Ep. 259 Why Letting Go Of Control Feels So Wrong but Actually Reduces Anxiety and Stress in Midlife

Why does letting go feel so uncomfortable?
There is a meaningful way to understand this discomfort that can help you feel more calm, present, and at ease.
In this episode, you’ll discover:

1. Why letting go can initially increase anxiety and stress in midlife and why that’s actually part of the process
2. How your brain and body respond when you stop overplanning and begin practicing letting go
3. Three simple ways to begin letting go so you can feel more present, flexible, and less driven by anxiety

 Take 13 minutes to begin practicing letting go and feel more calm—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

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover how learning to let go can decrease your anxiety and stress

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW 0:06

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. On Monday, we explored how over-planning is often your mind and body trying to feel safe, trying to decrease anxiety and stress. And if you experimented with this at all, you may have noticed something surprising. Letting go, didn't feel calming. in fact. It can feel uncomfortable, maybe even a little unsettling. In this episode, you'll discover why letting go initially increases anxiety instead of decreasing it, how your brain and body respond when you stop over planning. And three simple ways to begin practicing letting go so you can give your body what it actually needs. Balance, rest, and calm. If you tried Monday's Inner Challenge, notice name and tame, and even questioning your list. You may have felt something you weren't expecting. A little more anxious, not less unsure what to do with the space or pull to go right back into planning. That's not a sign that you're doing anything wrong. In fact, it's exactly what should happen. Remember, any real change will feel uncomfortable at first, but so does living with ongoing stress and anxiety. So here you're gently leaning into short-term discomfort for long-term calm, To understand why this happens, we can come back to your body for a moment. Letting go isn't just behavioral, it's physiological. Your brain has learned control equals safety. Uncertainty equals risk and anxiety. So when you're not planning everything, filling every minute and staying one step ahead, your body becomes more aware of the anxiety underneath the anxiety that over planning has been quietly managing and it goes on alert, your mind responds with thoughts such as something's off. I need to get on top of this. Let's make a plan. And as you saw on Monday, that works, especially when you're younger, but in midlife. There's just simply too much to manage that way. So learning to let go becomes an essential coping skill of midlife. Even though letting go initially feels like losing control, but what you're actually losing is a strategy your body relied on to feel safe that no longer is working. Let me state the obvious. Letting go doesn't mean not caring, not planning or being irresponsible. It means something quieter and actually more profound than that. It means allowing space without trying to control everything in it. Staying present instead of constantly getting ahead of your life, letting your body settle without solving everything first. And maybe. The most beautiful part of learning to let go is that you actually step more into who you are and what you want. And as you start to sit with that, you may notice this isn't just about what you do during your day. It begins to shift how you relate to life as a whole. There's another way to understand what we're talking about here. You can begin to see letting go as a spiritual practice. And when I say spiritual, I don't mean religious. I'm talking about that state of your spirit because anxiety, stress. Urgency. Those aren't just thoughts. They're the state Your whole system is living in. And mental wellness isn't just about thinking differently. It's about cultivating a spirit that feels more calm, more steady, more at ease. Happier. So this isn't just about changing your schedule or crossing things off a list. It's about learning how to relate to life in a way that supports your spirit, not all at once, but over time. That's why I call this the practice of letting go, because you really will have to practice this. Day in and day out. Remember, this idea of over planning, over controlling has been in your life for decades. You're not just gonna flip a switch, but rather it's actually leaning in to the practice of letting go and let it take shape in your everyday life. Let me share with you three ways to practice letting go. Number one, let go of one task. Not your whole list. Just one thing that doesn't all have to get done today and then. Don't replace it, let that space exist. I worked with a client who had a very full everyday list. One of the things on her list was vacuuming her living room daily because of her dog. She chose to remove that item from her list and what happened after dinner? It stayed with her. She kept thinking, I should vacuum. It only takes five minutes. She helped her kids with her homework, went through bedtime. But that thought was always there in the background, but she didn't give into it. It's just a thought. It's not a law, it's not an edict. And by the end of the day, nothing