Mental Wellness Skills That Change Your Life: An Inspirational Healing Conversation With MJ Murray Vachon, LCSW (Inspirational)

What if the reason you feel overwhelmed, anxious, or emotionally drained isn’t because life is “too much” … but because no one ever taught you the mental wellness skills that make life manageable—and peaceful?

In this inspirational & motivational episode, Reginald D sits down with MJ Murray Vachon, a licensed clinical social worker, certified EMDR therapist, mental wellness educator, & host of Creating Midlife Calm Podcast. MJ has over 36 years of experience & 50,000+ clinical hours helping people heal.

This powerful conversation blends faith and motivation, emotional resilience, practical mental wellness tools that can transform the way you think, feel & respond to life. MJ breaks down what mental wellness really means, why it matters more than ever in today’s high-stress world & how your emotional state impacts not only you—but everyone around you.

People are carrying silent stress, emotional overload, anxiety, trauma & unresolved pain—especially after the pandemic & the nonstop noise of social media. You may feel like you’re trying to hold it together while life keeps throwing curveballs. This episode is for you if you want to feel more stable, more grounded, and more spiritually aligned without pretending everything is fine.

Press play now to get the inspirational, motivational mental wellness tools that can help you find calm, strengthen your faith & start feeling emotionally stronger starting today.

 MJ's  info:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vachonmjmurray
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mj.murrayvachon
Website: https://mjmurrayvachon.com

 Mental Wellness
• Ep. 130: 1 Simple Coping Skill To Stop Stress & Anxiety From Spiraling Out Of Control & Derailing Midlife Calm -   https://pod.fo/e/2ae1c9
• Ep. 131: 5 Simple Words That Will Transform Stress, Anxiety & Chaos Into Calm, To Make Better Midlife Decisions -  https://pod.fo/e/2af7fa
• Ep. 1: What Is Mental Wellness -  https://pod.fo/e/35013e
• One-Pager: What Is Mental Wellness -  https://tinyurl.com/mvrth7tv

motivational speech, faith and motivation, mental wellness, emotional health, emotional regulation, inspirational stories, motivational speeches, anxiety help, trauma healing, EMDR therapy, resilience, self improvement, healing journey, creating calm, coping skills, men

Transcript

MJ Murray Vachon: Foreign.

Reginald D: Welcome to Real Talk With Reginald D. I'm your host, Reginald D. On today's episode, I have MJ Murray Vachon.

Today's guest is someone whose life has quietly touched tens of thousands of lives and whose wisdom has shaped how we understand emotional health,

resilience, and what it truly means to be mentally well.

MJ Murray Vachon is a licensed clinical social worker, certified EMDR therapist,

and mental wellness educator with more than 50,000 clinical hours and 36 years of experience helping individuals, couples and families navigate anxiety,

depression,

trauma,

life transitions, emotional regulation,

and relational struggles.

MJ Murray is also the host of two podcasts, the Inner Challenge podcast and the Creating Midlife Calm Podcast.

Welcome to the show, M.J.

thank you.

MJ Murray Vachon: I'm really excited to be here.

Reginald D: Thank you. Thank you so much.

So, mj, let's start out like this. Can you tell us a little bit about where you grew up and what your childhood was like?

MJ Murray Vachon: Yes. I grew up in a small rural Indiana town.

Granger, Indiana is about three or five hundred people, depending on the census.

I'm the fifth of six children and I think I would use three words. I think that my childhood felt really safe.

It felt very community oriented and it felt rooted in faith.

And I look at life now and I just grow in a deeper and deeper appreciation of what I was given through no work of my own. It was just lucky to be raised where I was raised.

Being the fifth of six children is just like that's a community and our neighborhood, I still text and see my neighbors that I grew up with and that was a community.

Our schools were a community.

And I so value that. And that still is a really important part, not just of my personal life, but what I help clients with of knowing how healing and energizing community is.

And the last would be faith. That what I love about my childhood and looking back is that my best friend, her dad was the minister of the Church of Christ right down the road from us.

And let me just tell you, if you wanted to hear someone who could preach, it was Reverend Ed Erskine. And if you wanted to hear someone who could play the piano,

it was the Rev, as we called him. And we met when we were two and we are still friends today.

And we played at the church all the time.

And what might seem not so unusual today,

but my parents let me go to her church. The deal they made with me when I was in first grade is you can go to Kim's church, as we called it,

as long as you go to mass every Sunday.

And when I look back now through happy accidents,

having to hold those differences. The tension of this is what Catholics do, and this is what Protestants do was really formative.

And her mom, the minister's wife,

has all these funny stories of me saying to her,

you know, Mrs. Erskine,

Protestants eat supper and Catholics eat lunch.

And I really divided the world in that way.

And it really was a master's degree in difference and seeing not to be afraid of it, but to be curious about it.

And for people who are in my profession,

you know, therapy is all about difference. We always work with people very different than ourselves,

you know, and so my initial eight years in therapy were doing in home therapy in the inner city of Chicago,

Very different than a rural community.

And I moved from, you know, being fearful and,

like, ignorant to just loving that work.

And so that's kind of the, you know, the Cliff notes of my childhood.

Reginald D: Yeah, I like the part about the church.

