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

Ep. 207 Death as a Teacher: How Thinking About Mortality Strengthens Midlife Coping Skills for Stress & Anxiety

• MJ Murray Vachon LCSW • Season 4 • Episode 207

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What if thinking about death could actually teach you how to live with more peace, presence, and perspective?
You don’t have to explore this alone.
In this episode, you’ll discover:

  1. Why practicing small acts of letting go builds resilience for life’s biggest transitions.
  2. How the body “knows how to die” and what that means for reducing fear and blame.
  3. A simple yoga pose that can shift how you approach mortality and daily anxiety adding meaning and clarity to your life. 

 Take 20 minutes to practice letting go and discover new calm in midlife—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.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

In this episode, you'll discover how gently imagining death can ease anxiety and deepen the quality of your life. 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. It's Halloween, a season where our culture brushes up against images of death, often in playful or spooky ways. But today we're continuing our real conversation about what death can teach us about living fully. On Monday, I shared part one of my talk with my cousin Beth Kavanaugh, a hospice nurse. With nearly two decades of experience, we explored how thinking about death can bring more presence and peace. Into our daily lives. In this second part, we go deeper. You'll hear how practicing small acts of letting go, that actually have very little to do with dying, prepares you for life's biggest transitions. Why the body actually knows how to die, something I had never thought about and how a simple yoga pose can gently shift how you think about mortality. I'm grateful and excited to welcome back, Beth, to continue our conversation.

Guest:

Thank you MJ for having me.

I think of all my friends who are in healthcare. One thing they say is that. People really don't understand. That for many medical conditions there, isn't a fix. From your perspective, how can the 45 year old, the 58 year old to 71 year old? How can they hold? This in evitable fact that we will die. Someday. How can we do that in normal everyday life? You do it because you're a hospice nurse, I did it because I fell into this class. And also I'm at an age as a therapist where I am dealing with. My client's desk, the loved ones of my client's desk. how do we sturdy our self for this inevitable experience?

Guest:

I was thinking about my dad who never really got on board with my mom's death. My mom died when she was 58 and he and I took care of her. And he really, he denied it. He was trying to make her steak and potatoes instead of sitting at her bedside. And she really didn't want to eat anything. Just be with her. Think a lot of fortitude comes from self care practices. A Inner stability. for lots of people, it could be meditation. It could be prayer. It could be. Some type of. Compassion work. I do feel like you need some inner fortitude to acknowledge that death is a reality in our life.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

Part of what you're saying about your dad. Is he couldn't sit. With the truth. I'm going to lose my wife at a young age.

Guest:

I think it's easier for. People that think about other people dying, even though it's really hard to think about your mom dying or your kids dying. We have a lifetime of. Things that are difficult. Uncomfortable that come at us. And I think it might be important to look at what you're avoiding in your daily life, in your 24 hour life. Because, people drink to avoid. People run marathons to avoid. There's so many ways that we avoid the uncomfortable things that happen in our lives. Paying attention to your body and what's going on with it. The reality of death is it is the most uncomfortable thing to get on board with. How do you eat an elephant bite by bite. So tiny little bites, right? Have to get onboard with your dad. I think you have to. Oh, I'm having anxiety right now. Oh, this is uncomfortable. I'm going to feel it in my body. Why do I have it is because I feel left out for my friends or whatever it is, 54. I still have those feelings. Then I'm like, oh, that's weird. Why? I have this discomfort and then I'm okay with it. After a while. And then. It dissipates. And I'll think, oh, I should do something that would make me feel better about those. So I'm going to call a friend and be proactive about it.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

In my mental wellness terms is tending and befriending. That's what the monk was having me do. And I went from two seconds and then I went up to a minute, two minutes to finally in the combination of class, we did this 45 minute meditation. On our death. Then it made it. Okay. Yeah. And it also made it humorous. Because it's really funny. To avoid something that I completely know is going to happen. Could be today. It could be. I'm lucky, like my mom and lived to be 92. But it does make a difference because every time we don't blame an unclaim unclaimed is avoiding. But rather tend to befriend. I do think we live very differently.

