Ep.131 5 Simple Words That Will Transform Chaos Into Calm, To Make Better Midlife Decisions

Feeling  overwhelmed by anxiety?
Discover  five powerful words that can help you move from chaos to calm and help you  make better decisions in your daily life.
In this episode, you’ll discover
1. How to recognize and shift from mental chaos or rigidity to a state of calm flow.
2. Discover actionable steps to re-regulate your body and observe your mind for           better  emotional control and decision making.
3. Hear real-life examples of how the FACES framework transforms anxious reactions into  actions aligned with your desires and values.
Press play now to learn how to regain clarity, avoid regrets, and stay aligned with your values using the FACES model.

Check out this awesome one pager that summarizes this episode:
https://mjmurrayvachon.com/podcast-1/

Send us a text

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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

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (00:00):
In this episode, you'll discover five

(00:02):
words that will help you shiftfrom feeling overwhelmed to
feeling mentally clear so youcan make great decisions in
life, avoid regrets and maximizeopportunities.
Welcome to Creating MidlifeCalm, a podcast dedicated to
empowering midlife minds toovercome anxiety, stop feeling
like crap and become morepresent with your family, all

(00:24):
while achieving greater successat work.
I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensedclinical social worker with over
48, 000 hours of therapysessions and 31 years of
experience teaching mentalwellness.
Welcome to the podcast.
It's Thursday and I'm here tofollow up on Monday's episode
where I shared a simple tool tohelp you stop your anxiety from

(00:46):
spiraling out of control.
How'd you do with Monday's InnerChallenge?
I discussed, Noticing, naming,and taming your anxiety to
prevent it from taking over.
I also introduced to you Dr.
Siegel's image of mentalwellness, highlighting how
observing your mind can be apowerful tool for managing your
anxiety.

(01:08):
In today's episode, I'm going tobuild on those skills by
introducing FACES.
Flexibility, Adaptive,Coherence, Energized, and
Stable.
Five key words that can help youshift from feeling overwhelmed
to feeling mentally clear.
These words can guide you tomake decisions aligned with your

(01:28):
values, helping you to avoidregrets and helping you step
into opportunities that comeyour way and not let anxiety
block you.
How'd you do on noticing namingand taming your anxiety?
Perhaps you left a meetingfeeling anxious, but managed to
ground yourself as you werewalking back to your office,

(01:48):
taking calming breaths.
Or maybe you experienced a nearmiss while driving, anxious
reaction at the next stoplight,and took a moment to breathe.
These are examples of how youare capable of bringing calm to
your body, anytime, anywhere.
One of my clients shared aninsightful experience yesterday.

(02:09):
She told me, I often forget todo this in the moment, but when
the anxiety lingers, I stillfind this practice helpful.
Even if it's not immediate, thistechnique can still make a
difference.
Don't overthink it, just start.
What makes this simple techniqueso effective is that it begins
with your body.

(02:29):
We're often taught to think ourway out of anxiety by bypassing
our body altogether, whichactually makes your anxiety hang
around.
What I like to say is train yourbody to re regulate when it's in
a heightened state and then tendto your mind.
What does it mean to tend toyour mind?
This brings us to an importantdistinction between the brain

(02:52):
and the mind.
Your brain is the physical organthat runs all the systems in
your body.
It can be seen and studied.
When you do breath work, yourbrain is actually re regulating
your central nervous system.
It's an incredible machine.
Your mind, however, is unseen.
It's your unique subjectiveexperience of the world.

(03:15):
It organizes and creates thestory of your life events, which
is why it doesn't work whensomeone tells you you shouldn't
feel anxious.
Anxiety requires a personalprocess to work through.
You can't outsource it.
Even medication can't do thewhole process of moving your
mind to a clearer place.

(03:36):
This is where Dr.
Siegel's image of mentalwellness can be incredibly
helpful.
In Monday's episode, Iintroduced Siegel's image of the
river of wellness.
I asked you to imagine your mindas a calm flowing river,
navigating life's waves withconfidence.
On either side of this river aretwo banks.
One is labeled chaos, the otherrigidity.