I like that. I love the way it kind of, I guess,

sets you in a direction for your journey, actually, when it's all said and done.

Because you spent over 50,000 clinical hours helping people understand their emotional lives.

How do you personally define mental wellness? And why does that definition matter today more than ever?

MJ Murray Vachon: Oh, thank you for asking. What is the most passionate question in my life?

At about year seven or eight of being a therapist,

I remember working with a family whose teenager was very lost.

And the mom said, I wish we had known all of this when we were young.

This meaning basically,

mental wellness skills.

And I had a light bulb, and I went to one of my friends. I'm like, we should do a camp.

We should do a camp where we teach in therapy,

or we should do a camp where people can learn in a camp what we teach in therapy. Why should people have to suffer and in order to learn this stuff?

And now it's 1992. You know, then it was 1992, the words emotional intelligence hadn't been coined. There was no social emotional learning. But your podcast today shows how far we've come.

But my colleague and I, we created a camp, and that morphed into a school curriculum for six, seventh, and eighth graders of how to cultivate mental wellness.

And about year eight, maybe like around 2000, I went to a workshop. Here I am a mental wellness educator. There really wasn't such a thing. But that's what we called ourselves.

And Dr. Dan Siegel asked, How many of us. 800 in the audience, all clinicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers,

how many of us have a definition for mental wellness?

Three people raise their hand.

So here's everyone in the mental health field and even me.

Not just in the mental health field, but the prevention field.

I don't have a definition for mental wellness.

And so why is it important?

Because how can we have it if we don't know what it is we know?

Generally, I want to feel better.

And so I end up using two definitions.

And the reason it's important is that which we can define,

we can create really hard to create that which we don't have a roadmap for.

So the first definition I use is from the World Health Organization.

And it super simple. And I always say, like, cultivating mental wellness is putting into words what we all know.

And what the WHO says is that it's a state of being where the individual can realize their abilities,

can cope with the normal stresses of life,

can work productively and fruitfully,

and can contribute to the communities that they're involved in. Family, work, cities, churches.

So that's the 40,000 foot view.

But then I use Siegel's image for the boots on the ground view.

So I'm going to just. If you would be so willing, I'm going to ask you to just walk with me through creating this image in your mind. Would you be willing to do it?

Reginald D: Yes.

MJ Murray Vachon: I just want you to create the image of a calm, peaceful river that you are alert to. You're just watching this river in your mind.

Reginald D: Okay.

MJ Murray Vachon: Can you do it?

Reginald D: It's tough.

MJ Murray Vachon: It's tough.

Yeah,

it's tough for all of us.

But that is the natural state of our mind.

To be peaceful,

to be calm, and to be alert.

Now, how do we know that?

Think about babies,

right?

Babies have incredible moments of calm and peace because they haven't taken on the worries of the world yet.

And so we start with that peaceful image,

and then life happens.

And what Siegel's image is on one bank is chaos.

When something happens, that makes our mind move into a chaotic state, state where we feel out of control.

And on the other bank is rigidity,

where something happens that makes us dig our heels in and try to impose control.

And that's the state of our mind.

We have the capacity to be calm, peaceful and alert.

But we can certainly expect that as life unfolds, our mind will go to chaos,

our mind will go to rigidity.

And cultivating mental wellness is understanding that image, using it like we use images for other things, maps to get to the destination that we want to go to,

but using these five letters that he floats in the river, because they're tools and those letters spell faces that when we're on the bank,

we can use F,

the tool of flexibility.

A,

the tool of adaptive.

C,

the tool of coherent.

E, the tool of energy.

S, the tool of stability.

Can I walk you to an example?

Reginald D: Yes.

MJ Murray Vachon: Soon after the pandemic, and we were locked down pretty long here,

I went to Starbucks. It was kind of like going to a football game. People were really excited to be out and about.

And there was a lot of people, like 35 people waiting for coffee. And I had ordered ahead and my plan was to zip in and zip out. I was going to go to work and do my emails and I could feel the frustration like, oh, I don't have time for this.

But because I see this,

I can feel my mind going from, you know, and we're not trying to be, you know, Buddhist monks and calm. We're just trying to be like American calm. Right? My goal in life is to be a B.

I don't need to be an A if I'm a B. I have a higher chance for my mind to be calm if I'm an A. I'm always stressed out, like, how do I get to be an A?

How do I get to be an A?

So I notice that this not going my way is making my mind go on the banks.

So I do a grounding exercise.

I move my mind to my feet,

just kind of aware, take some breaths and re regulate my central nervous system that is getting a little rocky here.

And then all of a sudden, a woman comes in and her coffee's not ready and she goes on the bank of chaos and she throws a fit and she starts yelling at this barista who is no more than 18 years old.

And she's like, I ordered ahead. It said five minutes. It's not there. I need to get to work.

And like, everybody goes like this.

So I become flexible,

think, okay,

it's gonna take a while.

And then I become adaptive.

I can sit outside and I can do my emails while they make my coffee. I can go to work.

I didn't want to lose the $5,

so I became coherent.

I'm living in reality here.

Even though the app told me and even the app told that woman X number of minutes, it was wrong.

The coherence is obviously with 30 people,

it's going to take some time.

