I could take care of the
kids and kind of tend todirections and, you know, help
(05:00):
navigate and different thingslike that.
So it really worked out welland we were super appreciative
of my husband taking on thisresponsibility and we were both
very verbal to him inrecognizing our appreciation of
him.
Especially on the first night itkind of got a little bit crazy.
A three and a half hour tripturned into a five and a half
hour trip, which was really long, after our whole morning of
flying into California from theEast Coast, and so it was really
(05:22):
a challenge to do all thedriving, but my husband did it.
And what I also noticed is thatthere were times that my
husband was really on edge andthis, of course, made sense to
me in different moments of thetrip.
Again, when he was doing a fiveand a half hour drive that we
thought was going to be a threeand a half hour drive, that made
a lot of sense.
When we were driving on thePacific Coast Highway in the
dark when we had expected to beat our destination before
(05:43):
sundown.
That was also a prettystressful situation.
I understood that he was alittle on edge, although in that
particular trip he was prettyfocused and he was really a rock
star on that particular leg.
But there were other times whena little bit of his edginess
caught me off guard and I waslike why is he reacting that way
?
And I felt confused and annoyedand aggravated in different
moments of the trip and Istarted to think about this like
(06:05):
what is going on?
He felt almost unfamiliar to me, like in many moments we were
sharing this awesome experiencetogether with our family and it
was just so extraordinary.
And then, in other moments, hewas acting the story.
I told myself he was acting alittle bit jerky and I didn't
understand why.
And then I started to reallythink about it because I got
curious.
I was like what's going on here?
(06:29):
Because this doesn't seem tomake sense to me.
But I believe as is part of theImago theory and it's something
that I hold as a personal valueand personal truth is that
everything that everyone doesall the time makes sense, which
is a pretty bold statement, andI'm sure talk about that in
another episode as well.
But if I believe which I dothat everything that everybody
does makes sense all the time, Iwas like what makes sense about
this?
How is this making sense?
What am I not understanding?
So I got curious and I realizedthat in order to drive,
(06:52):
especially for the extendedperiods of time, this was a road
trip.
It was, you know, five days ofdriving.
We went to multiple locations,there was a few stops every day,
plus driving to a differenthotel every night, and in order
to be engaged and alert and havethe energy to drive and the
motivation and even some of thefocus to drive.
That is a combination, if wetalk about our nervous system, a
(07:12):
combination of states, and ifyou don't know a lot about
nervous systems, this may soundconfusing, but it's incredibly
valuable information.
So our nervous system can onlyhave three states.
One of them is calm, safe andgrounded.
That's our ventral state.
And then the other two statesare states of survival and that
sympathetic, which is our fightor flight response, and dorsal,
which is our collapse, shutdown,freeze response.
(07:34):
That's kind of like the shortversion of our nervous system
state experiences.
And we can also have blendedstates and also we can have
regulated states, versions ofour survival states.
Again, this might feel a littlecomplicated, but basically we
can have a sympathetic statethat is in that fight or flight
to protect us, or we can havesympathetic that gives us energy
(07:54):
and helps us take action.
And in this case that's what myhusband needed.
He needed some of that healthy,sympathetic, regulated energy
to join with that ventral energy.
So the blended state would beventral and sympathetic, but
again, not in a dysregulated,self-protective way, but in a.
This is how our nervous systemis miraculous and can come
together in such a way to helpus meet the needs of a situation
(08:17):
, and in this particularsituation, the need was he
needed to be alert and engagedand focused and have the energy
to be able to make these longdrives.
So his nervous system camethrough, you know, he did it.
He did what he needed to do, hegot us everywhere we needed to
get to and that was prettyawesome and, again, my sister
and I were like so incrediblythankful for that.
However, because we were doing alot of driving every day and we
(08:40):
were very busy doing a lot ofactivities throughout the day,
we were also tired Not so tiredthat my husband was not safe to
drive, but you know he wasn't aswell rested and taking a
relaxing, easy kind of vacation.
It wasn't that kind of trip,and so that, combined with
probably lots of other factors,I'm sure lots of other little
cues of danger and even somehistorical cues of danger, my
(09:01):
husband does have some childhoodexperience about being in cars
that I won't go into right nowbecause it's his story to share,
but I do know that that's partof his experience in cars and my
guess is is why he felt reallymost comfortable being in the
driver's seat, literally.
So there were a lot of thingsgoing on.
