51 | When Anxiety Makes You Feel Numb (And How to Get Yourself Back)

• Do you feel numb, tired, or checked out, even when life looks “fine”?
• Do you keep hearing “be positive,” but it does nothing for you?
• Do you miss feeling like yourself? 

Feeling numb does not mean you are broken. Sometimes anxiety runs for so long in the background that your brain gets worn out and starts shutting things down to conserve energy. It can look like you do not want to do the things you used to love, nothing feels exciting, and even good moments do not land.

In this episode, Jessica Davis explains what is happening in your brain when anxiety keeps your nervous system on high alert. You will learn why negative moments stick faster than positive ones, why “celebrate your wins” feels impossible when you are depleted, and how to use a simple skill from the Courage Method to help your brain register safety again. Stay with this episode until the end so you can start collecting proof that you are handling more than anxiety says you are.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode
 • Why anxiety can make you feel numb, flat, or disconnected
 • What negativity bias is, and why your brain remembers “bad” faster than “good”
 • Why embracing wins is nervous system training, not fake positivity
 • How to stop deflecting your wins so they finally register
 • Simple ways to collect proof that you are safer than anxiety says
 • How to start feeling like yourself again, one small moment at a time 

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⚠️ Disclaimer:  Block Out the Noise provides personal insights and practical stra...

