Ep. 253 How to Tell the Difference Between Anxiety and Your Inner Voice to Reduce Stress in Midlife

Have you ever noticed the anxious, urgent voice in your mind full of “what ifs”?

There is a calm inner voice beneath that anxiety, and learning to recognize it can reduce stress.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

1. How to recognize the difference between anxious thinking and your inner voice
2. Why midlife is often when people begin hearing their inner voice more clearly
3. Two practical ways to reconnect with your inner voice and reduce anxiety

🎧 Take 10 minutes to better understand the voices in your mind and move toward more calm—you’re worth it.

****

About the Host: 

MJ Murray Vachon, LCSW, is a seasoned clinician, educator, and host of the podcast Creating Midlife Calm, recognized by Maria Shriver as a “Listen of the Week.” Over the past 40 years, MJ has led more than 50,000 therapy sessions and developed the Inner Challenge mental wellness program and the Inner Challenge Master Class, practical tools for emotional regulation, self-awareness, and resilience taught for more than 30 years in junior high schools and at the University of Notre Dame for freshman football players. Through her podcast, teaching, and coaching, MJ helps people build calmer lives, stronger relationships, and healthier communities.

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 how learning to recognize your Inner voice can reduce anxiety and mental clutter.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW 0:08

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 0:32

Welcome to the podcast. If you've ever done spring cleaning in your house, you know something interesting happens. At first, you clean the visible spaces, the kitchen counters, the closets, the surfaces people see. But eventually you realize the real clutter is often somewhere else. It's, in the basement, the place where old things get stored and guess what? Our minds work a lot like that too. Monday's episode was about ushering spring in and cleaning the closet of the mind, noticing tension in the body and tending to it. Today we're going deeper. We're going into the basement because basements are where we store the things. We don't know quite what to do with. Old expectations, old roles, old beliefs about who we're supposed to be by midlife. You've been storing things in that basement for decades And often what you find there is the quiet voice that has been trying to guide you all along. In this episode, you'll discover the difference between the anxiety, voice, and the Inner voice. Why midlife is an incredible opportunity to begin hearing your Inner voice more clearly, and two ways you can begin listening to that voice. Even with a busy life, and we'll build on Monday's Inner Challenge, noticing tension in the body, because often the body is the doorway to hearing your Inner voice. In Monday's Inner Challenge, I asked you to write down your answer to four questions. Perhaps you like many of my clients are surprised when you begin to do this because when you slow down long enough to notice tension, you often begin hearing something else too. Your Inner voice. Often the first place you'll hear your Inner voice is actually through your body. Let me show you what I mean. For more than 20 years, my mental wellness program, Inner Challenge was part of a junior high curriculum, and every November we had something called Inner Voice Month. Yes, this is true. I encourage the students to write about their Inner voice, the quiet voice inside that often guided them to align with their deepest values once and desires. Those essays often brought me to tears. One student wrote, I was so mad at my brother for not sharing the remote that I was gonna hit him. And then I could hear this voice inside that said, don't do it. Another student wrote something very different. She said, I hate basketball, but my dad loves to coach my Inner voice told me to be honest with him, she told her dad the truth. She quit basketball, he continued coaching. I taught this to them at a young age because I knew something from the many clients I had worked with. If they didn't understand this concept early, by the time they were in their twenties, it would be the roar of loved ones in the culture that they would listen to. Instead of their Inner voice. And that's what often brings people to midlife, feeling anxious, overwhelmed, and honestly quite disconnected from their authentic self. Children often recognize that voice quickly, but as you grow older, it's easy to bury it under expectations, responsibilities, dreams that were thwarted. And the voices of other people. And midlife is often when that quiet voice begins knocking again. If the body is the closet of the mind, the Inner voice lives deeper, more like the basement. Like I said earlier, it's where old expectations, roles and beliefs get stored. Many of you have been carrying these ideas for decades, and the anxiety voice often grows louder when your life begins drifting away. From what your Inner voice actually knows is the truth. One of the most helpful distinctions I've learned in my work is this, the anxiety voice is loud, urgent, and fearful. It pushes it pressures. It says things like, what if this goes wrong? You should be doing more. You can't disappoint them. Don't listen to yourself. They know best, but the Inner voice is different. It's usually quiet, calm, steady. It doesn't yell it often says something simple like, this doesn't feel right. This is really important. You already know the answer. And sometimes those quiet and calm statements