#80 When Trying Harder Isn't Working: How Your Best Becomes Better

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Hello, and welcome to the When Depression is in your bed podcast.
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I've spent years saying something, and I imagine it's something you may have said yourself.
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I'm doing my best.
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I've said it to myself, I've definitely said it to Ben many, many times, and I've genuinely believed it.
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As a matter of fact, I still believe it.
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But lately I've been realizing something that has been changing how I understand those words.
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Not only is my best not fixed, which I've always been aware of, but my best changes as my capacity expands.
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And I can intentionally influence the conditions that help my capacity expand.
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In other words, I can help my best become better.
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And that's what I want to talk to you about today.
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I'm your host, Trish Sanders.
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I'm a licensed clinical social worker, Mago certified relationship therapist, relationship coach, and the creator of The Road to Reconnection.
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And I am delighted that you are here.
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Let's get started.
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Pretty much over the entire course of my personal and professional life, I have often said that I truly believe that everyone is doing their best.
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And this is something that I have sometimes gotten pushback on from people both in the office and in my personal life.
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People often say something like, Really?
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Are you sure?
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Have you looked around lately?
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Look at people, look at me, look at my relationships, look at the state of declining mental health, look at our world.
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How could everyone possibly be doing their best?
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And I understand that question.
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I truly do.
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And I totally respect that everyone gets to have their own perspective.
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And through the lens I look through, I still believe it's true.
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And the more that I've learned about nervous system functioning, the more I become convinced that in most moments, people are genuinely doing the best they can with what they have available to them.
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Now that certainly doesn't mean that everyone's best looks the same.
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And it absolutely does not mean that we don't have responsibility for our actions.
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It simply means that what is genuinely available to us in any moment is connected to the amount of capacity that we have available in that moment.
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And that's related to our nervous system functioning.
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For years, I have understood that if I was feeling sick or overwhelmed or excessively stressed, that my best that day would certainly not look the same as on a day when I felt well rested or grounded or things seemed to be going well in my life.
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That made sense to me.
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And honestly, I could usually have compassion for myself and others.
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If someone was grieving or sick or super overwhelmed, I wouldn't expect their same level of functioning to show up in that particular moment.
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And that compassion and understanding certainly extended to Ben in some of his hardest moments.
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When he was in his deepest depression or his most active anxiety, I certainly wasn't expecting the bar for his best to be very high.
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And I was often okay with that.
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And at times I was able to often extend that same level of compassion and understanding to myself.
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However, it got more challenging when my best or Ben's best stayed at that relatively low level for extended periods of time.
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And what I didn't quite understand, what I couldn't quite figure out, was how someone's best becomes consistently better, or how someone can intentionally support their best getting better and better over time.
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For me, it just seemed like either I woke up having a good day or Ben seemed to be in a good mood.
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And in those days, our best was better.
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And I certainly felt grateful for those moments, but it wasn't very empowering not understanding how we got there.
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I really wanted to understand how people could gradually become more capable over time.
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And I really wondered if it would always seem like such a tremendous effort to do some of the things that a lot of other people seem to do with relative ease.
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And I truly wondered if my best was ever going to get better in a consistent way.
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And the more I've learned about the nervous system, the more I think so much of what we label as mental health challenges or relationship struggles or self-esteem issues can often be understood through the lens of capacity.
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When our nervous system shifts into self-protection, our capacity narrows.
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Sometimes that means things like taking a shower or brushing your teeth, doing the laundry or the dishes, sending an email can feel incredibly difficult.
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And when we're experiencing that kind of narrowed capacity, it shows up in our relationships as well.
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We become more reactive, maybe more controlling, more avoidant or withdrawn.
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We might overfunction, we might underfunction, we might stay extra busy, or we might fall into collapse.
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Not because we're bad people and not because something's wrong with us, but because our nervous system is trying to protect us.
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And when I myself have been in that place of narrowed capacity, it often comes with a lot of negative self-talk.
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I think to myself that I should be able to do it.
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I question why can't I just do the simple thing?
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I question what is wrong with me and why can't I just try harder to get it done?
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And in those kinds of moments, it totally makes sense why I went into that self-attacking place.
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But I've also realized something.
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Self-attack pretty much never expands our capacity.
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In fact, it usually does the opposite because it's often experienced as a cue of danger, and our nervous system feels like it needs to protect itself.
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And then we enter this very familiar loop.
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Narrowed capacity leads to self-attack.
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Self-attack creates the need for more self-protection.
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And self-protection usually narrows capacity even more.
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And before long, it can feel like change is not even possible.
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And for years, that's the loop I lived in so much of the time.
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And I did truly believe that I was doing my best.
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I just didn't know how to help my best become better.
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And I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to do just that.
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And there's a lot of wonderful information on this out there in the area of habit development and goal formation, things like getting 1% better every day.
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And intellectually, I read it and it totally made sense to me.
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The problem wasn't that I didn't understand or agree with the concept.
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The problem was that I did not know what to do to help myself get 1% better every day.
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There were some days when I was doing things that supported that and I felt like I was on a roll.
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And then there were usually a lot of other days where I wasn't coming even close and I felt like I wasn't moving in the direction that I wanted to at all.
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So even though there were some times I ended up feeling like I was making progress, I ended up spending a lot more time feeling defeated.
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And what polyvagel theory and understanding the nervous system gave me was not just another strategy.
