Ep. 102 Holiday Calm: 2 Coping Skills To Increase Calm & Joy Admist The Stress & Anxiety of Family Estrangement in Midlife.

Feeling the sting of family estrangement this holiday season? Let's find ways to bring you calm and ease that pain. 

 In this episode, you'll discover:

 1. How reflecting on your role in the estrangement can empower you to heal.

2. The transformative power of compassion for your loved one's struggles and your own pain.

3. Practical tips to reclaim peace during this challenging season.

 Find solace and strength through reflection and compassion to navigate the holidays with greater calm.

Listen to Fan Favorite: Ep. 85 5 Easy & Effective Steps to Stop Overthinking Now!

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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

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MJ Murray Vachon LCSW 0:00

Feeling the sting of family estrangement this holiday season? Let's find ways to bring you calm and ease that pain. Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, a podcast dedicated to empowering midlife minds to overcome anxiety, stop feeling like crap and become more present with your family, all while achieving greater success at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensed clinical social worker with over 48, 000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching mental wellness. Welcome to the podcast. Today is Thursday and I'm following up on Monday's episode where we explored family estrangement. In today's episode, I'll share two coping skills that can help you manage the complex emotions of being estranged from a loved one, especially as you head into the holiday season. As I mentioned on Monday, the reasons for family estrangement vary, but often involve complex emotional issues, unresolved conflicts, differing values, past traumas, perceived favoritism, or lack of support. The most common form of family estrangement involves parents and their adult children, with misunderstandings and communication breakdowns making it difficult to repair these relationships. Whether you're the one who stepped away or the one who was left behind, the emotional pain can be so intense. I encourage you to seek professional help to process this pain in a healthy way, rather than turn it into anger or numbing it with substances. In Monday's episode, your inner challenge was to look back at when the estrangement began and consider your role in it. This can be really difficult to do because when you're hurt by someone, it's only natural to focus on what they did rather than your own actions. However, blame is unexpressed pain. If you don't tame your pain, it can grow like weeds in your heart, turning your anger into something that consumes you, that impacts not only your other relationships, but your day to day life. For example, I had a client whose brother cut her off after she asked him to help care for their mother. He left in anger saying, Don't ever call me again. I am done with you. Two years passed with no contact, and she suffered, through family events and holidays without him. She couldn't see her role in the estrangement, feeling that he was just selfish. After some reflection, when I asked her to go back to the moment that the estrangement happened, she had some insight, and she said, for years I had been hounding him and for years, he had said, no, I just pushed and pushed and pushed, and he couldn't stand it anymore. So I reflected back to her. You couldn't accept his no. And she said to me, but his no is wrong. Yes, I think in a relationship court, she would win. It is important that children help their adult parents. But what we're talking about at this point in her life isn't the estrangement, but rather her being able To find a way to live with it peacefully, I encouraged her in this holiday season, when she was feeling out of control because she can't make her brother come to Thanksgiving or send him a Christmas gift that he would open, that she instead turn her energy inward and step into her own power, she could not accept her brother's no all those years and plan accordingly. But at this point in time, she had to accept her brother's no and she was making it work out. I encouraged her, moving through the holiday season, to practice accepting other people's no's. as well as to look inward and ask herself if sometimes she needed to say no for her own health and well being. This insight didn't excuse her brother's actions, but it allowed her to reclaim some peace. Accepting her role empowered her to approach relationships differently, not only with others, but with herself. This is giving the gift of repair. The pain of estrangement is real, but another powerful coping skill is to shift from a place of loss to one of compassion. Estrangement often stems from deep seated intergenerational issues like abuse, neglect, addiction, shame, and avoidance. Moving forward, it's helpful to recognize these patterns that often drive a person, perhaps yourself, to a breaking point. I once worked with a client estranged from her adult child who struggled with severe mental illness. This client felt like her golden years were being ruined by the stress of her child's unpredictable behavior while my client set boundaries, the holidays still brought her deep, deep sadness. I encouraged her to revisit the early days of her child's illness, and she admitted that she had long resisted acknowledging it. She sat in my office, so soft, so vulnerable, looked up at me and said, I just wish I had been more willing to accept her mental illness. In that moment, her anger, her frustration softened, and I could see her open her heart and be more compassionate to her child, who also was avoiding and denying the seriousness of her illness. Holding compassion for how difficult it is to accept mental illness, whether you're the child or the parent, allowed my client to allow her feelings of frustration and anger, also include compassion and loss. This brought her some peace. In its simplest form, family estrangement is about hurt, though often the most common emotion that people express is grief. Compassion for those who may have hurt us, is a balm that brings peace. The peace may not repair the relationship on the outside, but it does make a difference for you on the inside during this season of joy, I invite you to hold compassion for both your pain and that of your loved one. Practicing this compassion, whether in the shower, before bed, Or, if necessary, seeking support from a therapist or a clergy member to figure out how to do this. This can be a really powerful way for you to not let anger control you and to reclaim some peace. Remember, this is for you. To help you feel better. It's not about allowing mistreatment. It's about moving forward and accepting the messiness and the complexity of human relationships. One of the most challenging parts of family estrangement is making the decision to let go of the anger and move to a healthier place of peace and calm. In addition to these skills, remember the basics of self care during the holidays, get enough sleep, eat as well as you possibly can, and do something for others. In this episode, we explored how to approach family estrangement during the holidays. First, I discussed the importance of reflecting on your role in the estrangement, as this can be both healing and empowering. Then I looked at how offering compassion for your loved one's pain can ease your own, helping you navigate the season with greater peace. Thanks for listening. And I'll be back on Monday with another episode of Creating Midlife Calm.