Ep. 47 Coping Skills to Manage Anxiety & Other Difficult Emotions in Midlife: Taming and Aiming (Part 2)

Inner Challenge Podcast with MJ Murray Vachon LCSW

Want to feel better? Get better at feeling!!! In this episode MJ and her guest dive into the model MJ has created to manage feelings in a more direct and healthy way. Most of us are taught to use an external mindset to manage our feelings. You know, Blame & Unclaim--send a text complaining how awful someone is, doom scroll, eat chips or have a glass of wine or two or three... We get short term relief but nothing more. The Internal Mindset: Tend & Befriend, that MJ has created is tested and approved by junior high students. You know this age group, if it doesn't work they tell ya! The Internal Mindset uses self-awareness to help you sync up with your body and breathwork to decrease emotional intensity so you have better mental clarity--which helps you not to act in ways you regret! The hardest part of all this ---to slay the dragons of avoidance and distraction that says feelings are too uncomfortable to manage. You can do this!! Feelings are physical sensations, nothing more or nothing less! Typically they are super intense for 30-90 seconds so learn to tend and befriend them so you manage them instead of them managing you! What's your reward--better mental clarity, less rumination, and living life with lots more authenticity! The one pager in the show notes is a must!! Check it out. (Thanks to Cathy Hall, graphic artist extraordinaire. https://mjmurrayvachon.com/podcast-7/
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.

****
Summer! Summer! Summer! MJ will be sharing some of her favorite episodes with you while she takes a bit of a break, tapes new episodes, swims in her favorite outdoor pool, babysits her grandson Neel and continues to work on the Inner Challenge Master Class! Thanks for all the support this year where listenership continues to steadily climb. This is really fun!
****

About the Host:
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than 45,000 hours of therapy sessions. After 7 years of clinical work (1993) MJ realized that her clients knew very little about Mental Wellness which led her to create Inner Challenge. Inner Challenge brings practical understanding and skills rooted in neuroscience as well as MJ’s clinical and educational wisdom to help people cultivate mental wellness. MJ was Social Worker of the Year in 2011 for Region 2/IN.
About Inner Challenge:
Inner Challenge was created in 1995 as a summer camp for girls, and spent 20 years being tested and refined in junior high classrooms, businesses, and community organizations. In 2017-2018 Inner Challenge was a class for freshman football players at the University of Notre Dame. In May 2022 the Inner Challenge Podcast debuted continuing the initial aspiration to bring Mental Wellness knowledge and skills to all! #stopfeelinglikecrap!

To connect with MJ Murray Vachon LCSW, learn more about the Inner Challenge or inquire about bein...