Ep. 233 The Surprising Way Disconnection From Yourself Causes Loneliness, Anxiety & Stress, in Midlife

Why do anxiety and stress linger in midlife—even when you’re surrounded by people?
You’re not broken—your nervous system may be responding to a quieter form of loneliness that often goes unrecognized.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

1.     Why anxiety and stress in midlife can stem from disconnection from yourself—not just from other people

2.     How coping skills rooted in self-alignment (not performance or pressure) naturally lower anxiety

3.     Why restoring calm first makes connection feel safer—without forcing yourself into uncomfortable situations

🎧 Take 13 minutes to learn coping skills that reduce anxiety, stress, and loneliness in midlife—without pushing, performing, or forcing connection—you’re worth it.

Have you tried journaling, deep breathing, podcasts, therapy—even medication—and still feel anxious, stressed, and overwhelmed in midlife?

I’m creating a new program to help you experience real midlife calm, and instead of guessing what you need, I want to hear directly from you.

👉 Take this short, anonymous 2-minute survey:
https://forms.gle/zU92vegG8ruAXEGZ7

Thank you!

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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: 0:41

In this episode, you'll discover how reconnecting with yourself can lower 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. On Monday, we talked about something many people feel, but rarely name out loud. How loneliness increases anxiety and stress in midlife, and why that's not a personal failure. We looked at that through two very different lenses. The good life mindset and the abundant life mindset. The Good Life mindset tells you to fix yourself, push harder, and prove you're doing life the right way. Even when it comes to connection, the abundant life mindset offers something gentler. It says, wellbeing begins with safety, not performance, and that connection grows best when pressure comes down first. My 40 years as a therapist have shown me that in midlife, a quieter voice often begins to surface a voice that wants more of the abundant life mindset. Learning to identify it. And listen to it can help create more authentic and calmer connection in your life. This is why I chose to begin this new year looking at resolutions to these two mindsets. I invite you to look at the six previous episodes where I explain the good life and the abundant life mindset. Talked about losing weight and how to keep moving. Today's episode is a continuation of that conversation, but with a very specific focus. This episode is not about pushing yourself to be more social. It's not about forcing connection and it's not about doing more. It's about how to reduce loneliness and create more calm and connection by restoring something internal first. In this episode, you'll discover why loneliness can exist even when you're not socially isolated. How midlife responsibilities often pull you away from yourself, not just other people. And how reconnecting with who you are can reduce anxiety and increase calm. But first, let's return to Monday's Inner Challenge. Monday's Inner Challenge was intentionally gentle. It wasn't about increasing connection, but rather about reducing first social pressure and second internal pressure. You know, the, I should pressure. That matters here because today builds on the same idea. Anxiety eases when safety and coherence return. Coherence is the experience of being aligned with yourself. Take a moment to reflect on that. It may be easy to notice when you're not aligned, the one-sided friendship or being so over committed that there's no time for self care. But it's equally important to notice when you are aligned, the work project that lights you up or the quiet evening that lets you read and everything in your body relaxes, connects, and feels good again. but now I want to talk about a different kind of loneliness. Here's the reframe I want to offer you today. Midlife loneliness is often not about being alone. It's about being disconnected from yourself, your authentic self in midlife, so much pulls your attention and actions outward work, caregiving, responsibility, logistics being needed. Not to mention the phone survival mode becomes efficient, but it's not always nourishing. Over time, things quietly fall away. Interests, creativity, values, meaning parts of you that once felt alive you can be busy. You can be capable. You can be needed and still feel strangely unanchored inside. And when that internal anchor is missing, anxiety and restlessness often rise because nothing feels settled or coherent. This is why loneliness can exist even when you're not isolated. Let me name something subtle, but important. People often ask, why do I feel lonely even though I'm not actually alone? Possibly because your identity has evolved, but your self recognition hasn't caught up. It's a bit of identity. Jet lag. Earlier in life, the big question was, who am I? In midlife, the question quietly transforms to who am I now? Life changes you. Experience changes. You loss. Responsibility. Growth and challenge reshape you, but you might be living from an outdated version of yourself, one that no longer fits that gap creates a quiet loneliness, and anxiety, and restlessness often sit right on top of it. The Good Life mindset often handles this by saying, be practical, be responsible. Be secure. Be realistic. And so you tell yourself, I'll get back to what matters later. This isn't the season for me. Other people need me more. The roles stay intact, but self connection erodes the abundant life mindset asks different questions. What parts of me went