She is still yelling.

The barista is crying, you know, just like, not boohoo, but tears.

And I'm sitting outside regaining my calm,

getting stuff done.

She pretty soon marches out the door.

Line of swear words. And I thought, man, her Day is probably ruined because she didn't understand that coherence is. Everybody out here isn't setting up the chessboard so we can get to work on time.

Stuff happens, and we can manage our mind even when out here goes cuckoo bananas. And a lot of cuckoo bananas.

So why it's important a is because we all want to feel better. We're all kind of feeling like ****,

but we keep thinking, if this out here changed,

I'd feel good.

When we actually have the power to change within.

Reginald D: Right?

MJ Murray Vachon: Say she got her coffee faster than the rest of us because they made it right away to get her out.

Reginald D: Right.

MJ Murray Vachon: But she disrupted everybody because it's not just about us,

right?

So that's why it's important if we don't know what it means to cultivate mental wellness. And I can send you a link. I have, you know, two podcast episodes. I forget their numbers, but my podcast, Creating Midlife Palm, I don't do the other one anymore.

I just do one is 10 minutes.

The episodes are 10 minutes. And they're just coping skills. So people can create Palm.

Right? Because we have the power to do it. But somehow we've been given the message that the only way we can be calm is if everything out here goes our way.

And I don't know about you, but it doesn't happen like that in my life.

Reginald D: Nope, Nope. Not at all.

MJ Murray Vachon: So that's why it's important. Kind of a windy answer. I apologize.

Reginald D: But,

yeah, and the crazy part about it, mj, when you think about it, and I'm not in the mental health field, but when Covid hit and after, you know, all that fiasco with COVID and the things we went through, everybody went through,

people was different. Even when Covid,

you know, stopped or whatever case may be, you know, they still say it's out here, you know, every now and then, somebody get it. But after everything stopped raging,

people were different.

I mean, people just going just crazy now.

They're just doing, you know, just.

Just all whacked out and stressed out. I'm like, man, this thing really has messed some people up.

MJ Murray Vachon: Yeah. I mean, I think of two things that I've said that I did a workshop for a group to help them process the pandemic. They were inner city school teachers.

They were not sitting at home doing zoom. They were in the thick of it.

And I went before I gave the workshop. And the workshop was to process their experience of the last 18 months.

So I'm eating lunch with them. They don't know I'm the presenter and one of the young. They're all pretty young, in their mid-20s. One of them said to somebody, I don't know what we're talking about that pandemic for.

What a waste of time. It's over.

And the other one yells, yeah, it sounds kind of stupid. So, you know, then I got to go do the workshop up, right? But I do this process with them where they get to put words to their experience.

Many of them had students whose parents died,

and they were living with that grief and all of that, but had not processed it.

And I often thought it would be so amazing as a country,

to acknowledge it was a pandemic.

It was scary.

People had to,

in a moment, pivot.

And we never really looked at how incredible our response was.

I had clients who were 75. They had never used FaceTime.

I had to teach them how to use FaceTime. I had colleagues that had never done anything on the computer.

They had to buy a computer because they needed to pay their mortgage and they needed access.

And, like, the capacity for human beings to learn things out of sheer necessity is a part of the pandemic we don't talk about.

But I think the damaging part wasn't anything with the pandemic. It really had to do with algorithms,

that all of us were home and we were on our phones a lot more, and we were on our tablets and our devices.

And I've come to believe that it used to be said you are the five people you spend the most time with.

I've come to really believe that you are your five top algorithms. Maybe three, I don't know.

And that feeding of one side,

unfiltered, that makes each of us, you know, more right. That we're right about this. You know, people have to understand. And that's what I think is often something people don't talk about.

But I see in my office with my clients is this phone is about, you know,

stay on it. Because that's how the tech companies make money. It's how a lot of people make money.

But the problem is it leans towards enragement,

because that is engagement.

I. I heard it said the other day that in marketing, it used to be sex cells.

Now it's anger cells, enragement cells.

And I'm like, that's probably true.

And so that I don't, you know, that was like an unintended consequence of the pandemic is we all became more of our algorithms and less of our relationships.

Reginald D: Yeah, that's true. That's so true. And, like, I Say it took a lot of people down some roads that they weren't ready for.

MJ Murray Vachon: Yes, yes.

Reginald D: Which is unfortunate. But.

But, mj let's talk about this. Some people feel that faith and mental health are in conflict.

From your experience,

how can mental wellness actually strengthen someone's spiritual life and sense of purpose?

MJ Murray Vachon: I'm going to out myself here. I have never answered this question,

so I am not answering this with authority.

I'm answering this to see what you think.

Because in the last 10 years, South Bend is a highly churched community.

We have a really strong Catholic community because the University of Notre Dame is here. We have a really strong Protestant community.

We have become a place where Orthodox Jews move to because the cost of living is decent.

We're losing it by the minute.

And we have a really strong,

I think,

spiritual base in this community.

And in the last 10 years, I have halls where people say,

I would like to see you because I'm looking for a Catholic therapist,

or we're looking for a Jewish therapist,

we're looking for a Christian therapist. And I never had these calls before.

And one of the things in social work school is we're really trained to be open to whoever walks in our door because we don't get to pick.

