Ep. 204 Feeling Anxious and Stressed? Your Best Midlife Coping Skill Is Already Inside You

What if your calm hasn’t disappeared — you’ve just stopped practicing how to return to it?
Stress and anxiety in midlife don’t require more control — they require better connection with what’s already inside you.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
1.    How to reconnect with natural calm using everyday moments
2.    Why giving anxiety too much attention increases suffering
3.    Simple coping skills to reset your nervous system in real time
Take 10 minutes to listen  and begin practicing calm, not chasing 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

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover that calm is something already inside of you.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:06

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.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:30

Welcome to the podcast. This week I unexpectedly went on retreat, not the kind with yoga mats or meditation bills. My retreat teacher was my 2-year-old grandson, Neil, and he reminded me that calm isn't something you chase. It's actually something you can return to because it's already inside of you. In this episode, you'll discover what I learned on Retreat That Calm is a natural state that you can reconnect with through practice. And that. No matter how crazy our world is, you can stop giving your anxiety inappropriate attention. And I'll close with a simple Inner Challenge that you can use today to steady your mind. Let's face it, if you're living in the world right now, you know that calm is not going to come from the outside. The world is unpredictable, even if you like myself and many of my clients, limit your news intake every week seems to bring something heartbreaking or violent. And of course you feel anxious, but here's the key. If you wait for the outside world to calm down, you'll never feel peace inside. And that's where Neil, my tiny retreat master, reminded me of something essential. I took the week off to babysit him. His parents came to our home in Indiana. And I just spent hour after hour with this adorable 2-year-old, and the first lesson I learned is this calm is contagious. When practiced in the present, spending eight to 10 hours a day with Neil was really like a crash course in mindfulness. He tattled over to books and flipped through them like they were treasures. He played with the wind chimes and sang country roads. A hundred, no. A thousand times he failed every single day to win my cat over, but his mood never changed. By day three, I noticed something shocking. My mind was calm, completely present, deeply. Content. Neil's calm was contagious. And that's the first big insight I offer you today. Calm is already within you, but you have to practice reconnecting to it. Science backs this up. Neuroscience shows us that repeated habits create new pathways in your brain. The more you bring your attention back to the present, the more your brain wires itself for calm, because in the present. we are paying attention to whatever we're doing. Maybe your eating, maybe your driving, maybe your working on a podcast. Whatever your doing in the present, when your bring your mind there actually brings you to your natural state of calm. So don't just think I want to be less anxious. Practice presence. Cook dinner and pay attention to the smells. Take a walk and notice the sky. Read a book without checking your phone. These simple practices bring you back to what's already there, which leads me to the second insight I wanna share with you, because I have a feeling that you're listening to this and thinking, MJ, that all sounds nice. But first of all, I don't have access to a 2-year-old retreat director, or I can't take the week off work. And also what do I do when something terrible happens? And you're right, life does bring pain. Life does bring suffering. And Neil reminded me of this. Neil has a severe milk allergy. Let me tell you, it's actually terrifying. And I have great respect for his parents as I've watched them learn to accept and work with this allergy without being in a state of constant anxiety or panic. But with this allergy comes blood draws. During his week here, he had to go to a lab. To get his blood drawn. This turned into 25 minutes of awful poking, prodding and tears. Let me tell you, as I watched him sit on his mother's lap. It was awful. He was crying so hard. The two phlebotomists. Were doing their best, but there's no way to really make a blood draw enjoyable through all his tears and his crying, he said, I want Vivaldi. His mother instructed me to turn on the music, so I pulled out my phone, went to Spotify, and Vivaldi began to play. Neil was still crying. but his body softened, the music, gave him a foothold back into calm. He grounded himself without even ever being taught to do this, because within him and within each of us is a knowing, a deep knowing that we can make it through hard things by calming ourself with comfort, and for Neil, music is comfort. As we left the lab, we were heading to his other grandmother's for dinner, and then off to my sister's house for his first pony ride. The lab experience was so distressing. I had the thought. I bet the rest of the day is ruined, this is where he taught me lesson number two. Don't give distress inappropriate attention. When Neil left the lab, when the blood draw was over. It was over. Neil never replayed it. There was no blaming. There was no complaining. He went right back to enjoying his grandmother's delicious green beans and his first pony ride. The Buddhists have a phrase for this. They say, don't give your suffering, don't give your anxiety inappropriate attention. If you keep giving your mind to the pain, it grows bigger. But if you let your attention move on to whatever you're doing in the present, your nervous system resets faster and science agrees with this. Research shows rumination replaying your stress. In your mind, talking about the terrible thing that happened. It keeps your cortisol high, but shifting your focus helps your body settle back into balance. I saw that with my grandson. I practiced that. And from watching him, I learned when my mind this week would go to the horrible things that have happened. I brought my mind to the present to whatever I was doing. I tried to be more like this 2-year-old guru of mine where my mind wasn't focusing on the worries and the concerns of the world. and that's where I offer you this week's Inner Challenge. Try to reconnect with the calm already inside of you. When your thoughts begin to spiral, ground your feet. Take three slow breaths. Gently bring your focus back to what you're doing. Washing dishes, driving, eating, or talking with someone you love. Try to do this three times a day and you'll rediscover that 2-year-old ability, the natural calm you were born with. In today's episode, I shared with you two insights from my unexpected retreat. First calm is already within you and practicing presence helps you return to it. And second, anxiety grows when you give it too much attention, but you can choose to shift your focus back to now. I hope you'll join me on Thursday for a follow-up episode where I'm gonna share with you some practical coping skills that will help you reconnect further with the calm that is naturally inside of you. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Thursday with more creating midlife comb.