Ep. 205 Surprising Coping Skills You Can Learn From Toddlers To Dissolve Anxiety and Stress In Midlife

What if the surprising key to dissolving midlife anxiety and stress comes from the way toddlers move through the world?
You’re not alone if stress and anxiety in midlife make calm feel out of reach.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
1.    Why eliminating outside stressors rarely creates lasting calm
2.    How toddlers teach powerful lessons about coping with midlife anxiety and stress
3.    Right-brain practices that reconnect you to the calm already inside of you
 Take 12 minutes to unlock calm from the inside out and ease midlife anxiety and stress—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: 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover simple ways to reconnect to the calm already inside of you. 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. On Monday, I shared how a week with my 2-year-old grandson Neil reignited, a deep sense of calm in me. His calm was contagious, and when he went back home, I feel even more committed to emphasize here how important it is for you to connect with the calm already inside of you. Even if that feels impossible in this episode, you'll discover why trying to eliminate outside stressors doesn't really bring lasting calm. What the toddler brain can teach you about being present and resetting quickly, and the right brain practices that help you reconnect to the calm already inside of you. Before we begin, let's check in with the Inner Challenge I gave you on Monday. I invited you to notice once your thoughts started to spiral, to stop ground your feet. Take some calming breaths, and bring your focus back to whatever you were doing, dishes, driving, eating, or talking with someone. You love the practice of doing this reminds you that calm isn't something you need to chase. It's actually something you return to. Yes. The calm already inside of you. Do you ever think if I just get rid of what's stressing me out, then I'll feel calm? Sometimes that does work. Leaving a toxic job, setting a boundary, or getting your to-do list done, but let's be honest, most of the time life won't let you remove every stressor. That's why the most powerful path. Is learning how to be calm on the inside. Letting calm become your foundation. Not a prize that the world hands you. And to do that, you need practices that reconnect you to the calm. Already inside of you. So what can we learn from the toddler brain? This is where toddlers are such wise teachers at two years old, their brains are wired to live in the moment. The prefrontal cortex, that part of your brain that sits right behind our forehead. Its job is to plan, predict, but it also worries In toddlers, this isn't mature yet, so they aren't replaying yesterday or forecasting what ifs for tomorrow. Instead, toddlers are sensory driven. You actually know this once you think about it. They explore, they reset quickly. That's why when they cry hard one minute and are laughing the next. Their brains naturally let them drop back into presence Over the years I've seen that adult. What if Loop in my office more times than I can count. Have you noticed it at night? Your mind spins what? I don't get the job. What if my child gets cut from the team? What if we don't have enough money? One client told me I go to bed and all I do is what ifs. It's ruining my life. That was her moment to try something new. I asked, what sensory experience do you love more than? Anything. She lit up, oh, I love a bath. She said, I would love to end each night just soaking in a tub. I said, why don't you? And she said, I don't have time for that. And then she caught herself and laughed and said, oh, I won't scroll. I'm going to soak. A week later at her next appointment, she said soaking in that tub changed everything. The bath released all my stress of the day, and I slept so much better. Something equally important happened. That sensory experience gave her a tangible experience of calm, one that she could think of during her stressful days. She would say to herself, Ugh, this is so stressful, but I can soak it away tonight. That's reconnecting with the calm already inside of you. I totally get it. Midlife, ugh. The load is so much. You can be listening to this podcast and think, MJ, I got way too much stress and anxiety for me to reconnect with my calm, but I really want to encourage you to begin to imagine that you can reconnect with your calm. It's inside of you, and it's free for the asking. I understand you can't go back to a toddler brain, but you can borrow its strengths. By activating your right brain. As you know, your brain has two hemispheres. The left brain is analytic. It plans, organizes, judges, and worries. The right brain is holistic. It processes music, art, rhythm. Imagery connection. When you engage the right brain, you become more present, embodied and calm. Here's a few practices to try as I go through them, just take notice of which ones you connect with. Music and rhythm put on music or move with rhythm like my