All of these things created anexperience where sometimes my
husband shifted from being inthat really lovely blended
(09:23):
nervous system state of ventraland sympathetic, that really
helpful sympathetic to give himthat energy to do what he had to
do and stay engaged in driving,and he kind of sometimes tipped
over into that dysregulatedsympathetic state.
And I wouldn't say he was superdysregulated most of the trip
at all, but he would get alittle bit of that flavor, a
little bit more of theirritability or kind of a little
(09:43):
bit more of that little fightresponse, not big fight Most of
the time.
We did have some challenges onthe last day at the airport, but
that was another situation thatwas separate from this and
perhaps I will maybe invite himon to talk about that experience
because I think it was reallyfascinating.
But I'd love for him to sharehis perspective on it as well in
addition to just hearing mine.
But except for that last day inthe airport, which was unique,
(10:03):
he really just kind of got intothese little flavors of
sympathetic dysregulation, alittle bit of that edgy kind of
like friction kind of place.
But I started to realize like,oh, he needs this sympathetic
energy in order to be drivingand doing what he needs to do
and what we need him to do right, what we want him to do, state
(10:24):
already when he's a little tired, when he's a little bit hungry,
when we've been driving forseveral hours in the day, or
when some other cue of dangercomes up, it's real easy for his
nervous system to kind of tip alittle bit more into that
dysregulated, protective,sympathetic, fight or flight
experience.
And so when I started to viewit that way, I had what in
polyvagal theory, which is aboutour nervous system and how it
(10:44):
creates our entire livedexperience, how we experience
the world.
We would say that I got context,I had more of the picture, I
had more of the understanding ofwhat was happening.
It wasn't that my husband wasgoing from being awesome and
fantastic and fun and great tobeing a jerk.
That wasn't really what washappening.
His nervous system wasresponding.
In certain moments it was alittle bit more prone to being
(11:04):
dysregulated, which made sense,and I was able to have a lot of
compassion for that because Ireally understood what was
happening.
So I didn't talk to him aboutthis hardly at all on the trip
because we were really go, go,go.
There was not too much downtime.
As a matter of fact, I would dothe whole entire trip again,
but I would do it in at leastdouble the amount of days so
that we could have more downtime.
But being that we only had fivedays to be able to make this
(11:26):
trip, it was pretty amazing andI'm really grateful that we were
able to have that experience.
But, again, not a lot ofdowntime at all, and so I was
able to use this context to beable to see more clearly and
regulate my system enough sothat, to the best of my ability.
I certainly wasn't perfect in myself-regulation, but I was able
to self-regulate far betterthan I would have been if I was
(11:48):
telling myself a story like oh,why is he being such a jerk?
This is our family vacation.
We should be enjoying eachother.
Why is he so on edge?
I'm not doing anything wrong.
I offered to drive.
He said that he was gooddriving, so why is he
complaining?
He wasn't complaining aboutdriving, but just, you know,
whatever the story, plenty ofdysregulated stories that I
could have made up had mynervous system been in a
dysregulated state, because, ifyou remember your stories,
(12:10):
follow your states.
So whatever nervous systemstate you're in, I call it
goggles.
You have goggles that coloryour experience and so if I was
in sympathetic, I would have hadsome sympathetic, fiery goggles
.
I would have had some fightresponse in me, like I don't
even want to be on this tripanymore, let me get out of here.
Or I would have had.
I often call them depressiongoggles, but dorsal goggles of
shutdown, like sitting quietlyin the car, feeling disconnected
(12:33):
, and I really didn't have thatexperience at all because, I
mean, sometimes there were likelittle moments of friction, but
for the most part I was reallyable to use my intention that I
had set before I went on thetrip which I talked about in my
last episode of of.
I really wanted to be presentand I wanted to truly enjoy this
vacation as much as I could.
One because, of course, I wasgoing to this really beautiful
(12:54):
part of the United States thatI've never been to and I really
wanted to enjoy that andappreciate it.
Even more than that, I was goingwith not only my family, my
husband and my kids, who I adore, but also my sister and my
nephew, so I really had a carfull of some of the absolute
most important people in my lifeand I wanted to truly enjoy
that privilege and that gift and, in order to make the best of
(13:19):
it, that really translated forme to me regulating myself and
me finding my grounding and mybalance and doing what I needed
to do so that I could hold spacefor my husband and for
everybody in a way that feltgood for them and felt good for
me and truly I think it made ahuge difference in our trip
because, like I said, eventhough there were several
(13:40):
challenges along the way, wereally were able to get back on
track, not just between Ben andI, but just overall with the
trip.