And. And I've really thought about, and what I see is this suspicion and this almost competition between religion and faith and mental health and psychology,

where when I was trained, it was more of a collaboration and a partnership.

And what I've come to see is I think psychology and mental health has a natural ceiling.

And I think of faith and spirituality as not having a ceiling.

And that we,

you know,

when we understand mental health and we work to cultivate it,

we are often using the same part of ourself that people use in religion, and that's the spirit.

People come to therapists because their spirit is depressed,

because their spirit is anxious,

because their spirit has been harmed.

And what we're trying to do is help people reclaim it.

I don't think most therapists think about it that way,

but I actually do. I ask people,

tell me about your spirit.

Most people have never thought of it,

but when I think of religion and I think of spirituality,

there is no ceiling. People,

no matter what their denomination,

they're trying to train their spirit to connect to God, Buddha,

who. Whoever is there, being.

And to have that done from a place of love,

from a place of service,

from a place of compassion, transcendence.

But what gets in the way of that is when people's mental health isn't good,

that there's really clear ways. It's what I do on my podcast. There's really clear ways to tame our spirit when it leans towards fear or depression or when it's been very hurt and harmed, as it often can happen in trauma.

And so to me,

I'm working hard and sometimes it's successful, sometimes it's not.

To have people see them as really a partnership and not,

you know,

working at odds against each other.

So that, that's kind of my thought today. They could be different in a month. What do you think?

Reginald D: Well, with me, I think basically the way I was raised, you know, I come from a very religious family with pastors, preachers and,

you know, Southern Baptist type things. And what I've seen growing up is that there was a conflict between faith and mental health because a lot of people thought that they didn't believe in mental health.

They thought that was of the devil, like that's a demonic spirit that's in your mind. You know,

they believe that you need to have the Holy Spirit and all everything else will go away,

you know, give you the power to heal and things like that.

So for years I've heard that talk just straightforward to people know, like, but then you will see people that,

you know, commit suicide. You see people that does all kind of things and,

and everybody's like, man, what happened? I'm like, well, they were saying something, but we were saying something else. You guys were saying something else. And I think as the years went on,

when people started educating the church,

Southern Baptist churches, I'm talking about that side of the trap.

When they started educating itself on mental health and things like that, then it became, okay,

this is real.

You know, then they believed in counseling. You know, they believed in. A lot of them didn't believe in that kind of stuff. It's either, you know, God and the Holy Spirit can change you.

If they can't do it, nobody can do it. You know, they didn't believe, a lot of them didn't believe that kind of stuff. But I think that side of the church has came a long ways because like I said, they have educated themselves and they're pretty much working in partnership,

you know,

with faith and mental health.

Now more than ever, you know, they're quick to say, hey, you know, go see this person, go see that person, and things like that instead of just making it one sided.

MJ Murray Vachon: Yeah, it's a tool,

right? Faith is formation,

faith is aspirational.

Faith says to us,

you can be better,

then you might be left to your own devices,

right? That, you know, the human condition is one of selfishness.

And faith says you can be more than that,

you can be more than that.

And I certainly worked with people who interpreted their depression, their anxiety as demons.

Great, I could go with that.

How do I know if it's demons or not?

Right. The way that one treats it is the same and that's with love.

You know that often one's inner demons,

I think, is that they haven't really connected to what faith does well, and that says you are worthy the minute you're born.

My mental wellness program, Inner Challenge, I taught to freshmen football players at Notre Dame. Series of happy accidents. I end up with these guys who trust me. It was intimidating.

And they were by far the most joyful people I have ever worked with.

And they because my style is pretty,

I'm always creating.

There was this moment where somehow we were talking about,

you know,

your self worth and your self esteem and one of them said, oh,

I thought they were the same.

I said, no,

that is the root of tremendous suffering.

Because your self esteem is like the weather.

There's always going to be someone who does better than you. You can't win every game,

you can't catch every pass,

and if you think you're worth is rooted in your self esteem,

then you're going to feel really uncomfortable inside.

And so it was actually Brock Wright, I think he plays for the Detroit Lions. He said, oh,

so basically our self esteem is our performer self and our self worth is our real self.

And I felt the ground shake underneath me and I was like, amen, brother. That is exactly right that we all have a performer self.

And that's where on the good days we're using our gifts for the benefit of the other.

But sometimes we have good days, sometimes we have bad days,

and it's like the weather.

But our real self is the self that's rooted in God made me and I'm a holy being connected to God.

And so that worthy self,

I don't know how many people really separate these.

Kristin Neff, who is the expert in the world on self compassion,

separated it for therapists maybe 10 or 15 years ago,

right? You have your self worth, you have your self esteem.

Rock Wright, football player, he renamed it, you have your performer self and you have your real self.

And that really helps because then we're not asking our performer self to make us feel like we're enough.

And that's probably the disease of modern time is nobody feels enough because that's kind of what capitalism pedals, right? You're not enough. You're not enough. Buy this, do this.

But in reality, we are enough.

We just have to find ways to connect to that truth.

Reginald D: Yes. That is so true. I love the way you separated the two. That was good. That was good.

MJ Murray Vachon: It was the spirit.

