Ep. 144 How to Finally Feel Confident Setting Boundaries When Midlife Anxiety Makes It Feel Impossible

Is anxiety stopping you from setting the boundaries you know you need?

Get a clear, simple strategy to move through fear and finally take action to get what you want and need.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

1. 5 simple, actionable coping skills to manage anxiety when it flares up around boundary-setting
2. Real-life client stories that show how midlife anxiety shows up in sneaky ways—and how to work with it
3. A practical script-building tool to help you set boundaries with confidence and calm

Start using these tools today to move through your anxiety and set boundaries that protect your peace. Listen 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

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover what to do when your anxiety hijacks your ability to set a boundary. 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 gonna talk about how to set boundaries with difficult people, and one of those difficult people might just be you. In this episode, I'll review the power of setting boundaries and how to befriend your anxiety so you can gather the information it's trying to give you. That way you can use five simple coping skills to set boundaries that honor what you need in a way that connects both to yourself and to others. Let's begin with the simple fact. You know what a boundary is. In fact, you are already an expert when it comes to boundaries. Think about it all day long, you're adapting and respecting boundaries. You stop at a stop sign. You pick your kids up on time or close to it. You pass on the cake, go for a walk or make yourself go to bed instead of scrolling, so you'll feel better the next day. As you know, boundaries are how society and individuals systematize the acts of daily living to promote order and health. If you really think about it, boundaries are a superpower, and one of the great acts of wellness, physical and mental is learning how and when to set them. Take a moment to think about the boundaries you do set day in and day out the alarm rings. You snooze once. Then you get up, the bills come. You may not really like where the money's going, but you pay'em on time. Your coworker might be annoying, but you move on. Most people tend to focus on the boundaries. They don't set, but it's important to recognize the ones you do set that helps motivate you to face the harder ones, whether it's with someone difficult or yourself. Let's be honest, if you weren't decent at boundaries, you'd probably be in jail or the hospital. The real difficulty comes when a particular need to set a boundary arises, and unlike a stop sign, it doesn't feel safe. It feels scary, anxious. Danger ahead. You want to speak up, but you freeze. In fact, setting some boundaries can make you so anxious that you avoid them altogether. Let me give you an example. I have seen many times in my office. A midlife client finds out that their coworker, often younger and with less experience is making more money. They want to ask for a raise, but anxiety takes over. They create a story in their mind to talk themselves out of it. Raises are only given in July and it's March. My boss gets offended when people ask for raises. I'm not supposed to know what my colleague makes. Let's assume all of these things are true. Then what? Well, you move to coping skill number one. You know what it is by now. If you're a regular listener, name tame and aim your anxiety. Don't be afraid of yourself. Boo. You're not that scary. So sit in a chair, ground your feet and gently place your hands on your body wherever you feel the anxiousness. Then for 90 seconds, honor the fear. Let it unfold naturally. See where it takes you. My client did this and found their fear, led to anger, then to a memory that a coworker had asked for a raise just a few months ago. And got it. Here's another example. One of my clients couldn't get herself to go to bed after her husband left their marriage. She was grieving, but more than that, she was anxious about sleeping alone. For months, she slept on the couch. It left her exhausted in session. She connected to her fear of being alone in bed and remembered feeling that same fear as a child. She hadn't recalled it in years. She then remembered how her mother created a nighttime ritual. Tea with milk, listening to Carol King's album tapestry and a soft blanket. She looked up and she said, I think I need to mother myself. Wow. Now that's some hard one wisdom anxiety is just the starting place when you need to set a boundary, don't let it stop you. It's giving you valuable information. Some of it true, some of it false. The only way to know which is which is to sit with it and be curious to tend and befriend that anxiety. Which moves to coping skill Number two, befriend your anxiety, not by avoiding it, but by saying what is it you're trying to tell me? And then listen, really listen. Deep listening. As you know, some of what your anxiety is telling you is fiction, but some of it might be wisdom, and your job is to separate the two. Let's go back to the client who wanted to ask their boss for a raise. Maybe in your situation, you just want a weekend