So, even with the challenge ofthe first night driving so long,
we were really back on track bythe morning and that's kind of
how it went the whole time.
We were not literally off ourschedule again in the same way
that we were the first night,but there were other things we
had little metaphorical detoursbecause of and we were able to
(14:03):
deal with them and get back ontrack again, literally and
figuratively.
Deal with them and get back ontrack again, literally and
figuratively.
But I know that if I would havebeen dysregulated, and
unconsciously dysregulated, andI would have gone into a
self-protective response.
I would have felt prettyjustified and been telling
myself all of these stories thatwould have contributed to us
probably not being able to getback on track as quickly as we
(14:23):
all were able to, and thisincludes my husband, my sister
and all three kids in the car.
Nervous systems communicate withone another, so we had five
different nervous systems in onesmall space in the car,
constantly communicating witheach other, and there were so
many different cues of safetyand cues of danger and there was
a lot of regulation and momentsof dysregulation going on,
because this is part of thehuman experience.
(14:44):
This is true for everybody.
And when we came home, myhusband and I were able to start
really addressing it and divinginto it, and I think that we
will probably continue to reallydive in and pull apart
different moments of this trip.
And the way I think about it isthat we've had a lot of great
vacations in the past.
I think we it is that we've hada lot of great vacations in the
past.
I think we've gotten better atvacationing.
We had really nightmarevacations early in our
relationship because we didn'tknow how to vacation together,
(15:06):
but we've also had a lot ofchallenging road trips, both
short and long, and I reallyfeel like this experience was
super valuable in helping us beable to have what I'm thinking
of as more regulated road tripsthat can feel better for us as a
couple, but very much us as afamily and whatever other
nervous systems are travelingwith us in the car, because,
(15:27):
like I said, sharing space withnervous systems, they're going
to be communicating at a levelbelow consciousness.
I've talked about this onprevious episodes and I will
absolutely talk about this morein future episodes, but I just
wanted to share today, really,my takeaway of how driving in
many different ways and again,we can talk about this in a more
comprehensive way in futureepisodes but driving is
(15:47):
something where there is oftenneeded that blend of ventral and
sympathetic energy in order todrive safely, to be alert, to be
engaged, to have motivation todrive a long distance or
something like that, and,depending on all the other
factors going on, it can bereally easy for the driver or
the passenger to becomedysregulated, and I think that
that's a really big reason why acar can be such a source of
(16:10):
conflicts for so many partners.
Again, two of my couples, onthe week that I came back from
my vacation, both shared storiesof car conflicts that they had
on their vacations, and I justthought that it was really
fascinating, and that's why Iwanted to talk about it with you
today, and I look forward toexploring it more with you in
the future, because I thinkfiguring out how to have a
regulated relationship in such away that works for me and my
(16:31):
family is a priority, and it'salso a priority for me to share
this information with others,because I think that that's how
we improve the world by havingregulated relationships, and, of
course, that also means, inpart, having regulated road
trips.
So I look forward to talkingmore next time.
As our time comes to a close, Iask you to keep listening for
just a few more moments, becauseI wanna thank you for showing
(16:53):
up today and I want to leave youwith an invitation.
As you hit, stop and move backout into the world on your own
unique wellness journey In orderto move from where you are
today to the place where youwant to be.
The path may seem long orunclear or unknown, and I want
you to know that if that seemsscary or daunting or downright
(17:15):
terrifying or anything else,that is totally okay.
Know that you do not have tocreate the whole way all at once
.
We don't travel a whole journeyin one stride, and that is why
my invitation to you today is totake a step, just one, any type
, any size, in any direction.
It can be an external step, itcan be observed or measured, or
(17:38):
it could be a step you visualizetaking in your mind.
It can be a step towards actionor towards rest or connection
or self-care, or whatever stepmakes sense to you.
I invite you to take a steptoday because getting to a place
that feels better, more joyful,more connected than the place
where you are today is possiblefor everyone, including you, and
(18:02):
even when depression is in yourbed.
If today's episode resonatedwith you, please subscribe so
you can be notified when eachweekly episode gets released.
I encourage you to leave areview and reach out to me on
social media at trishsanderslcsw.
Your feedback will help guidefuture episodes and I love
hearing from you.
Popular Podcasts
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com