grandson Neil did for Vivaldi during the blood draw. Music soothed him and shifted his focus. Have you noticed how a single song can change your state, step into your agency and use music if that's your thing? Art and imagery are wonderful ways to connect to your calm, draw doodle. Look at art or picture something calming. One client of mine who suffered from panic attacks knew. Every breathing technique, but the thing that settled her the most, push pin art a few evenings a week, she sat with it and her whole system relaxed it wasn't about the skill, it gave her brain a gentle, absorbing focus that calmed her body from the inside out. Being mindful of your body and doing practices that connect you to your body is such an important part of cultivating calm breath work, yoga, relaxing your muscles, your right brain tracks body sensations. So tuning into your body brings you into the present. Remember, stress and anxiety can trap you in your head. So here's a tip. Each time you get up to use the bathroom, take 10 seconds, two arm circles. Touch your toes, follow your breath. Say to yourself, I am not just my head. I am my whole body. This quick reset helps you reconnect with the calm. Already inside of you, and of course, nature and awe. Step outside, take out those earbuds. Notice the colors, the textures, the sounds, even two minutes on a porch counts. Nature grounds your nervous system. Hey, if you want my four minutes of cricket sounds guaranteed to soothe your nervous system, just send me an email at MJ at MJ Murray Han. And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, connection and eye contact, emotional connection with a friend, a spouse, a child, or a pet, pulls you back into calm. One client calls it cat mindfulness. Each morning her cat curls up on her lap for five to seven minutes. She just pets him by the end. Both are deeply relaxed. Science backs this up. About 10 minutes of petting lowers cortisol and blood pressure and boost oxytocin, your bonding hormone. I think that science says you can pet not just your cat, if you get what I mean. It's not just comforting, it's biological, calm. Now let's go to the M word, the one practice with a huge body of research that most people want to avoid. Meditation. I know that word can feel intimidating. Maybe you've tried it and thought, I can't do this. My mind won't stop. Here's the truth. Meditation has nothing to do with stopping your thoughts. It's about gently bringing your mind back again and again, back to the calm. Already inside of you. Think of it like a toddler with a toy completely absorbed in stacking blocks or flipping through a book. That focus is meditation in its simplest form. Attention anchored in the now science shows even a few minutes, can calm the amygdala, lower stress hormones, and strengthen your prefrontal cortex. And over time, your brain literally changes how it handles anxiety, and it doesn't need to be formal. Sit for two minutes and notice your breath. Focus on the sounds around you or repeat a calming word like peace or love. The goal isn't perfection. The goal is practice. Want my story about meditation in college? I tried it once, lasted 15 minutes and thought, Nope, not for me. In my forties, I tried it again. Still overwhelming. In my fifties, I found Tara Brock's guided practices online. Her gentle voice and her instructions changed everything. I wasn't emptying my mind. I was calming it and filling my heart with something good. There are so many ways to access this now. A little meditation goes a long way. Don't let old experiences keep you from trying. Because in my 40 years of clinical practice, it is the one thing that people start out hating and learn to love. Now let's talk about what doesn't bring calm. Do you reach for your phone to unwind? Scrolling pulls you in. It distracts you at first. It really does seem calming until it doesn't. Phones, keep your mind overstimulated. Novelty comparison. Endless information instead of calming you. Scrolling often leaves you more restless, more anxious, more drained. That's why real practices, music, breath, nature, meditation, leaning into your senses feel different. They quiet your system instead of revving it up. They bring you back to the present, back to the calm already inside of you instead of scattering your attention everywhere. In this episode, you discovered that lasting calm doesn't come from fixing everything outside of you. You can reconnect to the calm already inside of you by practicing presence, learning from the toddler brain, and engaging your right brain. And you saw why real practices like meditation restore peace in a way that scrolling never will. I know it's hard to let go of the idea that if everything on the outside would just settle down, so would your insides. But if you can be brave. If you can be courageous enough and accept that the calm is inside of you and with a little effort, these practices will go a long way in helping you cultivate calm from the inside out. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Monday with more creating midlife calm.