Creating Midlife Calm: Coping Skills for Stress & Anxiety in Family, Work & Relationships
Coping Skills for Midlife Stress and Anxiety in Family, Work & Relationships
Forget the midlife crisis—how about creating midlife calm? The anxiety and stress of this life stage can drain your energy, fuel overthinking, and make it hard to enjoy what should be the best years of your life. This podcast offers practical coping skills to help you reduce anxiety, manage stress, and rediscover a calmer, more confident version of yourself.
In Creating Midlife Calm, you’ll discover how to:
- Be happier, more present, and more effective at home and work.
- Transform stress and anxiety into powerful tools that boost your clarity, energy, and confidence.
- Cultivate calm and joy through practical, affordable coping skills that help you handle life’s daily challenges.
Join MJ Murray Vachon, LCSW, a seasoned therapist with over 50,000 hours of clinical experience and 32 years teaching mental wellness, as she guides you to reclaim your inner calm. Learn to stay grounded in the present, navigate midlife transitions with clarity, and build emotional resilience using proven coping tools.
Every Monday, MJ dives into real stories and science-backed insights to help you shift from anxious to centered—ending each episode with an “Inner Challenge” you can practice right away. Then, on Thursdays, she shares a brief follow-up episode that connects, deepens, or expands the week’s topic, helping you apply these skills in real life.
Let’s evolve from crisis to calm—and make midlife your most balanced and fulfilling chapter yet.
🎧 Start with listener favorite Ep. 138 to feel the difference calm can make.
Creating Midlife Calm: Coping Skills for Stress & Anxiety in Family, Work & Relationships
Ep. 280 How Your Favorite Summer Activity Can Decrease Anxiety & Stress in Midlife
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What if one small shift during your favorite summer activity could help decrease anxiety and stress?
You're not alone if anxiety and stress leave you feeling narrowly focused and disconnected from the present moment.
In this episode, you'll discover:
- How using your senses during a favorite summer activity can broaden your focus, create calm, and help decrease anxiety and stress in midlife.
🎧 Take 2 minutes to engage your senses more fully and create a little more calm—you’re worth it.
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About the Host:
MJ Murray Vachon, LCSW, is a seasoned clinician, educator, and host of the podcast Creating Midlife Calm, recognized by Maria Shriver as a “Listen of the Week.” Over the past 40 years, MJ has led more than 50,000 therapy sessions and developed the Inner Challenge mental wellness program and the Inner Challenge Master Class, practical tools for emotional regulation, self-awareness, and resilience taught for more than 30 years in junior high schools and at the University of Notre Dame for freshman football players. Through her podcast, teaching, and coaching, MJ helps people build calmer lives, stronger relationships, and healthier communities.
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.
Welcome to Creating Calm in the Wild. I'm MJ Murray, And this is your reminder that calm isn't always found when life settles down. It's actually something you can create right in the middle of the wild. One of the unintended consequences of anxiety and stress is that it narrows your perspective. This practice that I wanna invite you to incorporate actually broadens your perspective. Do you have a favorite summertime activity? Walking, hiking, biking, laying on the beach? Mine is swimming outdoor laps in my city's 50-meter pool. In fact, that's what I just finished doing for the first time this summer, and I wanna share with you a practice that you can incorporate into any summer activity that will help you cultivate calm and decrease stress and anxiety. So as you hike or bike, or for me, swim, I invite you to bring your senses into it. That's what I just did for the first swim of the season. For a couple minutes as I was swimming laps, I moved my attention from what I normally think about when I'm swimming, my stroke, my podcast, what I'm gonna make for dinner, to my senses. As I was swimming, I began to notice how the water felt on my body. I began to listen to hear the plane above, the muffled kick as I did a flip turn. I began to look more closely, and trust me, the first day of the pool, it is crystal clean, and as I looked, I so appreciated what I was seeing. I began to taste. It's amazing that I can swim for 45 minutes and never taste the chlorine in the pool unless I bring my attention toward it. And lastly, I smell. You would think you couldn't smell underwater, but actually, your smell is always working. It's just important to bring your attention to it. So you might be asking, "MJ, what's the purpose of this?" The purpose of this is anxiety and stress narrows your field of focus, and paying attention to your senses as you do regular and enjoyable things it actually trains your focus to broaden And that's not only helpful, but interesting and fascinating. So give it a try. Thanks for listening, and please join me Monday for my full-length episode of Creating Midlife Calm.