Are you stuck in the heartbreak of midlife breakdown or estrangement and unsure how to move forward?
When relationships end it hurts, but it doesn’t have to define your future.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
1. How to mind your mind and tend to your emotions so you feel better.
2. How to grow external self-awareness
3. How to clarify your core values so you can move forward with integrity and self-respect
🎧 Put in your earphones, take a breath, and let’s begin the journey back to your calm.
****
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.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (00:00):
in this episode, you'll discover how to
heal when midlife estrangementbreaks your heart.
Built-in Microphone (00:06):
Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, a podcast
dedicated to empowering midlifeminds to overcome anxiety, stop
feeling like crap and becomemore present with your family,
all while achieving greatersuccess at work.
I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensedclinical social worker with over
48, 000 hours of therapysessions and 31 years of
(00:27):
experience teaching mentalwellness.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (00:30):
Welcome to the podcast.
If you're navigating the pain ofa broken relationship, whether
with a parent, adult child,close friend, or even a
neighbor, you are not alone.
Estrangement midlife can feelconfusing, heartbreaking, and
deeply personal.
And while no two stories are thesame, the emotional impact is
(00:51):
often just as profound.
In episode 1 0 1, I talked aboutthe reasons for our culture's
growing problem withestrangement.
In today's episode, we're hereto help you find your footing
again in one of life's mostchallenging heartaches.
I'll walk you through threepowerful and compassionate
coping skills to support yourhealing.
(01:13):
How to mind your mind and tendyour emotions instead of
reacting or getting stuck in thepain.
How to grow your externalself-awareness.
And lastly, how to clarify yourcore values so you can move
forward with integrity andself-respect.
You stare at the phone.
(01:34):
No new messages from the friendthat you used to text daily.
You replay that lastconversation or the blowup at
the family holiday, wondering ifthat is the moment where
everything in this importantrelationship shifted.
Or maybe you are the one whobacked away after too many
unresolved hurts that ache inyour chest.
(01:56):
That's the grief of stillcaring.
Even saying moving through, itsounds a bit cliche to me
because the pain of estrangementfrom someone you love is not
only heartbreaking.
It's often life altering.
I've seen this in my office andI've experienced it amongst
family and friends.
(02:17):
Estrangement in midlife cantrigger waves of anxiety,
self-doubt, grief and anger.
But it can also become apowerful turning point for self
and relational awareness andhealing.
This isn't an episode about howto fix the relationship.
It's about how to heal you thatmay catch you off guard because
(02:39):
when you are facing this kind ofloss, it's so easy for your mind
to think about, how can I getthis relationship back into my
life?
But right now, you may not havea choice about the relationship,
but you do have a choice as tohow you move through the hurt.
Let's begin with how to care forthe emotional storm inside of
(03:03):
you.
Coping skill number one, mindyour mind and tend your
emotions.
No two estrangements are alike.
Some begin after a huge fightwhere someone declares I am done
with you.
Others begin with unansweredtexts and being ghosted, what
leads to estrangement beyond thehurt and anger is often a lack
(03:26):
of communication skills and aninability to hear or to say what
needs to be shared.
The irony, and to me the saddestpart of it is that it's these
very skills that are required torepair the relationship.
Yet they were often missing.
So the estrangement happens.
This leaves you reeling andreeling can look very different
(03:50):
depending on who you are.
I once had a client whosesibling ghosted her after a
fight about caring for theirparent in earlier episodes, I've
shared Dan Siegel's image formental wellness, A Peaceful
river where your mind is calm,peaceful, and alert, flanked by
two banks, one bank representsyour mind, being rigid, imposing
(04:12):
control, the other, your mindbeing chaotic, being out of
control.
My client's mind kept bouncingfrom bank to bank.
She text her brother.
Things like, we can work thisout.
Rigidity, then you're a selfishjerk.
You've done nothing to help mom.
Chaos.
Estrangement is a loss.
(04:33):
And loss disturbs your mind,heart, and body coping.
Skill number one is aboutrecognizing that your mind needs
some tending.
Like many people, you may wantto fix the relationship so your
mind will calm down.
That makes sense, but you'reactually outsourcing your
healing.
If you want to feel better, youhave to move your energy towards
(04:56):
helping yourself feel better.
Start by simply observing yourmind without judgment.
Another client came in becausehis wife insisted he come.
It wasn't until our fourthsession that he mentioned he no
longer spoke to his daughter.
He said it like he was talkingabout his fourth grade teacher.
I asked him to say it again andobserve what happened in his
(05:19):
mind.
