Creating Midlife Calm: Coping Skills for Stress & Anxiety in Family, Work & Relationships

Ep. 149 Trump’s Tariffs Spiked One Midlife Listener’s Anxiety and 3 Coping Skills Helped

• MJ Murray Vachon LCSW • Season 4 • Episode 149

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 Is your anxiety spiking every time Trump’s tariffs make headlines?
You’re not alone—and it’s not just about politics, it’s about your nervous system.

In this episode you’ll discover:

  1. How to shift from news-induced anxiety to calm by using this 2 simple technique.
  2. How guided meditation can help to reduce anxiety around world events, like Trump's tariffs
  3. The brain science behind this 1 essential hack to physically reduce anxiety🎙️

 Tune in now to learn simple, science-backed ways to reclaim your calm in midlife—even when the world feels chaotic.

Try this meditation:

Our Mindful Nature: Nurture by Nature Meditation for Anxiety

https://www.merylarnett.com/podcast/nurtured-by-nature-meditation-for-anxiety


 




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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.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

In this episode, you'll discover how to decrease your anxiety when President Trump's tariffs go up. 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. One of the interesting things about living in a red state, but in a blue city is that I get this unique up close view of the political divide, and woo, this past week, president Trump imposed tariffs then he paused them leaving the markets and probably people like you and me swimming in uncertainty, and we know what that means. Anxiety up, calm down. That's why I am bringing back my new mini format. But MJ, really? In this episode, I've invited a listener to try out the coping skills I shared with you on Monday. Why? Because the uncertainty that we're all living in is probably not going away soon, and I want you to have simple, doable ways to calm your nervous system when things outside of you feel anything but predictable. By the end of this episode, you'll find it easier to step into your agency and take charge of your mind. No matter what's going on, on Wall Street or in Washington. Hearing someone else actually put these tools into action will help normalize the process, and it will also help you understand what it means to make coping skills intentional, and they're usually not as hard as you might fear. So welcome back to the podcast, Abby.

Guest:

Thank you. I'm happy to be back. Let me start by asking you, on a scale of one to 10, how anxious does all of this make you feel? Honestly, an eight or a nine.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

Can you tell me why you're an eight or nine?

Guest:

Unfortunately I'm in between jobs, so anything having to do with finances feels escalated because I don't have that base of security that I think you often have with a job. Also, I don't feel like I'm a person who deeply understands the financial system.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

You're really moving through this economic uncertainty with a lot of vulnerability.

Guest:

That's a great way to put it.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

That makes sense that you're at eight or nine.

Guest:

Yeah,

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

I think it's scary to be at eight or nine, but as a therapist, as someone who cares about you, I actually wanna applaud that you are courageous enough to say I'm at eight or nine.

Guest:

I thought about saying five or six just to seem a little bit more cool, but that's just not where I'm at.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

I want to say to all our listeners, it is really cool, to be honest. When you're honest, you actually set yourself up for success, because when your at an eight or nine, you use coping skills more intentionally and more purposefully than when you're at a two or three. When we're at a two or three. you don't really need any coping skills for anxiety, but when you're at eight or nine, you absolutely need coping skills. Let's go back to the episode. What were the coping skills that you tried?

Guest:

I did the seven minute meditation and I also did a 20 minute meditation. I also tried to reign in my reading of headlines. I turned off the alerts. So I pick when I look at them rather than them getting me when I'm surprised.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

That was actually the last coping skill. I talked about the importance of managing how you consume the news. Let's start with that. What was it like to purposely and intentionally turn off your alerts versus those hijacking your brain when you actually may be in a good spot.

Guest:

I think my biggest fear with doing it is that I would be behind, there would be something that happened, for example, like I got the alert right when the tariffs switched, and something about being that in the know in some ways calming for a second, but then concerning. The switch caused me to be more purposeful and why I was looking at the news and the purpose was to be informed. I feel like often with the alerts the purpose of being informed got overshadowed by being freaked out suddenly. And because I'd pick a time of day that I think I was a little bit more grounded I felt like I was able to consume it in a better way.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

Wanna go with your word consume, because we think of consume when it comes to food, and you're actually using it as a metaphor of consuming the news. Imagine that you're walking through your day and you pretty much know you eat at seven in the morning, and then you get at noon. Maybe you have a snack at three, then you eat at six, and that works for you. Your body expects to have fuel at that time, and you're able to have energy throughout the day. When you Respond to alerts. It would be the same as you're walking through their day and someone shoves a hamburger down your mouth. You're not even hungry. You didn't even want a burger. And then pretty soon you're going somewhere else. And before you know it, someone's pouring a milkshake down your throat. You didn't want it, but it's there. The power of deciding what you decided, is that you are managing the news at a time that is good for you versus the companies that are trying to get you to consume and stay on your devices as much as possible, shoving them down your throat, shoving them in your mind, making you unexpectedly anxious. In this political environment where the news is all the time coming at us, it's really overwhelming.

Guest:

Somehow I got a messaging that it is important to be as up to date as much as possible, and there is an issue almost with your commitment to the world if you're not doing that.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

When you hear yourself say that out loud, does that make sense to you?

