Ep. 127 Emergency Episode: 5 Effective Coping Skills to Calm Overwhelming Anxiety Caused by Donald Trump & Elon Musk

Is President Trump & Elon Musk governing style making you feel overwhelmed, anxious, or on high alert, you're not alone.  

In this emergency episode, we address how to care for your mind in unpredictable times and regain a sense of calm—even when the world feels chaotic.

In this episode, you’ll discover: 

1. Five powerful coping strategies to reduce anxiety and regain control of your mental well-being.

2. Learn how to manage your news intake, incorporate movement into your routine, and choose projects that restore your sense of control.

3. Find out why meditation is key—even when your mind won’t stop racing.

Press play now to learn practical, therapist-approved ways to calm your mind and navigate uncertainty with resilience.

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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

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:00

In this emergency episode, I'll share with you five coping skills that will help you decrease 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. This is an emergency episode. One of the great things about being a clinician is you kind of have a pulse on what's going on in the world. And sometimes one of the hard things about being a clinician is you have a pulse about what's going on in the world. It has been quite a week in therapy land, not for all my clients, but for many. Many of my clients came to therapy this week, setting their own personal issues aside, saying, can you help me manage the anxiety and overwhelm I feel connected to what's going on in our government? If you feel pretty good about what's going on in the government, This podcast is not for you, and I'm going to address why you can be helpful for all of us later on, but you're probably not going to be listening. So I want you to enjoy your Saturday, go to the grocery, have coffee with a friend, and by all means, get ready for the Super Bowl. But if you are in that half of my caseload this week, your body and mind probably feel on high alert. All for your own unique reasons. Perhaps you work with immigrants. Maybe you're 67 and you depend on social security and medicare and the news coming out of the payment system is freaking you out. Or you're one of the thousands of government employees whose job might be on the chopping block. Maybe you just like a government that's predictable and follows rules. Whatever is making you feel anxious and unsafe that's where I want us to begin. First of all, know that it makes complete sense we like predictability and none of this follows what we are used to. This podcast is not going to question if how you got to this mental and feeling state is good or bad or right or wrong, but rather how to help you get yourself to a better one. All week, I've been saying, I think we're in a mindemic. What's a mindemic? You might ask. The uncertainty that is President Trump's style and that I follow my own rules Which is Elon Musk's style is playing with your mind. Since I don't expect either of them to be changing soon, I want to offer you some ways to cope with the unpredictability, the uncertainty, and to be honest, the meanness that seems to be inherent in their day to day operations. Coping skill number one. You've been here before. You might say, no, I haven't. This is unprecedented. Everybody in the media is saying this. That is true. When it comes to this type of government action, this is unprecedented. But what isn't unprecedented is you being in a position of fear and uncertainty. Remember March 2020? Yes, just five years ago, we entered a global pandemic, where your physical well being was threatened. For all of us, it was new and unpredictable. Go back to those early days and weeks and remember I kind of felt like this. I kind of felt like, is the world going to end? How will we ever get out of this? Will we be stuck in our houses forever? Yes, you have done this before. Granted, that process wasn't pretty, but if you are listening to this, you survived the pandemic. And that alone can be helpful for you to remember in this situation. Coping skill Number two, in a mindemic, you need to take care of your mind. This is my department. So let me share with you what I have been sharing in many of my sessions this week. Of course, you know what the first thing is. Limit your news consumption. Think of news like food. If you overeat, you feel like crap If you over consume news, your mind will feel like crap. Pick two new sources and do your best to not consume them for more than 15 minutes, twice a day. You might disagree with my plan. You can create your own, but the bottom line is you cannot be, following every notification. Actually, I hope you turn your notifications off. For your own well being, be honest as to how much news you can consume and still have the energy and focus for the rest of your day. I strongly encourage you don't consume news right before you go to bed and actually give yourself the opportunity to start your day off without consuming news in the first hour and see If like many of my clients that has really helped them point their day in the right direction. Coping skill number three. You knew what I was going to say again, exercise. this is stressful. The only way to reduce this type of stress, is to move your body and let it get out of you, nothing heroic. A walk is awesome. Do it daily. Coping skill number four. You are out of control. I think it is safe to say that President Trump or Elon Musk will not be calling you anytime soon to get advice on how you would like them to behave. So, Take back your control and pick a project. I learned this in 2008 when many of my clients were directly impacted by the housing crisis. One of our local churches had experts in job hunting and shebang create a program for anyone who wanted their expertise. The one thing that person had to do was commit to weight loss. an exercise program in return for the services. What that did for my clients blew my mind. So I am taking a page from that playbook, which worked for every one but one of my clients. And I am encouraging you to pick a project, whether it's household, whether it's health, or whether it's a hobby. I want you to pick something that you can do now and see the progress over the next couple of months. Maybe you've always wanted to paint your room. Well, by God, get down to the paint store because we are not homebound. Pick a color and paint your room starting this weekend. Maybe you know that you really need to lose weight. You could easily gain 20 pounds in a Mindemic. Instead, you could shift to, I'm going to learn how to eat well, and cook in a healthier way. That is fantastic. You are out of control, So step back in, choose a project. Coping skill number five. if you're in a mindemic, it is really important that you do something that helps you still your mind. You can check out my episode 119 for a five minute meditation. There's great apps. 11 minutes a day can really help your mind settle. Let me tell you what meditation looks like in a mindemic. You sit down and your mind goes everywhere and you focus on your breath and your mind goes everywhere and you bring your mind back to your breath and then it goes everywhere. That counts as meditation. Just to let yourself sit for five or ten minutes every day and watch your mind go and you bring it back, go and bring it back, is essential when you're in times of stress. This is a time of stress for you, meditation is not going to be this pleasant Zen like experience, but what it is going to do is allow your mind to settle a bit and of equal importance, remind you that you can bring your mind back to what you want to focus on, which might be learning that new skill. Painting that bedroom, cooking a healthy dinner for yourself. Of course, you might be saying, coping skills aren't doing anything. Why aren't you telling me what I can do? Well, I'm a therapist. You can figure out if you want to join a protest, download five calls, write your congressman. But when you're in a mindemic, what you have to do is take care of your mind. And that's actually my department. You probably know people who aren't so bothered, and perhaps that bothers you, but it can also be a sign that you too can be aware and live in this, and not let the actions of two dysregulated men make you dysregulated. Yes, you can be concerned. Yes, you can be worried. And you can be calm. What we learned in the pandemic is we can do hard things. What we learned in the pandemic is sometimes terrible things happen, but we go on anyways. So what I wanted to do today in this emergency episode is encourage you to create a plan that protects your mind and allows you to care. In today's episode. I hope I validated the anxiety that you feel in this time of uncertainty. It is a mindemic in my opinion And to navigate the mindemic, I want you to increase your coping skills so you can keep your mind calm. Limit your news sources get out and walk, play pickleball, work out at the gym, or whatever is a way that you can release stress. Choose a project where you're in control and you can see progress in the next few months. Lastly, meditate. When in a mindemic, one of the best interventions you can do is remind yourself that you can move your mind from a place of fear to a place of calm. Thanks for listening to this emergency episode. I invite you to share it with people that you love that are also struggling. I'll be back on Monday with more Creating Midlife Calm.