Because I'm sitting class with five 18 year old guys who probably between the five of them weighed 4,000 pounds and they are listening because their whole life is over dedicated to the performer self.

But they're young and they're hungry and they don't want to be taken down when things don't go their way.

It was a spiritual moment.

Reginald D: Yeah. And is there a specific reason that you chose just the freshman?

MJ Murray Vachon: Oh, trust me, I didn't choose.

Reginald D: Okay.

MJ Murray Vachon: They,

I think in 2012 or so, Notre Dame had a losing season and that doesn't bode well in South Bend, Indiana. So there was probably like 7,000 investigations about why did we lose.

And one of the things they found is that they're early enrollees. Kids who come second semester their senior year didn't have an orientation and they needed more support than was being given to them.

And so one of the assistant athletic directors knew of my program at the Inner Challenge, my mental wellness curriculum, had been at a local junior high for 21 years and she happened to coach basketball there.

And she's called me on December 22 and said, hey, do you think you can flip your program into a course for our freshman football players?

I said, oh, yeah, for when? Like August? She goes, no, for three weeks.

And my graphic artist, Kathy hall, and I just worked over the Christmas holidays and I did it for three years until the, you know, things changed. There's a new coach.

But it was so beautiful to work with these young men who came from all over,

you know, all over.

And they,

I really think, taught me more than I taught them.

Reginald D: Right. That's the way it usually happens.

MJ Murray Vachon: Yeah.

Reginald D: Usually.

MJ Murray Vachon: Habits, yes.

Reginald D: So MJ EMDR has become such a powerful tool for trauma healing. For listeners unfamiliar with it, how do you explain what it is and why it works?

MJ Murray Vachon: Oh,

thank you for asking this.

I was trained in 1993 or 94 when we were very skeptical.

My husband is a psychologist and we needed a bunch of CEU fast.

And it is now, I will not refer to a therapist who's not trained in it.

How I explain it is it takes,

it's a whole body treatment.

So you.

Let's say I did this a couple weeks ago with someone in a car accident and I had him create an image of the worst Moment of the accident.

I.

That's Ben. I had him. What's his negative belief in that worst moment?

I'm going to die.

What's your positive belief?

I'm safe.

Combine the image of the worst moment of the accident with the negative belief and just meld them here in the safety of my office. There's a lot of pre work done to make people safe.

You just don't step into this. But I'm giving you the.

And tell me what you feel.

And he's like, sheer terror.

Where? My throat, my chest, I'm sweating.

And that's the setup. And I'm like,

I want you to stay with that terror. And you can. Some therapists have you follow their fingers with your eyes. I use tappers that do bilateral stimulation.

And you do it for about 25 or 30 seconds. And then you say,

just tell me in one sentence or two what's happening.

And he goes, I feel like I can't breathe.

And I'm like, you're safe. Your body will make you breathe.

Continue.

He goes to. He does another round,

and he's like,

I can almost feel the windshield on my head.

I'm so sorry.

Stay with that. As painful as it is. And we just keep working through in a very free association way.

And it took him probably about 30 minutes of working through it.

And then, you know, maybe of those 30 minutes,

11 were incredibly intense. You know, he was crying.

He could feel his shoulders. They hurt because he'd had a shoulder injury.

And then the pain began to subside,

and, you know, he began to see not just this little. His image was his head against the dashboard or the windshield. I'm sorry.

And then as it got bigger, he was like, oh, all the people who helped that the other person was safe,

that no one was tragically killed.

And, you know, the firefighters, the paramedics, how great they were. So it went from the worst, and then it kind of slowly gets bigger.

You know, he'll come back and do a couple more sessions.

But what EMDR does is it's counterintuitive when we have trauma.

Our body isn't really built for trauma, but it is built for trauma. It's an amazing machine,

but it isn't built to process trauma. It can withstand it,

but EMDR is an incredible tool that helps people process trauma.

And so one of the things that is counterintuitive is you start with the worst part, which is what we like to not, what do we do after a car accident?

At least everyone's safe.

We swing to the positive and then three and four or five weeks later,

we can't sleep at night. As were his symptoms, he was like, this is terrible. My car is total, but nobody's. And he was fine. And then he was having sleep interruptions, and he was having kind of flashbacks.

So it leans into.

With a very skilled professional, don't try this at home.

But it leans into really the. You know, the trauma and moving through it,

and it becomes a safe way.

Does that make sense?

Reginald D: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

MJ Murray Vachon: And it's not just used for extreme things, though. It is used for trauma.

You know, it's 40, 50 years old.

And so, you know, I have a child who had a very severe learning disability.

So school was brutal,

and her dad was her tutor, and she'd sit at the table and just be so frustrated that she couldn't learn. And I was making dinner, and inside I was so lit up, I was like.

Like white knuckling. Like, I wanted to yell at her, like, stop it. You're driving me crazy. Right.

That was the example I used.

That's not a trauma.

That's just an unhealthy reaction.

And in my EMDR training, that is what I used.

And what floated back was I had a severe speech impediment as a child,

so I knew her frustration.

I was three to eight. I don't really have big memories of that speech impediment, but I know I had it. I used a speech therapist,

and it allowed me to let go of that which my body held onto.

