Ep. 242 Why Your Midlife Busyness Is Hiding Your Stress & Anxiety

What if the reason you stay busy isn’t because life is demanding but because slowing down feels unsettling?
If this resonates, you’re not broken — and there is a constructive, meaningful way forward.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
1.    How anxiety and stress often masquerade as productivity and constant motion in midlife
2.    Why busyness can feel regulating to your nervous system even when it quietly drains you
3.    How simple awareness of your relationship with activity becomes a powerful coping skill that restores calm
 Take 10 minutes to understand why slowing down feels hard and begin retraining your nervous system for real rest — 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

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover that maybe your anxiety is fueling your busyness.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW 0:05

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.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW 0:29

Welcome to the podcast. You may believe you're busy because your life really is full. And honestly, that might be true, but if you're always moving, always doing and rarely settling, rarely relaxing, even when time finally opens up, that's something worth paying attention to. In this episode, you'll discover why being busy is often rewarded and reinforced even when it's driven by anxiety. How midlife roles and parenting patterns keep your nervous system in motion and what it means when slowing down starts to feel uncomfortable instead of calming. Last week a client said to me, do most couples fight right before they go to bed because we sure do. When we explored their particular dynamics, she said, I find it very difficult to turn off at night, so I always bring some decision I want us to make. That way I can go to bed with a sense of accomplishment. She added This drives my spouse crazy'cause he just wants to relax, not decide. Let's face it. Most people in midlife are caring a lot. The to-do list is long, but if you struggle to set it aside, this episode is for you. When I said to this woman that she sounded anxious, she looked at me and said. Oh, no, I'm not anxious. I'm just busy, responsible, and trying to stay on top of things. Anxiety in this season doesn't always look like panic or worry. Often it looks like momentum, productivity, staying ahead, just getting one more thing done. I work with many people who don't see themselves as anxious at all, but they notice something else. They feel uneasy when nothing is pressing. They don't quite know what to do with stillness vacations. They look forward to them, but they're little uncomfortable with no structure, nothing to do. So let me ask you this just to check in, not a diagnosis. If you finally get time to rest, does your body actually settle or does it feel restless? One reason this pattern is so easy to miss is because our culture rewards it being busy signals competence. Doing creates structure. Activity gives a sense of control. So when anxiety fuels motion, it often gets reinforced instead of questioned. You get praised for being productive. You feel useful, you feel needed over time, motion itself. Becomes regulating not just because others reward you, but because your body does too with little hits of dopamine that feel good, not because it's healthy, but because it's familiar. So when your anxiety fuels busyness. It's not personal, it's cultural. You're not only responding to stress, you're living inside a system that equates worth with output. Think how often you hear someone say, oh, you must be so busy, or my calendar's packed. It's often said like a badge of honor. Let me talk about a place where this pattern of doing shows up and where it might be costing you more than you realize. Family life, especially in parenting, many midlife parents notice that most of their interactions with their children are transactional. Who needs a ride? What needs to get done? What problem needs to be solved? Put your phone away. Slowing down just to be together without an agenda, without a plan can feel awkward, inefficient, or strangely uncomfortable. So the instinct is to add something, a plan, an activity, a structure. But here's what's important to understand. Unstructured relational time is deeply regulating for your nervous system and for the nervous systems of the people you love. If your system has been trained for motion, that kind of time can feel unsettling at first. Not because it's wrong, but because it's unfamiliar. I often hear parents say, I don't know what to do with them if they're not doing something. That discomfort. Isn't failure, it's information. On Friday afternoons, I do consults focused on a specific problem. Once a couple came in to brainstorm how to have more closeness with their junior high children, they started by implementing family dinner four times a week. They came back the next session reporting. It was so uncomfortable that by the second night their kids were begging to bring their phones so they could share YouTube videos. They could all talk about, I encouraged the parents to create closeness by talking in a neutral way about what was happening. The dad said, I think we need to learn how to sit down together with no devices. The oldest child replied, dad, no one does that, because if there isn't something going on outside of us, we start to notice how uncomfortable our inside feels. Whoa, from the mouth of babes. And if you don't have kids, this same pattern often shows up at work or when you're alone, filling every open moment with tasks, emails, or planning, you know what I mean? You are on the phone talking to a friend and instead of relaxing with a nice cup of coffee, you're wiping the shelves or dusting. Let me share a little biological fact with you. Your nervous system is not meant to be on high alert. But when stress is ongoing, your nervous system adapts. It learns it's staying activated is safer than slowing down movement feels predictable. Stillness feels uncertain. So when motion stops, what often surfaces isn't calm, it's restlessness, self-judgment, a sense that you should be doing something. Or as that wise teenager said, feeling uncomfortable inside. This is where many people instinctively reach for stimulation often without realizing it. You sit down, put your hand on your phone, not because you need it, but because your nervous system is still scanning. If you wanna learn more about how the phone impacts your nervous system, check out episodes 121 and 122 remember, you can be physically still and neurologically busy at work at night or when nothing is required of you like my client who laid down at night. Body at rest mind wanting one more task completed. And that's not a character flaw, it's conditioning. Over time, anxiety fueled busyness has costs and they're often very subtle. You might feel more irritable, sleep might suffer quiet moments, stop feeling restorative. But there's another cost that often goes unnoticed. The impact on the people you live with. When one person in a household is always busy or internally activated, others feel it. Yes, emotions are contagious. Children often become more performative than relational. They sense that relaxing isn't really allowed. Partners may not get the space they need to slow down, share ideas, or just talk without turning it into logistics or problem solving. This isn't because you don't care, it's because anxious motion changes the emotional climate. Often without anyone realizing it. But what I have learned from my clients is many people reach a moment when you think, I don't even know how to relax anymore. So here's your Inner Challenge for this week, and it's about noticing. Not changing. Just begin to notice when movement feels soothing, when stopping, feels uncomfortable, when structure or stimulation gets added, mindlessly No fixing. No correcting, no judging. Awareness is work today. And here's the most important thing to hold on to. Your ability to slow down isn't lost. It's something your nervous system can relearn, and that's exactly what I'll focus on on Thursday. In this episode, you discovered how anxiety and stress can fuel being busy in midlife through culture roles and learn nervous system patterns. And why? Understanding this is the first step toward restoring your ability to slow down. Because our body needs to work hard and our body needs to play hard, and our body needs to rest hard. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Thursday with more creating midlife calm.