are surrounded with nervousness because your truth doesn't always align with what others you care about want. And that's the challenge in your busy life with work, family, culture, and expectations. It's easy for this quieter voice to get buried. One of the interesting things about midlife is that many people begin hearing the quieter voice more clearly. Sometimes it starts with exhaustion, sometimes with resentment, sometimes with a sense of being overextended. People often come to therapy saying, I don't know what's wrong. But something doesn't feel right. Midlife is often when you may realize you've been living more by expectations than by your Inner voice. That feeling is often the Inner voice trying to get your attention. One thing I've learned about the Inner voice is that it is rooted in goodness, which means it's also important to understand what the Inner voice isn't. Your Inner voice is not a voice inside that guides you to harm yourself or others. In 40 years as a therapist, I've sat with many people who have had those kinds of thoughts, and when they find the courage to tend to befriend those thoughts, instead of hiding them, something important often happens. Their deeper voice begins to emerge and say something very different. It says, no, that isn't what I want. I Just want less pain. Human beings are fragile creatures living in a tough world. Sometimes the mind tries to solve pain in ways that aren't helpful, but underneath that noise, there's a deeper voice that once healing. If your Inner voice feels constantly negative or critical, I encourage you to seek professional help because what years of being a therapist has taught me is that many people mistake someone else's voice for their own clients who grew up with very critical parents often believe that criticism is their Inner voice. But it isn't. It's a voice they internalized after hearing it for years in therapy, they slowly learn to move that voice out of the basement of their mind. And as that happens, their real Inner voice begins to emerge. At first, it may feel new. Even a little unsteady, but over time it becomes a voice that offers guidance, clarity, and compassion. Your Inner voice will never shame you. It guides you to a healthy life-giving place. So the question becomes how do you listen to that voice now that you're in midlife with so many demands? Let me share two ways. Often your Inner voice appears when you're alone and quiet, maybe at a stoplight. On a walk or when you're lying in bed at night, thoughts surface, and many people have learned to dismiss those thoughts quickly because they've been trained not to listen to what lives deeper inside of them. Let me give you an example. A client who had come to therapy to rebalance her life while her and her husband were trying to have a third child said to me, I slept horribly last night. I asked her why, and she said. I had this thought that I feel really content with two children. I asked her to sit with that thought to tend and befriend it. She looked up and said, oh, I prefer not to because what if it's true? I would disappoint him. She had placed her own feelings deep in the basement of her mind because she loved her husband and wanted to give him what he wanted. Her Inner voice had been there all along. It had just been buried and in a moment of quiet and stillness, she hesitantly reconnected to it. One another way to hear your Inner voice become curious about your judgments, resentments, and jealousy. We are often taught those feelings are bad, but they are human. They give you incredible information. If you can be courageous to tend and befriend them, and when you do, you'll often reconnect to deeper truths within you. A client had a younger sister who had just bought a home. My client and her husband were living in an apartment and believed they could never afford a house like hers. My client had created a whole story about why buying a house right now was silly. Finally, I said, I can't tell if you're resentful or jealous. She quickly said neither. I just think she's being stupid. I asked her to sit quietly with that feeling. Soon tears fell down her face and she said, I want a house, but my husband and I have given up. Then something else surfaced. A quieter voice. Maybe we're giving up too soon. Her Inner voice had spoken. When you listen to your Inner voice, it's a little like going into the basement with the lights on instead of the lights off. Listening to that voice doesn't mean you immediately change your life often. It simply means you begin by hearing it, acknowledging it, letting it have a place in the conversation. When the Inner voice is heard, the mind becomes a much quieter place, and when you do that, mental clutter begins to clear. Calm often follows. And from that place, people often step into their day with greater energy and agency.

11:26

In this episode, you discovered how your quiet Inner voice often lives deeper in the basement of the mind, beneath the louder voice of anxiety and expectations.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW 11:37

If you'd like a simple way to begin practicing this, I created a free five minute guided exercise called paying attention to tension. It helps you slow down, notice where anxiety and stress are living in your body and gently tend to it. Often people find that when they do this exercise, it's easier to connect with your Inner voice. You can find it in the show notes. It only takes five minutes and you can use it anytime your mind feels cluttered. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Monday with more creating midlife calm.