Ep. 232 Why Loneliness Increases Anxiety and Stress in Midlife and How Understanding This Brings Calm

Why does loneliness in midlife so often show up as anxiety and stress instead of sadness?
Nothing is wrong with you—your nervous system is responding exactly as humans are wired to respond.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

1.     Why loneliness acts as an amplifier for anxiety and stress in midlife

2.     How modern connection and emotional unsafety can quietly increase loneliness

3.     How coping skills that reduce pressure—not performance—restore calm and safety

 🎧 Take 12 minutes to understand how loneliness fuels anxiety in midlife—and what actually helps—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 why loneliness quietly increases anxiety and stress in midlife.

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. As we wrap up January, we're finishing our look at New Year's Resolutions 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 the right thing. The abundant life mindset offers something gentler. It says, growth happens to support not pressure, and that wellbeing is about safety, not performance. I hope you've enjoyed this month where I've contrasted these two different life mindsets, and you may be surprised how quietly the abundant life mindset starts to show up, guiding you toward more calm, more connection, more self-trust, and more genuine enjoyment of your life. Let's be honest, aren't you a little tired of the rat race today we're turning our attention to something many people feel, but rarely name out loud loneliness. Because loneliness in midlife isn't just painful. It's a powerful driver of anxiety and stress, and as you enter a new year. That matters. In this episode, you'll discover why loneliness acts like an amplifier for anxiety and stress in midlife. Why modern forms of connection often leave you feeling more alone, not less. How an abundant life mindset helps you approach loneliness without forcing yourself into uncomfortable connection. And we'll end with an Inner Challenge you can do right now focused on reducing pressure before increasing connection. So why talk about loneliness as we enter a new year? Because the data is sobering. And validating. Large studies show that nearly one in three adults over 45 report frequent feelings of loneliness and midlife. Adults often report higher loneliness than younger adults, especially during transitions like career shifts, caregiving, health changes, divorce, or children leaving home and loneliness. Isn't just emotional research consistently shows it raises cortisol, increases inflammation, disrupts sleep, and significantly increases anxiety and depressive symptoms. If you've noticed your anxiety or stress climbing alongside a sense of disconnection, that's not a coincidence and it's not. A personal failure here is something important to understand. Loneliness in midlife doesn't just feel painful. It actually amplifies stress and anxiety, and that's not a personal weakness. It's because you're human and humans are wired for connection. When you feel disconnected, your body stays on alert. Your mind scans for threat. Your stress response has fewer places to land and settle. That's why loneliness often shows up as overthinking, overdoing, emotional reactivity, exhaustion, or just a quiet sense that you're carrying everything by yourself. Loneliness hurts and your body knows it. Loneliness in midlife doesn't just make you sad. It can leave you feeling disconnected and unsafe. And anxiety is how the body responds. I see this often in my office, a high functioning midlifer who feels constantly overwhelmed and irritable, confused by how demanding life feels and why others seem to be gliding through, why they feel so alone inside it all. And then there's the midlifer who's no longer running on full speed, no longer caregiving, or constantly busy, and suddenly finds themselves stuck in repetitive thoughts without structure loneliness, rushes in and can quietly turn into a painful story of being alone or even worthless. Here's the reframe I want you to hold onto. Loneliness isn't a sign that you're doing something wrong. It's often a signal that your life is changed faster. Your support system. This is where modern life quietly complicates things. We are more connected than ever, and yet many people feel profoundly alone. Phones, social media group texts, they offer the illusion of connection without the regulation that comes from feeling truly seen or safe. Scrolling can actually increase loneliness because it activates comparison without providing comfort. Texting can replace voice. Likes can replace presence. So if you've ever put your phone down and felt more alone than before, you're not imagining it. Let's be honest, we've all experienced this. many of my clients work on what I call outsmarting their smartphone. If you want the science and a tested plan, episodes 1 21 and 1 22 go much deeper into this, but let me share a small moment that really stayed with me. One client who was the only woman in her work group