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August 6, 2025 13 mins

What we believe about our relationships can become self-fulfilling prophecies. The notion that "past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior" might seem logical, but it ignores our capacity for growth and conscious choice.

Through a candid glimpse into my own marriage, I share how a flooded basement became an unexpected opportunity to break old patterns. When my husband discovered our underwater basement, I felt the familiar pull toward our dance of dysregulation—him upset, me trying to calm him down, both of us spiraling into disconnection. But this time, something different happened. One conscious breath created space for a new possibility.

The magic wasn't in pretending the flood wasn't stressful or in perfectly managing our emotions. It was in understanding how our nervous systems interact and choosing not to amplify each other's dysregulation. By allowing my husband his natural reaction without attempting to "fix" him, he regulated himself. We faced the challenge together rather than turning against each other.

This experience reveals the mechanics of relationship patterns: they repeat not because they're inevitable, but because they're calling for our attention. Every conflict contains within it the blueprint for growth—pointing to unmet needs and inviting deeper understanding. With consciousness and self-regulation, we can transform these patterns into pathways toward connection.

Whether you're struggling with recurring conflicts or simply want to enhance your relationship, remember that new possibilities emerge when we pause, breathe, and choose differently than we have before. Subscribe to join me on this journey of conscious partnership, where even flooding basements become opportunities for 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.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello and welcome to the One Depression is in your
Bed podcast.
This episode is part of myConscious, connected Partners in
Real Life series, in which Iwill share real current moments
from my actual life as examplesof what conscious partnership
can look like.
Today, I will talk about howpast experiences may actually
not be the best predictor offuture experiences.

(00:21):
If you'd like to hear more,stay tuned.
I'm Trish Sanders and I amdelighted that you are here.
Let's get started.
So you may have heard that pastbehavior is the best predictor
of future behavior, and I'm hereto tell you.
While that can be true incertain instances, it is
absolutely not a guarantee,especially if you do the work to

(00:41):
be in a conscious, regulatedpartnership.
This means that if you gainknowledge about yourself, be in
a conscious, regulatedpartnership.
This means that if you gainknowledge about yourself, your
partner, how to regulateyourself, how to effectively
communicate, or if you increaseyour awareness in any number of
ways about any number ofdifferent things, this doesn't
have to be set in stone, andgrowth or new behavior is
totally possible.

(01:02):
As I said, it is possible forpast behavior to be a predictor
for future behavior, and I'm notgoing to talk about all the
reasons why that may be.
In some ways, it's quiteunderstandable, because old
patterns tend to repeatthemselves.
What I am going to talk abouttoday is how these seemingly
repetitive, inevitable types ofpatterns that can occur in
romantic partnership may reallybe the outcome of both partners

(01:24):
unconsciously andunintentionally working against
each other.
And I'll share an example ofhow.
I almost got caught up in thisdance of dysregulation just last
week, but I was able to take abreath and allow something new
to happen.
So in an intimate partnership,it's really easy for one person
to expect their partner to actin a certain way.
So some sort of conflicthappens and one person thinks oh

(01:47):
, I know how my partner is goingto react.
Or their partner reacts in acertain way and they tell
themselves oh, I know what thismeans.
It's the same as always, andthat creates dysregulation in
them.
So their partner may in fact bedysregulated, which means that
they're going into a protectiveplace.
But if you react to yourpartner and you think to
yourself well, I know where thisis going, that may be

(02:09):
dysregulating to you.
And when you becomedysregulated, you then encourage
your partner to become evenmore dysregulated.
Then they can impact yournervous system and you become
more dysregulated, then thingsjust can get really out of
control really quickly and bothpartners can be super
dysregulated and the wholesituation can escalate very
quickly even from seeminglysmall triggers, and it's very
easy to tell yourself.
These are the kinds of thingsthat always happen.
These are the same fights thatwe get into my partner always

(02:31):
does this, or your partner mightsay that you always do that,
and it feels like there'snowhere to go from there.
But understanding thisunconscious process and being
able to make it conscious andseeing how each partner's
nervous system can affect theother and maintaining your own
regulation can create a wholenew pattern of behaviors.
And luckily I had thatexperience last week and I'm
here to share it with you.

