Ep. 196 Essential Coping Skills for Midlife Loneliness: How to Ease Anxiety and Stress by Rebuilding Community.

Does your busyness cover up midlife loneliness without truly easing your anxiety and stress?
You’re not alone—belonging often fades when school, church, or work communities disappear, leaving a quiet ache.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

1.     Why loneliness in midlife reminds us that busyness doesn’t equal belonging.

2.     How belonging shifts once familiar communities disappear—and why creating connection becomes a DIY project.

3.     Three practical coping skills to rebuild community and ease midlife loneliness, anxiety, and stress.

🎧 Take 10 minutes to reclaim calm and connection in midlife—you’re worth it.

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About the Host:
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than 48,000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching her Mental Wellness curriculum, Inner Challenge. Four years ago she overcame her fear of technology to create a podcast that integrated her vast clinical experience and practical wisdom of cultivating mental wellness using the latest information from neuroscience. MJ was Social Worker of the Year in 2011 for Region 2/IN.

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

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (3): 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover how the key to overcoming midlife loneliness lies in looking back. 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 32 years of teaching practical science-backed mental wellness. Welcome to the podcast This year, the most popular podcast episodes have been on midlife loneliness. As I've said before, this surprised me even though the news often reminds us that loneliness is an epidemic for all ages. Check out episode 1 46 if you want the wise, but today. It's story time. I wanna share with you a real life story. Something that just happened this past weekend that helped me see a possible solution to the loneliness you might be feeling. And hey, maybe you aren't lonely, but maybe one of your parents or siblings is. If so, listen and share this podcast with them. Because in this episode, you're gonna discover why loneliness and midlife can persist even when life feels full and busy. How belonging shifts once school, church, or work communities fade. And why creating connection becomes a DIY project. And lastly, three practical strategies to rebuild community and ease your midlife loneliness. Let me share with you my story. My children attended a K through eight school that, besides being a very good education, was filled with many wonderful individuals and families. It was also the place where I created my mental wellness program, Inner Challenge. No School is Perfect. This one wasn't, but it was a darn good one. One of the most special things about it was the community, the people who made it tick, you know, the outstanding principle. The overworked teachers who smiled on most days, and the many parents probably like you, who pitched in to coach teams, cook hot dogs and sew costumes for the school play. It was a true place of community. Yet, like all good things, it came to an end. Our kids graduated and after 21 years of teaching Inner Challenge to the junior high students, so did I. At first, I didn't think too much about not being part of this community that we had grown to depend on. Life was busy. I had my clients, my aging parents. My lawn demo, mow dinners to cook, and all the other crushing responsibilities of midlife. My kids were moving into their own high school and college communities where parents are appropriately sidelined. Every so often though, I would think about that community and feel an ache inside. I might run into someone at the grocery and the ache would return. Then three weeks ago, out of nowhere, three women sent my husband and me an email inviting us to the annual picnic right there on the school parking lot, in the last year, I realized I missed those people. I missed that community. And here were three brave women who must have felt the same because they were gathering us together again. And to be honest, I was a little hesitant, a little afraid walking up to the school that I had literally walked up to thousands of times, but on a beautiful Saturday night, I pushed through that fear and sat down with about 20 of us ate cold hamburgers that weren't that good and caught up. Each person I spoke with expressed deep appreciation for the invite. Some said, I really miss this. Others said I'm home by myself a lot. We are busy and we are lonely. The two can live side by. Busyness can cover up loneliness, but it can't fill it. What fills it is conversation with interesting people, just like their children have gone on to grow and to develop. Each of these people that I spoke with that night, I found fascinating. I found just sitting and learning about their lives, catching up on what their children were doing to fill a certain spot in me that I'm not quite sure I knew was empty. If you crave connection and conversation about real things and you don't get enough of it, you're not alone. You may feel lonely, but you're not the only one saying In midlife, I need relationships that provide sustenance. I need a sense of belong. Maybe your community has broken down because your kids are no longer in school. Maybe you no longer attend church. Maybe you work remotely great for your family, but not always great for your soul. Here's what I want you to remember today. Belonging matters. In fact, the only real cure for loneliness is a sense of belonging. If you're lonely, it may have less to do with you personally and more to do with no longer being part of the structures that used to give you community automatically. At the picnic, someone asked me would I consider midlife. I've always said 35 to 75. That may sound wide and is often shocking for some people, but after working with clients for many years, it feels true. Chip Conley, the founder of Modern Elder Academy, agrees he also defines midlife as 35 to 75, not the traditional 40 to 65 he sees it not as a crisis, but as a long stretch of renewal, growth, and wisdom in today's longer, healthier lifespans. But one of the hard parts is that we often outgrow our communities, or maybe it's better to say we graduate from them. For most of our lives, community and belonging are created for us. But in the second half of midlife, you need a strategy to create a place to belong. In the last few days. I have thought a lot about that picnic In my conversation with my former and current friends, three strategies seemed to surface that I think might help ease loneliness. Number one, think about revisiting old communities. Think of the groups who've been part of and consider a reunion, just like my example above. Number two, extend your activities that you're already doing. If you step into something new or a part of something like pickleball, don't let the community stop at the court. Be brave like my friends, and invite people out afterwards. Number three, create meaningful gatherings. If you're part of a community that's busy, but surface level, gather people with gentle boundaries, maybe no talk of kids, school or politics. A few months ago. I got an email from a group of moms who had listened to my podcast. I thought, that is such a great idea. No one has to read the book, 10 minutes discuss. The point is create a gathering, but don't overthink it. I can't help but think that my three friends who sent the email just did it. And guess what? They kind of hit it out of the park at the picnic. There were even little note cards inviting us to gather again in a month. I'm pretty sure the attendance will be good. One woman admitted as she was leaving that she had made backup plans because she wasn't so sure how it would go. I laughed and said, me too. My husband and I brought our walking shoes, aren't we humans funny. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. But in this case, I think it made our hearts afraid until we reconnected and talked for hours. No walking for me that night or in a month.'cause I know where I'll be gathering again. This week, your Inner Challenge is probably pretty obvious. I want you to write down three communities you've been part of in life so far. Maybe grade school, a championship team, a favorite church group, an old neighborhood, whatever comes to mind. Then look at them and challenge yourself to be brave and send an email to a few people for a gathering. It could be in person or on Zoom. In this episode, you've discovered that busyness can cover up loneliness, but true belonging comes from real connection. Why midlife requires you to take the lead in creating the communities you need, and three ways to bravely rebuild connection through reunions, extending activities into deeper relationships, and gathering people for real connection. So here's the hard truth in midlife. Once the old communities fade connection becomes a DIY project, that means you may need to slay a few dragons to find your new kingdom,

9:14

and that's exactly what I'm gonna talk about on Thursday, including my respectful disagreement with Mel Robbins, who says it takes 200 hours to find a close friend

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (3): 9:26

thanks for listening. And I'll be back on Thursday with more Creating midlife Calm.