Creating Midlife Calm: Coping Skills for Stress & Anxiety in Family, Work & Relationships

Ep. 187 How This Simple 60-Second Coping Skill Eased One Listener’s Midlife Stress & How It'll Reduce Yours Too

• MJ Murray Vachon LCSW • Season 4 • Episode 186

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Can imagining success actually reduce stress in midlife—or is that just wishful thinking?
You’re not the only one who doubts simple coping skills when  stress feels overwhelming.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
1.    A real-life listener’s story of using the “mental movie” coping skill to calm stress before a job interview
2.    How running the mental movie three times helps ease resistance and create calm
3.    Why imagining success in everyday tasks like getting to bed can break the anxiety cycle in midlife
 Take 15 minutes to learn a coping skill that brings your stressed brain back online—you’re worth it.
Email me at mj@mjmurrayvachon.com for your free copy of The Mental Movie

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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.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

​In this episode, you'll discover the simple mental shift that will transform your stress into action. 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. I'm excited you're here today because we have one of my favorite segments. But MJ really where a listener shares their experience trying a coping skill. From Monday's episode, this time it's the mental movie, A deceptively simple way to move through stress by imagining yourself doing the thing you've been avoiding. In episode 1 79, we define stress as the feeling that something important needs to get done, but your brain wired for efficiency. Yes, A little lazy, resists, especially with those tedious and emotionally loaded tasks. This is where the mental movie comes in. Your brain can't really tell the difference between imagining and doing so. Visualizing the start of the task gives you a jumpstart. Does it really work? My daughter, Abby was home for a visit and I asked her to give it her best shot. Abby, welcome to the podcast and let's begin by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself.

Guest:

I am so happy to be here, and I am currently on the search for a job, which is what I used for my mental movie.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

I wanna begin by asking you to explain to our listeners the mental movie coping skill.

Guest:

The coping skill of creating a mental movie is basically visualizing whatever you are trying to do before you're doing it. To minimize some resistance.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

What's your own relationship to resistance?

Guest:

I think like a lot of people we feel a lot of resistance toward many different tasks because of our phones. The phone has given me an instant gratification that takes longer to get when, you're doing something like cleaning your house. I find most things that I have to do in life I have a level of resistance toward. I'm really good at pushing through that, but it's definitely something that I have all the time.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

I asked you to listen to Monday's episode and then I said just try it and just to be clear, My kids aren't my clients. It's not like I've been sharing these coping skills with you throughout your life. You probably hadn't even heard of this coping skill, had you?

Guest:

No, I had not heard of this coping skill.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

Can you share with our listeners what you did with the mental movie in your week?

Guest:

Yes. I had an interview that, I had to do, but I was very nervous prior to it, I, took some breaths, put my feet on the floor, and then visualized the interview going well, and then again, put my feet on the ground, took some breaths, visualized in a different way, going well. They did a third time and once again, visualize it going well. I think for me, what was interesting is doing it several times because, I think my resistance to something like this would be, well then I'm, I'm picturing the way I, I think it should be going, but doing it multiple times allowed me some kind of flexibility with it. That was really nice. And also, I could be more responsive in the interview,

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

Okay, I think that's really insightful. One of the key parts of this coping skill is if you can make yourself do it three times, magic kind of happens, and the magic is not external. The magic doesn't make the person give you the job, but the magic helps your brain move from being anxious and stressed to being more open. More flexible and adaptive, which will make you more coherent. The model that I use of me mental wellness, it's our mind is meant to be calm, alert, and peaceful. Now again, your not gonna be super calm before your interview, but we do wanna be fairly peaceful and alert. That's important. Using the mental movie, not once, not twice, but three times, you could see your mind Feel less stress and then become more open, more flexible, more adaptive, more coherent.

Guest:

I think it was first just level of the volume down. There's a lot of thoughts and energy going on that I can't even tell you really what they were. But it was distracting. And then as I did it each time, I just felt the volume went down. And again, I wanna be honest, I was very resistant to doing this. I did not feel a hundred percent like it would work. The first time I was like, I don't think this is really helping, but I'll do it. And then honestly, it was after the third time, I was like, oh, I feel like that's helpful. But the first time and a half I didn't. Feel the benefit

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

that would be true of anything if we stand up our back feels a little tight, probably the first stretch isn't gonna make us more flexible. The second will feel a little better, the third will feel a little better. This really is in the same vein. How long did you run the movie? Not long.

Guest:

I think 20 to 30 seconds.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

I would say mine are almost never more than 20 seconds. So we're talking about one minute. Pretty. Yeah.

Guest:

A lot less

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

than

Guest:

screen time.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

A lot less than screen time because screen time is another form of movie, but it's a form of distraction. When we feel stressed about something and we're avoiding it, the screen is a beautiful experience of a movie from the outside in. Yeah. And the mental movie is actually a movie that starts within you and moves outward.

Guest:

Like many people, I need to do this thing, But first I'm gonna just scroll a little bit. And it would be interesting to implement this instead of. I can do the phone, but I'm gonna first do the mental movie, and my instinct would probably be, oh, I don't need to do the phone. I'm gonna go do the thing I need to do.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

Yes. Though we often turn to our phone for comfort. But what happens is we don't have control of what we see on our phone. We might have a little influence, like, oh, I'm gonna go to my favorite TikTok person who has puppies. And then on that particular day, she's like, I have terrible news. This puppy died. And then you're all churned up. When we're stressed, our body needs us to do something and the phone is doing something, but it's also out of our control of where it takes us. The mental movie. Actually in your control of where we take it. Were you surprised that when you created the movie that it didn't end up in catastrophe?