He said it, and then he replied,my mind is blank.
This man was relying on a copingskill.
Many of us use denial andemotional unclaiming, then I
asked him to notice whathappened in his body.
When I said, your daughter nolonger talks to you, he
(05:39):
immediately said.
That makes me really pissed atyou.
When I acknowledged how angry hemust feel, he moved instantly to
blame.
And let me tell you, for eightminutes, he ranted on about how
angry and disrespectful hisdaughter had become.
At the end of his rant, he said,how dare she hurt her mother and
(06:02):
me like this?
I responded.
I am so sorry.
this is heartbreaking.
It must feel so painful.
He looked so confused and thenhe sat in silence in 20 minutes.
he had cycled through blame,denial, and hurt These are often
the only tools we were given.
(06:24):
In our culture.
The two most common responses topain are blame and unclaim.
That silence.
It's often where people don'tknow how to tend to befriend
their own pain.
When I asked him how he and hiswife care for their hurt, he
said, I have beer andtelevision.
(06:44):
My wife, that's what her sistersare for.
We're all doing the best we can,but when it comes to
estrangement, it is rarely tidy.
Why?
Because humans, we're messy.
We're complicated.
Each and every one of us, whileit's human to wish estrangement
hadn't happened.
(07:04):
It has.
So coping, skill number one isto lean into using the loss for
growth.
Observe your mind.
Learn to regulate your emotion.
I showed this client my onepager on the river of mental
wellness, he looked at the onepager and laughed and said, who
thought of this?
It's kind of clever.
(07:25):
A little bit of education goes along way, I have never met a
person who didn't want to grow,neuroscience shows that naming
our emotions can reduce theirintensity by 50%.
And you know what that means?
That most people will save a lotof money on alcohol naming,
(07:46):
instead of numbing awareness,not avoidance.
That's step one.
Estrangement makes you feel outof control.
Tending to your emotions won'tbring the person back, but it
can help you come back toyourself if you don't know how
to do this.
No problem.
Find a therapist.
(08:06):
This is what we love to do.
Listen to episode six and sevenand commit to really helping
yourself move through this loss,move through this heartache.
So at the end of it, you feel.
Better about you.
Don't let pride or shame or fearkeep you stuck.
(08:27):
And this leads me to copingskill number two, increase your
external self-awareness.
What does this mean?
Reflect.
Honestly on your role in theestrangement, most estrangements
don't occur because of a singlemoment or a catastrophic event.
More often, they followrepeated, missed opportunities
(08:48):
for repair.
In my experience, estrangementoften happens not because
someone wants it, but becausethey don't have the relational
tools to do something else.
Once my clients are moreemotionally grounded, it's time
for deeper work.
I often begin this by asking myclients to write down the story
of the estrangement to fill inthe blank.
(09:11):
This person is no longer talkingto me because, and just write,
don't worry about grammar orpunctuation.
I encourage them to write freelyfor five or 10 minutes.
I follow that up with thisquestion what were the things
that you did that led to theestrangement?
A consistent pattern emerges.
(09:32):
Clients know a lot about theirown experience, but very little
about the other person's.
That's where externalself-awareness matches my
clinical observation.
Dr.
Tasha Erick's research showsthat only 10 to 15% of people
have strong externalself-awareness.
(09:52):
What is external self-awareness?
It's the knowledge of how yourbehavior, your actions, your
words, impact others.
Only 10 to 15% of thepopulation.
No wonder 27% of people have anestranged relationship.
So coping skill number two isincreasing external
(10:13):
self-awareness.
If you want to grow through thisloss, you have to want to grow
as a person.
Which leads me to my thirdcoping skill.
Clarify your values, and I'mgonna be honest, it is probably
this coping skill that is thekey to being able to heal from
(10:34):
estrangement.
And when I say heal, I meanwithin yourself to learn to live
with this painful heartache in away that it doesn't stop you
from having a meaningful,enjoyable, and beautiful life
loss, changes your values.
Often without you realizing it.
(10:55):
I want you to clarify two keyvalues.
Value number one is being right,more important than being
relational.
Start with yourself.
Have you gotten feedback frompeople that sometimes you're too
stubborn for your own good?
Let's be honest, most peoplelike being right until they're
(11:16):
not, and then those who growbecome curious instead of
defensive.
We live in a competitiveculture, but relationships
require collaboration, notcompetition.
The second value I want you toreflect on is can you stand in
your values even when therelationship is paused?
(11:37):
This especially applies toparents cut off by adult
children.
Many begin therapy feeling likevictims, but as they work
through coping skills one andtwo, they become more stable and
they start asking what it meansto respect their adult child.