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It gave me a completely different starting point.
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Instead of asking how do I force myself to be better or what's the next best skill that I need to learn, I started asking very different questions.
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What does my nervous system need?
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How do I become more attuned to myself?
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How can I respond to myself in different ways that would actually be more helpful?
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How can I notice and receive more cues of safety that support nervous system regulation?
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And what conditions could I influence that could help reduce some of the cues of danger?
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And when I started asking myself those kinds of questions, I started discovering something.
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I wasn't trying to become a better version of myself.
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I was learning how to intentionally create the conditions where more of myself could become available.
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And those are two very different things.
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And I think they come from different places in our nervous system.
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Striving to be the absolute best version of yourself is often coming from a sympathetically charged nervous system.
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Whereas being responsive to your nervous system and allowing your capacity to gradually expand so that you can access more parts of yourself is much more grounded in a ventral state in our nervous system where we can feel safe enough to become more of ourselves.
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My journey was not perfect and it was not linear, but it was consistent enough.
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And that experience of expanded capacity has in time become even more familiar than my old familiar experience of narrowed capacity.
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And over time, my best naturally became better.
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Not because I tried harder, but because more genuinely became available to me as my safety increased and my capacity expanded.
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A really good way to illustrate what I'm talking about right now is to talk about my garage.
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If you opened up my garage door and you looked inside right now, you might reasonably ask, Trish, is this really the best that you can do?
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And in this moment, I honestly would say, yeah, it is.
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It is so cluttered and there are piles of things that need to be donated and things that need to be sold.
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And there's things like boxes of old photographs that still need to be organized and categorized and find a permanent home.
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And years ago, when I looked at that garage, that would have confirmed old stories about myself.
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I'm a mess, I'm inconsistent, I'm a total and complete failure.
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But today I look at that garage very differently.
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I no longer see it as evidence that I'm incapable.
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I see it as evidence that my capacity just hasn't quite expanded to that point yet.
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And I can believe that about my garage because I have evidence in other places in my life.
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Evidence that over the last several years I've become more physically healthy, more emotionally healthy.
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I've become better to my husband, better to my kids, and better to myself.
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Not because I became a different person, but because more of me became available.
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I've shown up consistently for this podcast for over a year and a half.
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And I've been steadily and consistently working on my coaching program and the theory behind all of it for months now.
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And sustaining those kinds of things would have felt impossible to me years ago.
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So now when I look at my garage, I don't feel shame anymore.
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I feel trust.
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Trust that my capacity has expanded before and trust that it will continue to expand again.
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And that's not wishful thinking, that's evidence based on my own life, what I've intentionally done and already created.
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The more I've reflected on this, the more I realize that one of the things that understanding the nervous system has given me, one of the absolute greatest gifts, has been that of hope.
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Because I've always believed that I'm doing my best.
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I believed it 20 years ago and I believe it today.
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The difference is I now know that I can intentionally influence my best.
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And I no longer have to just simply hope that I wake up with more capacity tomorrow than I have today.
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And I know that I can intentionally create conditions where even more of that expanded capacity becomes possible.
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Not all at once, but gradually and in time.
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I know that I can build greater understanding and awareness and compassion.
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And little by little my capacity expands.
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And as my capacity expands, my best expands too.
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Now, this doesn't mean that there won't be days where I still feel overwhelmed or tired or need a break.
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And it doesn't mean that I'll never feel discouraged or disappointed again.
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Capacity will always fluctuate.
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That's just a part of being human.
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But I also know something today that I didn't know all those years ago.
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Capacity doesn't only just fluctuate, capacity also expands.
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And I can participate in that process.
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Not perfectly, and I can't control it in every single moment.
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But I can and have done wonders by working with my nervous system instead of against it.
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So today when I say I'm doing my best, I still mean it, but it's not the same thing that it used to be.
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It's not just how I understand how I was stringing together so many days of narrowed capacity, even though I was trying so very hard to do better.
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Today it is filled with hope and possibility.
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It is an invitation to keep finding more ways to intentionally influence the conditions that allow more and more to become genuinely available.
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Because my best isn't fixed and it's not totally out of my control.
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My best can continue becoming better.
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One moment of understanding and self-compassion, one moment of self-care, one moment of noticing a cue of safety, one moment of being able to respond differently to a cue of danger so I can take better care of myself.
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Each little piece of new evidence at a time, I watch my capacity expand and my best become consistently better.
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And I think there's something incredibly hopeful about that.
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And I hope there's something in today's conversation that feels hopeful for you too.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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And I want you to know that if that seems scary or daunting or downright terrifying or anything else, that is totally okay.
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Know that you do not have to create the whole way all at once.
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We don't travel a whole journey in one stride.
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And that is why my invitation to you today is to take a step, just one.
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Any type, any size, in any direction.
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It can be an external step that can be observed or measured, or it could be a step you visualize taking in your mind.
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It can be a step towards action or towards rest or connection or self-care or whatever step makes sense to you.
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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.
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If today's episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you can be notified when each weekly episode gets released.
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I encourage you to leave a review and reach out to me on social media at trish.sanders.lcsw.
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Your feedback will help guide future episodes, and I love hearing from you.
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Also, please share this podcast with anyone who you think may be interested or who may get something from what I have shared.
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Until the next time we connect, take care of yourself and take a step.