Ep. 165 Why Understanding Your Father's Emotional Influence Is Key to Building Emotional Resilience & Ease Anxiety in Midlife

Does Father’s Day bring more dread than celebration?
You’re not the only Midlifer who feels anxious or conflicted about your relationship with your Dad.

In this episode, you’ll discover:
1. Why your father can still trigger deep anxiety, anger and hurt  in midlife, even if you rarely see him
2. Five powerful coping skills to protect your peace before, during, and after Father’s Day
3. How to turn pain into growth without needing to “fix” your relationship with your Dad.

🎧 Take 12 minutes to reclaim your calm and care for yourself this Father’s Day—you’re worth it.

****

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: 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover the value of reflecting on your relationship with your dad

Built-in Microphone: 0:06

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.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:30

welcome to the podcast. This coming weekend is Father's Day, and if you're like many people, this holiday might stir up complicated feelings. So let's begin with a simple fill in the blank, this Father's Day, I feel. In today's episode, you'll discover how to navigate the emotional complexity of Father's Day and use it as an opportunity for healing, gratitude, and midlife growth, even if your relationship with your dad is painful, distant, confusing, or wonderful. I want to begin with the obvious Father's Day can bring up a wide range of emotions. For some of you, it may be gratitude and grief for a father who is a source of stability and care, but is now gone or aging into someone who's hardly recognizable. For others, it's grief for a father who is never truly present, maybe anger, addiction or self-centeredness blocked him from being a steady presence. Or perhaps you never even met him. Then there's the middle ground, the gray area where many live in. Maybe your dad did his best and still fell short in painful ways. One thing I hear a lot this time of the year is. Ah, father's Day, it doesn't matter. It's just a hallmark holiday. Sure, the holiday may be manufactured, but your relationship with your father is very real. And your feelings, grief, dread, anger, sadness, gratitude, and even anxiety deserve care. Here's a quick stat. Research shows that men are half as likely as women to seek therapy or confide in close friends. That means that many dads had little guidance when it came to emotional connection, and you were shaped by that. One of the powerful developmental milestones in midlife is reevaluating your childhood experiences. This isn't navel gazing. It's an act of growth. You now have the adult perspective to explore how your dad present, absent, or somewhere in between, shaped your identity, self-worth, and even your parenting. And here's one truth I want to offer right up front. No one in the world has the same dad. My father, an attorney, had strong opinions on just about everything. I love that about him. We debated all kinds of things from chores to when I could skip church, which was never and whether my husband and I were buying the right house. I credit him with my confidence, my voice, my willingness to stand up for others. I also credit him with my impulse to want to always be right and talk too much. some good, some not so good. Ask my husband. Some of my siblings had a different view. For them his strong opinions were exhausting. Who's right? We both are. Same dad, different experience Coping skill number one, your story is yours. Your experience with your dad is yours alone. No one has to agree with it. No one has to share it. You don't need to get anyone's approval for it. And you'll do your siblings a big favor by allowing them to have their own version of the same man. Coping skill number two, when it comes to your dad or your dad's, do the Inner work. It may sound like a therapist cliche, but you can't fully grow as an adult without doing your Inner work around your dad. What does that mean? It means putting words around how your father shaped you, for better or worse. It means looking at all the father figures in your life and exploring their influence. Let me share two examples. One client appreciated that her mom named her father's anger as his problem when she was little. After a rage episode, her mom would put her on her lap and say, darling, your dad has a temper. He should not be yelling like that. That's about him, not us. She would then offer her daughter a hug. That simple acknowledgement followed by a hug, helped reregulate her nervous system and made her feel safe. She grew up into an adult understanding that other people's inability to regulate their emotions was about them, not her. She thought this was normal until she married into a family where her father-in-law gambled and her mother-in-law minimized it. He stressed the casino, helps him relax. She even had her children working in their pre-teen years to help with groceries and she called this being responsible. Whatever your story, the first