✨ Free Resource: Download my guide, 100 Practices That Can Increase Your Access to Rest & Renewal — filled with simple, doable ways to rest your body, mind, and spirit.

These are small, easy to incorporate practices for eight kinds of rest — from physical and emotional to creative and communal and more.

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Feeling tired yet never truly restored is not a personal failure; it’s your nervous system doing its best to protect you. We unpack how trauma and challending life experiences reshape the body’s priorities, keeping you in survival cycles that block deep rest. Using Polyvagal Theory as a guide, we walk through the three core states—ventral vagal safety, sympathetic fight or flight, and dorsal shutdown—and show how a loss of flexibility can make stillness feel dangerous instead of soothing.

You’ll learn how neuroception, the body’s subconscious threat-detection system, constantly weighs cues of safety and danger. When danger outweighs safety, rest becomes inaccessible, no matter how early you go to bed. We draw a clear line between shutdown and restoration, explaining why doomscrolling until you pass out isn’t rest and why “just relax” often backfires. If you’ve lived in a loop of daytime overdrive and nighttime collapse, or if depression has felt like being stuck in molasses, this conversation offers a compassionate map that makes sense of your experience.

Subscribe for weekly insights, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help others find the show. Then tell us: what’s one cue of safety you can add today?

- 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.