Guest:

It's richer, more depth, I do think that self-awareness. Is one of the tickets to a good death. People who are more self aware There endings. Are very rich. Rich with people in their lives, rich with, satisfaction in their lives. Maybe a belief in. Spiritual peace. That's not for everybody.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

Your self-awareness isn't a dive into self absorption or selfishness. But when we look at self-awareness through the lens of someday, I will die. I think we live very differently in those last years. I'm so happy. I get to be a therapist at this age and stage. Because obviously when I was 35, nobody in their seventies or eighties would come to me. Like that just wouldn't be. Why would somebody who's 80. See if. Five-year-old. But I have a good number of people in the last 10 years that are in the next stage of their life. I see them. Really decluttering. I see them making very conscious choices I don't want to burden my children in having to go through all of my things. I'm going to keep fit. Yeah, because someday someone will have to move me in a bed. And I want that to be possible. And self-awareness as we think about death also is to be thoughtful to others. I've had a number of sessions with children and their parents about driving. Of giving up the keys that's a loving thing to do. But that's also a death. There's a million deaths before we breathe. Our last breath. I like to think of, we're practicing for the big death, by letting go of things all of the way through. I actually helped my siblings clean out my parents' house. Where nothing had been discarded. That was a gift. They gave me their death, that I'm going to do differently for my children

Guest:

When people come to our hospice home, they have one room. And they come with three shirts. A pair of slippers. it's very stark. When you think about how it all ends and. other stuff is somewhere else.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

It's

Guest:

very bizarre.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

To take advantage of those very small moments in regular life that we step into death. Most people know someone who's dying. But I think there's value in reflecting on how that hits us. We sit at funerals and think about our own life.

Guest:

A hundred percent of the time. Don't you go back home and aren't you like a better human, I'm going to do this

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

and to have the guts to stay with that for awhile. And not go back to work and pretend that I wasn't at a funeral, which is an option, to sit in the funeral and reflect what is this particular funeral saying to me? Not just about that person's role in my life, which I think is. Super interesting and helpful. But what is it saying about this moment? In my life. And how can this make me better at death? And then better at life

Guest:

It's just letting go, right? When you think about all the things you have to let go of and death, and for people have a chronic illness, it's a slow. Letting go of each Activity of daily living, all of the sudden you can't walk as well anymore. And all of a sudden you can't breathe anymore. And all of a sudden you can't really feed yourself anymore. I think every day, if you practice letting go of something, maybe it's anger. Maybe it's letting go of. A dollar that you have in your wallet and giving it to somebody else, maybe it's Letting go of an idea you have, and you really want to carry through and nobody else wants to get on board with you letting it go. We

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

Practice. That if you think about someone who's a really good singer, they do a million vocal exercises, to be able to sing that song. Effortless beautifully. And so people who die well, they probably have practice letting go. Many times. Our daily life. If we're open to, it gives us the chance to do that. You said something in the class yesterday, that was really helpful to me as a therapist. I always have clients who's got people dying in their life. And often people use hospice and a very common thing that people say in my office. Is, I feel like hospice killed them you explained to the class. Why people don't want to eat.

Guest:

When people are dying, they lose their appetite and ability to swallow. And it happens over time, but it happens to almost everybody who is on a death trajectory at some point that cannot swallow food or fluids safely. And so you slowly ease them into yogurt and maybe thickened liquid, and then maybe just drop some water on the tongue. And, you progressively help them through this stage. That's really hard for family because family will want to feed grandma, even though she's choking, coughing can swallow. Then they're afraid mom's going to die from starvation. She's starting from starvation. I'm like, no. This is part of the dying process. She's not dying from starvation. Her diminished appetite is a natural response to the dying process. Our body knows how to do death. And we have to, at some point, trust it along the way and help. Hospice is hopefully there too. Educate along the way about the fact that, grandma can't eat or drink anymore because this is part of the dying process. Our body knows how to do this time process. And that's why we have diminished appetite.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

Wow. That's so powerful to me. Because we have medicalized the dying process. And some of that is really important because of pain control. But part of all the advancements in medicine. Is this idea. That somehow death can be avoided. And I have never even thought. Until you said it in class yesterday. That the body knows how to die.

Guest:

Yeah.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

It's the same as the body knows how to give birth. But for lots of reasons, some good, some I'm not sure. They're good. We've really medicalized the childbirth process. Some of that saves lives for sure. But some of that, doesn't let the body do what it's designed to do. And then as humans, we end up trying to impose control. Instead of having this inner peace. The body knows how to do this. It doesn't mean we don't use resources. I've never thought of it that way until you just said this and how often I've been. In sessions with people where they are trying to impose control. And when it doesn't work out, they're often blaming themselves. Or they're blaming the doctor, right? Instead of having this experience of this as a normal part of life, this is a normal process. The body knows how to do this. How do we tend to befriend?

Guest:

For every. Thousand deaths. There are a thousand variations. And. Most of those people die the same way. There really is a dying process that happens for many people. Yeah, our body does know how to die. And I like the idea of creating space. That's why I love being in a hospice facility. Because they have 24 7 reminders that this is a normal part of the dying process and it's okay.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

We used hospice for my dad and they were incredibly helpful. Left to our own devices. I just don't think he would have had the beautiful, peaceful death, that he was able to have There was one part in the weekend that was really difficult. He really want to die at home. And I was like, this is too much for us. We need to move him into a facility. And the hospice nurse just looked me straight in the face and said, You need to get stronger. I laughed and my mother was there and she goes, I don't think anyone's ever said that to you. I think I was just so afraid. This was out of my wheelhouse for sure. And out of everybody else's right. But it wasn't out of hers. She had one of those live strong bracelets on and I said I need one of those. With their guidance and their education, though, I kept asking how much longer they would never tell us. We knew it was within days, but I was looking for the hour in the minute. In closing, is there anything that you think for the listener that. Might be helpful for them. In trying to think about death.

