Ep. 155 Practical Coping Skills to Enhance the Effectiveness of Your Anxiety Medication in Midlife

Are you frustrated that anxiety medication isn’t giving you the relief you hoped for?
If you’ve been relying solely on medication and still struggle with anxiety, there’s hope.
In this episode you’ll discover:

1. Five simple, no-cost strategies to enhance your medication’s effectiveness and build a more balanced life.
2. How to shift your mindset from “I need to fix my anxiety” to “I need to improve my lifestyle” for long-term relief.
3. The 5  practical things you NEED to do, to reduce your anxiety. Even if you take medication

Press play now to uncover the missing pieces of anxiety treatment and take the first step toward a healthier, calmer you! 

Links to Episodes Mentioned in Episode 155:

Ep. 61 – Mental Wellness: Specific Coping Skills for & Losing Weight Your Way in Young Adulthood, Midlife & the Golden Years
https://tinyurl.com/y3eukhnh

Ep. 91 – Use These 2 Mindfulness Practices To Instantly Increase Gratitude, Calm & Joy!
https://tinyurl.com/u82dbx4z

Ep. 93 – 5 Simple Sleep Hacks To Help You Sleep Better Tonight!
https://tinyurl.com/ymbte8xu

Ep. 121 – Outsmarting Your Smartphone – The Science and Solutions You Need To Decrease Anxiety & Increase Midlife Calm
https://tinyurl.com/43znpns9

Ep. 122 – 3 Proven Coping Skills to Outsmart Your Smartphone and Decrease Anxiety & Reclaim 2 Hours a Day for Midlife Calm
https://tinyurl.com/mvbd5dzk
(Additional Link: https://pod.fo/e/2ac72e)

Ep. 123 – Simple Hacks to Conquer Midlife Exercise Resistance, Shift Your Mindset, Decrease Anxiety This New Year
https://tinyurl.com/3nbrh2b2

Ep. 124 – 3 Science-Backed Coping Skills to Overcome Exercise Challenges in Midlife
https://tinyurl.com/4p8rhma5

Ep. 140 – Understanding Hormones and Anxiety and How Midlife Women Can Regain Control
https://tinyurl.com/55df8dn4

Ep. 141 – The 3 Essential Hormones You Must Balance in Midlife for Less Anxiety, Better Sleep, and a Healthier Weight
https://tinyurl.com/5n6f4ksn

