Ep. 245 The Coping Skill That Works Better Than Stress Eating to Ease Anxiety and Stress in Midlife

What if learning to relax is the missing step in changing stress eating in midlife?
If you’ve tried to stop stress eating by using willpower or discipline, you’re not alone — and there’s a more supportive way forward.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
1.    Why stress eating often shows up when your body doesn’t yet know how to relax
2.    How learning to listen to your body helps reduce anxiety and stress without relying on food
3.    Gentle, science-backed coping skills that make relaxation feel safer and more accessible in midlife
 Take 10 minutes to explore how relaxation — not restriction — can change your relationship with stress eating. 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 why changing stress eating is not about learning to behave better. 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, we talked about stress eating as something your nervous system does to regulate itself. Not a failure, not a lack of willpower. And even if you missed Monday, stay with me because this episode will give you lots of information. You can go back later and listen to Monday. We ended with a simple Inner Challenge. Notice on the inside, if you tried this simple mindfulness exercise, you may have realized something important. You don't actually know how to do this, or you've never really listened to yourself in this way before, that's not a problem. That's actually the point in this episode, you'll discover why stopping stress eating isn't about better habits or more discipline, how learning to listen to yourself changes the role food plays in self-regulation, and why self attunement is a skill, not a personality trait. This episode isn't about behavior change. It's about learning to listen to yourself, because when listening returns, food doesn't have to do the regulating anymore. On Monday I introduced the concept self attunement. The ability to notice what you need without judgment. This isn't something that you're born with or without. It's a skill. And for many of us, it was never taught. If you are like most humans, you are taught to monitor yourself, how you look, how you perform, how you affect others. These aren't bad skills, but they're often overemphasized at the expense of being taught how to listen inward. Listening inward means noticing bodily sensations, understanding what you need, and responding with care. For most people, this kind of deep listening was rarely modeled or reinforced. So if you feel unsure, blank or awkward when you turn inward, that doesn't mean you're bad at attunement, it actually means you're learning something new. For the majority of my clients, women and men, this small practice catches them off guard. One client set. At best, how can I have spent 44 years with myself and not knowing what was going on inside of me? How insightful and how brave to be willing to go back and learn a foundational skill because when listening isn't taught, judgment steps in to fill the gap, judgment sounds like, what is wrong with me? How could I have done that? It's fast, it's decisive, and it shuts listening down. Curiosity keeps listening open. What's going on here? I wonder why I feel this way. Judgment delivers a verdict. Curiosity asks a question. This is where self attunement often breaks, not because you don't care, but because judgment hijacks the moment. I had a client who came in frustrated because for two weeks she had followed her self care plan carefully. Then one night she blew it, ice cream, chips, no sleep. I asked her to slow down to step out of judgment. And into curiosity to go back to that day and turn inward. What was happening? Was she anxious, stressed, lonely, angry? She sat quietly. Then she said, I kind of hate doing this. But she stayed with it and then she remembered a meeting at work. Her manager told her that her request for new hires wasn't approved. She'd have to figure out how to do more with the staff she had, as she said it. She looked up at me and softened more of the same, do more with less. She did what many of us do. She held it together on the outside, inside. She was overwhelmed. She was angry, she was tired. She pushed through the day, got through the evening, and then went for quick relief food. To stop all the feelings. When you're not grounded inside yourself, urgency rushes in. It sounds like this. Fix this, do something, make it stop. Food fits urgency perfectly. So does scrolling. So does overworking. So does controlling urgency isn't the cause. It's the consequence of not listening, using food to calm. Your nervous system worked, at least in the short run. You didn't invent that strategy for generations. Many of us were taught to not listen to ourselves. Updating that pattern isn't rejection, it's evolution. And maybe even a quiet revolution. We don't listen to be selfish. We listen to be accurate. And authentic. When you learn to listen, instead of monitor something quietly shifts your self talk. Softens your urgency, decreases the emotional climate around you, changes. No fixing or blaming others. Just small ripples of self understanding and awareness that you can work with. This can sound easy on a podcast, just listen to yourself. But my decades as a therapist have taught me that this is more like learning a second language. It does take time. It does take practice. It takes patience. So let's talk about a few simple ways to begin practice. Number one, practice listening to yourself when nothing is wrong. This is about building familiarity. Choose a neutral moment waiting for your coffee as you walk from the parking lot to your office building, standing at the sink, sitting in your car. Ground your feet. Turn your attention inward. No analysis, no fixing, just noticing what's happening inside this listening practice is not a performance practice. Number two, pause and follow your breath when stress shows up, pause, do nothing else. Follow your breath not to calm yourself. But to stay with yourself often one breath is enough to interrupt urgency. Listening comes before action. I've heard it say that action absorbs anxiety, and that is true, and at times that is helpful, but listening absorbs the truth and that my friend is a great place to start. Number three, ask the attunement question. This is the heart of it. Ask yourself like my client did. What would help? If you're someone who helps others, your first answer may be about someone else. That's not wrong. It's practiced. Gently bring it back inside. Then ask. What do I need right now? You may not know. That's expected. Not knowing, doesn't mean you're disconnected. It means the question is new. Asking builds trust, answers come later. And yes, at first this can feel scary because listening to yourself is changing the old rules. One client who called herself a Hall of fame stress eater, shared her first win with me after her teenage daughter yelled, you are the worst mother of all time. She went straight for the chips. She opened the bag, smelled their deliciousness, and then her practice kicked in. She paused, grounded herself, turned inward, and she quietly said, that really hurt. Then she put the chips away, sat down, wrapped herself in a blanket. Nothing more, nothing less. when she told me this, she said That was the simplest and hardest fix of my lifetime, working toward a new hall of fame, one bag of chips at a time. Self-monitoring asks, what should I do? Self attunement asks. What would help? This is the shift. Learning to listen, not. Learning to behave. Listening builds trust. Trust reduces urgency. Regulation becomes internal. Something you do for you, not something outsourced. That builds self-trust and that is healing and that is powerful. Often, it's not about fixing anything, but about holding what hurts, what feels anxious or uncomfortable until it eases and passes through. Usually those uncomfortable feelings Science tells us, will decrease in 90 seconds. In this episode, you discovered that stress eating doesn't change through control. It changes as listening returns. Nothing is wrong with you, but something important is missing, and it's something you're allowed to learn. It's free. It just takes a little bit of effort and practice. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Monday with more creating midlife calm.