Ep. 153 How Midlife Caregiving Triggers Anxiety & Identity Loss and Coping Skills to Ease the Ache

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Are you quietly grieving while still showing up for everyone else?
Your kids need you differently, and your parent needs you more—everything inside can start to shift.

In this episode you’ll discover:

1. A deeper understanding of how anxiety and buziness in midlife often masks hidden grief of these profound relationship changes
2. Practical coping tools to manage emotional overwhelm and identity shifts
3. Language to name your experience and reconnect with your sense of self

If you’ve been carrying too much for too long, this episode will help you name the ache and soften the load.🎧 Listen now to reclaim clarity, calm, and a deeper connection to yourself in midlife.

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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.

Episode Transcript

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW (00:00):
In this episode, you'll discover how to
ease the ache of midlifecaregiving.
Welcome to Creating MidlifeCalm, a podcast dedicated to
empowering midlife minds toovercome anxiety, stop feeling
like crap and become morepresent with your family, all
while achieving greater successat work.
I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensedclinical social worker with over

(00:23):
48, 000 hours of therapysessions and 31 years of
experience teaching mentalwellness.
Welcome to the podcast.
On Monday, we talked about theinvisible load of midlife
caregiving, where you'resandwiched between the needs of
your children, grandchildren,and aging parents.
As you know, the tasks ofbalancing all of this are
enormous.

(00:43):
On Monday, we focused on theinvisible load, the emotional
weight that not only cluttersyour schedule and your to-do
list, but also fills your headand heart with constant concern.
That heavy quiet ache you carryabout the people you love.
In this episode, you'll discoverthe hidden grief that caregiving

(01:04):
often brings, not just for thepeople you love, but for the
version of yourself you'reslowly having to let go of.
Whether it's stepping back as aparent or watching your own
parent age.
This episode explores the acheof becoming someone new.
Before we dive in, let's revisitMonday's inner challenge.

(01:25):
Your inner challenge was to takefive minutes and ask yourself.
When it comes to the people Ilove, I worry that I.
If you did it, you might havenoticed some things you're
caring that aren't really yoursto fix, but maybe you also
notice something deeper thatsome of what you're caring isn't
about them at all.

(01:45):
It's about you.
And more specifically about whoyou were.
Who you're no longer allowed tobe.
This is a type of grief thatoften gets quietly tucked into
the everyday reality of being amidlife caregiver.
Letting go of parenting in realtime is painful in a way that's
hard to put into words.

(02:06):
You've spent decades being thecenter of someone's life,
remembering their appointments,cheering them on, tracking their
moods, managing the rhythms oftheir days, and then one day
they don't need you in the sameway.
A client recently said to me.
No one needs me like they usedto.
I feel invisible in my own homeexcept when it comes to meal

(02:29):
prep and dishes.
There was no anger in her voice.
Just sadness and grief.
It's not just that her childrenhad changed, it's that she no
longer knew who she was in theabsence of being needed.
That's the part we don't talkabout enough.
Parenting doesn't end.
It just shifts.

(02:49):
Your child gets her driver'slicense or goes to college and
you feel a mix of relief andloss.
Their steps towards independenceleave you with time and space to
ask the question, who am I now?
Yes, the same developmentalquestion your teen is asking.
It also circles back to you.

(03:10):
But before you dive intoanswering it, give yourself time
to feel the silent ache ofletting go.
For many parents I've workedwith, this often starts around
junior year in high school.
The invisible weight of griefbegins to sneak in.
The sadness is oftentwo-pronged.
The first is the sorrow ofmissing the day-to-day joys of

(03:32):
raising a child.
You might not miss packinglunches or driving to the 6:00
AM swim practice, but you mightdeeply miss the humor they bring
to the dinner table, the friendswho eat you out of house and
home, and the many activitiesthat made you the cheerleader
you never were.
The second is regret.

(03:53):
18 years goes by quickly unlessyou have a newborn or a grade
schooler.
But if you're parenting a teen,you suddenly have a front row
seat to all the things youwished you would've done.
I've sat with parents who regretnot treating their children's
learning disability or attentionchallenges.
Others who worry they didn'tinstill values beyond academic

(04:15):
achievement.
This too is part of grief, andlet me say this, it's not your
fault.
You've done your best.
None of us give our childreneverything.
If we did, why would they everleave home?
It's okay that your griefincludes not just missing the
joy and the energy your childbrings, but also a kind of

(04:37):
earned wisdom, the awareness ofwhat they still need to work on.
I encourage parents to put thatwisdom into words.
I worked with a couple whose sonwas incredibly gifted in the
arts.
They poured their support intohis passion, but his grades and
other subjects suffered limitinghis college options.