Because one thing we know now in mental health is that the body doesn't lie,

and it holds on to hurts,

whether it's the hurt of not being understood or whether it's a big hurt of abuse,

an accident.

Reginald D: Right,

Right. So, mj, you said that mental wellness is learnable,

and it's not just about coping,

but cultivating. What are the first steps someone should take to begin that process?

MJ Murray Vachon: Mental wellness is a junior high skill.

If you went to junior high,

you can learn to be mentally well.

And so I think it's curiosity. The first step is to begin to think, to make the transition,

that if everything in my life went right,

I would be mentally well to understanding. No,

Life is more like a video game.

We have to learn the coping skills to keep ourselves calm and regulated when things happen out here that upset us, that throw us curveball.

So I would say the first thing that people should learn is how to regulate their emotions.

How to regulate their emotions. Because the model that I've created is that our culture Teaches us to blame and unclaim.

Blame is. You shouldn't be doing this. Unclaim is addiction. I mean, the addictions really are often a way of numbing uncomfortable feelings.

But the healthy model is tend and befriend.

I don't know if you do links on show notes, but I can send you to my foundational episodes on how to regulate your emotions. And I have a nice one pager.

You know, it's notice name tame,

aim.

And then it's that simple. Like, I'm getting disregulated. I'm getting coffee.

I'm going to ground my feet, I'm going to take some breaths. I'm going to take responsibility for me to stay again,

B calm, or just a b calm, not a Zen Buddhist calm.

And I have that.

So when I.

I used a lot of methods of emotional regulation because I'm working with junior high kids, and they're brutally honest.

And so I finally found this one. I created it off of some other people's. I took adoption. There's nothing new in my world. We just take and adapt.

And the brightest kid in the class, who was a real brainiac, after I taught notice name tame and aim,

he came up to me and he said,

I hope I don't get in trouble for this,

But I never thought I had emotions.

You know, I'm just kind of like an intellectual guy.

But now I see that I do. And this is a lot like potty training, right?

I. In my head, I'm like, no, this is nothing like potty training.

But I said, wow, that's an interesting metaphor. Can you say more?

And he said, well, you know how we drink all day long, and when our bladder gets full, it signals us to go pee so we don't wet our pants? I'm like, okay.

He goes, what you're saying is we go through our day and stuff dysregulates us,

and some of it's little and it just gets regulated, but sometimes as stuff builds up or something's big,

our body gets dysregulated. And what we need to do is notice. Ooh, I'm feeling ******.

Tame.

Just feel the anger and breathe.

Literally no more than 90 seconds. Research has told us.

And then we'll have a clearer mind.

And that's aim. We figure out what to do.

And I looked at him and I said, oh, my God, that's brilliant.

Every time I talk about emotional regulation,

Luke Barrett, I'm going to share that story. And I pretty much always have.

So that's where I want people to Start because it's our emotions that don't get processed,

that don't get noticed.

If we're, we don't notice them, we're going to be like the lady in Starbucks,

no big deal.

Not only is she dysregulated, she dysregulated the 18 year old bartender who was crying or barista and all the people in the place.

And so it isn't just about me, it's about understanding. If I cultivate mental wellness, for me,

it is contagious.

It is contagious.

Reginald D: Right, Right.

MJ Murray Vachon: Just like when people are angry, that becomes contagious. Unless someone is really trained their mind.

Reginald D: Right.

MJ Murray Vachon: And doesn't let it be contagious.

Reginald D: Exactly. Because when you say it's contagious, it's very contagious. Because I was looking at the news yesterday and they flashed something on the news like there was a fight in the food line, which is our grocery store,

over a turkey.

And it started with an employee and a customer and then it went to another customer getting on this other customer about this turkey. I don't know what was so special about this turkey, but it ended up being a fight in the store and then it ended up shooting at each other in the parking lot.

I was like, geez, I mean, I know it's more turkeys in the store, man.

MJ Murray Vachon: Yeah, I'd be happy to buy both of them one. Right. Just to keep the peace.

Reginald D: Right.

MJ Murray Vachon: About 12 or 15 years ago, neuroscience learned these things that every junior high girl knows is that we have mirror neurons,

these neurons in our forehead that actually make emotions contagious.

And there was this period in mental health and in the culture, it's like, you can't make me feel what I don't want to feel. I'm like, you have never worked in a junior high.

Trust me, that girl rolls her eyes and, and that girl day is ruined.

Right.

And so,

you know,

if we want to give peace a chance, we actually do start with our own.

We actually start with our own.

Reginald D: Right.

MJ Murray Vachon: Because a lot of people are walking around and they're walking around at a 7.

So when they don't get a turkey, that 7 goes to 12 or 20 or 60.

But people aren't walking around with full bladders.

People are taking care of their bladders because they don't want wet pants.

Reginald D: Right.

MJ Murray Vachon: We don't have to walk around with our emotional state being agitated at 7 and 8.

So when we don't get our way because we want the turkey, that eight flips, our lip flips and we do and say things that probably really aren't coherent with our values.

Reginald D: Right, Exactly. So, Jay, I have a couple of bonus questions.

MJ Murray Vachon: Oh, great.

Reginald D: What's one belief about emotions? People need to let go of that theirs are.