without emails or shot at a promotion. Start by befriending your anxiety and fear moving through it, and then you're gonna notice the information it brings you. This client remembered that another colleague could ask for a raise midyear, which actually spiked his anxiety, but also gave him clarity. led him to coping. Skill number three. When you wanna set a boundary and you do this Inner work, you're going to get clear on what you're afraid of. Do yourself a favor and move it from your head to a piece of paper, my client wrote down. I'm afraid if I ask for a raise, I could get fired or I could piss off my boss. Woo. That's a lot to carry. Just getting it out of his mind helped him begin to clarify the story he was making up in his head. I then asked him to get mathy, look at those two fears and tell me what's the percentage of reality that either of those could happen. He responded, 0%. I can't get fired. We're too short staffed, but 90% I'll piss off my boss. He's grumpy by default. Okay, so now it's not a catastrophic scenario. It's a tough conversation with a grumpy boss, and that's where the real work can begin. How do you handle a grumpy boss? At first, my client was frustrated, but then he said something surprising. I actually feel bad for this guy. His job is kind of impossible. Right. His grumpiness is not about you. And that brings us to coping skill Number four, create a script and rehearse it. I know this sounds so cheesy, so therapist, but trust me, it works, especially when you have to set a boundary with someone who's difficult. Make your asks simple. Respectful and fact-based. You and I both know difficult people really don't care about your emotions, so don't have your ask be rooted in emotions. Have it be fact-based. Boss, I first wanna say the obvious work is really hard for all of us, and I know it's especially hard for you. We're short staffed and I really can't imagine how difficult your every day is. But as you've noticed from my timecard, I've been working close to 50 hours a week. I'd like to ask for a 5% raise. I believe this would align my pay with newer employees, and it would also give me more motivation to keep giving my all. My client rehearsed this script in session and again at home until it felt natural. Not easy, but natural. Remember when setting a boundary with a difficult person, validate their experience. Then ask for what you need, using facts and this leads to coping skill. Number five. You can set the boundary, but you can't control the reaction. You can ask for a raise, but you can't make your boss give you a raise. Whatever your boss's reaction is, it's about him, not you. Bosses can be bound by budgets. They can be bound by a lot of things within the company that they know are occurring that you don't have access to, but that doesn't change your role. Advocate for what is best for you. In this example, the client's boss didn't respond for two weeks and woo. Back came his anxiety. This time my client named it, tamed it and aimed it with a follow-up email. His bosses reply. It'll be in your next paycheck. No, great job, no affirmation, just action, and that's a win. The boss stayed grumpy, but my client had the courage to move through his fear and ask for what he felt that he needed. Now, let's go back to my client who couldn't sleep in her bed. The nighttime ritual helped for a few nights, but then she returned to the couch. Why? Because the real issue wasn't the couch, it was the grief. She said, it makes me too sad to sleep alone. What that failed attempt revealed was that she was avoiding the deeper pain of loss. Sometimes you can't set a boundary, not because you're weak, but because you're avoiding something painful. Avoidance is your best attempt to not feel the hard stuff, but usually the long-term cost isn't worth it. So we made a deal. She could stay on the couch if she journaled three times a week about her grief. She came back a few weeks later and she said, I'm forced into a life I don't want, I guess I need to figure out how to build a life I do want, and it should probably start with sleeping in my bed That weekend, she rearranged her room, bought new sheets and a comforter like the ones from her childhood and began to rebuild. There are still occasional nights where she's on the couch, but her grief no longer steals her sleep, and that makes her anxiety much more manageable in this episode, we talked about the importance of setting boundaries with others and yourself, how anxiety can sometimes make these boundaries feel impossible, and I gave you five coping skills to help you move through the fear and take action. Your Inner Challenge this week is to choose a boundary you've been wanting to set, use, name tame, and aim to befriend your anxiety, and then move to creating a script and practice it. Then try it out, whether it's with your boss, your child, your partner, or yourself, and I'll be back on Thursday with a brand new format called, But Mom, really? My daughter is gonna team up with me to challenge whether my Inner Challenge is actually doable. Who better than a daughter to set her mother straight? Will my strategy survive her pushback, or will I have to rethink them? Thanks for listening to creating Midlife Calm.