had fallen apart. She looked at the rug closely and really didn't see any dog hair, and she took a breath, laughed a bit at herself, which is always probably the best way to cultivate a lighter spirit. What changed wasn't her schedule, it was her relationship to pressure. She began to see that maybe vacuuming doesn't need to be done every day. And in that moment, she practiced letting go and as she said in session, I'm gaining 25 minutes a week. Let me share another practice. Let go of how it's done. Sometimes the pressure isn't actually the task itself. It's how well you believe it needs to be done. What if this doesn't have to be done so perfectly? What if it could be good enough? Let's talk about kids' birthday parties for a moment. Are you enjoying them? Are they, is the time, money, and energy worth it? Trust me, I am not suggesting you don't have them. I'm inviting you to not become a slave to them. My daughter loved her birthday. I mean, loved it and I loved making her cakes creative, detailed, connected to her wild and extravagant themes. It was so fun. Until it wasn't. As she got older, her ideas became bigger and more demanding, so we made a shift, no planning until a month before a clear budget, and sometimes the store made the cake. Did I feel bad? Actually, I really did. I had thoughts like, it's her birthday. It's one day I should be able to do more. But I Also knew I wanted to enjoy it with her. I didn't wanna be stressed and feel overwhelmed by such demands, and what I noticed was this, she was just as happy and I had the energy to be present for the whole day. So I had to let go of the higher standards, but what I got in return was so worth it. And here's a third practice of letting go. Let go of structuring all your time. I'm gonna be honest. This is my favorite of all three practices because this is where I really feel my clients have transformed their relationship to anxiety and over planning. Ask yourself what would it be like to not schedule part of your weekend or even one evening? No plan. No structure. Know what's next, just space. I've done this with many clients, especially those who notice that unstructured time makes them very anxious, and what they begin to see is this. They're not becoming anxious. They already are over. Planning was just keeping them from feeling it. So we start small a Saturday morning. The only guidance is this, wake up and trust yourself. Ask yourself, what do you feel like doing? Not what do you have to do, not what should you do, but what do you want to do? One client woke up and realized she wanted to go get coffee from her favorite place for herself and her husband. As she was driving, she kept thinking, this is a waste of time and money, but she kept saying to herself. This is what I want. It's only one day she brought the coffee home and her husband was so happy. He gave her a hug and he said, let's go for a walk outside. The birds are out. It's beautiful. Her first thought, a walk. I usually walk after dinner, but she said nothing and went. They ran into friends. Went to breakfast and on the way home, her husband said, I don't think we've ever had a Saturday morning like this at her next session. She said It was kind of great, but it was also really new. I could see the value, but I had to keep calming that voice in me, that voice at wants every hour to be productive and purposeful. But she stayed with it, and over time, something shifted. She began to notice what she actually felt like doing, not what she thought she should do, Here's the most surprising part of these practices. Letting go didn't take her away from herself. It actually brought her closer to herself. And in that her anxiety began to soften. And as this begins to unfold, there's something important to understand. At first, letting go can increase anxiety. Your mind may race, you may feel behind. You may feel like you're missing something. That's your nervous system recalibrating, and this is where how you talk to yourself really matters. Because if your Inner voice sounds like, what are you doing, you're falling behind, this isn't working, your body will stay activated. But what if you spoke to yourself the way you would your child or your pet? It's okay. You can do this. We're just trying something new. You are safe, that tone can begin to calm your system because your nervous system isn't just listening to what you do. It's listening to how you're being treated from the inside. Because calm doesn't come from controlling everything. It comes from learning. Your body can be okay without controlling everything, and over time, what begins to change is actually amazing. You begin to feel more present, less resentful, more flexible, less exhausted. You don't have to become less productive. You just become less driven by anxiety and stress. In this episode, you discovered why letting go can feel uncomfortable at first, how your brain and body respond when you stop over planning and how small shifts in how you approach your time can begin to reduce anxiety and stress. Remember, letting go doesn't mean everything falls apart. It means you can stop holding everything so tightly. I bet you have some friends and family members that would really benefit from listening to this episode, so I invite you to share this with them. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Monday with more creating midlife calm.