Ep. 215 How to Disappointment-Proof Your Holiday in 6 Minutes Using This Unexpected Midlife Coping Skill for Stress and Anxiety

What if the secret to a peaceful Thanksgiving isn’t in what you plan—but in what you accept?
You’re not alone if the holidays bring a mix of love, pressure, and unrealistic expectations.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
1.    Why disappointment hits harder in midlife—and how to soften it with self-awareness.
2.    The one ingredient that transforms stress into calm (no gratitude list required).
3.    A simple coping skill that keeps connection strong, even when the day doesn’t go as planned.
 Take six minutes to reset your mindset, reduce stress, and create calm that lasts through the holiday—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.

Transcript

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover the one ingredient that helps you enjoy the holiday no matter what happens.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:08

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: 0:32

Welcome to the podcast. Today's another mini episode, just six minutes to help you head into the holiday with more calm and connection. On Monday, I shared my family tradition of writing short poems for special occasions. If you haven't listened, go back. It's only four minutes, and I invited you to have a phone free holiday. It's a funny little poem that you can pass on to your guests as a way of inviting them to have more connection, because let's be honest, holidays rarely go as planned, but calm and connection are always within our reach. Now I know that putting your phone away for a while on this holiday sounded simple on Monday. But today, that's a whole different challenge. You up for it. Just put that phone far away from your guests and be present to your day. And if you didn't invite others to join you, it's not too late. You can still put a basket by the door with a note that says, welcome to a phone free holiday. Two to four, or if you're eating out, invite everyone to keep their phones off the table and truly be there. It's a small act with a big impact because if the phone is the ingredient to leave out for more connection, then the ingredient to add for more calm, fun and joy is patient acceptance. Holidays are tricky. There's so much planning and preparation that your mind starts imagining what the day should be like, and honestly, that anticipation and planning, it's part of the fun. It's what builds excitement and hope. But when the day finally arrives, those same expectations can quietly set you up for disappointment. Remember Christmas as a kid you'd imagine opening gifts and feeling pure joy, but sometimes there was a little disappointment because what you imagine never perfectly matches what happens. So as you listen to this, check in with yourself, what are your expectations? Would you be willing to let go of them for today? Sounds easy, right? But it's not still, it's possible. Here's where to start. Notice who your expectations are for. Are you hoping your two relatives who don't get along suddenly well, that no one will bring up politics, that your aunt won't bring the cranberries, or that people won't drink too much? If your expectations are about what other people do, how much control do you really have? Yep. Zero. Families are messy and they're yours. You might want them to fit your ideals, but they never will. Not because they don't love you, but because every person at your table is living their own story with their own needs, their own expectations, their own limits. None of them will perfectly match yours this truth can sting, but it's also freeing. Maybe Uncle Joe or your college nephew won't buy into phone free holiday, but you and plenty of others can. So the one ingredient to bring to your day is this, accept that each person comes as they are, not as you wish them to be. Patient acceptance isn't giving up. It's choosing peace of mind over control. It's reminding yourself, I can't manage others, but I can manage my own mindset. And you get to choose how you meet that truth. Let me share with you one of my all time favorite stories from the couch. A few years ago, a client of mine had found great calm in writing a nightly list of five things she was grateful for. She decided to bring that idea to Thanksgiving, asking her family to each share something they were grateful for. When she suggested it, her teenage son rolled his eyes and said, i'd be grateful if we didn't do this dumb idea. She burst into tears and left the table. Her husband yelled at their son, her mother's sied, and said, we never would've spoken to our parents like that. She sat in her room for a bit, had a good cry, and then remembered this idea of patient acceptance. She came back to the table and said, I'd be grateful if I could join you all. I'm sorry. Her son apologized and said, okay, we can do it. I'm grateful. My parents let me say what I think and still love me. Everyone laughed. I love this story because it's real. The spirit of a messy family doing its best. We all misstep and when we do, the goal isn't perfection, it's repair. You notice, you reregulate your emotions and thoughts and you reach back out. Trust me, your mindset is all in your control. In this episode, you discovered that the one ingredient to bring to your day is patient acceptance, the calm, understanding that every person at your table comes with their own story, their own hopes, their own way of showing love. When you let go of what should happen and stay grounded in what is happening, connection grows naturally and gratitude follows. Remember, holidays don't have to be perfect to be meaningful. They just have to be real. If you found this episode helpful, forward it to a friend. Trust me, they will be grateful from my home to yours, happy holiday and thanks for listening. I'll be back on Monday with more creating midlife calm.