Ep. 252 Spring Cleaning Your Mind To Reduce Anxiety & Stress In Midlife With These Coping Skills

It’s spring—what if you cleaned more than your closets and started spring cleaning your mind?

There is a simple, compassionate way to understand tension and begin clearing mental clutter.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

1.     How noticing tension in your body helps you recognize anxiety and stress earlier

2.     A short writing practice that helps you spring clean your mind and strengthen coping skills in midlife

3.     How tending to tension helps your nervous system settle and increase calm

🎧 Take 12 minutes to begin spring cleaning your mind and strengthening coping skills—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 paying attention to tension can help you reduce mental clutter and anxiety.

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. Spring is the time of year when many of us start cleaning out our closets, drawers, and basements. You look around and you realize how things have accumulated clothes. You no longer wear boxes. You forgot. Were there something similar happens in your mind? Over time you accumulate worries, expectations, responsibilities and pressure. And eventually that mental clutter doesn't just stay in your thoughts, it shows up in your body. In this episode, you'll discover why anxiety and stress often appear as tension in the body before they appear in your thoughts. A simple process that helps you clear mental clutter by listening to your body. And how tending to tension can calm your nervous system instead of trying to think your way out of anxiety. Yes, we are spring cleaning your mind here on creating midlife calm and we'll end with an Inner Challenge, something you can do today to begin practicing this process. A few years ago, many people cleaned out closets using Marie Condo's. Famous question, does this item I'm holding in my hand spark joy people empty drawers, closets, and entire houses asking that one simple question. This week we're doing something similar, but instead of decluttering your closet, you'll be decluttering your mind and the surprising place to start. Isn't with your thoughts, it's your body. Over time, you accumulate, unfinished conversations, worries about the future, pressure to meet expectations.

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experiences and beliefs from your childhood.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW 2:28

That clutter doesn't just reside in the back 40 of your mind. It actually lives in your body. A tight jaw, a knot in your stomach, a heavy chest Tension in your shoulders. Your body is often the first signal that something inside of you needs attention, which leads to this simple idea where there is tension, there needs to be attention,

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When you feel tension, what's your go-to? Do you ignore it, push through it, analyze the situation, caused by it, phone a friend and talk it to death. Let me give you a pat on the back because all of those things are a sincere attempt to calm your mind, but it's missing something that's essential to calm. Your body is being ignored. When you feel tension, your body is actually asking you to pay it attention. Gabor Matee, a respected trauma therapist, teaches several questions that help people understand tension in the body. Today I'm gonna walk you through a slightly expanded version that adds an important step.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW 3:44

instead of pushing through the tension, you can learn to listen to it. This exercise works best if you write the answers down, you might be listening to this podcast and not able to stop and grab a pen or paper. No problem. At the end of the podcast, I'll send you to a link where you can get an MP three from me with all the questions, so you can take five or seven minutes to declutter your mind. I strongly encourage you to do this in the form of writing. Why? In simple terms, writing helps move your brain from reacting to reflecting. It slows rumination and it helps your nervous system settle. So if you can grab a piece of paper, and let's begin spring cleaning your mind. Take a moment to answer each of these questions. Trust your first response. That's probably most aligned with what really is going on with you. Question number one, where do you feel tension? Tightness or numbness in your body, just do a body scan and notice maybe your tension is in your jaw, shoulders, stomach, chest, back, or arms. This is where your body is asking for attention. Question number two, does this tension feel familiar or is it new? Sometimes tension reflects something you've carried for a long time. Other times it signals something new happening in your life. Write down your response. Does this tension feel familiar or is it new? Now my favorite question, if this tension could speak, what would it say? When you translate your body's tension into words, the response could be anything. Open your heart, no judgment, accept whatever you wrote down. Here's the step. Many people skip. Once you understand the tension. Your instinct may be to eliminate it, but emotional regulation doesn't happen by eliminating feelings. It happens by tending to them instead of trying to fix the tension or tell yourself why it doesn't make sense or why it does make sense, turn toward it and ask gently, what do you need right now? Sometimes the answer is very simple. A breath, a pause, a walk, a cup of tea, a moment of quiet, a good cry. You are not solving the future, you're responding to what your body needs right now. I. Let me take a second to address two possibilities that often happen with my clients when I ask them, what do you need right now? The first common answer is what they need other people to do, and while that may have some value, they have actually turned away from their body and their back up in their mind. If your answer was, I need him to leave me alone. I need her to go to bed on time, I want you to go back to your tension and I want you to very gently ask it, what does the tension need right now? So it can settle and feel calmer The other common response to what do you need right now is that the mind often jumps to worst case thinking, you know, catastrophizing, what if this happens? What if everything goes wrong? This is where many people move from regulation. To rumination. If that happens, once again, come back to your body. Ask again, what does this tension need right now? Not what happens if the worst occurs, just what my body needs in this moment. Let me share with you a clinical example. A client recently came to her session feeling very anxious about a conflict at work. Her first instinct was to analyze everything. What did I say wrong? What are they thinking? What will happen next? I asked her to pause ground her feet, and I asked her the first question, where do you feel tension in your body? She immediately noticed tight pressure in her chest. When I asked her if it felt familiar, she said, oh yeah. It felt exactly like the tension I experienced growing up when conflict started in her family. Then I asked her the third question, if the tension could speak, what would it say? Her answer surprised her. I am small and I'm in trouble. Instead of analyzing further, I asked her, what do you need right now? Her answer was simple. I need to slow down and breathe. Within a few minutes, The tightness softened, not because the problem was solved, but because the nervous system felt attended to. She looked up at me and she said, oh. I forget that when I'm surrounded by conflict, it's easy for me to feel like a child, and a simple breath brings me back to adulthood isn't it fascinating that once she got out of her head and reregulated her body, she felt stronger, calmer her adult self because where there is tension. There needs to be attention after tending to the tension. Here's your final question. What do you notice in your body now you may notice a little more space, a deeper breath, less tightness, a small sense of calm, more alignment and connection. This is how emotional regulation begins. I wanna connect this process to the Inner Challenge emotional regulation model. I teach on this podcast so often, notice name, tame, aim. Notice the tension. Name what it's saying. Tame it by tending and befriending the sensation. Aim your response toward what your body actually needs in that little moment. Instead of trying to think your way out of anxiety, you allow your body to guide you. This week's Inner Challenge is simple. Do a small piece of spring cleaning for your mind. Write down these questions. Where do I feel the tension in my body? Is this feeling familiar or new? If this tension could speak, what would it say? What does this tension need right now? What do I notice in my body? Because where there is tension. There needs to be attention if you'd like help practicing this process. I created a short guided audio where I walk you through these questions step by step, you can download it by leaving your email in the link in the show notes, and I'll send you the guided exercise directly to you. It's about five minutes long and something you can return to anytime you notice tension building in your body. In this episode, you discovered why anxiety and stress often appears tension in the body before they appear in your thoughts. A simple process for clearing mental clutter by listening to your body. How tending to tension helps calm the nervous system instead of trying to fight the feeling later this week. We'll continue spring cleaning today. You clean the closet. Next time we're moving on to a bigger project, cleaning out the basement of the mind where old expectations, beliefs, and obligations are often stored, and where your Inner voice can finally be heard. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Thursday with more creating midlife calm.