Ep. 249 How to Calm Anxiety and Stress in Midlife When Your Overthinking

Why does anxiety in midlife make your mind spin even when thinking harder only increases the stress?
There is a practical and hopeful way to calm anxiety and stress that doesn’t require figuring everything out first.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
1.    Why anxiety and stress in midlife pulls your attention into overthinking.
2.    How practicing body awareness during ordinary moments prepares you to handle anxiety when stress bombs hit.
3.    Three simple coping skills that help you return to your body so anxiety and stress in midlife can naturally settle
 Take 12 minutes to learn how to calm anxiety and stress in midlife when you can’t stop thinking—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 how to calm, anxiety and stress when you can't stop thinking.

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. In Monday's episode 2 48, we talked about the surprising truth that when anxiety and stress rise, the problem is usually not confusion. The problem is intensity, and that intensity is what makes stress feel so uncomfortable. It can push you to try to think your way out of stress instead of leaning into your body and learning how to allow your stress to naturally decrease. In this episode, you'll discover why anxiety pulls your attention into your head. Away from your body. How practicing body awareness during ordinary daily moments prepares you for stressful ones and a few simple ways to return to your body when anxiety and stress rise and lastly, what to do when that stress bomb gets activated. Monday's Inner Challenge invited you to notice the moments when anxiety pushed you to figure something out immediately. And I asked you to pause and ask yourself this question in this moment. Do I need clarity or do I need calm Today? We're gonna build on that idea. Because the hardest part about working with anxiety usually isn't noticing or naming it. The hardest part is remembering to slow down and do something different once your stress is activated. This is what I call taming. Wanna hear an irony? We live in a body obsessed culture. Until it comes to anxiety, then we forget our body and get stuck in our head. Think about it. You know this is true. When anxiety rises, attention quickly moves to your mind. You start analyzing, replaying conversations, trying to understand what is happening or what you should do next. And before you know it, your attention is completely in your head. And your body disappears from awareness, but your nervous system doesn't calm down through thinking alone. Your nervous system settles when your attention returns to the body and the present moment, Which means one of the most helpful things you can practice is simply remembering to come back to your body. And the interesting thing is this, you don't learn that skill during stress. You learn it during ordinary moments during. You can't really expect to calm your body during stress if you never practice noticing it during ordinary moments. I think of it like sports teams practice their plays before the game, so when the pressure rises, their bodies remember what to do. Your nervous system learns the same way. The more often you gently bring your attention back to your body and help it relax during everyday life, the easier it becomes to return there when anxiety rises. Let me give you three ways that you can return to your body. One, notice your surroundings. I know that kind of sounds ridiculous, but let's be honest, most of the time we're going through our day and our mind is in one place and our body is another. So I wanna recommend that you take a little trip and sync up with your body on a regular basis as you move through your day. Let's say you're walking somewhere. Notice your surroundings. Notice the lights, the sounds, all the movement around you. Feel your feet and ground them as you walk on the sidewalk. Or if you're sitting in a chair, zoom out and notice what it feels like to have your whole body being supported. Feet on the ground, your body grounded in the chair. You're back supported these simple shifts. Bring your attention out of your thoughts and back into the present moment. I know this sounds silly, I know this sounds so easy, but trust me, incorporating moments like this throughout your day really are helpful. It's kind of like the fundamentals of sports. Another idea, is to check in with your body. Sometimes it simply helps to pause and say to yourself. Hey, I'm gonna check in with my body. You might notice tightness in your shoulders, a constriction in your chest, tension in your jaw. Instead of analyzing it, just soften it a bit. Let your shoulders drop, flap your arms around a bit. Let your jaw loosen, let your breath move a bit more freely. One of my clients actually writes a reminder on her daily to-do list that simply says, check in with my body. I just love that. No fixing, just noticing. I actually do this at red lights and I constantly need to relax my shoulders where I carry most of my stress. And here's a third tip. Bring your awareness into your movement. Many of us move our bodies while our attention stays in our head. You might be exercising while watching TV or listening to a podcast. Your body is moving, but your attention is somewhere else. What if for just part of that workout, you moved your awareness into your body. Notice the rhythm of your breathing. Feel your muscles working. Notice the movement of your body. I do this when I swim. To be honest, most of the time when I swim, I'm coming up with ideas for the podcast, but at some point. For part of my swim, I shift my attention away from thinking and into the sensation of the water and the movement of my body. Even saying this right now makes my whole body relax. These are small shifts. But they give you real life experience of your capacity to calm your body. How often are you given the message that you need to go to a spa? I'm not against spas, but you can do this work from the inside out and it's free. It's your nervous system. Why not learn how to calm it? Practices like these may seem simple, but they're powerful because they train your nervous system to return to the body. And when anxiety rises, that pathway is already familiar. Instead of trying to think your way out of distress, your body already knows how to begin settling. And once the body settles, your thinking brain naturally comes back online and clarity becomes much easier. Recently I was teaching this skill to a client and he said, do you need this? I laughed and I said, of course I do this like 15 times a day. We all need to do this. Life is stressful. None of us are immune from stress. So one of the most important skills. Not only for wellness, but for quality of life is learning these basic ways to help our bodies settle. Not just in ordinary times, but when a stress bomb lands in your lap, something happens with an aging parent. A child calls with a problem. You get an unexpected email from work. Your brain is wired to detect danger, so your first reaction will always be stronger than the situation usually requires. That's not a flaw in you. That's biology, and this is where the sequence I often teach becomes helpful. Notice name, tame and aim. If you want more information on that, check out episode six and seven. Let's be honest, most people are pretty good at noticing a naming. You notice something is wrong. You name the feeling, anxiety, frustration, fear, or just I feel like crap. But the hardest part is the third step. Taming your reaction if you're taking care of an aging parent, you know, stress bombs, you can be at work having a productive day. When you get a call that your parent has fallen in that moment, your mind begins to spin. You think, oh, this could be the beginning of the end, or you're torn between rushing to the hospital and figuring out how to get your kids from school. You immediately go into thinking mode and planning mode. I want to encourage you to take two minutes before you fly into action. Notice my body is on high alert name. I'm afraid and irritated, tame, ground your feet and hold your distress. Stay with it. Breathe it out. Turn your awareness toward it and feel it increase, and then hold it until it begins to decrease. Remember what goes up. Must come down, regulate your nervous system before you put your Cape of service on. Because if you pause even for a moment and return to your body, feeling your feet on the ground, noticing your breath, something will begin to shift. The situation hasn't changed, but your nervous system has, and once your nervous system settles, you can respond with so much more clarity. Taming doesn't eliminate the stress. The goal of managing stress is not to get rid of it. The goal is to learn to hold it long enough so it can settle. Because emotions work in waves. What goes up must come down. When you bring your attention back to your body, you give that wave of emotion space to move through you instead of escalating. And once your nervous system settles, you can respond with much more clarity. In this episode, you discovered that returning to your body is one of the most effective ways to calm anxiety and stress. And by practicing body awareness during ordinary moments, your nervous system becomes better prepared for the moments when those stress bombs land. I've helped thousands of clients increase their ability to hold distress so they can reregulate their nervous systems and feel better. And the key to doing this is remembering to do it for decades. You've likely been overthinking and under feeling. All in the name of managing anxiety and stress practice doesn't make perfect, but it certainly helps remind you that the true path to calm is through your body, not your brain. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Monday with more creating midlife calm.