Ep. 189: How To Immediately Reduce Your Midlife Stress & Anxiety With These Easy & Fundamental Coping Skills

Ever feel like your mind is spiraling but your body can’t catch up?
You’re not alone—midlife anxiety and stress often demand more than just logic or positive thinking.
In this episode, you’ll discover:

1. Why your five senses are some of the fastest, most effective coping skills for anxiety and stress
2. What to do when your usual calming strategies aren’t enough to reset your system
3. How to build a personal “grounding routine” using sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste

 Take 10 minutes to calm your body and quiet your mind—you’re worth it.

 Listener Freebie Offering
Need help calming down right now?
I’ve recorded a Crickets Sound Reset—a peaceful, grounding MP3 to help soothe anxiety, especially during overwhelm or at bedtime.
To receive it, email MJ directly at:
mj@mjmurrayvachon.com

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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 use your senses to ease your anxiety. Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, the podcast where you and I tackle stress and anxiety in midlife so you can stop feeling like crap, feel more present at home, and thrive at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with over 50,000 hours of therapy sessions and 32 years of teaching practical science-backed mental wellness. Welcome to the podcast. This is a week where I have more to do at work than time to accomplish it. When I came home the other night, my shoulders were tense. My mind was busy making up scenarios about insurance companies being out to get me. When I got home, I wanted to be fully present with my daughter who was visiting. After dinner. I went for a walk to let it all go. As I walked down my driveway. I couldn't help but hear the symphony of crickets in the woods next to my house. I walked for 10 minutes letting the sound surround me. I did a few arm circles and let the anxiety and stress of the day go. I was odd, truly odd, just thinking about how many billions of tiny creatures it takes to make so much noise. And I was reminded how powerfully calming our senses can be with just a little intention. I thought to myself, this would make a good podcast episode. So in this episode, you'll discover why your five senses are powerful tools for calming anxiety in the moment, what to do when your body-based grounding skills aren't enough to interrupt the spiraling thoughts and how to create a custom grounding routine using sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. It won't cost you a cent, and it takes very little time. But first, let's revisit Monday's Inner Challenge. From episode 180 7, I invited you to try to catch your anxiety once a day when it starts and then interrupt it. Using a 92nd body-based reset, you are encouraged to name your anxiety signals, ground your feet, and soften your body. How'd you do? Remember noticing your anxiety is the first step, and instead of letting it run amuck, you can use simple coping skills to ease it. But what happens when your anxiety is louder, when it pushes harder and the body alone isn't quite enough to reset it? When your anxiety floods your system, your body enters fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. You might not know what fawn is. Fawn is when your reaction to an event that causes anxiety is to overly accommodate by people pleasing or not really listening to what you need to do. Your thoughts spin into the future or loop around a fear, but your senses are always present. Your senses are the fastest path to what's real, what's happening right now. Dr. Dan Siegel, a clinical professor of psychiatry and a pioneer in the field of interpersonal neurobiology, created the Wheel of awareness, a practice that helps people shift their attention to different parts of their Inner and outer experience. One key part of the wheel is directing attention to the five senses. This isn't just mindfulness. It's a scientific way to anchor yourself. In the present and calm your nervous system. When I teach my mental wellness program, Inner Challenge, this part of the wheel is the one people love the most. You might be like many of my students walking around with your senses online, but not really aware of how helpful they can be unless of course you taste something you don't. Your census help anchor you because they send information straight to the lower brain. The part responsible for survival, regulation, and safety, unlike thoughts which are filtered in future focused, your sensory data is immediate. That's why sensory grounding works even when logic doesn't. It also explains why telling yourself you shouldn't be stressed, you shouldn't be anxious. Rarely works, but grounding yourself, reregulating your nervous system with breath work and using your senses that can offer. Real relief and calm. And guess what Science supports this. Studies in neurobiology show that engaging the senses activates the vagus nerve, which helps reregulate your nervous system and shift your body. Out of high alert, even a few seconds of focused sensory input can lower your heart rate, deepen your breath, and relax your muscles. Okay. Let's walk through how to use each of the five senses as a coping strategy. We are built to use our senses. You do not need a master's degree in this. You do not need to spend hours doing this. Often what I have seen is when people are anxious, they turn to the senses, but they don't always turn to using them in a way that leans towards calming. And that's really key if you want your senses to help reregulate your nervous system. Let's start with sight. Look around you find five things in your environment with a specific color or texture, like five blue things or five soft items. Move your awareness to those items. Earlier this summer, I watched the World's Best Swim teacher. Do this with a student who was terrified of the water. she asked him, what's your favorite color? And of course he said blue as he was putting up a pretty big tantrum. To avoid getting into a blue pool. She replied, let's look for blue things in no time. They did, and then she gently got him to sit at the pool's edge. How about the sense of sound? You might not know this, but sound has three layers the far away. Cars, sirens, the medium, a ticking clock, the near your breath or heartbeat. This brings your focus from the abstract to the immediate. I do this almost every night. When I fall asleep, I lay in my bed and I listen to the crickets. I bring my attention back to my clock ticking, and then. I listen to my breath. It's incredibly grounding. What about touch? Grab something nearby. I just picked up my water bottle. It's cool and it's smooth. You could pick up a pillow, a textured fabric, or even your own hands and bring your awareness to it and feel it fully. I am not sure anyone in the world loves soft things more than my grandson. I watch him calm down as he rolls on a soft blanket or carries one of his beloved stuffed animals. The need to be comforted to self-soothe is ageless. That's why hugs can be very helpful when you're anxious. What about the sense of smell? This is really interesting. Smell bypasses thinking and goes straight to memory and emotion. Keeping a calming scent nearby. Lavender, lemon, peppermint, or something nostalgic can be so calming. Why do you think we all love those scented candles? One of the most helpful tricks to calm a panic attack is scent. A few months ago, a client who was struggling with panic bought a beautiful necklace designed to hold drops of essential oil. That small scent cue helped her reset in moments. And lastly, taste. This is probably the scent that we use the most and we are the most familiar with. But did you know that a strong taste can interrupt anxiety on the spot? Try sour candy a mint. A sip of tea slowly and mindfully. One of my clients said it best, I used to eat mindlessly to calm my anxiety. Now I have my favorite tea for when I really need to calm down. Let's put this all together. When your anxiety overwhelms, you combine body-based grounding with your senses. What is body-based grounding? You move your awareness to your feet and you breathe slowly. Just breathe in, breathe out. You are taking your own wellness into your hands and calming down your central nervous system, and then you reach for peppermint tea, or you listen to the crickets, or you look and touch something beautiful. You are creating a layered coping skill. One that involves your whole body, not just your brain. You're telling your nervous system. I'm safe. I'm here. I got this. Remember those crickets I mentioned earlier? I was so blown away by their sound that I recorded them and turned it into an MP three that you can use on your phone. It's a short calming audio you can play when your mind feels overstimulated or you're trying to wind down for sleep. You close your eyes. Let the sound anchor you in the present and let your nervous system soften. if you'd like my cricket sound reset, just send me an email mj@mjmurrayvachon.com Let me tell you, those crickets are incredible. In this episode, you discovered how to engage your five senses, sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste to support your body When anxiety feels intense, you learned why sensory, grounding calms the nervous system and how to build your own reset routine even in the middle of a stressful day. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Monday with more creating midlife calm.