noticed that during breaks she would sit at her desk and scroll. It felt safer, but it also kept her isolated. One day she decided to leave her phone at her desk, take her snack into the break room, and sit with her colleagues. Nothing dramatic happened. No deep conversations. Just small. Ordinary interaction. But that night when she went home to her empty house, she noticed something surprising. She had more energy and she didn't feel as lonely. After two weeks of making the same small shift, she realized something important. Going home alone felt easier because she was no longer alone all day. And that's the quiet takeaway here. Not a rule, not a demand. When real people are available even small moments of presence can soften loneliness in ways that screens can't. Another factor we don't talk about enough is emotional safety. Many midlife clients tell me they feel less safe being themselves socially than they used to, especially in recent years. Cultural tension, political division, fear of saying the wrong thing or losing relationships when it doesn't feel safe, to be honest. People pull back, not because they don't want connection, but because they want to avoid conflict or rejection. And over time, that kind of withdrawal quietly increases loneliness. I see this often in my practice. Clients come in anxious about gatherings where they know there are differences, political, relational, or both. What's striking is how much larger those differences feel than the similarities they actually share. With just a little pre-work reflecting on common ground or shared history, the sense of unsafety often decreases, and when that happens, the possibility for connection grows. One client summed it up beautifully she said, I'm going back to the old days when I didn't even think about politics or religion when I was with my family. that wasn't avoidance. It was wisdom. She wasn't forcing connection. She was creating enough safety for it to happen naturally. This is where the good life versus the abundant life lens becomes especially helpful. The good life mindset treats, loneliness, like a personal failing. It sounds like this. You should have more friends. You should be more social. You should put yourself out there. That mindset turns loneliness into pressure, and pressure never creates connection. It activates anxiety. The abundant life mindset asks a very different question. What kind of connection actually feels safe and supportive? Right now? It recognizes that connection isn't binary. You're not either connected or isolated. There's a wide and often overlooked middle ground, and that's where healing usually happens. This matters because forced connection. Backfires. When you tell yourself you should be more social or more outgoing, your body tightens. Anxiety, raises and loneliness deepens So what does connection look like through the abundant mindset? For starters, it's gentler. It might look like a meaningful conversation instead of a group event. Familiar spaces instead of new ones, or simply being around people without performing. This isn't avoidance. It's listening to yourself on a deep level, and this calms anxiety. One of my clients used to love going to church for a number of personal reasons. She stopped attending over time, though she realized she missed the spiritual messages and the sense of grounding they gave her. Eventually, someone told her about a preacher whose sermons she found meaningful. She decided to attend, but entirely on her own terms. No committees, no pressure to join, no expectation to be super involved. She simply showed up, listened and sang. What surprised her most was how regulating it felt. Just being present without obligation. Gave her a sense of connection. Again, not overwhelming, not draining, just enough. That's the abundant life at work connection that meets you where you are rather than demanding you be someone you're not. Before we close, I want to offer you today's Inner Challenge this week. Don't try to increase connection. Instead, reduce pressure. Ask yourself, where am I pushing myself socially? Out of shoulds, where could I choose one place to feel a little safer? A little. More myself. The goal isn't less connection. It's kinder connection. That might look like leaving early, letting your spouse know you need help or choosing familiarity over novelty. Less pressure often leads to more connection first with yourself and then with others. So today you discovered why loneliness increases anxiety and stress in midlife, and why that's not a personal failure. You learned how modern connection can intensify loneliness, how emotional unsafe leads to a draw, and how the abundant life mindset offers a calmer. More compassionate way forward. You don't need to fix loneliness by pushing harder. You need an approach that reduces pressure first. And on Thursday we'll take this one step further, talking about how to reduce loneliness related anxiety without pushing yourself in the uncomfortable connection. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Thursday with more creating midlife calm.