step is to tell the truth about it. Years ago, I had a client who told me in our very first session, I'm never gonna talk about my dad, about six months into therapy. She said, I think I'm beginning to understand that my over-functioning and anxiety might be connected to trying to please my dad. I guess I need to talk about him. She did, and over the next few months, her sense of self began to blossom. She realized that her younger self had learned to chase the validation of a man who never gave it. As an adult, she began to accept her father's limitations and focus on what he could give her" career advice, a love of Notre Dame football and unwavering support when she left an abusive marriage. While part of her still long to hear, I love you, or I'm proud of you, she learned to see him for who he was so she could finally become who she wanted to be. If you've inherited toxic patterns, control avoidance, arrogance, addictions, you'll only interrupt them by seeing how they live in you now. Even if you are sure they don't. Americans clinging to the myth of the unshakeable dad. Strong, steady, silent. But that myth leaves little room for men to ask for help or feel safe with their emotions. In my 21 years in a junior high, I watched the girls hash out drama and develop emotional muscles. Boys, they kept it light sports and video games. Less conflict, but also less depth. When you reflect on your dad's legacy, zoom out. Think about the culture, the times, the family he came from. When my dad was 89 and dying, a hospice nurse told him he seemed anxious. Later, he said to me, she thinks I'm anxious. I don't even know what anxiety is. I could have rolled my eyes, but I zoomed out. He was part of the greatest generation men praised for going to war and never speaking of it again. He looked at me and said, why would I be stressed? I know I'm dying. I tried to live well. I hope to go to heaven. What about any of this would stress me out? His faith gave him a framework to feel safe when times were rough and grateful when times were good. His generation gave him silence. The big takeaway when you reflect on your dad. Don't do it in a vacuum. If you focus only on your pain, you'll miss the context that shaped both him and you. one of the hardest parts of coming to terms with your dad is your generation's learning will most likely not be his. That's why when I explained anxiety to my dad, he didn't get it. Each generation has a chance to do better than the one before, but your growth most likely won't change your dad. It changes you. In earlier generations, growth was measured through financial success or educational achievement. But as our culture has begun to value emotional and relational intelligence, our generation is learning to do better in deeper, more human ways. Let me share an example of this where the intention is in the right place. But because all of this is new, it is easy for it to go sideways. A woman came into therapy with her 13-year-old daughter. Her father had been a strict fear-based preacher. She responded by parenting with only love and choice. The result, a self-absorbed daughter who was lonely and averse to limits. Three weeks into therapy, this dear woman broke down. She looked at me and she said, I tried to do better than my dad, but now I think I'm doing worse. She learned the truth. Doing the opposite of your parents isn't healing, healing is naming what helped and hurt, understanding your parents' formation, choosing healthy actions from a grounded, knowledgeable, and compassionate place. She re-centered her parenting around this question. How do I Raise a child who's responsible, kind, and able to care for herself and others? What was amazing to her is she moved from her reactive parenting. I don't want to be like my dad, and began to remember the many good things she got from her mother and grandfather. Reflection isn't about blame, it's about growth. It's about being able to see the whole picture. If your dad makes you feel all tangled up inside, find a therapist who can help you gently untangle it, this work takes time, but it will help you integrate what's good and release what no longer serves you. Your Inner Challenge this week is to write a letter to your dad. Just start it with Dear Dad and let it rip. You don't need to send it, but letting the words come out unfiltered is one of the best ways to check in with where you are in this foundational relationship. In this episode, you've discovered how to take advantage of this hallmark manufactured holiday. How midlife invites you to reflect on your father's influence, which isn't manufactured, but foundational to your wellbeing. Whether your dad was a source of love, pain, or both, your experience is real. It is living inside of you and becoming conscious of it will help you become more of who you want to be. On Thursday, I'll be back with a follow-up episode on how to Get through Father's Day. When your dad causes anxiety or anger. Whether you're grilling out or making a phone call, I want you to show up with confidence. Thanks for listening to creating Midlife Calm.