EP. 290 How Anxiety & Overwhelm Can Lead You To Avoid What Matters Most in Midlife

What if the biggest problem isn’t your anxiety—but what anxiety is convincing you not to do?
If you’ve been putting off a conversation, avoiding a decision, or looking away from something that feels overwhelming, you’re not alone.
In this episode, you’ll discover:

1. Why avoidance is often anxiety’s attempt to protect you from feeling overwhelmed
2. How learning to stay steady with difficult emotions can help you face reality instead of looking away
3. The hidden connection between anxiety, overwhelm, and the stress that avoidance can create over time

 Take 12 minutes to understand what anxiety may be convincing you not to do—and learn why awareness is the first step toward responding differently. You’re worth 

If you'd like to learn more about the Inner Challenge Master Class or bring it to your organization, I'd love to hear from you. Email me at; mj@mjmurrayvachon.com.

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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. 

Transcript

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover that maybe the biggest problem isn't anxiety itself, but rather what anxiety convinces you not to do 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 three decades of teaching practical science-backed mental wellness Welcome to the podcast. Many people think anxiety looks like worrying, overthinking, panic, or racing thoughts, but one of the most common ways anxiety shows up is avoidance. And what's challenging about avoidance is it can feel really helpful until it doesn't. This week, two clients sat in the same chair on the same day in my office, both smart, successful, hardworking women and moms. Both came to the session experiencing anxiety. What struck me wasn't what they were anxious about, it was what they did next. In this episode, you'll discover why avoidance is often anxiety's attempt to protect you from feeling overwhelmed, how some people learn to work with anxiety while others get trapped by it, And

Speaker 1:32

why reducing anxiety isn't always the goal, but rather learning how to carry it is.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW 1:39

Let me share with you the story of these two clients. The first client came into my office and said, "MJ, I had a really scary weekend. I found a lump in my breast." I felt terror." Her mother had had breast cancer. Immediately her mind started racing. What if this is cancer? What if I have to tell my children? What if everything in my life is going to change? I asked her what happened next. She said, "At first I felt frozen. I just sat down. I couldn't move." Then she paused and said, "Then a little voice inside of me said, 'Breathe. Just breathe. You're still here.'" She took a breath, then another, but she still couldn't settle. She got up and started swinging her arms fast, really fast, not because it solved anything, but because she needed somewhere for all of her fear to go. Then she sat back down, and another thought came, "Go for a walk." So she put in her earbuds and started walking. She told me that the music actually made her feel worse, so she turned it off. Instead, she just kept putting one foot in front of another, and she walked and kept repeating to herself, "Breathe. You've got this. Breathe. You've got this." Then she came to a fork in the road, a literal fork in the road. She laughed as she told me this because it felt almost symbolic. She said she stood there for a moment and thought, "Face this," and she took the right fork. Over the next few days, she called her doctor, made an appointment, and gathered information Not because she wasn't terrified, but because she was. As she told me the story, something struck me. Her anxiety never disappeared, but as she was sharing this with me, she felt steady. She wasn't steady because she wasn't afraid. She was steady because she stayed connected to reality. Instead of using anxiety as a reason to avoid, she used anxiety as information. Something important needed her attention. A few hours later, another client sat in the same chair, and what happened next taught a very different lesson. The client was talking about frustrations at home. At one point, she mentioned all the messes she kept finding around the house. I asked her, "Oh, is your son visiting home?" She looked at me and said, "No. He's been living in the basement." I was surprised. He had graduated from college about eight months earlier, and I didn't remember us talking much about this. So I asked her to tell me more. She explained that he was supposedly looking for work, but most of his time was spent playing video games, smoking pot, sleeping odd hours, and leaving messes throughout the house. Then she said something that immediately caught my attention. I don't really wanna talk about it." I nodded and said, "Yeah, that makes sense." Then I said, "Besides being annoyed by the messes, I wonder if part of you feels afraid." She looked at me, and I continued, afraid that he's not moving forward." She stared and was quiet for a long time. Then she finally said, I'd really rather not think about this." I nodded again, and then I said, I wonder if you actually do think about it, you know, maybe late at night, early in the morning, or when you're driving." She looked at me and said, "Or all the time I said, "So maybe the worry is there. It's just not in the front. It's running in the background." She looked confused and asked, "What do you mean?" I said, "Often anxiety makes us afraid, and when we're afraid, one natural response is to run from the fear." Then I smiled. "That works great if it's a bear. It just doesn't work very well when it's your beloved child." At that point, she put both hands over her face. After a long silence, she said, I just don't want this to be true." He's our smartest kid. Now he's mean, disrespectful, and I feel completely overwhelmed As I reflected on these two conversations, I realized this isn't really a story about a breast lump and a son living in a basement. It's a story about two responses to anxiety. The first response says, "This scares me, so I need to move toward it." The second response says, "This scares me, so I need to move away from it." And here's what I think many of us miss. Avoidance isn't weakness. Avoidance is protection. Avoidance is anxiety's attempt to protect you from feeling overwhelmed. The problem is that what protects you today often creates a bigger stress tomorrow What struck me was that both women cared deeply. Both were anxious. One had learned how to stay steady when anxiety showed up. The other felt so overwhelmed that avoidance felt safer. And that's often what avoidance is, anxiety trying to protect you from feelings that seem too big to face. Of course, this doesn't just happen with health concerns or adult children. It happens everywhere. Life gives all of us situations that feel overwhelming. Health issues you've been putting off, finances you don't wanna look at, difficult conversations with your spouse or elderly parents, loneliness Are your uses of food or substances that can help you numb the feelings of anxiety and overwhelm? This pattern of anxiety which turns to overwhelm and then avoidance, when not understood, can take you to a place of unintended stress and outcomes And this leads me to this week's Inner Challenge. I want you to complete this sentence. Trust whatever comes into your mind. The thing I've been avoiding because it feels overwhelming is Simply notice what popped into your mind. Trust it. Take a breath, a slow, deep breath, and just stay with your thought. Notice your body's reaction. Do nothing more, nothing less, but breathe. You don't need to fix anything. You don't need to solve it. You don't need to make a plan. Before you can face something, you first must acknowledge it's there These are overwhelming times If today's episode resonated with you, I invite you to look into my Inner Challenge Masterclass. It's my online coaching program where together you and I can face your real-life challenges because those are the curriculum, My masterclass uses the situations you're facing right now to help you understand your emotions, strengthen your coping skills, and respond to life's challenges from a steadier place if you'd like to learn more, I'll put my link in the show notes. In this episode, we discovered that anxiety often uses avoidance to protect you from feeling overwhelmed. On Thursday, we're gonna continue this conversation and talk about what overwhelm actually is and how to steady yourself when anxiety becomes more than you know how to carry. Thanks for listening to Creating Midlife Calm.