Ep. 255 How To Stop Seeking Reassurance In Midlife & Build Coping Skills That Actually Work for Stress & Anxiety

How do you stop seeking reassurance and begin trusting yourself when anxiety and stress feel overwhelming in midlife?
There is a steady and empowering way to build inner reassurance.
In this episode, you’ll discover:

1.     How learning to hold emotional discomfort strengthens your coping skills for anxiety and stress. 

2.     Two simple ways to hear your inner voice so you can make clearer, more confident decisions

3.     Why building inner reassurance helps you feel more steady and rely less on outside validation

🎧 Take 9 minutes to build inner reassurance and strengthen your coping skills—you’re worth it.

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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

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover how to build Inner reassurance. 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. One of the most satisfying parts of being a therapist is helping people transform how they use reassurance. Instead of using it to fix anxiety, they begin to use it for real support. That changes everything. In this episode, you'll discover why building Inner reassurance leads to better emotional regulation and clearer decisions. And the two steps of transforming reassurance. The first, how to hold emotional discomfort, and the second, a simple process to hear your Inner voice. Before we begin, let's touch base with Monday's Inner Challenge. On Monday, I asked you to notice your relationship with reassurance. When anxiety rises, who do you go to and what are you hoping they'll give you? You may have noticed how quickly the urge comes to reach outside of yourself for relief. Today we're gonna learn what to do in that moment instead. We live in a culture that leans towards quick fixes. You can ask someone their opinion. You can check in with chat GPT or put it out on social media. And while those can help, it can become easy to never fully learn how to build reassurance within yourself. But the confidence I've seen people gain when they make this shift is incredibly powerful. Not only do you regulate your emotions better, you also make better decisions. Because most of the time you are the only one who has the full picture of your life. There are two parts to building Inner reassurance, and you need both. The first is to steady your body. The second is to hear your voice. What do I mean when I say steady your body? Basically emotional regulation. You need to learn how to hold discomfort. That doesn't mean you like it. It means you don't immediately try to get rid of it. So I wanna really encourage you to intentionally make this decision. I'm not a teacup, I can hold discomfort. Once you make that decision, you're gonna naturally lean into notice, name, tame, and aim, my emotional regulation framework. You notice what's happening. You name what you're feeling. You gently help your body settle. I call this tame, and then you'll have more mental clarity and you'll be ready to take the next thoughtful step. I call that aim. This isn't magic, it's not voodoo, it's just leaning into the natural way. Your body is meant to process emotion. If you wanna go deeper into this, you can listen to episode seven or 2 49. Let me give you an example. One of my clients came into session unsure if she should let her 17-year-old son take a girl to the prom. She was concerned because she knew this girl had mental health challenges. My client had already sought reassurance by asking her friends and sister, and she was still spinning. So instead of answering her question, I had her pause notice name and tame. Within about 90 seconds, she moved from anxiety and fear to sadness. She said, I'm just so sad. He's grown up so fast. She stayed with that feeling and as she did, her mind became clearer. And this leads to part two of transforming reassurance. Learning how to hear yourself. Yes, your Inner voice at first. This can feel really unfamiliar, almost like swimming underwater at night. And if this feels hard at first, it makes sense. You may not be used to listening to yourself this way. If you're used to looking outside yourself, it will take some time to hear what's inside, be patient, stick with it, because this is where the transformation begins. And here's two simple ways to begin to listen to your Inner voice. The first. Write it out. This doesn't mean pages and pages of journaling. It can be as simple as writing the question you're struggling with. Should I let my daughter stay home from school today? Can my son go to the prom? Do I need to tell my boss I'm going to be late with this project? Then jot it down. Pros, cons, fears. Just do a brain dump. Don't worry about spelling and punctuation. This will help you begin to see what you actually think. I. The second way, talk it out. Yes. With yourself. If you don't like writing, you can talk it through, not to someone else, but to yourself. I actually do this all the time and it's incredibly helpful. You can start with the question, what should I do? And then just let your thoughts come out in silence or using your voice at first. This can feel good. You start to hear what you're thinking. You connect to yourself on the inside, which is a powerfully grounding experience, but then often something else shows up, fear, uncertainty, and this is the moment most people go back to outside reassurance. But this is actually the moment where Inner reassurance is built. So instead of running from the fear and uncertainty by phoning a friend, you can remind yourself, Hey, I'm not a teacup. I can feel discomfort and return to the process of regulating your emotions. You notice name and tame ground your feet. Put your hands on your body where your tension is and breathe until your body settles and your mind becomes clearer, and then you'll come back to thinking and decision making aim. So with this same client, after she regulated her emotions, I handed her a piece of paper. I asked her to go back to the original question. She quickly wrote down pros and cons. Then she looked up at me and said, it's one night. I need to get a grip, hold my anxiety and trust him. That clarity didn't come from reassurance. It came from her being able to move through her feelings and hear herself. Remember, feelings aren't facts. They're just information. When you begin to trust yourself, something important happens. You stop asking, what should I do? And you start asking, what do I think is right here? Notice the nuance. Most of the decisions we make have many right answers. You just need to select the one that is right for you. When you do this, you'll not only feel more steady, you'll begin to pass that steadiness. Onto others. Self-trust becomes something you give away and it strengthens your relationships, not weakens them. Transforming reassurance into self-trust is a process. It's built over time by practicing these two skills again and again. I hate to say it, but this is not one and done. It's something that we're going to do for the rest of our lives. But if you stay with it, you may be surprised by the calm and clarity it brings into your life. And as you build this, you may notice you need less reassurance from others. And when you do seek it, it feels like support, not a lifeline. In this episode, you discovered how building Inner reassurance starts with learning to hold emotional discomfort and creating simple ways to hear your Inner voice so you can feel more steady and make decisions you trust. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Monday with more creating midlife calm.