MJ Murray Vachon: Right. Emotions are not facts. They're feelings, and they're your subjective experience. Then.

Reginald D: Okay, what's a myth about therapy that drives you crazy?

MJ Murray Vachon: Oh, I kind of like myths. I don't get driven crazy by much because often myths are rooted in someone's real experience.

So I would say,

I don't know. I think there's a probably truth in all the myths and that it's helpful to get curious when people say, you know, therapy's only for somebody who's young.

I have quite a few clients now in their 70s and a couple in their 80s.

How inspiring is that?

Right?

Or that therapy's only for the rich.

No, you know what?

There's a lot of ways to cultivate mental wellness that are free.

Like the number of podcasts helping people. They're all free.

Check in mine. Creating Midlife Calm. I mean, it's free. It's 10 minutes.

And people can actually do some of this work on their own.

So,

you know, I want people to go to therapy who have had trauma.

I don't ever want someone to have to work through trauma on their own.

But I also know that there's a lot of services out there that are really helpful, that don't cost a lot of money. I've had a lot of people use AA who've had drinking or drug problems.

And so I think one of the myths is that I can't afford it.

And sometimes you can't afford what you first want,

but you, with a little bit of time and a little bit of curiosity, you can probably find what you need in a way that you can't afford.

Reginald D: Absolutely. Absolutely. One more. The most hopeful thing you see in your work today. What is the most hopeful thing you see in your work today?

MJ Murray Vachon: That's a really good question.

I think one of the really hopeful things I see is people reaching out sooner in the first. You know, I've done this almost 40 years.

So in the first 20 years,

when people came to my office,

they had lived with their suffering for a long time,

and it's really hopeful to me. Like, my one client who's in her mid-70s,

her husband died. She'd never lived alone,

and she just wasn't able to know how to cope without him.

And she remembered that her mother had the same thing happen,

and her mother just went downhill,

and she Reached out. Someone who never didn't really even believe in therapy and she didn't let herself go downhill.

And this was a case where I could normalize. I'm like,

this is painful, but this is normal Greek.

And I was able to say,

there's some beautiful grief support groups. You don't have to be alone.

I'm happy to see you,

but you might really benefit more from being with other people like you.

And she went to a grief support group at our local hospice.

And that's what I'm saying is that that has been incredible. I see her every four or five weeks and she kind of just checks in, but they're really doing the work and that's not costing her a cent.

And that's very hopeful. If a 70, maybe she's 78. If a 78 year old can make the phone call, I want a 28 year old or a 48 year old to don't let yourself suffer.

Reach out. There's a lot of help.

Reginald D: Yes, absolutely. And that's the most critical thing. When people just have the stuff, they just house it. You know, it won't reach out for help, anything like that. And then when it does, something detrimental happens.

Everybody's looking around, like what? You know, we didn't see this coming, or we did see it coming, didn't say anything about it or whatever the case may be. But it's like,

you know, if you need help, get help.

MJ Murray Vachon: Yeah, I mean, we're really in a transition as a culture.

My mom, born in 1930,

her generation was called the silent generation.

And she was, I call, she had the Obama temperament.

Just nothing seemed to ruffle her feathers.

Nothing seemed to ruffle her feathers.

And she,

you know, also though, didn't really do anything emotionally. Didn't really know what to do except kind of round up.

And that's one way to live. And I really love my mother. She's passed, but I think we don't get the complexity of life if we don't do some inner work.

And that often begins when we're suffering.

I'm sure there's somebody out there who did it when everything was going great. But most of us,

the gift of suffering is it makes us more reflective. And the gift of reflection is it helps us stay aligned with our values and gives us energy if we do it in a healthy way.

Reginald D: Right. So, mj, lastly, how can my listeners sign up for your programs, follow your journey on social media or listen to your podcast?

MJ Murray Vachon: Oh, thank you for asking. My podcast, Grading Midlife Calm, is on all the major platforms, Spotify, Apple.

In the winter of 2026, I'm actually going to have my mental wellness program. Inner Challenge will be a master class.

Through a series of fortunate events.

I met a film producer who just said,

let's do a master class.

And he's in the final stages of producing it. I saw the first outtakes of it two weeks ago.

It is beautiful. And he has worked with people from all over the world. He is a unicorn of a human. I've never met anyone like him. He mostly does documentaries on people with disabilities.

And he works Syria, Africa,

El Salvador. And he's used all these talented people from all over the world to create something that I never envisioned myself doing. I loved your introduction.

Like, the work of a therapist is very quiet.

Like,

we go to work, we do our jobs. It's not splashy.

It's very in the boat rowing and even the work of teaching junior high students. There's nothing sexy about that. I mean, you're just trying to have them not have you hors d' oeuvre most of the day.

Right? And so to meet this man at a benefit for our local women's shelter, which I'm crazy about,

and he did their video and then we went to coffee and he's like, I have two months off. Let's do this. And we did it in nine days.

I have no idea how to market it. I have no idea how to distribute it. I know nothing about that.

But I trust and somehow we'll make that work. So that will be coming probably,

you know, January, February.

Reginald D: Wow, that's exciting.

MJ Murray Vachon: It is very exciting.