(04:58):
At first, they blamed themselveswondering if they should have
pushed him harder, but over timethey realized that their son's
natural stubbornness the samequality that made him such a
powerful artist, also made himresist anything he wasn't
interested in.
They had an honest conversationwith him.

(05:18):
They shared their perspectiveand then asked him, do you see
yourself this way?
He replied, isn't everyone likethis?
They gently said to him, no.
Some of your peers have workedhard to build the skills of
doing things they don't enjoy.
That's something you haven't hadto do yet.

(05:39):
And if you want to grow, it's askill worth learning.
We'll support you, but it has tostart with you.
Inside that moment wasn't blame.
Inside this grief of letting gois hard earned wisdom.
Don't let the shame or thetendency to over assume
responsibility block an honestconversation with your child.

(06:01):
You know this child in a way noone else does.
The silent grief of letting goof parenting is a normal stage
of midlife.
It doesn't need to take overyour week, but journaling once
in a while or having coffee witha trusted friend to put it into
words and talk about it out loudcan really help you feel seen

(06:22):
and lighten the load.
Now, let's talk about yourparents.
One of the deepest griefs incaregiving is realizing that
you're starting to feel like theparent instead of the child.
A friend of mine once said, Istill call my mom, but it's not
her anymore.
She's there, but she's not her.

(06:43):
She only focuses on her worriesand whether my dad is eating
enough.
This kind of loss is tricky.
It doesn't come with a cleanbeginning or an end.
There's no memorial, no formalgoodbye, just a slow, steady
unraveling of who they wereuntil one day you realize you've
lost something huge and no oneeven saw it happen.

(07:06):
You're still showing up.
You're still caregiving.
Emotionally, you're grieving.
You're grieving the parent whohad the energy and mental
sharpness to truly engage withyour life.
The one who made you feel seen,the one who believed you were
the best thing that everhappened to them, and that loss

(07:26):
really hurts.
But what if your caregivingexperience is more complicated?
What if you're caring for aparent with whom you've never
had a close or saferelationship?
That's another form of grief, asilent grief that comes with a
daily reminder that you neverhad the parent you wanted or

(07:47):
deserved.
And with this comes a painfulquestion, why am I giving to
this person what they never gaveto me?
This is a scary and importantquestion for you to wrestle
with.
If you don't anger andresentment can build.
Years ago, I had a friend inthis situation.

(08:07):
When her father died, I went tothe funeral without really
knowing anyone else in herfamily.
At the funeral, the ministersaid, You're probably wondering
what good I could say about aman who struggled with drugs and
alcohol his whole life, who lethis selfishness get in the way
of being a good father andhusband.
What I can tell you is this,through grace, some luck, and a

(08:32):
very strong mother, he hadwonderful children.
Children who in the last fewmonths of his life gave to him
he could never give to them.
There wasn't a dry eye in thechurch.
Later I asked my friend how shefound it in herself to show up
for her dad.

(08:52):
She said, I really didn't do itfor my dad.
I did it for my kids.
I wanted them to see a differentway of being.
Whatever your unique grief inletting go of a parent is, your
work is the same.
It is to put words to your ownexperience, your own story, so

(09:13):
you see you.
It won't match your siblingsversions.
It is solely and souly yours.
It is the work of your soul.
Caregiving is a mirror to yoursoul and a training ground for
your heart.
It teaches you how to be moreloving, more kind, and honestly

(09:36):
a lot less selfish.
Being a therapist has taught methat the two most powerful times
for personal growth are birthand death.
Doing the work of naming thesilent waves of grief that swell
inside of you.
Now, that's a masterclass inbeing human.
Naming your grief doesn't meanwallowing in sadness it actually

(09:59):
helps point you toward the nextstage of your life.
With hard one wisdom, you beginto answer the question, who am I
now without a child at home or aparent alive in this world?
In this episode, you exploredthe deeply personal grief that
often hides within the invisibleload of caregiving.

(10:22):
Letting go of your identity as aparent in real time, and letting
go of your role as a child whenyour parents age and pass away.
By putting your grief into wordsand honoring your experience,
whatever it looks, like you easethe weight of what you carry and
create space for your nextchapter to unfold.

(10:46):
Thanks for listening, and I'llbe back on Monday with more
creating midlife calm.