57 | Cancel Exercise: This Is Why You Avoid It When You’re Anxious

Do you keep telling yourself you should work out, but still avoid it?
 Does exercise feel like one more thing to fail at when you are already anxious?
 Have you ever wondered why movement helps anxiety, but feels so hard to start?

When you are anxious, exercise can feel like pressure instead of relief. In this episode, Jessica Davis breaks down why anxiety makes movement harder to start, why staying stuck often makes stress worse, and how to make exercise feel more realistic, supportive, and doable.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why anxiety makes exercise feel harder than it should
 • How movement helps release stress from your body
 • Why avoiding movement often keeps anxiety going
 • Simple ways to move, even if you hate working out
 • How to stop thinking about exercise in an all-or-nothing way

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

Transcript

Canceling The Word Exercise

Jessica N. Davis 0:08

Be honest, who actually likes exercise? It's one of those words that just feels heavy, like taxes or laundry. You hear it and instantly need a nap. Let's be real. That word's been overused, misunderstood, and a little intimidating for way too long. So today, we're canceling it. Yep, that's right. In the spirit of cancel culture, we are officially canceling the word exercise. No workouts, no pressure, no wellness guilt, just movement. Because when you're anxious, overwhelmed, and running on empty, the trick isn't to push harder, it's to move smarter. And that's exactly what we're diving into today. Hi, and welcome to Block Out the Noise, a space for teens and young adults to quiet the noise of anxiety, self-doubt, and overthinking. I'm Diska Davis, licensed therapist, mindset coach, and the creator of the Courage Method, a framework designed to help you show up as the most confident version of yourself. Before we dive in, if you haven't grabbed the free anxiety survival toolkit yet, you're going to want it. It has coping skills you can use in the moment, audio tools to help you reset when things feel like too much, a breakdown of the courage method, and even a meditation. It's free and it was made for exactly the moments this podcast talks about. The link is in the show notes. 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 it alone. All right, let's go. Here's the thing about anxiety: a lot of it lives inside. Yes, it can show physically tight shoulders, a knot in the stomach, feeling like you might get sick, but so much of it is internal. It's that energy that just sits there, builds up, and has nowhere to go. That's why you might feel restless, fidgety, or like you could crawl out of your skin, even when you're doing nothing. And that's exactly why movement helps so much because it takes that energy and gives it somewhere to go. You're physically doing something to help your body release what it's been holding. Now I want to talk about the word exercise for a second because I think it gets in the way. Exercise sounds like exertion, it sounds like a gym, a routine, something you're supposed to do, but probably aren't doing enough of. But movement is different. Movement is dancing to a song in your room. It's going for a walk because the weather is nice. It's stretching before bed. It's yoga, swimming, boxing, walking them all. It's just doing something with your body. And for teens and young adults, especially, I don't want this to feel like another thing on your already overwhelming list. That is not what this is. This is permission just to move in whatever feels good for you. So if movement is so helpful, why don't we do it when anxiety is high? Here's what's really going on. When you're overwhelmed, your instinct is to escape. And that's not you being lazy. That's your nervous system trying to get you away from discomfort as fast as possible. Video games, social media, TV shows, just lying in bed, these give you fast relief, but not lasting relief. Movement asks you to put something in before you get something back. And when you're already exhausted and anxious, that feels like too much. And I get that. That's most days for a lot of people. But here's what happens when you stay stagnant for too long. The tension that anxiety creates has nowhere to go. It just sits there. And the longer it sits, the harder everything else feels. The avoidance builds, the mood dips, the anxiety gets louder. Moving your body is one of the ways you interrupt that cycle. Let me explain what's happening in your body when you move, even just a little. Your brain releases chemicals called serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins. You've probably already heard some of these. Serotonin helps you regulate your mood. It actually is the same chemical that antidepressants work to increase. Dopamine is tied to motivation, pressure, and reward. And endorphins, those are the ones behind what people call the runner's high. Now here's what matters. You don't have to run a marathon to get this. Research shows that even 10 minutes of movement can start to lower anxiety and give your brain the boost that it's looking for. A walk, a dance, just getting your body going. Movement also lowers cortisol, your body's main stress hormone. When cortisol is high, everything feels more threatening, more urgent, more overwhelming. Movement literally helps bring that down. I want to share something that I saw with a client, and I'm not going to share any identifying details, but this really stayed with me. I was working with a teen who was dealing with a lot of irritability, difficulty focusing, and mood swings. Over time, as consistent movement became part of the routine, the shift was noticeable. Not perfect, not overnight, but genuinely better. It became so noticeable that the family started building movement into their daily schedule because they could tell the difference on the days it happened versus the days it didn't happen. That's not a coincidence. That's your body's responding to what it needs. I want to say this too. It does not need to be intense. It doesn't have to be 30 minutes, it doesn't have to be 10,000 steps, it doesn't have to look like anything you've seen on social media. The pressure around all of that is real. And when things feel like pressure, they stop being helpful sometimes. So let's just make it yours. If you love music, put on your favorite song and just move to it. One song, that's three or four minutes. That's it. If it's a nice day, go out for a walk, even for 10 minutes. I actually had a client who would go outside when it was raining and dance in the rain. Whatever works, right? If you love shopping, walk them all. You'd be surprised how much activity you get by just looking at store to store. If you're into boxing, swimming, dancing, do that. And if getting out of bed feels like a lot right now, start there. Don't stretch your arms, roll your shoulders, move your ankles. That still is movement. And here's something I used to do because I love TV and I absolutely can get lost in binge watch shows. I would tell myself I had to walk in place during the episode. So I was able to still do something I love and just add a little movement to it. You can partner things you already enjoy with a little bit of movement and it stops feeling like a chore. Even if you play video games, try standing up instead of sitting while you're playing. You'll naturally move more because you're focused on the game, not on the fact that you're moving. The goal isn't perfection. The goal is just not being completely still. I also feel it's necessary to talk to the person who's listening to this and feels like I genuinely hate working out. I'm not the gym person. I'm not athletic. This is not for me. And I hear you, but I want you to hear this too. A lot of resistance isn't about just hating it, it's about the have to part of it. I have to work out 30 minutes. I have to break a sweat for it to count. I have to follow some kind of program. And none of that is true. In the beginning, all you're trying to do is get your body moving. And if you weren't moving before, and now you are, you're already doing better than you're before. You're not competing with athletes on TikTok. You're just competing with yesterday's version of you. That's the win. You don't have to do the same thing every day either. You don't have to build a perfect routine overnight. You just need to start and then keep finding ways to move in whatever form feels right as often as you can. Because what happens over time is that your body starts to remember how it feels after you move. And that feeling, that's what actually builds the habit. Not willpower, not discipline, the feeling. So here's one action for today. Within the next hour after you finish listening, move your body once. One song, one short walk, or one stretch. That's it. And honestly, I would love to hear what you picked. Leave a comment, send a message, tell me what you did. Because if this episode got you moving, I want to know. And if you have a couple of minutes, I would love it if you could leave an honest review of the podcast. It helps more people find the show. And we want to help create change for as many people as we possibly can. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, keep moving forward. Trust yourself, and never forget you have what it takes to black out the noise.