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.
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.
M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW
In this episode, you'll discover how the let them mindset can help you stop wasting emotional energy on things outside of your control. 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 I'm diving into a simple yet powerful concept from Mel Robbins called, ""Let Them"". Mel is having her moment. She is all over the news sharing this fun and super helpful idea to decrease anxiety and increase calm. By the end of this episode, you'll understand how the ""Let Them"" mindset can help you stop wasting emotional energy on things outside of your control. I'm also going to add two simple but important skills that I think Mel left out of her theory so, you can implement LetThem with even more success. As always, I'll end with an inner challenge, something you can start today to help ease your anxiety. The LetThem theory is built on a simple idea. Let people do what they want. Mel shares a story about being at her son's prom photo session, discover that his friend group had no dinner reservations. Oh yeah, if you've had teenagers, you have been in that situation probably 150 times. They started talking about going to a fast food taco place and Mel jumped into action. You know the drill. What? No reservations? A taco place? It's raining. It's a small building. It'll never be able to fit you. It's your prom. In no time, she was all wound up and then her college aged daughter looked at her and said, Mom, ""Let Them"". At that moment, a light bulb went off and a theory was born. Instead of trying to control or influence others behaviors, allow them the freedom to act as they choose. Whether it's a family member who makes a decision you don't agree with, a friend who doesn't respond the way you had hoped. Or even a stranger's behavior that frustrates you, like the woman yesterday who took all the half priced canned pumpkin at the grocery store. Just ""Let Them"". Why? Because people are going to do what they're going to do. This theory that Mel created is for people, perhaps yourself, who spend too much time and energy trying to manage how others think, feel, and act. If that's you, I'm glad you're listening, because these two words can set you free. Think about the last time you stepped in to be a life coach for someone who, A, wasn't paying you, and B, didn't invite you. How'd it go? Probably not There are two truths about life. One, people like to do their own thing. Two, when we try to control others, their brain actually leans into resistance. Why? Because people like to do their own thing. Voluntarily life coaching others often leads to unnecessary stress, anxiety, and disappointment because the truth is you can't control anyone but yourself. Letting them do what they will doesn't mean you approve or agree. It simply means you're releasing yourself from the burden of control and all the emotions that quickly follow it. The beauty of ""Let Them"" theory lies in its simplicity. When you stop fighting against the actions of others, you free up mental and emotional energy for things you can control, your own choices, peace, calm, and your own priorities. Let me give you an example from the couch. A number of years ago, though I've had this many times in my office, a client was upset because her siblings weren't doing what she felt was enough for their aging parents. This created a lot of tension as she explained to them what she thought her parents needed and in response, they did what adults often do. Whatever they wanted. She tried to get them more involved, first by being nice, and then by using guilt. Nothing worked. She was miserable. At the time, I didn't have these two fun words, ""Let Them"", but I said what I always say to my clients in this situation, Stay in your lane. You are not their life coach. When you adopt the ""Let Them"" mindset, you are letting people make decisions that they believe are best for them. This means that you're not internalizing their decisions. or making it about you. Doing this almost instantly reduces overthinking, judgment, and resentment. It reminds you that other people's actions aren't necessarily personal. They're often a reflection of their needs, priorities, or struggles, not yours. Practicing the spirit of ""Let Them"" gave my client enough mental space to realize that she had always been closer to her parents than her siblings. Instead of being mad at them, she developed some compassion and gratitude that the cards fell in her favor when it came to her relationship with her parents. LetThem is a coping skill that can bring you more calm, but actually it comes from a place of anxiety. Yes, your desire to help or control may seem like it comes from a good intention, but if you use your superpower of self awareness, you'll likely see that you feel anxious about the other person's behavior. Your kid isn't doing well in school. ""Let Them"". Your adult child is drinking too much. ""Let Them"". Your spouse isn't getting enough sleep. ""Let Them"". It sounds easy, but for many of you listening, you've been conditioned to jump in and help, jump in and direct, and even jump in and save. Having ""Let Them"" as a coping skill in your mental wellness toolkit will take a bit of practice. You need to use the skill I talk about so often on this podcast. You need to notice when you are being called into action for someone else and do the following. Number one, pause and reflect. When you're tempted to react or overthink someone's behavior, pause and ask yourself, is this something I can control? If not, ""Let Them"". Number two, breathe and re regulate your nervous system. For some reason in my research, Mel left this important step out. If you don't do this, you'll be white knuckling your way through. ""Let Them"". Number three, focus on your energy, redirect your energy within your control, your own actions, emotions, boundaries, and desires. Number four, release judgment. Understand that people's decisions aren't always about you. ""Let Them"" make their choices, even if they're not the ones you'd make. Judgment is poison, usually not for others, but for yourself. Let Them"" can move you from judgment to acceptance. Acceptance to compassion and compassion to wishing others success as they make their own choices. My client was so busy judging her siblings for not being like her that she wasn't thinking of them as separate people with their own history with her parents. When she stepped out of control and judgment, she remembered how hard her dad had been on her siblings. Something the family never acknowledged. But they still lived with. A few months after she had initiated her one way truce, there was enough peace between them that one day she said to her sibling, I think I get that it's hard to help dad because he was so hard on you. This tough guy got tears in his eyes and said nothing. Her making space for her sibling's experience inside of her made her more compassionate and kind. It didn't change her siblings behavior, but it did change her. And that's what this podcast is all about. You changing your behavior so you can create calm. Judgment is an attempt to feel powerful and in control. Let Them"" surrenders to acceptance, peace, calm, love and compassion. The spirit of LetThem is you staying in your lane with a sense of wishing those swimming next to you the right to do whatever workout they want and you can send them blessings that you hope it's a good one. By the way, Common sense prevails in applying ""Let Them"". Parents should use this wisely with children who don't have enough life experience to keep themselves safe. But they may actually know that they want to quit piano. This theory isn't about being passive or ignoring boundaries. It's about choosing calm over control in situation where control isn't yours to have. Think of rush hour. Or you can choose to be calm, or you can choose to be angry about the traffic flow. The ""Let Them"" theory is liberating because it's not about giving up. It's about letting go. It reminds you that your peace doesn't depend on controlling others. It depends on how you Manage you. So your inner challenge is to try out, ""Let Them"". The next time you find yourself caught up in someone else's choices or actions, take a deep breath and ask the question, can I control this? If the answer is no, take a few breaths and say, ""Let Them"". Next, refocus your energy, let go of judgment. And wish them well. In this episode, I shared Mel Robbins, ""Let Them"" mindset and I encourage you to add breath work and a sprinkle of kindness at the end wishing those who you wanted to control, well, I actually did that with the lady who took all the half price pumpkin. In my mind, I imagined she was making pumpkin bread for the homeless. Me, I was just going to make overnight oats. On Thursday to talk exactly about the unintended consequence of ""Let Them"". If you're not focusing on you, if you're not focusing on them, then you have to begin to focus on you. And. That can be a bit harder than it seems. Thanks for listening to Creating Midlife Calm.