quiet? What still tugs at me? Even if I ignore it? What did I sacrifice that mattered? from this lens, loneliness isn't failure. It's information, it's longing. It's a signal that something in you is asking for recognition. Sometimes loneliness isn't about missing people. It's about missing a part of yourself. Let me give you an example. I had a client who shared that on his way to our session, he drove past to high school, and as he passed it, he felt an ache, not regret, just a quiet tug. Earlier in life, he had dreamed of being a high school coach. Instead, he chose financial security and became a lawyer. What matters here is this. He wasn't unhappy being a lawyer and he wasn't lonely because he lacked relationships. He was lonely for a part of himself that never had room, a part that wanted to mentor, guide and shape young lives. That ache wasn't regret, it was unexpressed identity. And this is often how anxiety enters when meaningful parts of who you are go unrecognized internal dissonance builds. The nervous system stays unsettled. Anxiety rises, not because something is wrong, but because something important is asking to be seen. Sometimes this can feel scary because our culture tells a very dramatic story about midlife, that if you notice longing, you must blow up everything and start over. But that's not what this is. What this looks like instead is a gentle midlife update for my client. Simply naming that longing began to lower his stress. Nothing changed around him, but something important came back online inside, and that's where calm begins. No crisis. Just an update. Guided. By midlife courage and wisdom, I want to offer two gentle doorways for reflection, not action. Doorway. Number one. Childhood interests. What absorbed you before. Usefulness and productivity mattered. Teaching, building, writing, music, nature, curiosity. This isn't about going backward. It's about retrieving energy and coherence, alignment with yourself. Doorway two. What's quietly pulling at you? Now? The thing you say you don't have time for. The idea that keeps resurfacing the class you dismissed as impractical a poetry class. Morning writing time. A pottery class writing a choir, spiritual study. These polls matter because they restore self connection and authentic self connection. Grounded in the abundant life mindset reduces stress and anxiety. And increases enjoyment. That's today's goal, not social expansion. Let me say this clearly, you're not fixing loneliness. Here. You are reducing anxiety by restoring self coherence. Self coherence simply means you feel like you're living from the same place inside. Again, your values, your energy, and your actions start to line up. When self coherence returns, internal safety increases, agency returns, meaning stabilizes and grows. And when anxiety comes down, connection becomes safer. Let me give you another example from the couch. I worked with a midlife client whose life looked full, but she didn't feel nourished. She was giving constantly to others with very little refueling for herself. She loved to paint, but there was no room for it in her life. No space to leave out a project, no uninterrupted time, and a loud voice saying she'd come back to this when her kids went to college. In 10 years, as we talked it through, she realized she didn't need to do this perfectly. She didn't need a home studio or a half day carved out. She needed permission to meet herself where her life actually was. She decided to take a class at a local art studio twice a month, paying for the class helped her show up The studio solved the space issue and four hours a month. Connecting with her Inner artist without setup or cleanup, made an immediate difference. She felt calmer. More energized, more like herself. That's the abundant life at work. Not pushing or performing, but choosing what helps you feel grounded, whole, and at home in yourself. Something else happened too. She met people in the class who shared her interest, and one of her preteen children said, mom, that's so cool that you're painting. I hope when I'm old like you, I have the guts to do something new. Of course. When we talk about loneliness, we usually talk about it. When we talk about loneliness, we often talk about it from the perspective of reaching out and strengthening relationships with others. Check out episodes 1 96 and 1 97 where I talk about the importance and strategies on how to do this. But for today, you are reaching inward and you're reconnecting with yourself as we close out January, we're closing this month long. Look at New Year's resolutions through the good life and the abundant life lens. Thank you so much for joining me. I feel great about where creating midlife Calm is headed In this new year in November, I learned that we are in the top 5% of all podcasts. I wanna thank you for the support and the continual listenership that you have given me over the past year. And if you're new to creating Midlife Calm, welcome, and check out all my past episodes, and I invite you to follow me and share this episode with a friend, because that's how together we create more midlife, calm. In this episode, you discovered that loneliness doesn't always come from lack of people, but from lack of self connection. You learned why midlife responsibilities can pull you away from your identity and how that disconnection fuels anxiety and stress, and how restoring self coherence can soften loneliness without forcing uncomfortable connection. Remember, you don't need to push. You don't need to perform. You don't need to fix yourself. Reconnecting with who you are is often the calmest place to begin. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Monday with more creating midlife calm.