(02:52):
So last week we woke up onMonday morning to find that our
hot water heater had broken andour entire basement was
underwater by a few inches.
My husband had gone downstairsfirst and he called me when he
noticed what was going on and Iran downstairs and he
understandably was not happy.
No one's really happy when theyfind out that their entire

(03:12):
basement is flooded.
But in that moment hisunderstandable dysregulation
landed in my nervous system asan old experience, because I've
seen Ben get dysregulated before, and sometimes it's in a
situation that I thought he was,quote unquote, overreacting, or
sometimes his reaction whetherit was an overreaction or not,
from my perspective sometimes itlanded as scary in my nervous

(03:35):
system or any other number ofdynamics where my nervous system
received his behavior as a cueof danger that I needed to
protect myself.
And so in that moment, verybriefly, I felt myself kind of
tense up and pull back and Iwanted to protect myself by
telling him to relax or calmdown or we'll figure it out, or
what can you do?
It's already happened, whateverany number of things that I

(03:57):
could have said in that momentbecause I wanted him to regulate
.
However, if I would have toldhim to relax or don't make such
a big deal of the basement beingflooded, that would not have
landed very well in his nervoussystem.
Telling someone who's feelingnervous or anxious or upset or
frustrated to relax is generallyan unhelpful way to respond,
and certainly when yourbasement's flooded, that would
have been a very unhelpfulresponse.

(04:18):
But instead I was able to pauseand take a breath that
wonderful tool of our breath andI was able to stay regulated
instead of launching off into myown dysregulation and, for
whatever reason, I obviously wasnot happy about the basement,
but I wasn't immediatelytriggered from the basement
itself.
I really was in a state of like, ok, this just kind of sucks

(04:40):
and we'll just have to figure itout.
I certainly had moments ofdysregulation over the next
several days as we were rippingout the basement and cleaning
everything out and all that butmore about that on another
episode perhaps.
But in that moment I really wasable to use that breath to
ground myself and when I wasgrounded I was able to see much
more clearly and I was able toeasily see.

(05:00):
Oh yeah, of course Ben'sfrustrated.
Right now he's having a momentthat he's well entitled to have
and I don't really need to makethat worse.
Right, I can allow him thatspace and he had his little
moment and he wasn't doinganything outlandish or having
this giant reaction.
It was just a totallyunderstandable, valid reaction
to finding out that yourbasement was underwater.
Right.
Once he had that moment that heneeded, he actually was able to

(05:24):
self-regulate pretty quickly.
I didn't have to jump into thatrole that I know pretty well
that I don't always like beingin, although I've been in it
often, certainly in our earlierrelationship, but I didn't have
to help him.
I didn't have to save him orfix him or regulate him or make
him feel better or take care ofthings or be the responsible one
or anything.
I just had to take a moment sothat he could take care of
himself and I could take care ofmyself, and then we were able

(05:47):
to work together in partnershipto figure out what needed to be
done, and he was able to callthe plumber and get the ball
rolling, and then everythingelse that happened.
Afterwards, the company came torip everything out and we had
to deal with all that situation,but we were able to deal with
it together, which made a hugedifference.
So, yes, it was absolutely adifficult situation.

(06:09):
However, we didn't make it worseby creating a rupture and a
divide between us, and that issomething that, in the past, we
absolutely would have done.
We, in some ways, are expertsin making hard situations even
worse, and at a certain point,we both were like, hey, you know
, we don't really want to dothat anymore.
Let's try to work togetherinstead of against each other,

(06:29):
and that was a huge shift, as wehave done the work to become
conscious partners.
So for me.
It was really quite exciting tosee in real time how this new
pattern was emerging, that I wasable to regulate myself.
Ben was able to regulatehimself.
We both were able to have ourown reactions, which were, in
this case, different and theyoften are different but we were

(06:51):
able to get through it in such away where we were able to stay
connected and that felt really,really good, and I was really
proud of both of us for beingable to do that Because, again,
historically we have not beengood at it and that's because we
didn't understand what washappening.
Our nervous systems were justdoing what nervous systems do
and reacting to one another, andthen we make stories about each

(07:13):
other.
He probably would have thoughtthat I was minimizing how he
felt and didn't let him havefeelings, and he probably would
have experienced me asunsupportive, which would have
made sense.
But it's not actually true thatI don't want him to have space
to have his feelings or that I'munsupportive, and I probably
would have thought that he justhas these giant reactions and I

(07:39):
likely would have told myself anold story that he can't handle
anything in life and that hejust loses it whenever there's
any little bit of stress that'shappening and that would have
been really quite an inaccuratestory, because it's perfectly
reasonable to have a reaction toyour house flooding and it's
not accurate that he can'thandle anything.
But if we had told ourselvesthose stories, we each would
have believed them verywholeheartedly and we would have
continued being dysregulatedand, acting out of that

