Ep. 120 3 Coping Skills To Decrease Overwhelm & Anxiety During The LA Wildfires & Mass Shootings

How do you navigate the overwhelming emotions that come with hearing bad news in today’s world?

Without the right tools to process these challenges, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, hopeless, or even numb.

 In this episode you’ll discover: 

1. A powerful three-step plan to process bad news while maintaining emotional balance.
2. Practical tips for limiting and balancing your news consumption to protect your mental health.
3. Inspiring ways to channel your energy into small acts of kindness, decreasing your anxiety and creating a positive ripple effect in your community.

Take charge of your emotional well-being and discover how to manage bad news with calm and compassion—press play now!

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About the Host:
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than 48,000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching her Mental Wellness curriculum, Inner Challenge. Four years ago she overcame her fear of technology to create a podcast that integrated her vast clinical experience and practical wisdom of cultivating mental wellness using the latest information from neuroscience. MJ was Social Worker of the Year in 2011 for Region 2/IN.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support.

Transcript

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover three coping skills to process bad news, helping you ease your anxiety and increase your calm. Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, a podcast dedicated to empowering midlife minds to overcome anxiety, stop feeling like crap and become more present with your family, all while achieving greater success at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensed clinical social worker with over 48, 000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching mental wellness. Welcome to the podcast. It's Thursday and I'm here to follow up on Monday's episode. This week we're taking a break from New Year's resolutions to focus on simple, effective coping skills to manage the anxiety and overwhelm and hopelessness that you can feel when it comes to hearing bad news. In this episode, I'll share a three step plan I've used for years. One that many of my clients have found helpful in navigating the constant barrage of bad news that we hear from tragic events. Let's begin by reflecting on how did you do on Monday's Inner Challenge. On Monday, we explored a 5 minute meditation to help you shift from fear to compassion. I hope you found this meditation helpful, and if you found your mind jumping all over the place, remember the value of being patient as you learn to tame your mind. Your mind is a busy mind and you're learning to tame it and that isn't a one and done experience. I know it's not easy, but with a little bit of effort, five minutes really can make a difference. I invite you to use this meditation anytime you feel overwhelmed by bad news. A few months ago, a client of mine came into session and said, I know we're working on my issues, but I need to talk about this most recent shooting in the US. She was really frustrated with herself because she'd been at a family event the day before and she brought up her sadness about the shooting and her family members just kind of shrugged it off. She said to me, why can't I be like them? I can't pretend to know why they shrugged it off, but what I've learned from being a therapist is if you don't have a way to process terrible things when they happen, you run the risk of being hardened, cynical, or numb. These are not healthy states of mind, which lead me to the first coping skill I want to share with you today when it comes to dealing with bad news. Coping skill number one. Choose your mindset. Yes, you might think of mindset when it comes to sports or employment, but I'm encouraging you to cultivate and to choose a mindset when it comes to how you take in and process bad news, whether it's a natural disaster or something a human did that was tragic. What is your mindset when it comes to bad news? Do you ignore it entirely, feeling it's too much to bear? Or do you find yourself consuming the news endlessly, stuck in that cycle of doomscrolling? Or maybe a mixture of both, depending on the day and the time? Think of your mind as a car. If you were driving and all of a sudden your car veered off track or raced out of control, you would take action to get your car back on track. Similarly, when bad news threatens to derail you emotionally, you can guide your mindset back to a place of calm and compassion. You do have to take charge of your mind or it will default to negativity, cynicism, and hopelessness. It takes effort on our part to move it to a healthier place. I had a conversation with a friend's father years ago that completely shifted my perspective. He was 90 years old and I was lamenting with him the bad things that were happening in the world. He looked at me with the wisdom of a 90 year old and he said, MJ, the world has always been hard. I was born during the depression. I lived through five wars. I've lost loved ones, got fired