Ep. 113 4 Coping Skills for Managing Stress, Anxiety and Grief in Midlife During the Holidays

Are the holidays bringing more heartache than joy this year? Discover practical ways to honor your grief and find moments of calm amidst your pain. 

Holidays can be emotionally overwhelming, especially if you’re grieving the loss of a loved one or supporting someone through terminal illness. 

In this episode  you’ll discover: 

     1. How to tune into your inner voice and trust it to guide your unique grieving              process.
    2. Why doing less can actually bring a bit of  peace during the holidays.
    3. Meaningful ways to honor your loved one while still giving yourself   
         permission to rest and heal.        

Listen to this episode to gain compassionate guidance and practical coping strategies that will help you move through the holidays with grace and authenticity.

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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 (2) 0:00

If you're dreading the holiday due to grief, this episode will offer some balm as well as a few practical coping skills to ease your suffering. 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. It's the most wonderful time of the year, or is it? If you're grieving, this time of year can be especially difficult. Complicated. And exhausting. In this episode, you'll discover the main reasons that grief during the holidays is especially intense. And I'm going to share with you four practical coping skills to help ease your suffering and maybe allow you to find a minute or two of joy and connection this holiday season. A number of years ago, my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer in the beginning of December. Most likely, any of you who are listening who have been through a similar experience, whether it's your spouse, friend, sibling, child, or coworker, knows that grief during the holiday has such a push and pull of feelings, and expectations. The world around you is playing holiday songs. And the world within you just wants it to be over. You want the person who is sick to get well, the person who has died to come back, and the people around you to stop thinking that holiday traditions are a remedy for grief. If they were, every hospice in the country would keep a Christmas tree and a menorah in their lobby all year long. If you're grieving this holiday season, The first thing I want to do is offer my sincere condolences to you. Grief during the holidays is a very hard, and unique experience. The first coping skill I want to offer you may be a bit surprising. The coping skill I want you to use as you move through this holiday season is you. Yes, coping skill number one is to trust yourself. Your grief is unique to you and what works for you will not be the same as what works for a sibling or a spouse or someone in a grief support group. Inside you is a quiet inner voice hoping to be listened to this holiday season. It will give you guidance that will work for you if you can access it and trust it. Think of yourself as Santa with your quiet inner voice on your lap. And you're asking the question, what do I need at this time in the holiday season? I'm pretty sure you won't get what you want, but the question is really to ask yourself, what do I need at this time? And to trust what arises. With no judgment, accept whatever arises and write it down in your journal or speak it into your phone. I shared this process with a client of mine many years ago whose husband had died in the summer, leaving her and her two teenage children alone. There really were no words that brought comfort. for their loss. It was excruciating on so many levels. Her beloved children would no longer have a dad. She had to try to figure out all the awful paperwork connected to death. Something that we often don't even mention until death has come. And with her husband's absence, she came to realize how much he had done week in and week out to keep their life balanced. The practicalities of grief overwhelmed her and only worsened her deep, deep missing of him. Now it was a week before Christmas and when she asked herself the question, what do I need? What surfaced in her? was, I need to burn down the Christmas tree. Of course, for her children's sake, she didn't. But as she sat with this need, she was flooded with compassion for herself. All season long, she had pretended. She made cookies, she bought presents, she wrapped them, and she even went to the holiday concert at the school, which for her was the most excruciating event of the entire season. Listening to that inner voice that said, burn the tree, actually gave her permission to be pissed, to be angry. And for the first time, she sat with that anger. The only paper that was close to her was wrapping paper. And she grabbed a pen and she wrote and wrote and wrote all of her anger about where her life was in the midst of this season of joy. She realized that she had been pretending for her children, her family, and maybe even for herself. You probably know this. At any time of the year, our culture gives us about a month to grieve. But during the holidays, grieving is supposed to take a back seat to celebrating. But of course, you know it doesn't. If you are going through the motions on the outside, but suffering a bit each day, give yourself the gift of authenticity and sit with your grief. After my client wrote, she had one of those deep, scary, and existential cries. She told me she cried so hard that she was afraid. But after a bit, the crying lessened and she found herself much more connected to herself than she had been when she kept pushing herself to do what she expected of herself and what she believed everyone else expected the end of the cry, she picked up the pen and she wrote these three profound words. Do less now. Coping skill number two is to give yourself permission to do less. Understand as you probably already know. People who care about you don't want to see you miserable. We live in a culture that tells us to do, do, do. But what people who are grieving around the holidays often need is just a lot of time to be. I invite you to give that to yourself. Again, listen to your inner voice when enough is