Guest:

I do think the time limit is helpful for that. Because it didn't give myself, more space to catastrophize I have to come up three times with how this is going to go well, and that creativity, I think, distracted me

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

it's really amazing for me as a therapist. I have done this thousands of times with people and nobody at their third running has had a negative movie. And I think it's because we are innately self-protective. While stress is different than anxiety, anxiety is. Something that hasn't happened in the future or something that we regret that happened in the past, but stress is in the now. The mental movie is a coping skill that we use for a stressor that we have now, and that stressor can be as small as I need to get the dishes done, or as big as I have this job interview. Did you use it any other time? I did.

Guest:

I love To fall asleep on the couch. It's one of my favorite things in the world, and I wanted to have a really good night of sleep, so I knew that if I got ready for bed and got my own bed, it would be a. Much better night of sleep. Before that, I did do the mental movie once, twice, and then I was able to do it. That's what was interesting to me is that I didn't take as much willpower

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

I said on Monday's episode that that is the number one. Way that people that I have worked with have applied this coping skill, and that is to get themselves to bed on time or for those many, many people who are couch surfers to get themselves in their bed so they can actually get a quality night sleep and not wake up with a crank in their neck.

Guest:

I think what was helpful about it is sometimes when you're imagining a task like that, it feels like so many steps. It feels like so much, even though it's really not, you're just tired and it was just a nice route. Okay, this is the first thing I'm gonna do, and you just went ahead and went for it, which I think was easier than imagining the whole process.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

If we accept what science tells us that the brain is lazy and the brain loves efficiency. We all have lazy brains. If we accept that, then we understand the value of a coping skill like this that kickstarts the brain. And then what happens is that the brain kicks into efficient mode. And it just naturally will move through something you've done thousands of times in your life. Like put yourself to bed in an efficient way.

Guest:

That makes a lot of sense. I did feel a little bit more efficient. What I like about it is you don't have to go get anything. It's easy, it's simple, but it's really just making yourself do it once. And I think for me, that's gonna be the hack. Just do it once.'cause once you start to do it, then you'll want to probably do the movie again.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

That is so true in my experience of working with people is that I think that is because the brain loves efficiency, and second, I just think as humans we're naturally resistant to doing that, which is good for us. If I accept, hey, I'm naturally resistant to doing what's good for myself, and here's a hack, then. We can have a lot more agency in being able to get ourselves to do what we want, which then actually helps us to have a lot more time to be able to do things that are fun.

Guest:

It is so easy to waste time in those in-between periods of resistance, and you're not even really enjoying yourself. It's almost like more like you're enjoying the, I got away with this, right? These 20 minutes I was supposed to be doing this, but I really should be doing this and you're not really relaxing or decompressing.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

I want to slay resistance because I think resistance is the thief of joy. I love The concept of what would your life be like if you tackled resistance.

Guest:

I really agree with that. There are so many things we wanna do every day, and it's just so easy for me personally to feel like I can't do all of those things or really have the time when I probably do. It's just that. Initial resistance at the beginning. The examples I gave you were things either I knew I had to do, like I'm not gonna not go to the interview, right? Or. Pretty quick task. Get ready for bed. I'm a person who I can be incredibly detail oriented. Because of that, I sometimes will not want to do something because of the amount of time it will take. An example of this is When I clean floors, I can see things that probably the average person can't see because I am really detailed. A 30 minute job could be an hour job for me. What would you say to someone like that when their resistance is really the amount of time that they're willing to put into something?

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

I would say run the mental movie. Run the mental movie, and see yourself cleaning the floors with. A spirit that is a little less intense. My hunch would be having done this with lots of people is the second or third movie they're actually putting on music that helps them not get so intense. They're not playing the theme song from Gladiator. They're playing something from Sesame Street or, I don't know, I music share department, not mine. Yeah. Run the mental movie with that intention. And resistance and avoidance is all of us not being grounded in being present and not having intention. Sometimes I think when we hear the word intention, we zone out because there's this whole speak in the big culture of, visualize that you are going to climb this mountain or you're gonna make$4 million, that is great if people wanna do it. I just don't live in that sphere. I'm just trying to get through my day feeling happy and peaceful and calm. Mental wellness is going through your day with a spirit. That's buoyant. A spirit that's attentive, a spirit that is uplifted, whether you're cleaning the floors or doing an interview. Now, that isn't always possible, but if we don't have the intention of loosen up and don't take it so seriously and run a mental movie of doing the floors with a lighter spirit, then it won't happen.

Guest:

The, the music is a really good trick too. And the intention, you know, I will be honest, when you said intention initially, I cringed a little bit.'cause I think of the kind of woo, like my intention is to clean the floor with, it's something that feels very, not tangible, but if the intention is to be able to get this done so I can go do some other things today too, or just get it done in 30 minutes, I actually start to plan it a little better, I think is part of it. And the task does become a little smaller.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

That is a very key part of resistance. Often our resistance without the mental movie, we have this subliminal backstory going that whatever we're doing is so big. When I thought about on a Sunday morning having to do my billing, that felt oppressive? And when I ran the mental movie, I realized, oh, I just had to deposit checks and I literally laughed at myself. And that's the spirit of the mental movie. Making everything bigger than it is to right sizing it with a lighter spirit. I use this easily two or three times a day. I have almost no resistance anymore in my life where I used to have a lot. But what's really lovely is I almost always am laughing at myself Who resists putting money in the bank? In this episode, I wanna thank you, Abby, a real life listener for trying the mental movie and really making it come to life for our listeners and sharing how you used it, but also sharing your questions about it. If you'd like a PDF of this process, send me an email at mj@mjmurrayvachon.com. I'll put that email in the show notes and I will send you for free this super helpful coping skill. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Monday with more Creating Midlife Calm.