(03:59):
When your mind is on the bank ofchaos, you feel overwhelmed,
your thoughts spiral, youremotions become unpredictable,
and you may experience panicattacks, constant worry, or an
inability to focus.
The bank of rigidity, you leaninto over controlling
tendencies, avoidance,perfectionism, or excessive
reassurance.

(04:20):
Seeking.
This might mean sticking tostrict routines or
procrastinating out of fear offailure.
How do you move off these banksand back into the river of calm?
Dr.
Siegel provides the acronymFACES, Flexible, Adaptive,
Coherent, Energized, and Stable.
These five words can guide youfrom fight, flight, freeze, or

(04:44):
fawn response back to alignmentwith your values and desires.
FACES offers a helpful way tounderstand the optimal state of
mind that you aim for in dailylife.
F Flexible means being open tochanging plans or perspectives,
like adjusting how you respondwhen traffic delays your

(05:04):
commute.
A.
Adaptive involves managingdiscomfort, such as finding a
quiet space to focus when workgets chaotic.
C.
Coherent.
It's about making sense of youremotions, like recognizing that
your irritation during aconversation might stem from
feeling unheard.
E, energized, means feelingalive and engaged, such as fully

(05:28):
immersing yourself in anenjoyable hobby or task.
S, stability, provides thegrounding to stay calm even when
life throws you unexpectedchallenges, like handling a last
minute schedule change withComposure.
By cultivating FACES, you buildthe capacity to stay calm,
present, and connected in theflow of everyday life.

(05:51):
I've shared these words withThousands of people, and the
feedback is unanimous.
They work.
When you feel out of control,start by re regulating your
body.
Then observe which bank yourmind is on, and use these words
to guide yourself back into theflow of calm.
Here's an example.

(06:11):
One of my clients has anincredibly overextended life,
two jobs, kids, and elderlyparents.
Her constant stress often putsher on the bank of rigidity,
where she finds herself yellingat her kids to keep moving.
She realized this behavior wasnot coherent with her values.
On less stressful days, she'scalmer and kinder and her kids

(06:34):
respond better.
She decided to adapt herthinking, shifting from I'm bad
if I'm late, to sometimes, dueto my life's demands, I will be
late and that's okay.
She became softer with herself.
By accepting her reality, shereduced her stress, became

(06:55):
calmer, And ironically, was lesslikely to be late.
wasn't that her mind was a zenocean full of placid water, but
it was that she found herselfcalmer and much kinder, not only
to her children.
but to herself.
Another example involves clientswho work in high pressure jobs

(07:16):
with unrealistic demands.
Post pandemic, this seems to bea lot more common.
These clients often bouncebetween the bank of chaos, I
have so much to do, I don't knowwhere to start, and the bank of
rigidity, I must work 14 hourdays.
When they focus on faces, theyoften gravitate towards these

(07:36):
three words, coherence,Energized, and Stable.
They begin by acknowledging thereality.
There's more work than can bedone in a week.
They work on improving theirsleep, which helps them feel
more stable and energized.
And they build the muscle ofaccepting that they're never
going to be completely on top oftheir workload.

(07:58):
This shift helps them adapttheir thoughts to the truth of
the situation, which often makestheir internal dialogue with
themselves much gentler, muchkinder.
Can you see what I'm talkingabout?
When you calm your body andobserve your mind using this
model, you gain a concrete wayto address your anxiety.

(08:19):
Trying to change externalcircumstances often wastes
energy, but stepping into yourown agency, calming your body,
observing your mind, and workingwith your thoughts can lead to a
healthier perspective.
I encourage you to check out theone pager attached in the show
notes for a beautiful visualrepresentation of this model.

(08:41):
I also discussed this model indepth in episode one of this
podcast.
It's a powerful tool to alignyour thoughts with your values
and decrease your anxiety.
In this episode, I've encouragedyou to use the superpower of
your body to re regulate yournervous system and the
superpower of your mind toobserve your thought.

(09:02):
By applying Siegel's image ofmental wellness and the FACES
acronym, you can make internaland external changes to feel
calmer and happier.
Don't let anxiety hold you backfrom being the person you want
to be.
Step into your agency and trythis model.
Sit with a friend, a spouse,even a therapist, and discuss it

(09:25):
so you can gain insight andclarity.
Thanks for listening, and I'llbe back on Monday with another
episode of Creating MidlifeCalm.