Guest:

It's kind of extreme and it is a little ridiculous.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

What I want you to do is not take this personally, that it's to step into the truth that the phone culture has been created to keep us connected at all times, whether it is good for us or not. I know that it is very life-giving for people to step into their power and to understand the economic structure of the phone. That is to keep you hooked in at all time so they can monetize you and then understand the importance of your own independence, where you can say Thanks, but no thanks. I'll turn off the notifications. I will check the news as people have for centuries, once or twice a day,

Guest:

It's a good thing to remember four centuries. I've never honestly thought about that. it's helpful to have that perspective that people have received news in this other way that could maybe be a little bit more healthy. Can I talk about another one of the strategies I did? Yes. The other was meditation.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

On Monday I shared a link to a wonderful podcast called Our Mindful Nature. The reason I recommend this podcast at this time is because the creator of this podcast, Meryl Arnett, offers short guided meditations that include gentle nature sounds. When anxiety takes over, science tells us that guided meditations with nature sound can gently bring your nervous system back to calm.

Guest:

I found the seven minute meditation, easier to start. So I did a quick little one. I really procrastinated the 20 minute, meditation and I did it. And of course, like most things, once you do it, you're like, oh, that was a good thing. Finding the time, but probably more. Getting your butt to sit down and listen to the meditation is very hard. But there's something that happens in the first three to four minutes of it where I am like, I don't wanna do this. Lady on Spotify, you are lovely, but I don't wanna do this right now. So what advice do you have. I will bet you that lady doesn't wanna do it the first three or four minutes. I don't wanna do it. And this is a parallel process to the phone. It's the opposite in a way.

Hmm.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

The phone we can't not want to do. Yeah. And then when we're on it too long, our mind feels. Yucky. Our body feels yucky. It is normal, and this is the hardest part of meditation. The first three or four minutes I think are painful. Most of the time when I do the first three or four minutes, my mind is just making a list of things I forgot things I need to do.

Guest:

I kept finding reasons for me to not have to do it. But I will say something that was helpful was the earbuds, before I did it without the earbuds and I was like, I can't do this. And then I put the earbuds in and I felt like I could much better settle in.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

Why do you think that is?

Guest:

Most of us have these earphones now that can cut out a degree of background noise. So in a sense it was like doing part of the work for me where before I was hearing the neighbors and hearing someone mow on the lawn.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

One of the beautiful new discoveries in the last 20 years is that we can manipulate sounds to calm our brains. And in a meditation like this, and that's why I very specifically chose it for our listeners, she has a team of people who are experts at this. They're not just throwing sounds on, they actually know the science of putting on sounds for different ways of calming the brain, and this one is on anxiety. That's why I said this particular meditation is not so much a meditation as it is a tool to give yourself permission to listen to something that's calming. Do you see the difference?

Guest:

I do see the difference. Also knowing that she puts the sounds.'cause I was like, this is an interesting array of sounds and for other people listening. At first I was a little irritated by it and then by the end I liked it, which is fascinating.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

You're irritated because you're going from a mind that feels irritated. You're anxious, you're at an eight or nine. What's interesting is when you stop, you become more aware of that uncomfortableness of the eight or nine. You put your earbuds on. And for three to four minutes, while your mind settles in and makes a shift. It goes from anxious, anxious, anxious. and the sounds use other parts of your brain to take in the sounds and that actually helps the anxiety to reduce

Guest:

I think just being aware that irritation is part of it, is helpful to push through, even if I expect it, like, oh, that's gonna happen at this portion. I think that surprised me that that is a common part of switching, mental states.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

If your mental state is one of anxiety, and it doesn't even have to be what I call like a frontal mental state. You can be engaged in something, and in the background is that eight or nine anxiety, and then you put on the earbuds and this meditation is like medicine, it's gonna sting at first because you're asking your mind to move from the thinking part to the being part. You go up and then it kind of settles and it does help you feel better because of the sounds, and you don't have to do nearly as much work as if you were doing traditional eastern zen meditation where you were trying to empty your monkey mind.

Guest:

That's really interesting.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

So this meditation does a lot of the work for you.

Guest:

What was interesting after it, I was actually a little tired and I lay down for 20, minutes. Then I woke up and I felt a more rested. Then when I meditated, I think I was more aware of the state my body was in.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

When your are at high states of anxiety, even though your not conscious of it, your body is tense and working hard, and you will be more tired. The purpose of meditation is to relax your body as well as calm your mind. And then you feel tired and you lay down for 20 minutes and you wake up and you feel. A lot better. A lot better. Yeah, and that's the point of these two episodes. We are going to be in a very unpredictable culture for a long time. President Trump thrives on unpredictability. And we don't get to change who he is as a person, but we can change who we are and our relationship to the unpredictability and the chaos. And that means a little bit more self-care.

Guest:

Yeah.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

In wrapping up, what's the takeaways for you from this episode?

Guest:

from the episode and from us talking, it's that understanding that there is a uncomfortable feeling, especially at the beginning of these types of meditations. I think I always assumed that I just wasn't very good at it, and that other people were able to get into them very easily and look so peaceful. So holding and accepting, and even anticipating that tension. I know you've talked about this in other episodes, to be friends with it, right? That's part of the process. the other thing I will really take away is understanding I have the power to control how I consume the news.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

Well said, thanks for being on our episode. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Monday with another episode of Creating Midlife Calm.