Transcript

Why Positivity Isn’t Working

Jessica N. Davis 0:07

You were probably taught that feeling down means you need to think more positively, be more grateful, just focus on the good stuff. And maybe you've tried that. Maybe you've even tried to celebrate your wins like everyone says you should, but it still feels empty. Like you're going through the motions, but nothing actually sticks. Here's what no one told you. It's not that you're bad at being positive, it's that your brain has been in survival mode for so long it doesn't know how to register the good anymore. And that's not a mindset problem. It's biology. Today I'm going to tell you what actually is happening in your brain when anxiety stops letting you feel the joy and what the research says about how to change it. Hi, and welcome to Block Out the Noise, a space to quiet the noise of anxiety, self-doubt, and overthinking. I'm Jessica Davis, a licensed therapist, mindset coach, and the creator of the Courage Method. I specialize in helping teens and young adults build confidence, courage, and purpose. If you've been feeling overwhelmed by your anxiety and not sure what to do, please go download the anxiety survival toolkit in the show notes. It's made for moments when your thoughts start spiraling and you need something steady to hold on to. Also, quick reminder: this podcast is here to support and guide you, but it is not a replacement for talking to someone in real life. If you're struggling with your mental health, please reach out to a therapist. And if you're in crisis, contact emergency services or a local helpline. You don't have to go through this alone. All right. I want to start by describing something I see a lot in my work. There's the version of anxiety that everyone talks about: the racing heart, the spiraling thoughts, the panic before something big. But there's another version that doesn't get talked about much. It looks like not wanting to do things you used to love, feeling flat or feeling tired all the time, losing your appetite or eating when you're not even hungry, pulling away from people, feeling like nothing is interesting anymore. And here's the thing: a lot of people look at that list and think, that sounds more like depression. And it might be, but sometimes it's not depression that showed up out of nowhere. It's anxiety that's been running in the background for so long that your brain just shuts down. Think about it like this: if your brain has been on high alert for weeks, months, or maybe even years, scanning for threats, waiting for something to go wrong, racing for the next bad thing. At some point your system gets exhausted. And when your brain is exhausted from constantly protecting you, it starts conserving energy. It stops letting you feel excited about things. It stops letting you enjoy small moments. It pulls the plug on anything that isn't about survival. That's not weakness, that's your brain trying to protect you. But it doesn't feel like protection. It feels like you've lost yourself. And please hold on. I know this sounds super negative. And you're like, okay, thanks for just pointing out all of these problems. But I promise, if you hold on and stay with me, I will give you strategies to help you with this. But before that, here's something the research tells us your brain is wired to notice bad things more than good things. It's called the negativity bias. Psychologist Rick Hansen explains it like this: Your brain treats negative experiences like velcro. They stick immediately. But positive experiences, those slide off like Teflon. And this isn't a flaw. For most of human history, this kept people alive. If you forgot about the good berry patch, no big deal. But if you forgot about the dangerous animal, you might not survive. So your brain learned to prioritize threats. Here's where it gets frustrating. We don't live in that world anymore. But your brain still works the same way, which means that embarrassing moment from three years ago, your brain remembers it clearly, like it was yesterday. The compliment someone gave you a week ago, gone. This is why you can have a great day, one awkward interaction, and suddenly the whole day feels ruined. Your brain is doing exactly what it is built to do, but it's not helping you. It keeps you stuck in a world where everything feels like a threat and nothing feels like a win. But here's where I want to switch things. You've probably heard people say, celebrate your wins. And I'm honestly one of those people celebrate wins all day, every day. I think it's definitely something everyone should do. But it can feel kind of cheesy, like, okay, I made it through the day. Am I supposed to throw myself a party? But here's what I need you to understand: embracing the wins is not about being positive. It's about training your nervous system. So let me explain it this way: when you're anxious, your brain is constantly logging danger. Every awkward moment, every mistake, every worst case scenario. It files all that under evidence that the world is unsafe. But here's what your brain is not doing. It's not logging the moments where you've actually were okay. It's not registering the times you survived something scary. It's not noticing that the thing you were afraid of didn't actually even happen. So your brain builds this picture of reality that is completely skewed. Zero wins, 100 dangers. And when that's what your internal scoreboard looks like, of course you feel hopeless. Of course, nothing feels worth it. Of course, you just want to shut down. This is why noticing wins is not about motivation. It's about correcting this distorted view of your own life. Every time you acknowledge, I handled that, I showed up, I tried, you're teaching your brain, we survived, we can rest. We don't have to stay on high alert forever. That's not toxic positivity. I definitely think that phrase is overused. It's about giving your nervous system proof that safety exists. If you've been listening to me for a while, you know that I talk about the courage method. I try not to talk about it every single episode because that would be annoying, but I want to bring it up today because I feel like it's the perfect episode to mention it. And the E in the courage method stands for embrace the wins. Not celebrate them, but embrace them. And that word matters. Celebrating is great. Like I said, I'm all for celebration, but embracing it is different. Embracing means you actually take the moment in, you don't push it away, you don't minimize it, you don't discount it, you let it land. And that's what most people struggle with. Something good happens, and immediately your brain goes, Yeah, but it wasn't that big of a deal. Or anyone could have done that. Or it doesn't count because fill in the blank. That's not embracing, that's deflecting. And when you deflect every win, your brain never gets the message that you're okay. So what does embracing the wins actually look like? Sometimes it's pausing for 15 to 30 seconds and letting yourself feel it. Sometimes it's replaying what went well in your head, actually walking through it again, not to like analyze what you could have done better, but just to notice what worked. Sometimes it's telling someone else about it, recounting the story to a friend or family member who's going to celebrate it with you. That's not bragging, that's reinforcing. And sometimes it's journaling about it, writing down what happened, what you were afraid of, and how it actually turned out. All of these count as embracing because embracing is just another way of saying, I'm going to let this win actually register. I'm going to take it in. I'm not going to let my brain skip over it like it never happened. Think of it like evidence collection. Your job is not to just hype yourself up, but your job is to collect proof. Proof that you can handle things, proof that scary moments pass, proof that you are more capable than anxiety tells you. Here's what I mean. If you had a presentation, anxiety told you it would be terrible and it wasn't, that's evidence. You text someone first, anxiety told you that they'd ignore you. They didn't. That's evidence. You made it through a hard day. Anxiety told you that it would be too much. You're still here. That's evidence. When you start collecting this stuff, something shifts. Anxiety's predictions stop feeling like facts because you have proof that anxiety is wrong a lot more than it's right. You're not trying to convince yourself everything is fine. You're just keeping an accurate record, and accuracy changes everything. I want to go over one more piece of this. Barbara Frederickson is a researcher who studies emotions, and her work shows something powerful. When you experience small positive moments, pride, gratitude, even just relief, your thinking actually expands. You become more creative, more open, more flexible. But when you're anxious, your thinking shrinks. All you can see is the problem, all you can feel is the threat. So embracing small wins doesn't just make you feel better. It literally helps you think better. It gives you access to parts of your brain that anxiety locks you out of. That's not a mindset trick. That's how your brain is built. So here's what I want you to take from this. If you've been feeling flat, if nothing sounds fun anymore, if you feel like you've lost yourself somewhere along the way, you're not broken, you're depleted. And depletion from anxiety can look a lot like depression. But here's the thing about depletion: it's reversible. Your brain is not stuck like this forever. It just needs proof that it's safe to come out of survival mode. And you build that proof one small moment at a time, not by forcing positivity, not by pretending everything is fine, just by noticing. I did that. I handled it. I pushed forward even despite feeling overwhelmed. That's how your brain starts to trust again. That's how you start to get yourself back. Please just keep practicing this and you will see the difference. Thank you for listening. I truly appreciate it. Until the next time, keep moving forward, trust yourself, and never forget you have what it takes to block out the noise.