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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 episode, you'll discover why medication alone isn't enough to fully manage your anxiety, 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. In Monday's episode, we talked about medication and weight gain, why it happens, and how to manage it. If you've ever felt frustrated that medication isn't giving you the relief you hope for. You're not alone. Many people think medication is the only answer to anxiety, but today, we'll talk about why that's not true and what you can do to feel better. In this episode, we'll explore why medication alone isn't enough to effectively manage your anxiety and how making small strategic lifestyle changes can dramatically improve your mental and physical wellbeing, you'll walk away with five simple no-cost strategies to enhance your medications effectiveness and build a healthier, more balanced life. Living with anxiety day in and day out is not only exhausting, but can be incredibly limiting. What if I told you it doesn't have to be that way? What if your anxiety could actually be a springboard to a healthier, more satisfying and more meaningful life? In my 38 years as a therapist, I found that most of my clients believe that medication is the only tool they need to treat their anxiety. But that would be like a home contractor showing up to build a house with just a hammer. In today's episode, we're gonna get practical and explore the other tools you have at your disposal right now to decrease anxiety and increase your enjoyment of life. Before we dive in, let's check in on last Monday's Inner Challenge. I encourage you to pay attention to how your medication affects your appetite, cravings, and energy level over three days. Did you notice any patterns? Maybe you realized your cravings for certain foods increased, or your energy dipped at a specific time of the day. Becoming aware of those small shifts can help you make informed decisions about your health and if needed, discuss adjustments with your doctor. If you tracked your changes, great job. If not, no worries. There's always time to start paying attention to what works best for you and your body and everything that I'm talking about today will apply to you as you move forward. Let me start with a story about a woman I worked with who had moderate to severe anxiety. She found it hard to go to a coffee shop even though she really wanted to. Both she and her doctor agreed that she was a great candidate for medication. After a few months, she felt better, but not as good as she had hoped. Her doctor then recommended therapy, which is how she came to work with me. During my assessment, I asked her what else she had done since starting medication. She looked confused and said nothing. Was I supposed to do something else? I told her, medication calms your mind, but your habits and lifestyle determine how well it works. She was shocked. No one had ever told her that before. She had assumed her unhealthy habits were caused by anxiety and that medication would make them disappear. This is something I hear all the time in my office and to be honest, it makes me sad. When it comes to mental health medication, whether for depression, A DHD, or anxiety therapy and lifestyle changes yield the best results. Why? Because if you've been living with anxiety depression or A DHD, chances are you haven't had the energy focus or time to create healthy lifestyle habits. And on top of that, we live in a culture that promotes unhealthy habits. Think about it. A huge part of our economy depends on processed foods, excessive screen time, and a sedentary lifestyle, all of which undermine your wellbeing. When I shared this with my client, she said, oh, this is a bigger deal than I thought. Yes, medication can help, but the only way to truly feel good is to make it the foundation while using other tools to build a healthier lifestyle. This requires a shift in mindset from thinking I need to fix my anxiety to, I need to fix my lifestyle. I like to compare medication to glasses. Glasses don't cure poor eyesight, but they help you see more clearly. Likewise, medication doesn't cure anxiety, but it makes it easier to manage. I recently shared this with a client and she admitted I'm kind of disappointed. I wanted the medication to fix everything. I get it. Of course, we all want a magic bullet, but what if the medication could be the agent of change Helping you not just manage anxiety, but build a lifestyle that keeps you feeling well for years to come. Think of it as remodeling your house. You start by deciding what you want to add or subtract to make your life better. The same applies here. Now that we reframed how to think about anxiety treatment, let's talk about the five biggest areas where you can make meaningful lasting changes. I use the acronym nests, N-E-S-T-S to outline the essential pillars of self-care, nutrition, exercise, sleep technology management, and stress management. Let's look at each one along with a simple action you can take today to improve your lifestyle and help your medication work more effectively. Nutrition fueling your mental health. Notice I didn't say weight loss. In my experience, when people shift from I want to lose weight to, I want to nourish my body, they naturally reach a healthier weight. If you're in midlife, start with one of these two hacks. Increase your protein intake or drink half your body weight in ounces of water each day. If you're a midlife woman, you should probably be eating protein equivalent to two and a half chicken breasts a day. A midlife man. More like three and a half. You get the picture. The more protein, the more energy, and the better your medication will work. Proper hydration and nutrition help your brain function optimally, improve energy levels and support your mood. Want more details? Check out episode 61, exercise. Movement as medicine exercise enhances anxiety medication by boosting serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins. Your brain's natural mood stabilizers. It also lowers cortisol. Your stress hormone improves your sleep and increases your energy. If strength training feels overwhelming, start with something simple like walking with a weighted vest. Want guidance on getting started? Listen to episodes 1 23 and 1 24. There is such great information in those short episodes. Sleep. The foundation for mental wellness medication works better when you're well rested. Poor sleep raises cortisol levels and reduces medication's. Efficiency, making anxiety harder to manage. If your sleep is terrible, start here. Try not eating after dinner to allow your body 12 hours to rest and repair each of your organs. My client was shocked at how much better she felt just after two weeks of this simple habit. For more sleep tips, check out episode 93. I think you'll be surprised how easy it is to improve your sleep. I also encourage you to look at episodes 1 31, 1 32, where I talk with Dr. Connie Chalko you listeners in perimenopause and menopause where sleep gets highly disrupted, these episodes will give you a starting place of what you should know about your body. So your body has the best chance not only of sleeping, but of using your medication to its most effective level. The T in Nests is technology management. Outsmarting your smartphone. There has been no other area in the last 10 years that I have put more energy into than trying to understand how I can help my clients outsmart their smartphones. Excessive phone use, especially before bed, disrupts melatonin production and increases cortisol, making it much harder for your medication to regulate mood. We also know any use beyond two hours a day, you run the risk of increasing your anxiety. Wanna break the cycle? Start by charging your phone in another room at night. Need help managing screen time. Listen to episodes 120 and 1 22. Trust me, they will be so helpful, not just to you, but to your family. S and Nest is stress management resetting your nervous system. Even with medication, stress can still throw off your nervous system. The good news, you can retrain your body to recover faster. Think about it. On a typical day, you look at the clock and you're already 10 minutes late, your cortisol rises. You are stressed. Five or six hours later, you're driving to work and someone almost hits you. Your cortisol rises and you are stressed.Later in the day, you can't find an important file at work. You're stressed. Each of those really small instances in your life, your body has a reaction and I wanna invite you to do a simple mindfulness exercise. Move your awareness to your feet and take a few breaths and reregulate your nervous system. If you can do this when you notice your body getting revved up, you're not storing all this anxiety as you move through your day when regular things set you off. If you want more information on this mindfulness exercise, check out episode 91. Where I give you two simple mindfulness exercises that help you with the foundation of emotional regulation. I know what you might be thinking, MJ, I don't have time to integrate and start all of these things. Trust me, you do. Just pick one and integrate it for two weeks until it feels more normal, and then move to another one. Most of us can take 30 minutes away from our phone in order to add some of these lifestyle changes that will not only help your medication work more effectively, but allow you to really feel better day in and day out. In this episode, I've encouraged you to make the mindset shift from, I need to treat my anxiety to, I need to treat my lifestyle. I've introduced you to nests, nutrition, exercise, sleep, technology management, and stress management. Five foundational pillars of your self-care, and I've given you simple ways that you can choose one or two things to begin to move in that mindset direction. I have also given you numbers to previous episodes that look a bit more deeply into each of these lifestyle hacks. Check out the show notes for links that go directly to each of these episodes. You can do this I'll be back on Monday and thanks for listening to Creating Midlife Calm.