Ep. 177 The 3 Midlife Anxiety Coping Skills That Backfire & Make Your Anxiety & Stress WORSE, and What To Do Instead

Creating Midlife Calm: Coping Skills for Stress & Anxiety in Family, Work & Relationships

Why do the most common anxiety fixes leave you feeling even worse?
Because they offer quick relief—but actually reinforce the anxiety cycle, especially in midlife.
In this episode, you’ll discover:

1. The neuroscience behind why 3 common coping skills you're using actually increase anxiety instead of easing it.
2. How these coping habits form early in life and silently shape midlife behavior.
3. What happens in your brain and body when you rely on these short-term fixes—and why they backfire.

Pop in your earbuds and learn how to stop the habits that hijack your calm and start building real emotional resilience.

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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.