Even from a distance, onemidlife mom had an aha moment.
(11:57):
She realized that she could giveher daughter space, manage her
emotions, and still love herdeeply.
She didn't need to disown orresent her daughter just because
her daughter wasn't in contact.
She could downsize her storythat her whole life is ruined
because she still hadrelationships with her other
children, her grandchildren, herneighbors, her friends part of
(12:20):
her life had been altered, butmuch of her life had stayed the
same As she grew more into thisrealization, she began a
beautiful ritual where each weekshe would go to a church and
light a candle for her daughterwishing her well.
Saying a prayer that somedaythey would reconcile on
(12:43):
birthdays and holidays.
She bought cards at small giftsand placed them in a box just in
case one day it all worked out.
She also sent her daughter asingle text.
I'm in therapy working onmyself.
I am sorry for the pain Icaused.
I understand that you needdistance.
(13:03):
I will always be open torepairing our relationship.
That simple value clarified andvalue driven action gave her
peace.
She knew what she stood for.
Midlife Estrangement is one ofthe most painful relational
experiences.
You can face, but it can alsobecome a doorway to greater
(13:26):
emotional maturity, compassion,and strength.
Today we explore three powerfulcoping skills, how to mind your
mind and tend to your emotionsinstead of reacting or
ruminating in the pain.
How to grow externalself-awareness and reflect on
how your behavior may haveimpacted the other person, and
(13:47):
how to clarify your core valuesso you can move forward with
integrity and self-respect.
This work is not easy.
It takes courage, humility, andoften support from others.
But every step you take towardemotional clarity is a step
toward freedom from the anxietyand heartbreak that estrangement
(14:08):
can bring.
I do understand that the painnever goes away completely, but
my hope for you is that you canlearn to carry it, so you can be
involved and show up for therest of your life.
In this week's Inner Challenge,I invite you to reflect on your
values by completing thissentence.
(14:28):
Even if this relationship neverheals, I will still live by the
value of.
Write it on a sticky note.
Place it where you can see iteach day.
Let the value which is positive,not the estrangement, which is
hurtful.
Guide your next step.
I'll be back on Thursday with afollow-up episode.
(14:49):
With healthy ways to cope.
If you are the one that hasstepped out of a close
relationship, remember, if you'dlike the one pager of my mental
wellness model, send me an emailmj@mjmurrayvachon.com Thanks for
listening, and I'll be back onThursday with more creating
(15:10):
midlife calm.
in this episode, you'll discover how to
heal when midlife estrangementbreaks your heart.
Built-in Microphone (00:06):
Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, a podcast
dedicated to empowering midlifeminds to overcome anxiety, stop
feeling like crap and becomemore present with your family,
all while achieving greatersuccess at work.
I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensedclinical social worker with over
48, 000 hours of therapysessions and 31 years of
(00:27):
experience teaching mentalwellness.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (00:30):
Welcome to the podcast.
If you're navigating the pain ofa broken relationship, whether
with a parent, adult child,close friend, or even a
neighbor, you are not alone.
Estrangement midlife can feelconfusing, heartbreaking, and
deeply personal.
And while no two stories are thesame, the emotional impact is
(00:51):
often just as profound.
In episode 1 0 1, I talked aboutthe reasons for our culture's
growing problem withestrangement.
In today's episode, we're hereto help you find your footing
again in one of life's mostchallenging heartaches.
I'll walk you through threepowerful and compassionate
coping skills to support yourhealing.
(01:13):
How to mind your mind and tendyour emotions instead of
reacting or getting stuck in thepain.
How to grow your externalself-awareness.
And lastly, how to clarify yourcore values so you can move
forward with integrity andself-respect.
You stare at the phone.
(01:34):
No new messages from the friendthat you used to text daily.
You replay that lastconversation or the blowup at
the family holiday, wondering ifthat is the moment where
everything in this importantrelationship shifted.
Or maybe you are the one whobacked away after too many
unresolved hurts that ache inyour chest.
(01:56):
That's the grief of stillcaring.
Even saying moving through, itsounds a bit cliche to me
because the pain of estrangementfrom someone you love is not
only heartbreaking.
It's often life altering.
I've seen this in my office andI've experienced it amongst
family and friends.
(02:17):
Estrangement in midlife cantrigger waves of anxiety,
self-doubt, grief and anger.
But it can also become apowerful turning point for self
and relational awareness andhealing.
This isn't an episode about howto fix the relationship.