It's very exciting. Yeah. But it's also. We had a whole day where we filmed with seven people between ages 8 and 70. Something where I'm teaching them the skills that I talk about in the master class.

And I just trusted this filmmaker. I don't even take good pictures with my phone.

And he's like, okay, we're gonna do this fishbowl and we're gonna have. I'm gonna bring this kid in. He's from Nepal, but he lives in Arizona and he's 8.

And I'm like, and then this woman who's 70. And I was like, oh my gosh. Like, we're gonna have this fishbowl and we're gonna have an 8 year old in it.

We're gonna film for 10 hours.

I'll just tell you,

the rest of the group had to rise to the level of this most gifted child.

I felt like, yes, I felt like we were in the midst of this spiritual being. He was so curious. I never have met a child like him and I have not seen any of the film of him yet.

But I know what he did for the project and he probably won't be on the film a lot, but he really upped all of our games.

Reginald D: Wow.

MJ Murray Vachon: Super exciting.

And it's one of those. It'll be a do it yourself. You can do it the comfort of your home or if you want a book loop to do it, I'm not going to be charging a thousand million dollars for it.

We've done it on a shoestring. I'm a social worker. He's a filmmaker. We had no funding. We just did it and we did it in his studio. But a man from El Salvador created the AI background.

It's incredible.

And this guy just. He's a magical human. He's a magical human.

Reginald D: Wow.

MJ Murray Vachon: Yeah.

So. So I look forward to that, you know, being out there. It's really my deepest desire to give this because I want it so people can learn it in the comfort of their homes.

Reginald D: Right, right.

MJ Murray Vachon: Because I think you can probably see I'm super practical. Right.

My feet are on the ground.

Because the people who trained me were practical. I had two practical parents who ran a house with six kids and other people who came to live with us in an orderly,

fairly calm way with, you know, explosions here and there, but nothing, you know, drastic.

And you work in a junior high,

like, they're just the best teachers ever because they weren't living to please me.

But I said, we are creating this program together. I looked for a program in 93,

okay, this would be a great thing to do. But there was no program in the country. Now there's a million social emotional learning programs.

But what I think is unique about this is I have these two hats.

I'm a therapist and I'm an educator.

And so putting that together,

my clients, I want them to get better. Like, I work really hard to find what will work for them. We do it together.

And I wanted to be able to teach the skills to students who weren't interested in them in a way that they would become interested.

And that's what I think I haven't seen in all honesty, in most social emotional programs, they're pretty dry.

And they're not.

Cultivating mental wellness is a junior high level thing.

You know, hey, you want to feel better? Regulate your emotions.

Hey, you want to have energy,

get sleep?

Hey, you want to take back your life,

outsmart your smartphone and all of that is lifestyle.

And I say this a lot,

and I think people don't respect me for it, but it is my perspective.

I'm not sure we have a mental health crisis in the US I think we have a lifestyle crisis.

Not enough sleep,

too much phone. We don't move our bodies enough,

and our relationships don't get enough attention.

And we were made from the beginning of time to be in community.

We were made from the beginning of time to sleep. We were made from the beginning of time to move.

We were made from the beginning of time to take care of ourselves.

Yet our economy is really dependent on us being on the phone too much, eating crappy food,

and that means we don't sleep as well because we're on the phone or we're not physically comfortable.

So I like to look at, you know,

that as a really important part of cultivating mental wellness is making small, doable shifts to our lifestyle.

Not drastic. As human beings, we can't go from, I will never eat sugar again,

but we probably could say,

instead of four pumps in that Starbucks latte,

I could have one.

Like, that's a huge shift.

Reginald D: Right.

MJ Murray Vachon: And that's good.

Reginald D: Right?

MJ Murray Vachon: And most people think, oh, I have to have no Starbucks or I have to have,

you know, no lattes, whatever your choice is.

Or, you know, I can never eat ice cream. Who wants a life where you can't eat ice cream?

But you could have one scoop instead of a huge bowl,

two or three times a week instead of every night? Like those small adjustments.

People don't believe how much they do.

Reginald D: Right? Exactly.

MJ Murray Vachon: Yeah.

Reginald D: So, mj, thank you so much for stopping by. I really had a ball today. I've learned a lot today.

MJ Murray Vachon: Oh, thank you so much. That means a lot. I was really excited that you invited me to be on your podcast.

Reginald D: Yeah, absolutely. Because I think what you do is, like, you say it's quiet,

but it's so powerful,

you know, and it's needed. It's needed, you know, because you can have parents,

you know, can't get through to the kids or can't help them through certain things. So it takes people like yourself, you know, they have to come to you, and you can break that ground and get in there and help them start making changes.

So I think it's critical.

Think it's very critical.

MJ Murray Vachon: Thank you. That means a lot. Because it is quiet work.

Reginald D: Right.

MJ Murray Vachon: And there's a lot of people like me doing it and doing it really well.

Reginald D: Right, Right. So there you have it MJ Murray Vachon.  Thank you so much. For stopping by in MJ

MJ Murray Vachon: You're welcome.

Reginald D: Thanks for tuning in to Real Talk With Reginald D. If you enjoy listening to Real Talk With Reginald D. Please rate and review on Apple Podcasts. See you next time.

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