(08:01):
frustration and anger towardseach other, thinking that we
didn't feel supported and weweren't working together and
that things never changed.
All of those old patterns wouldhave very easily taken hold and
again we would have felt reallyjustified in continuing to be
frustrated with each other andto continue not working together
, and we both would have feltreally alone during that process
.
However, since we have in factdone that dance so many times

(08:23):
before and I am very familiarwith those old steps, I was able
to catch it in this particularinstance before it even started
and we were able to engage in abrand new dance, a brand new
behavior that I wouldn't say isthe first time it's ever
happened, but for me and maybeit's because I'm very
consciously looking for momentsto actually talk about on the

(08:46):
podcast that could be that it'shelping me to notice the
positive things that arehappening, but also, I think
maybe over the last two or threeyears there have been so many
situations.
It's a regular occurrence thatsomething happens and I'm like,
wow, that's new.
You know that's not what usedto happen, or I know how this
would have gone in the past andthis was way better.
And so I definitely havedeveloped some ability to notice

(09:09):
when new growth is happening.
And growth, as I see it, is whenwe choose our behavior, because
we understand our underlyingneeds and we have some
information about our partner'sunderlying needs and we choose
to move forward in such a way orto act or to do something in a
way that hopefully gets uscloser to what we really want
Our needs being met, ourpartner's needs being met, the

(09:30):
relationship feeling better.
And that's really what growthis a new behavior that is more
likely to get us what we wantthan a dysregulated or reactive
behavior, which is more likelyto create disconnect and rupture
.
And so we were able to reallydo that together and we both had
a part.
And maybe on the next ConsciousConnected Partners in Real Life
series episode, I will talkabout the next part of what was

(09:52):
really hard for me about theflood experience, because, like
I said, that initial moment Ididn't experience as super
dysregulating, but thedysregulation and the challenge
definitely came over the nextfew days and perhaps I'll talk
about that more, but for todayI'll leave you with that
question, wondering are pastbehaviors absolutely the best
predictors of future behaviors?

(10:13):
Because, while the answer issometimes and unconscious,
patterns do have a tendency tobe repetitive and they repeat
and repeat, and repeat, but it'snot because they can't change.
The reason the conflictcontinues to happen is because
it's calling for someone to beable to recognize it and pay
attention to it and come to itin a new way and to really

(10:34):
understand it.
There's an unmet needunderneath there and there's
also what we call a lost part,but there's opportunities for
growth.
It's actually the blueprint forrelational growth in the
conflicts that couples have.
And when you can come to it inthat conscious way and regulate
yourself, as Ben and I were bothable to do in the flood, then
you can maintain connection andyou can really understand what

(10:55):
you need and move forwardtogether.
And I am grateful that Ben andI have continued to figure out
ways to move forward togetherand it's really exciting for me
to be able to share ourlearnings, our missteps and our
moments of celebration with you.
So I look forward to talkingwith you next week when I share
more about the experience ofbeing in a conscious, connected
partnership.

(11:17):
As our time comes to a close, Iask you to keep listening for
just a few more moments, becauseI want to thank you for showing
up today and I want to leaveyou with an invitation as you
hit stop and move back out intothe world on your own unique
wellness journey In order tomove from where you are today to
the place where you want to be.
The path may seem long orunclear or unknown, and I want

(11:40):
you to know that if that seemsscary or daunting or downright
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

(12:02):
, any size, in any direction.
It can be an external step thatcan be observed or measured, or
it could be a step youvisualize taking in your
direction.
It can be an external step thatcan be observed or measured, or
it could be a step youvisualize taking in your mind.
It can be a step towards action, or towards rest, or connection
, or self-care, or whatever stepmakes sense to you.
I invite you to take a steptoday, because getting to a

(12:22):
place that feels better, morejoyful, more connected than the
place where you are today ispossible for everyone, including
you, and even when depressionis in your bed.
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

(12:44):
social media at trishsanderslcsw.
View and reach out to me onsocial media at trishsanderslcsw
.
Your feedback will help guidefuture episodes and I love
hearing from you.
Also, please share this podcastwith anyone who you think may
be interested or who may getsomething from what I have
shared.
Until the next time we connect,take care of yourself and take
a step.
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