It's about how to heal you thatmay catch you off guard because
(02:39):
when you are facing this kind ofloss, it's so easy for your mind
to think about, how can I getthis relationship back into my
life?
But right now, you may not havea choice about the relationship,
but you do have a choice as tohow you move through the hurt.
Let's begin with how to care forthe emotional storm inside of
(03:03):
you.
Coping skill number one, mindyour mind and tend your
emotions.
No two estrangements are alike.
Some begin after a huge fightwhere someone declares I am done
with you.
Others begin with unansweredtexts and being ghosted, what
leads to estrangement beyond thehurt and anger is often a lack
(03:26):
of communication skills and aninability to hear or to say what
needs to be shared.
The irony, and to me the saddestpart of it is that it's these
very skills that are required torepair the relationship.
Yet they were often missing.
So the estrangement happens.
This leaves you reeling andreeling can look very different
(03:50):
depending on who you are.
I once had a client whosesibling ghosted her after a
fight about caring for theirparent in earlier episodes, I've
shared Dan Siegel's image formental wellness, A Peaceful
river where your mind is calm,peaceful, and alert, flanked by
two banks, one bank representsyour mind, being rigid, imposing
(04:12):
control, the other, your mindbeing chaotic, being out of
control.
My client's mind kept bouncingfrom bank to bank.
She text her brother.
Things like, we can work thisout.
Rigidity, then you're a selfishjerk.
You've done nothing to help mom.
Chaos.
Estrangement is a loss.
(04:33):
And loss disturbs your mind,heart, and body coping.
Skill number one is aboutrecognizing that your mind needs
some tending.
Like many people, you may wantto fix the relationship so your
mind will calm down.
That makes sense, but you'reactually outsourcing your
healing.
If you want to feel better, youhave to move your energy towards
(04:56):
helping yourself feel better.
Start by simply observing yourmind without judgment.
Another client came in becausehis wife insisted he come.
It wasn't until our fourthsession that he mentioned he no
longer spoke to his daughter.
He said it like he was talkingabout his fourth grade teacher.
I asked him to say it again andobserve what happened in his
(05:19):
mind.
He said it, and then he replied,my mind is blank.
This man was relying on a copingskill.
Many of us use denial andemotional unclaiming, then I
asked him to notice whathappened in his body.
When I said, your daughter nolonger talks to you, he
(05:39):
immediately said.
That makes me really pissed atyou.
When I acknowledged how angry hemust feel, he moved instantly to
blame.
And let me tell you, for eightminutes, he ranted on about how
angry and disrespectful hisdaughter had become.
At the end of his rant, he said,how dare she hurt her mother and
(06:02):
me like this?
I responded.
I am so sorry.
this is heartbreaking.
It must feel so painful.
He looked so confused and thenhe sat in silence in 20 minutes.
he had cycled through blame,denial, and hurt These are often
the only tools we were given.
(06:24):
In our culture.
The two most common responses topain are blame and unclaim.
That silence.
It's often where people don'tknow how to tend to befriend
their own pain.
When I asked him how he and hiswife care for their hurt, he
said, I have beer andtelevision.
(06:44):
My wife, that's what her sistersare for.
We're all doing the best we can,but when it comes to
estrangement, it is rarely tidy.
Why?
Because humans, we're messy.
We're complicated.
Each and every one of us, whileit's human to wish estrangement
hadn't happened.
(07:04):
It has.
So coping, skill number one isto lean into using the loss for
growth.
Observe your mind.
Learn to regulate your emotion.
I showed this client my onepager on the river of mental
wellness, he looked at the onepager and laughed and said, who
thought of this?
It's kind of clever.
(07:25):
A little bit of education goes along way, I have never met a
person who didn't want to grow,neuroscience shows that naming
our emotions can reduce theirintensity by 50%.
And you know what that means?
That most people will save a lotof money on alcohol naming,
(07:46):
instead of numbing awareness,not avoidance.
That's step one.
Estrangement makes you feel outof control.
Tending to your emotions won'tbring the person back, but it
can help you come back toyourself if you don't know how
to do this.
No problem.
Find a therapist.
(08:06):
This is what we love to do.
Listen to episode six and sevenand commit to really helping
yourself move through this loss,move through this heartache.
So at the end of it, you feel.
Better about you.
Don't let pride or shame or fearkeep you stuck.
(08:27):
And this leads me to copingskill number two, increase your
external self-awareness.
What does this mean?
Reflect.
Honestly on your role in theestrangement, most estrangements
don't occur because of a singlemoment or a catastrophic event.
More often, they followrepeated, missed opportunities
(08:48):
for repair.
