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.
Creating Midlife Calm: Coping Skills for Stress & Anxiety in Family, Work & Relationships
Ep. 223 The Incredible 2-Minute Christmas Gift That Will Ease Your Anxiety, Stress, and Midlife Loneliness
What if Christmas didn’t have to feel like something happening to you create and enjoy?
You’re not alone if this holiday brings complicated feelings, stress, or midlife anxiety.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
- How a single word can bring you back into agency and calm on a day that often feels overwhelming
- Why a mental “movie” helps anchor your body and nervous system to reduce stress and make you feel calm this Christmas.
Take 2 minutes to feel more grounded and connected—you’re worth it. Merry Christmas and a Calm New Year!
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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.
Christmas is here. And for many today doesn't feel magical. It feels complicated. It can feel exhausting. It can feel like something that happens to you, the expectations, the emotions, the dynamics instead of something you have an agency in. So for these next two minutes, I want to give you a gift. I want you to choose one word that can be yours today. Pick a word, just one. Trust. Whatever word, surfaces a word you want to stay with you today. Maybe it's calm, maybe it's presence. Maybe it's gratitude. Maybe it's enjoyment. Maybe it's rest. And now I want you to run a mental movie in your mind of you embodying that word today. Not perfectly. Just gently see yourself moving through the day with that word in your body. In your voice, in your choices, in how you treat yourself, let that word be the quiet thread that carries you. Let that word be what grounds your feet and anchors your heart. Let yourself slow down and listen to the wisdom inside of you. If you did Monday's Inner Challenge, giving your loneliness a bit of childhood comfort, Let this word ride right alongside of it. Those two things together. A small comfort from your past, and one word for your present can bring an unexpected steadiness to your Christmas. You are moving through today with your word. You're staying close to yourself. I'm wishing you a gentle Christmas. A calm Christmas, a peaceful Christmas, a gratitude filled Christmas, or whatever is your word today. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Monday with more creating midlife calm.