twice, and have one adult child who's always mad at me. Life has always been hard. Now it's your turn. That wisdom was an epiphany for me. Life is hard because the world is made up of messy humans. Humans have achieved incredible feats. It's fire, the wheel, medical breakthroughs, but we've also struggled with wars, climate change, and seeing others needs as equal to our own. You must choose your mindset about living in a flawed world. If you don't, negativity will choose you. The mindset I recommend is one of acknowledging the bad while transforming your response to be more compassionate and loving. This may sound lofty, but Monday's meditation shows it's possible to do this in just five minutes. Yesterday, as I was doing chores around the house, my mind would go back to the people suffering from the wildfires in California, and I would intentionally move my feeling of being overwhelmed and hopeless sending them peace and healing while I was doing dishes, sorting clothes. That's the beauty of choosing a mindset that changes your heart. Instead of thinking about myself, I am overwhelmed I can move from, I am overwhelmed, to I want to send them peace, love, and healing. Remember, you can manage your mind like a car. Decide to be the person who tends to your emotions and then sends peace and healing to each other. Choosing this mindset is not a one time effort. It's a value to cultivate continually. When you see your mindset as a value, then you begin to make choices that allow you to lean into this value, such as coping skill number two, limiting and balancing news consumption., You've heard the phrase, you are what you eat. The same applies to your mind. It becomes what you consume. That's why limiting and balancing your news intake is critical. Too much news increases your stress and your sense of helplessness. It's called doomscrolling for a reason. Turn off your notifications and set specific times to check the news. Avoid reading news in bed and stick to credible sources to navigate the rise of fake news. Yesterday, my husband was sharing with me how his 90 year old mother told him that the Pope had died. reading news. He read the story a couple other credible sources, only to find out that she was reading an AI generated news story. With the advent of AI, we are going to have to really be careful reading news and understanding if the source is credible or not. Misinformation can, if we don't check it, add a lot of stress to our daily life. Coping skill number two, limiting and balancing news isn't glamorous or sexy, but it is foundational when it comes to taking care of yourself. By managing your news intake, you protect your mental wellness and you create space for calm. When you feel calm, you will find it easy to practice coping skill number three. Coping skill number three is be a helper. When the world feels overwhelming, look for ways to help. this is an update to Mr. Rogers, who would say to children, look for helpers. What I'm saying to you is be a helper. Don't pressure yourself to make grand gestures. Donations, of course, are always an option, but simple acts of kindness can be just as powerful. Think about the last time you did a simple act of kindness. How did it make you feel? Just yesterday, a client inspired me. She came into my session, and I thought she would be on cloud nine, because her favorite football team, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, my favorite too, is going to the national championship. But she came in and she said, I'm in a funk. I used to live close to where the wildfires are. That place is so beautiful. I was in such a funk before I came that I just took a few minutes to clean the snow off my neighbor's cars. And that small act made me feel better. In fact, small acts of kindness are contagious. When I left work yesterday, I remembered her story. So I took a couple minutes and I cleaned off my office manager's car. As I was walking to my car, she came out and she gave me the biggest hug. Coping skill number three is be a helper. Not only because small acts of kindness make you feel better, But as you can see, there's a contagion effect. There's so many small acts of kindness, opening a door, thanking your barista, helping a mom whose child's upset at the grocery, taking someone a surprise latte, putting away the dishes, you don't need to plan it, just look in front of you and respond as a helper. These small acts allow you to hold both the sadness of the world and the joy of helping simultaneously. In today's episode, I encouraged you to step into your agency and use my three part plan for coping with bad news. Coping skill number one, cultivate a mindset that acknowledges your feelings and channels compassion outward. Coping skill number two, Limit and balance your news consumption. Coping skill number three, counter hopelessness and cynicism by being a helper in small, meaningful and fun ways. The world is full of suffering, honor it by moving through the pain. and finding clarity and calm to enjoy the good things around you while also offering compassion for those in the midst of heartache. Thanks for listening. I'll be back on Monday with another episode of Creating Midlife Calm.