In my experience, estrangementoften happens not because
someone wants it, but becausethey don't have the relational
tools to do something else.
Once my clients are moreemotionally grounded, it's time
for deeper work.
I often begin this by asking myclients to write down the story
of the estrangement to fill inthe blank.
(09:11):
This person is no longer talkingto me because, and just write,
don't worry about grammar orpunctuation.
I encourage them to write freelyfor five or 10 minutes.
I follow that up with thisquestion what were the things
that you did that led to theestrangement?
A consistent pattern emerges.
(09:32):
Clients know a lot about theirown experience, but very little
about the other person's.
That's where externalself-awareness matches my
clinical observation.
Dr.
Tasha Erick's research showsthat only 10 to 15% of people
have strong externalself-awareness.
(09:52):
What is external self-awareness?
It's the knowledge of how yourbehavior, your actions, your
words, impact others.
Only 10 to 15% of thepopulation.
No wonder 27% of people have anestranged relationship.
So coping skill number two isincreasing external
(10:13):
self-awareness.
If you want to grow through thisloss, you have to want to grow
as a person.
Which leads me to my thirdcoping skill.
Clarify your values, and I'mgonna be honest, it is probably
this coping skill that is thekey to being able to heal from
(10:34):
estrangement.
And when I say heal, I meanwithin yourself to learn to live
with this painful heartache in away that it doesn't stop you
from having a meaningful,enjoyable, and beautiful life
loss, changes your values.
Often without you realizing it.
(10:55):
I want you to clarify two keyvalues.
Value number one is being right,more important than being
relational.
Start with yourself.
Have you gotten feedback frompeople that sometimes you're too
stubborn for your own good?
Let's be honest, most peoplelike being right until they're
(11:16):
not, and then those who growbecome curious instead of
defensive.
We live in a competitiveculture, but relationships
require collaboration, notcompetition.
The second value I want you toreflect on is can you stand in
your values even when therelationship is paused?
(11:37):
This especially applies toparents cut off by adult
children.
Many begin therapy feeling likevictims, but as they work
through coping skills one andtwo, they become more stable and
they start asking what it meansto respect their adult child.
Even from a distance, onemidlife mom had an aha moment.
(11:57):
She realized that she could giveher daughter space, manage her
emotions, and still love herdeeply.
She didn't need to disown orresent her daughter just because
her daughter wasn't in contact.
She could downsize her storythat her whole life is ruined
because she still hadrelationships with her other
children, her grandchildren, herneighbors, her friends part of
(12:20):
her life had been altered, butmuch of her life had stayed the
same As she grew more into thisrealization, she began a
beautiful ritual where each weekshe would go to a church and
light a candle for her daughterwishing her well.
Saying a prayer that somedaythey would reconcile on
(12:43):
birthdays and holidays.
She bought cards at small giftsand placed them in a box just in
case one day it all worked out.
She also sent her daughter asingle text.
I'm in therapy working onmyself.
I am sorry for the pain Icaused.
I understand that you needdistance.
(13:03):
I will always be open torepairing our relationship.
That simple value clarified andvalue driven action gave her
peace.
She knew what she stood for.
Midlife Estrangement is one ofthe most painful relational
experiences.
You can face, but it can alsobecome a doorway to greater
(13:26):
emotional maturity, compassion,and strength.
Today we explore three powerfulcoping skills, how to mind your
mind and tend to your emotionsinstead of reacting or
ruminating in the pain.
How to grow externalself-awareness and reflect on
how your behavior may haveimpacted the other person, and
(13:47):
how to clarify your core valuesso you can move forward with
integrity and self-respect.
This work is not easy.
It takes courage, humility, andoften support from others.
But every step you take towardemotional clarity is a step
toward freedom from the anxietyand heartbreak that estrangement
(14:08):
can bring.
I do understand that the painnever goes away completely, but
my hope for you is that you canlearn to carry it, so you can be
involved and show up for therest of your life.
In this week's Inner Challenge,I invite you to reflect on your
values by completing thissentence.
(14:28):
Even if this relationship neverheals, I will still live by the
value of.
Write it on a sticky note.
Place it where you can see iteach day.
Let the value which is positive,not the estrangement, which is
hurtful.
Guide your next step.
I'll be back on Thursday with afollow-up episode.
(14:49):
With healthy ways to cope.
If you are the one that hasstepped out of a close
relationship, remember, if you'dlike the one pager of my mental
wellness model, send me an emailmj@mjmurrayvachon.com Thanks for
listening, and I'll be back onThursday with more creating
(15:10):
midlife calm.
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