Ep. 147 How Midlife Anxiety Is Driving Your Isolation & Loneliness & 2 Powerful Ways to Reconnect

Is your anxiety quietly fueling a sense of loneliness you can't quite name?
 
You may be crushing your to-do list but still feeling emotionally isolated or unseen, you’re not alone.  

In this episode you’ll discover: 

1. How anxiety masks itself as busyness, numbing, and overthinking in midlife
2. Why avoiding connection increases loneliness—and how to gently reverse it
3. Two powerful (and doable) coping skills to build real, nourishing relationships

If you're ready to turn up the light in your own life, this episode is your next step. Tune in 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 (2): 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover how midlife anxiety is fueling your loneliness. 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. Today we're following up on Monday's episode where we explored loneliness in midlife. Are you moving through your busy life, checking off the boxes, getting lots done, but still not feeling connected to others or even yourself? Do you carry worries and concerns alone, not having the time or a safe person to share them with? Perhaps you find yourself overanalyzing doing what I call both sides of the relational equation, overthinking why someone acts a certain way, but not talking directly to them to build understanding or connection. Or even worse, do you keep your concerns quietly tucked away, leaving others unaware of how you truly feel? This can make you feel unseen, disconnected, emotionally isolated, numb, and longing for deeper connection. This is midlife loneliness, being busy, getting through your demanding days, but not feeling truly connected to yourself and those around you. Midlife loneliness can lead to a low mood, increased anxiety, irritation, and decreased enjoyment of your daily life. In fact, a third of adult Americans experience loneliness each week. Your Inner Challenge this week was to choose one action to strengthen your social connection. How'd you do? Did you text a friend for a coffee date? Ask a work colleague to take a walk at lunch. Invite your partner to listen to a difficult part of your day without fixing it. If so, good for you. If not, take a moment to gently ask yourself, why didn't I do this? No judgment, just curiosity. Maybe you fully intended to send that text, but the week's demands got in the way. One way to overcome this is to set a simple reminder on your phone, or my favorite, a Post-It note or tie the action into an existing habit like I'm gonna text my friend while I'm waiting for my morning coffee to brew. Maybe you really wanted to do this, but reaching out felt too risky, so you said to yourself, it's just too scary. In today's episode, we're gonna explore the biggest culprit behind this hesitation avoidance, and I'm gonna give you two easy coping skills to help you move through that avoidance so you can cultivate more connection in your life. Midlife loneliness is tricky. It happens gradually. As I said on Monday, I compare it to a well-lit living room with dimmable lights. You may look fondly on your younger years, when connection happened easily, You saw your friends at school in the neighborhood, and you had lots of social outings that were all structured for you. Throw in the demands of work, family, kids, activities, the decline of social clubs, the false sense of connection from your phone, and of course the pandemic. And suddenly loneliness has crept into your life. Without even realizing it the lights in your living room have been dimming slowly. Leaving you to wonder is this, all life has to offer endless tasks and responsibilities. You probably wouldn't guess that social connection is like a muscle. You use it or you lose it. When you lose it, normal social interaction starts to feel overwhelming, risky, and filled with anxiety. Avoiding that discomfort feels protective at the moment, but in the long run, it deepens loneliness and reduces your enjoyment of life. To overcome midlife loneliness, you need to do two things. First, notice it. This sounds simple, but it's harder than it seems. Many people, the moment they feel lonely, reach for their phone, grab a snack, pour a drink, or light a cigarette, moving toward numbing instead of feeling the discomfort of isolation. Of course, not every time you scroll on your phone or open a bottle of wine is due to loneliness, but sometimes it is. Start paying attention to how often you feel alone, bored or isolated. Instead of reaching for a short-term fix, acknowledge your loneliness. I know this is hard. Let me share a personal story. About two months ago, two close friends of mine became unavailable, one due to illness and another due to moving. I could tell I wasn't myself. I even noticed one week that my phone use had doubled. Then I sat with the discomfort and I realized I was actually sad about not seeing these friends. Did that realization feel good? Not at first, but afterward I felt relieved, like I had fit a puzzle piece into place and gained a clearer picture of what I needed. Take a moment. You're in midlife. You've made it through some hard things. No one reaches midlife without facing the death of a loved one, a job disappointment, the pain of a struggling child, or the end of a meaningful friendship. Life is hard and you are doing it. So update your mindset. Let yourself feel the discomfort of loneliness. Notice it, name it, and tame it. The next time you feel lonely, sit with it. Place a hand on your heart. Take a deep breath, and instead of reaching for distraction, ask yourself, who would I like to connect with? Trust, whatever surfaces. One of my clients tried this and was surprised when the name of an old neighbor came to mind. She messaged her on Facebook, set up a time to reconnect, and felt really good and proud of herself. Another client had no specific name come up. She decided to check out her library's book club. She read the book, but felt too scared to go to the first meeting. No problem. There was a second meeting. At first, she convinced herself she couldn't go'cause she'd missed the first one. But then she laughed and thought, who says?The best part she attended the second meeting and discovered that the first one had been canceled due to an ice storm. This brings me to the second coping skill. Be brave. I know it sounds simple, maybe even cheesy, but bravery is one of the most underrated coping skills.These days it seems like life demands bravery more than ever. It takes no effort to trick yourself into feeling connected by scrolling social media, but let's be honest, no one you talk to on social media is gonna bring you a casserole when you're going through a hard time. You might even post thoughtful responses, but do you actually show up for them with a casserole? Probably not. What I want for you are a few relationships where you are truly seen and known you don't need a hundred friends, you need one, two, or maybe three. And an equal measure you offer the same return. Let me share my favorite story about bravery. I swim at a 50 meter outdoor pool in the summer, which has a high dive. One day I noticed a boy around 12 years old walking to the edge of the high dive, then turning back. He did this again and again for nearly 15 minutes. Finally, he came down the ladder. I got outta the pool and I wanted to see if he was okay. He looked at me with teary eyes and said, I came to the pool early because I'm the only one of my friends who can't jump off the high dive. I asked why he kept turning around and he said, I was waiting for the fear to go away. I told him, it doesn't go away. You just have to push through it. He looked at me, turned around, marched up the ladder and jumped. That's how connection works. The fear doesn't vanish. You move through it, and the more you do it, the easier it gets. One unintended consequence of our growing awareness of anxiety is that we've started treating all anxiety as something to avoid, there's a big difference between unhealthy anxiety that paralyzes you and normal anxiety that signals you're stepping outside of your comfort zone. Learning to recognize this difference is key. Normal anxiety, the kind that comes with taking a risk, asking someone out on a date or sharing a vulnerable truth is not something to avoid. It is something to push through. If your anxiety is paralyzing, that's a great time to see a therapist. This is our specialty. Midlife loneliness is easy to ignore, but the consequences are too much to stay in that state of avoidance. In this episode, we reviewed what is midlife anxiety and the number one culprit to turning up the lights in your relational life avoidance, I introduced you to two coping skills. Number one, notice a name avoidance for what it is. A desire to protect yourself that isn't actually protective and coping skill Number two, be brave. Don't let your anxiety keep you from focusing on connecting. As you move through your week, gently turn up your dimmer switch of social connection with steady, loving self-coaching. Take a small risk of reaching out. You're not turning on the floodlights of a theater, just gradually increasing the light in your own living room. Thanks for listening. I'll be back on Monday with more creating midlife calm.