Ep. 166 Essential Skills To Help You Cope This Father’s Day When Your Dad Makes You Feel Anxious or Angry

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.

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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: 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover how to cope with Father's Day when your dad makes you feel anxious or angry. 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. If Father's Day stirs up more anxiety than appreciation, you're not alone. For many in midlife this holiday brings old wounds to the surface, especially when your father still has the power to make you feel small. In this episode, you'll discover why anger and anxiety about your dad may still feel so intense even in midlife. I. How to calm your nervous system when Father's Day triggers strong emotions and five easy coping skills you can use this weekend to stay grounded and protect your peace. Let's begin with a check-in on Monday's Inner Challenge. If you listen to that episode, I invited you to write a letter to your dad, not one you needed to send. Just one that helps you assess where you really are in this most important relationship. If you did that exercise, take a moment to reflect. What came up? Tenderness, frustration, anger. Were you surprised by how much you still want something from your dad, an apology approval or simply peace? If you didn't get a chance to do the challenge, it's not too late. Writing helps untangle the thoughts that stay knotted in your head and sets the stage for today's episode. Today we're turning toward the harder part of Father's Day. The part you might have a tendency or desire to avoid even in your thirties, forties, fifties, or beyond the relationship you had or didn't have with your father can still impact you deeply. Maybe your dad was critical. Emotionally distant or someone you had to walk on eggshells around. When society says, celebrate your dad, your body might quietly say, brace yourself. You might be thinking, I haven't lived with this man for decades, or I only see him twice a year. It's just a 15 minute phone call. Why do I find all of this so exhausting? You also might wonder, why is this still so triggering? I'm a full grown adult, but he makes me feel like a kid. Let me show you what this can look like in real life. One client came to therapy in his mid forties to work through unresolved pain with his father. He had a successful career, a loving family and close friends, but when he visited his dad, he often felt 12 years old. His father would make subtle jabs. When the client got promoted. His dad said they always promote guys in nonprofits. Real men don't work there. When he enrolled his kids in music lessons, his father said, you're making them soft if he helped his wife in the kitchen, his dad would often joke that he was such a cute little housewife. Each visit, he left angry. And often he took it out on his wife by being silent and withdrawing. One day she said to him, I need you to go to therapy and work out your father issues. He did, and one of the first things he learned is this., You can move out of your dad's house, but he often comes with you. Coping skill Number one, name what's true without shame. Did you grow up in a family that emphasized what your father did? Coaching your teams, paying the bills while minimizing the acknowledgement of the emotional wounds he inflicted. Now in midlife, as you try to show up differently for your own family, your pain resurfaces. A wise part of you might whisper what I'm giving to my children and others I needed myself. That's what makes Father's Day so triggering. You are allowed to say, this holiday makes me angry. I hate Father's Day Commercials. They make me anxious. Suppressing or minimizing these feelings makes anxiety worse, but naming them honestly set you on the path to healing. Remember, you can't tame a feeling until it's named, and you can't aim yourself toward healing until you name and tame your emotional experience. I invite you to listen to episodes 53 and 54, where I focus on this in much greater detail. When it came to managing his emotions, my client learned this. After visits with his dad, he started telling his wife, Ugh, my dad makes me feel like crap. I need to decompress. Then he'd take the dog for a walk and unbeknownst to anyone else but him, and I guess me, he would speak aloud the things he wished he could have said to his father. That's the power of naming what's true. It's not something you need to share with your father. Truth is a gift and not everyone deserves that gift, especially someone you believe will break it. Which leads me to coping skill number two. Be patient as you learn to connect and protect yourself. As you begin to heal your father wounds, you're also learning how to father yourself. How to connect with and protect the parts of you that were hurt. How to connect with yourself and others in ways that are life-giving and healthy. Dr. Bessel Vander Klok An expert in trauma and the author of the Body Keeps the Score, explains that trauma and significant hurt isn't just stored in memory, it's stored in the body. When you experience overwhelming events, especially in childhood, your nervous system becomes wired to