Ep. 179 Is It Anxiety or Stress? The First Step to Choosing the Right Coping Skills in Midlife

Are you using the wrong coping skill for what you’re actually feeling?
Understanding the difference between stress and anxiety can help you respond more effectively and feel calmer faster.
In this episode, you’ll discover:

1. How to recognize the difference between stress and anxiety in your body and mind
2. Why coping skills that help with stress can make anxiety worse—and vice versa
3. Two powerful questions that help you choose the right response in the moment

 Listen now to begin matching your coping skills to what midlife actually demands from you—inside and out.

****

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 understanding the difference between stress and anxiety can help you create calm.

Built-in Microphone: 0:09

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.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:33

Welcome to the podcast. We throw the word stress and anxiety around interchangeably, but they're really not the same. And if you're using the wrong coping skill for the wrong experience, it's like trying to put out a grease fire with water. Your intention is good, but it just won't work, and sometimes it makes things worse. In today's episode, we're gonna discuss the difference between stress and anxiety. You might be surprised in this situation, words matter and just a little bit of knowledge can help you choose the right coping skill so you can feel better quickly. So let's go back to the kitchen. I wanna begin with a metaphor, stress is like a smoke alarm going off in your kitchen because something is actually burning on the stove. You can be stressed because someone just rear-ended your car at a stoplight, or maybe you're stressed because you have a big presentation at work, or you're stressed because your mom is actually sick. Anxiety, on the other hand, is when the alarm goes off, even though nothing is burning. You know, a false alarm. You feel uncomfortable at first, distressed and worried, but it's disconnected from what's actually happening. Right now, you're anxious because you're worried your child won't make the team or get into their first choice School. You're anxious because other companies are laying off their workers. Perhaps you're anxious that you won't have enough money for an unexpected expense. Stress is a reaction to an external demand, a deadline, a family issue, a decision that needs to be made. It has a clear source. It's usually short term, and once you take action, the feeling eases. On the other hand, anxiety is more internal. You know what this is? It's that lingering feeling of discomfort. Your body is saying this might happen, so start worrying now. Or your mind begins to loop with regret. I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have said that. Anxiety often shows up when there's no immediate threat. It lives in the future or the past. In the what ifs and worst case scenarios, you feel both stress and anxiety in your body, but the way you respond. Should be different. And that's why knowing the difference is essential. Let me pause here and give a clinical example. I was working with a midlife woman whose fear of public speaking had made her very adept at avoiding it. In fact, she was beloved at work because she mentored her colleagues by letting them do all the presentations. She came to therapy and worked on this because, as you can guess, it was hurting her career. She made great progress at working on this fear of public speaking, and before you know it, it was the day before her first presentation. She was stressed, the stress was real, but she had created a plan to manage it. Let me balance this with another clinical example. One of my midlife clients was very anxious about her child going off to college. She found herself losing sleep, worrying that her child wouldn't make friends, manage the workload, or be happy away from home. This is anxiety. She was spinning about her child's future even though her child was happily working at her summer job. So even though you used the word stress and anxiety interchangeably, it can be incredibly helpful to apply them more precisely to yourself. Why? Because doing so helps you choose a more effective coping skill. It's like finding the right shoe for the occasion. You certainly don't wanna show up for the 5K wearing stilettos. When you are under stress, the best thing to do is move towards action. What does that look like? Break things down, make a list, ask for help. And you might be surprised to find out that when you're stressed, standing up doing a few stretches, having a drink of water can help you take the next step. That's why my client who was stressed about her debut presentation had a plan because stress responds to structure and support. My other client was stressed about her child leaving for college, even though everything was fine. But when you're dealing with anxiety, action often backfires. Why? Because anxiety isn't about now. It's about what might happen. And if you treat it like stress, you'll end up doing more, thinking more and feeling worse. It's like running on that proverbial gerbil wheel. It just doesn't help. Stress needs a to-do list. Anxiety needs a time out. My client who was anxious about her daughter going to college, kept making lists of things her daughter needed to do before she left. In fact, she herself was doing many of them buying things at Target, double checking her daughter's class registration, and even doing an FBI level investigation on her new roommate. Finally, her daughter said, stop, mom. You're acting like I can't do this. Anxiety needs containment and calming, not control. We have all been there. Especially with our children, anxiety needs you to practice and settle your nervous system. A little breath work, a little grounding, a little naming what's real right now. So instead of trying to control everything, what would it look like to contain what you're feeling? With compassion, get curious, not judgemental. What did my client do when she began to feel anxious about her daughter leaving? She named it and tamed it. Yes, she would say to herself, I am nervous about my daughter leaving. And then she would sit in a chair, ground her feet and hold with great gentleness, all her anxiety. And often what would happen is that anxiety would pass in about 60 to 90 seconds what was really going on, a sense of sadness would erupt and she would just have a good little cry or just acknowledge how sad it is to have this part of parenting over. We've all been there, but perhaps you haven't done that. Instead, you keep treating anxiety like it's stress. Yet there are no straight lines when it comes to this human life of ours. Sometimes stress turns into anxiety. Let's go back to my client who gave the presentation. Her stress was real. She did have a presentation to give, but after it was over, she found herself lying awake at 2:00 AM worrying that she didn't sound smart enough or that people were judging her. Now we've crossed that line into anxiety because anxiety lives in the future or the past. In midlife, this happens a lot. You carry invisible loads, family responsibilities, health changes, work transitions. The to-dos are real, but often what drains you isn't the task. It's the mental loop that follows. Understanding the difference between stress and anxiety gives you the power to pause and ask, what am I actually experiencing right now? And what would help? Here's how to start spotting the difference this week. Ask yourself two simple questions. You can even write this on a post-it note. Is what I'm feeling anxious or stressed about something I need to do right now? If it's yes, that's stress. Am I looping on something I can't control or that hasn't happened yet? If yes, that's anxiety, it's kind of like a math equation. Both are valid, but they require different kinds of care. Your Inner Challenge this week is to notice the next time you feel overwhelmed and simply pause. Then ask, is this stress or is this anxiety? And once you know, choose a response that matches. If it's stress, take a small action. If it's anxiety, do something grounding or calming. Name, what's real focus on your breath? Practice Notice on the outside for a reminder of how to do this easy mindfulness practice, check out episode 91 Even one intentional choice can help your nervous system shift from chaos to calm. You don't have to get this perfect. Just start noticing that's the first step. And on Thursday's episode I'll help you take this even further. We're gonna look at how to match the right coping skill to stress versus anxiety in midlife, so you can stop guessing and start feeling better faster. If this episode helped you feel a little more seen or understood, would you follow the podcast on your favorite platform? Doing so helps more midlifers find their way to calm, and that means a lot to me. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Thursday with more creating midlife Calm.