Ep. 157 Why Alcohol Makes Your Anxiety WORSE in Midlife & 4 Coping Skills That Actually Work

Are you still reaching for a glass of wine to take the edge off midlife anxiety?
What once felt like a relaxing ritual may now be working against your peace, sleep, and sanity.
In this episode, you’ll discover:

1.    Why midlife hormonal and brain changes can cause alcohol to increase—not           relieve—your anxiety.

2.    Four healthier, science-backed coping skills that will REALLY help your anxiety. 

3.    How to track your drinking habits, rewire your routines to regain control over your emotional well-being.

Press play to learn how to reclaim calm and feel better—without wine running the show.

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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 the surprising reason alcohol doesn't help your anxiety in midlife. 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. A couple weeks ago, one of my clients walked into the office and said, I am spend this whole session whining about wine. We both laughed and I said, can you say more about that? She then went on to say, I do not understand how this coping skill of a glass of wine at night, that for 25 years has worked exceptionally well at calming my anxiety after dinner, relaxing and separating myself from my workday. No longer is working. In this episode I'm gonna give you the science behind why your wine, or your beer, or your gin and tonic, whatever is your drink of choice, may not be working as well in midlife as it did in your younger life. By the end of this episode, you're gonna be equipped with some real knowledge that will help you make the decision of what you need to do with alcohol in midlife. One of the most interesting parts of my job is that I work a lot with people in midlife and I work a lot with adolescents. When I put those two groups together, I really get information that is very helpful for me as a therapist that allows each group to create a healthier mind, body, and spirit. Oh, speaking of spirit, that's what we're gonna talk about today. Think back to your adolescence, huh? Kind of painful, right? You probably don't have to think too hard if you actually are parenting an adolescent because you watch this child navigate this life stage, day in and day out. Lots of ups, lots of downs, lots of an emotional intensity, lots of challenges, lots of not feeling good enough. Why? Because the job of an adolescent is to answer the question, who am I? So they're not really set in a solid self until they're around 25. And then as we know, because we're in midlife, that self continues to develop and change. And that brings us to this episode, rethinking the rules that we learned as an adolescent when it came to alcohol. Do those rules need updated for many of my clients over the years? There's only one answer. Absolutely. Because adolescence is full of so much uncertainty, so much coming to know yourself, so much comparing yourself with your peers and So much feeling less than we can't be surprised that alcohol liquid courage is one of the favorite coping skills for adolescents. I do understand that sometimes this coping skill leads to addiction, but for the purpose of this episode, I'm not gonna be talking about alcohol abuse, nor am I gonna be talking about alcohol addiction. Both addiction and abuse are serious issues at any age, but what I wanna talk about in this episode is to ask you to think about your use of alcohol in midlife. What was liquid courage and a way to connect and bond with your friends and your youth may actually be keeping you up and making you cranky in midlife. Why is that? You might ask? Well, as you don't need me to remind you. There are so many biological changes in midlife. Your metabolism is slower. You have a lot of hormone shifts, especially your estrogen. And your body actually has a heightened sensitivity to sugar and alcohol. Kind of good news, bad news, right? You may find it less tempting to eat sugar because you just don't feel as good afterwards, but you may love the relaxing feeling you get from alcohol. What is alcohol made of sugar? It's important to know that in midlife, your body is not processing alcohol the way it did when you were 20 out at the bar with your friends. The other biggie when it comes to midlife and alcohol is sleep disruption. Alcohol can definitely help you fall asleep, but for many people, leads to those 2:00 AM wakings and sleep that isn't restful. To be honest, this one life change led me to let go of that evening glass of wine because I'd be up at two and I couldn't go back to sleep till four. Another reason why alcohol doesn't work the same in midlife is its emotional impact. Your body creates a tolerance to alcohol. Where you could get relaxed and calm, maybe with one glass of wine at 25 or 35, you may find yourself, as many of my clients have up to a half a bottle or even a bottle a night in order to experience that same sense of calm. That is too much alcohol. A half a bottle of wine, a bottle of wine a night, it can really sneak up on you and it really can cause you to wake up in the morning feeling like crap, but also feeling guilty and even more anxious because you know that you've drank too much. Interestingly, this same drink that made you call when you were 20 or 22 over time actually increases your stress hormones, which makes you feel much more anxious. In a nutshell, what I'm saying to you is your buddy alcohol in, you aren't getting along in midlife the way you did in your early twenties. So what's a midlifer to do? Coping Skill? Number one. Face the truth. I bet your body, and I bet your mind has been telling you for quite some time, that you and alcohol just aren't dancing like you used to. If you wanna feel great midlife, if you wanna have less anxiety, most people will have to have less alcohol. I'm underlining the word less. Yes. Some people as they age, choose to stop drinking altogether, but for my clients