stay on high alert. Even decades later. A look, a tone of voice or familiar setting can send your system back into survival mode. Because the body remembers what the mind tries to forget. For my client, this insight became the foundation for his ritual. A two hour visit, a statement to his wife about how he felt, followed by a solo walk with his dog, where he practiced saying the things he wasn't quite ready to say out loud. Healing from a hurtful or emotionally immature father is slow. Slower than you would like it to be, but like learning a new language, healing takes time, repetition, effort and care. Here's something I want to emphasize. We live in a world where people often say, speak or text your truth, and others just have to deal with it. But in family dynamics, I urge caution too often what we call truth telling is actually retaliation. You hurt me. So now I'm gonna hurt you back. If you want to do better than your father, you have to be better than your father. Speaking truth with cruelty is not healing. It's a reenactment. That's why I preach patience. Be the father you needed. Not the one that you have or had. Which means as you head into Father's Day this weekend, you need a plan. Should you be visiting or talking with your father this year and your body is saying, warning, warning, warning, please listen to your body and use coping skill number three, prepare for the present with a grounded plan. Here are five things you can do to protect your peace this father's day. One, limit your time. Shorten the visit call. Choose a neutral setting if possible. Decide ahead of time what feels emotionally sustainable for you this year. Number two, focus on others who are there. Notice the people who make you feel safe and grounded, they are just as real as the one who triggers you. The brain loves the negative, but let your heart guide you to those in your family that feel safe and loving. Number three, watch your dad like a movie. Instead of tracking how he treats you, observe how he interacts with others. Be curious, neutral like a reporter. Here's an example from the couch in my office. A client shared with me that over the holiday weekend, his family was gathered around a picnic table. His daughter was chatting with her grandmother about her piano recital. Grandma had played the piano and the exchange was warm and joyful. Then suddenly his father grabbed one of the young grandsons and started wrestling with him on the grass. It shifted all the attention away from the conversation. Later in session, my client said it was so bizarre. The moment wasn't about him and he couldn't stand it. He hijacked the attention. And then he said something powerful. For the first time, I realized he doesn't just do this to me, he does it to everyone. I feel a little freer, a little lighter, a little more hopeful. Number four, practice breath work to calm your nervous system. Using simple breathing techniques like box breathing to bring your body back to safety. Even 60 seconds of breath work can reset your emotional state and help your mind be more clear. And lastly, have someone to process with afterwards. Choose someone, a friend, therapist, or partner, or even your pet who can help you reflect on the experience afterwards. Ask them to listen. I advise them that they don't need to fix this. You've got it. You don't need to carry the weight of this alone. Fathers hold enormous psychological power, and when that power has been used in harmful ways, it takes courage and support to heal. Here is a staggering statistic. About 27% of Americans have cut off contact with at least one family member. 26% of Americans are estranged from their fathers. Family. Estrangement is more common than you may think. And while distance is necessary at times, there is also another path. Family is messy. It's an intergenerational community, in a culture that often prioritizes individual needs over the support, beauty and messiness that only comes within a community of imperfect humans that we call family. Do your work with your North Star being that your generation will do its part to make your family healthier. It's easier to cut off in the short run. It's harder to build bridges that go the distance. But bridges are what connect us to life and to each other. I think bridges are one of the antidotes to the loneliness epidemic in our culture, which has to be fueled somewhat by the 27% estrangement statistic. If your father is dangerous, yes, protect yourself. But if he's emotionally limited, you may not need to throw the whole relationship away. You can heal the younger part of yourself without letting the child run the show. In time my client learned to say when his dad made a shaming comment. I see it differently. Four words. That's it. That one sentence broke the cycle, and that is what generational healing looks like. I. In this episode, you've discovered why Father's Day can feel emotionally charged even decades later. How your nervous system holds old wounds from childhood. And five coping skills to protect your peace this weekend. Name what's true without shame. Be patient as you learn to connect and protect yourself. Prepare for the present with a grounded plan. Thanks for listening. I'll be back on Monday with creating Midlife Calm.