Guest:

I think that is one way you could literally do it is lie down, corpse pose. Everybody's doing that, right? Poses for real. That's why it was created to imagine your death you could do it in yoga. You could lay down in bed, but I do think taking, even five minutes or I'm going to start small. And just imagining your death or imagining what it would be like on your death bed.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

Have you ever been in a yoga class where they've done corpse pose and said, imagine your death? No, I haven't either. I've probably done corpse pose. 10,000 times. Until you said it. I never even connected it to death. I'm thinking of some pleasant nature. That's mind blowing.

Guest:

Yeah. So lots of people do yoga probably. So that's a good place to start.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

For some people who have a brain that leans towards OCD. They think a lot about death. And that's very yeah, that's very problematic. I've played around a lot with all this. With certain people and they have really. Come to tend to befriend it. They're natural reaction is for some reason, their brain thinks about death more. And then they have a lot of panic around. And when they just see this as a helpful thought. And they don't panic and avoid, which is what they want to do. But just sink into it. And let it pass through their mind. They tend to befriend it. Then it just goes, yeah. It is like corpse posts. It's so obvious. But it's also an intrusive thought. That's really connected to reality.

Guest:

I think we are placed on this planet for an unknown amount of time. It could be two. Yes, it could be 82 years. We don't know. And so I think just sinking into that, I don't think it's all about going out and going to Hawaii and buying as many things as you can. I think it's about really being with that. Reality that This is an unknown timeline. And so lying down and having a practice that's uncomfortable. Start there

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

Okay. For a minute, we'll each imagine our own death, and then we'll share with our listeners what went through our minds.

Guest:

I imagine being under a maple tree and backyard. And a really comfortable. Like a Tempur-Pedic mattress. Super comfy warm, like soft blankets around me, my family around me, but not talking at me. I didn't want any BS. I didn't want to be like, everything's okay. I just wanted like quiet and like supportive. Loving presence. And then I imagine there's this choir called the threshold choir. And they sing beautiful songs when people are transitioning. And I thought about them. There.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

That's a really good one.

Guest:

Yeah.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

I'm going to up my game, go to that. What I have in my sleep number bed. And my kids, my daughter-in-law. And my daughter who I'm really close to can handle it.

Guest:

Oh, yeah.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

And so she's. Like facilitating the process.

Guest:

Yeah.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

And it's good.

Guest:

Yeah.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

So in many ways it looked like my parents' death.

Guest:

Oh, because both of my

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

parents had these really beautiful desks with all their children around them. And those are the death experiences that. Are imprinted in my heart and I just translate them into my brain.

Guest:

Yeah,

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

Which actually surprises me that when we took that minute to think about our death, that's what came to my mind and it's kind of comforting because I can see how far I've come in the last 10 years just reflecting on this really difficult subject. Beth, I wanna thank you for. Being with us these last two episodes, and for sharing with us your wisdom. How often families and individuals misunderstand the natural changes that happen at the end of life and how trusting the body's wisdom can ease fear and reduce blame, i'm grateful that we were able to explore just the idea of practicing daily, letting go, whether of things control or even small irritation, and how that practice can strengthen us for the larger letting go that are inevitable in life. And of course, when death comes, we also reflected on how self-awareness and honest conversations create a more peaceful path, not only for ourselves, but also for those we love. By sitting with the reality that our time is limited, we can free ourselves to live more lightly, more lovingly, and more fully, not just in midlife, but until the end of our life. I do want to say to our listeners if reflecting on death feels too overwhelming to do on your own, or if thoughts about death show up in an intrusive or distressing way, please don't hesitate to reach out to a skilled professional for support. I wanna end these two episodes with a gentle Inner Challenge. Just give yourself one minute to imagine your own death in a way that feels safe and supportive to you. Picture where you're at, who was around you, and a sense of peace you would want to carry into that moment. Notice what rises up. Not to frighten yourself, but to practice befriending the truth. If this exercise feels worthwhile, but too overwhelming to do on your own, know that reaching out to a therapist, a religious advisor, or another trusted professional or friend can provide a safe space to explore it even a single minute, or as I learned. Two seconds of reflection can help you live today with greater calm, depth and clarity. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Monday with more creating midlife calm.