who love wine, who love beer, who love a mixed drink, what I ask them to do is to run their own sets of experiments, and that's coping skill number two. Think about how many times in your life you put energy into making something better. Maybe you're updating your computer, maybe you're repainting a room. I want you to do the same thing reshaping and updating your relationship to alcohol, and the only way to do that is to have a plan. I ask people to get mathy and measure how many ounces are you drinking? I have a very funny story about this. During the pandemic, one of my clients was walking through her kitchen and on her counter, wore a bunch of wine glasses. I asked her to stop and to get a measuring cup, and measure out how many ounces of wine she was typically drinking. Let me tell you, these wine glasses, they looked like buckets. She got a measuring cup out and her wine glass held a little under eight ounces. I then walked to my China cabinet and I took out one of my wedding wine glasses to show her, and we both laughed. It looked like a thimble. When I measured it, it was just under four ounces, supersize me. That's what we've done with all of our cocktails. We're getting much more alcohol than we used to, and one of the updates is to get very mathy measure how much wine or beer or in a mixed drink. If you're out and about, ask them how many ounces are you putting in it? That way you can keep track for a week or two, and then what I encourage you to do is cut it down by 25% and see if you're getting the bad aspects of alcohol. If you're still waking up at midnight, if you're waking up anxious, then you cut it down by another 25%. You probably get the drift. The point is to use a little bit of effort, a little bit intention, and to rework and update how you are using alcohol in midlife so you get the best of it where it calms you, but it doesn't disrupt your sleep or have you wake up in the morning feeling more anxious. Spoiler alert. I've had hundreds of people do this. Some people actually over time decide to seldom drink. Their sleep is so important and alcohol wrecks it so much. They just say, I'm done. But what most people realize is their alcohol use has actually crept up in midlife to an amount that is not healthy and they're able to dial it back and enjoy the benefits of alcohol without suffering the side effects. Coping skill number two. Is to turn on a little bit of self-awareness and ask yourself, why am I having a drink? Perhaps you're having a drink because you're out with friends and it's Friday night and it feels so good just to relax, separate from the work week, fantastic. But maybe if you're at home having a drink because you're really mad at somebody and you don't know what to do with your anger, not so great. There's a difference between drinking for socializing and connection and restoration and drinking for numbing. Coping skill. Number two is to use your superpower of self-awareness and define for yourself why you're drinking. Lean more and more towards drinking, for connection, relaxation, and restoration. Coping skill Number three, what if you happen to be using alcohol to numb your anxiety? Three cheers for you, not for using alcohol to numb your anxiety, but the fact that you are able to recognize it. One of the reasons I'm doing this podcast is to give you coping skills to manage your anxiety amongst all the stresses of midlife. If you find yourself using alcohol to numb your anxiety. I wanna encourage you to look back at my previous episodes. I have more than 150. You can find some really incredible tools that can help you move through the anxiety to name it, to tame it and to aim it. And what often happens when you just do simple breath work and move through that anxiety and get to aim is you get the gold. You then get ideas of what you can do. One thing I've learned in talking to lots of my clients who are really updating their relationship with alcohol is what they find really helpful is a little bit more physical exercise and doing something that's enjoyable. Before you open that bottle of wine, go out for a 10 minute walk. Let yourself do some gentle stretching. Put on a song that makes you happy and move your body and move your mind to a different place beyond the anxiety. Coping skill. Number four, try some non-alcoholic drinks. O' Douls the beer without alcohol has been around forever, but lately the beverage industry is catching up with the demands of midlifers and there's all kinds of wine without alcohol, and I tasted one the other week and it was really, really good. I thought, wow, this is great. I can still have that exact pleasure of having a glass of wine without paying for it eight hours later. In this episode, I've given you the science of why alcohol in you may not be getting along in midlife the way you did in your twenties. I am encouraging you to whine about wine, and what do I mean by that? Put words to what's happening in your body with alcohol in midlife. Update your relationship to alcohol. Get math and measure for two weeks how much alcohol you're actually drinking. Be honest. Are you drinking to socialize and connect and relax or are you drinking to numb your feeling or because you're bored? If you find yourself drinking to numb feelings or because you're bored, look at episode 130 on emotional regulation and name tame and aim your feelings. Let that 90 seconds, that's all it takes of uncomfortable feeling move through you. Your inner challenge this week is to step into your power when it comes to you and alcohol. Choose one of the things I've talked about, measure, and really get a sense of how much you're drinking over a two week period. Or use your self-awareness and get clear on your reason for drinking. I'm gonna be back on Thursday and give you the latest science on cannabis pot and midlife a topic that is seldom talked about and this information for those of you parenting is essential. Thanks for listening to Creating Midlife Calm.