enough. Holidays come every year. In the future, you will have more energy,. It's okay to buy store bought cookies or send your children over to a friend or relatives to enjoy decorating Christmas cookies. If you live by yourself and you don't want to put up a tree, that's okay. If people offer to help you, I encourage you to take them up on it. Years ago, my son's best friend's mom unexpectedly died at age 40. Ten months later was the first Christmas and three of us shopped for her children. The dad just couldn't do it. A year later, almost two years after his wife's death, store doing Christmas shopping. He had been so distraught the first Christmas that he said to me he had no memory of buying his children's gifts. When I reminded him that we all pitched in to help him out that year. He just had such a big smile on his face, one, of gratitude for the help that he received, but two, that he had moved far enough along this year that he was out shopping for his children. So do less this holiday season and be honest. The only line you need is something like, I just don't have it in me. Thank you for understanding. The second part of that sentence is the most important. Another unique and I would say undescribable situation this holiday is if you are celebrating them with a loved one who has a terminal illness. was my family's experience with my dad. Everyone put on a brave face. Especially him. But the whole Christmas Eve was a bit surreal. There's no right way of doing this, but if you feel like you're swimming underwater in slow motion, you're in a pretty normal place. Listen to what you need and know that your needs won't look like anybody else's. Do your best to not judge yourself or your loved ones. Let's just admit it, all of this sucks. And none of us are gifted at moving through grief. We just get by. Of course, do your best to not overindulge in food or drink. Digestion numbs feelings in the moment, but can often disrupt your sleep, which is so important when you're grieving. Too much alcohol, inhibitions can be lost, and things can be said and done that people regret later. My dad did his best to enjoy his last holiday and to act normal. And my mom, the ever efficient hostess, was shocked the next day when she realized that she never took the turkey out of the oven. There were 30 people at that dinner, and not one of us said, Where's the turkey? That is grief. We're present in body, but not in mind. For you this holiday season, the central part is not going to be the traditions, but the person you love who is sick or missing. Your pain is acute and I encourage you to think about what you want to do to honor this person that you love so much. You don't need me to offer suggestions because there's no other relationship like this one for you. And with a bit of space and thought, an idea will come to you. I want to be the person who encourages you to trust your idea. I have loved listening to how many of my clients and friends over the years have celebrated, honored and remembered their loved ones during the holidays. One of my clients Sat by her tree with a glass of wine and a beer. She and her husband had done this hundreds of times. She drank her wine and she left the beer there the whole holiday season. A couple who had lost a child bought the gifts that they had imagined they would buy for their own child and gave them to a family in need. A number of my clients have created photo books. that were under the tree that they could just flip through again and again. One mom I worked with, wrapped up articles of her husband's clothing for each of her adult children. When they opened them, their glee was immense, and they wore them all day long. But probably the one that touches my heart the most was my dear friend Lyn who taped a podcast with her husband, who was dying of cancer. One morning I woke up to a text from her saying that she had listened to it on Christmas morning and felt comforted If listening to a couple speak honestly about their cancer journey, I invite you to listen to episode 32. Mental wellness and cancer. The common thread in each of these moments was only the person grieving knew how best to celebrate their loved one that holiday season. These small gestures serve as a bit of balm during the holiday. The most important thing is to not put pressure on yourself to do something grand. Let the idea organically come to you. If you don't have the energy, no problem. You may next year. Compassionately say to yourself, this is enough for this year. I need to do something a bit easier. Depending where you are in your grief journey, these moments can bring connection, calm, and maybe a bit of joy. Try to let the moments of good in, even though they can often catch you off guard and be a bit surprising. The last coping skill I would encourage you to consider is to write a letter or a card to your loved one who has died. Share with them what you're feeling and going through. All of it. They have passed through death. They can handle it. This is especially helpful for children. It gives them permission to have their own experience of missing their loved one during the holiday season. I have clients who have done this annually and found comfort in this very unexpected tradition. If you have a loved one who is sick this holiday season, write a letter of sincere appreciation. for all they mean to you. Your grief needs to be expressed in safe ways. Bottling it up leads to physical symptoms such as headaches, poor sleep, as well as more emotional exhaustion. As always, do your best at self care. Short walks. Less sugar. Earlier bedtimes. And a bit of sunlight. Don't make grief go away. But they will give you a bit more energy to carry what I always call the couch of grief. In this episode, I've helped you understand how normal and healthy it is to dread the holidays if you're grieving a loved one this holiday season. The coping skills of trusting yourself, doing less, letting others help, and finding a meaningful gesture to remember your loved one can be helpful in moving through the holiday season. But you and I both know that the real secret to the holiday season is it does end. Thanks for listening and I'll be back on Thursday with more Creating Midlife Calm.