63 | 6 “Normal” Habits Quietly Fueling Your Anxiety Every Single Day

•  Why does your anxiety feel worse even when nothing major is happening?
• Why do you feel tense, drained, distracted, or on edge even when you’re doing the same things everyone else seems to be doing?
• What if some of the habits you think are normal are quietly keeping your anxiety active every single day? 

In this episode, Jessica Davis breaks down six everyday habits that might be fueling your anxiety without you realizing it. These are not dramatic life choices. They are normal things like chasing energy with caffeine, staying glued to your phone, ignoring your body, avoiding movement, numbing out, and letting negative self-talk run unchecked. 

If you’ve ever wondered why your anxiety is not getting better, this episode will help you look at the daily patterns that might be keeping your nervous system stuck on high alert. Jessica explains how small habits build over time, why your body reacts the way it does, and why changing even one pattern helps you feel more grounded, capable, and in control.

 What You’ll Learn in this Episode: 

• Why normal daily habits might be making your anxiety worse
• How caffeine affects your nervous system and fight-or-flight response
• Why phone use, scrolling, and FOMO feed anxiety and disconnection
• How ignoring hunger, exhaustion, and body cues increases stress
• Why anxiety needs movement instead of stillness
• How numbing out with food, alcohol, gaming, sugar, or other escapes keeps anxiety alive
• Why negative self-talk lowers confidence and makes anxiety feel stronger
• How changing one habit helps you build self-trust and momentum
• Why you do not have to fix everything at once to start feeling better

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This podcast was created by Davis-Smith Mental Health, offering counseling for teens & young adults in Illinois (only). We accept BCBS PPO, Aetna PPO, and self-pay clients.

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

Transcript

Hidden Habits Behind Daily Anxiety

Jessica N. Davis 0:06

There are things you do every single day that are increasing your anxiety, and you don't even suspect them because they've consumed you. They've buried themselves so far into your life that you think these are just basic things that help you survive. But they're not. They're the thing perpetuating it, keeping it there, constantly stirring that uneasiness within you that never fully goes away. Today I want you to become aware of the things you may consider completely normal that could be the exact reason your anxiety isn't getting better. And then I want to challenge you to take action so that you can stop being stuck in the same place. Hi, and welcome to Black Out the Noise, a space to quiet the noise of anxiety, self-doubt, and overthinking. I'm Jessica Davis, licensed therapist, mindset coach, and the creator of the courage method. I've worked with countless teens and young adults who have made changes in the exact areas we're going to talk about today. And they said they never felt better. They didn't realize how much these things were taken from them until they stopped. And the more areas they tackled, the stronger and more capable they became.

Free Toolkit And A Safety Reminder

Jessica N. Davis 1:17

Before we jump in, please go download the anxiety survival toolkit in the show notes. It is packed with coping skills, audio tools, a full breakdown of the courage method, a guided meditation, and it's all completely free. 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.

Why Anxiety Keeps Getting Worse

Jessica N. Davis 1:48

All right, let's jump in. You've probably spent a lot of time wondering why you can't seem to get better, why everyone else seems to have it figured out and you haven't. Like somewhere along the way, they were handed something you weren't, some ability to cope, to not feel like life is constantly beating them down. And you're over there wondering why you can't get ahead of it. They are always on edge, frustrated, and worried things won't get any better. You want it to stop, but when someone tells you the answer might actually be in the normal, everyday things you're already doing, it feels too easy, too simple. Like there have to be harder reasons for everything you've been going through. But that's exactly what makes these six things so easy to miss. But here's what happens if you don't address them. Your anxiety doesn't stay where it is, it grows. And at some point you might find yourself not just struggling with anxiety, but with depression too. And you won't even know how you got there. You'll look up one day and realize that a lot of life has passed you by while you were just trying to hold on. The whole point of this is to help you realize you can take action, you can get better. And it starts with these six.

Chasing Energy With Caffeine

Jessica N. Davis 2:59

One, chasing energy. Anxiety is exhausting. And when you're exhausted, it makes complete sense that you'd reach for something to help you get through the day. So you grab a coffee, crack open an energy drink, pour yourself a soda, and for a while it works. The energy, the focus, the sense that maybe you can actually handle today. But it's like putting a band-aid on something that needs stitches. For a while it holds, but when you pull it off, you realize you've only made it worse. Caffeine triggers your fight-flight response. It releases adrenaline and cortisol, your body's stress hormones, and puts your nervous system on high alert. The same system that fires when you're anxious is the same system caffeine is activating. I spent weeks thinking something was medically wrong with me, heart racing, my watch sending me alerts, genuinely wondering if I was dying. It was my daily frappuccino. The second I stopped, it stopped. What would happen if you cut back or slowed

Screen Dependence And Constant FOMO

Jessica N. Davis 4:02

down? Two electronic consumption. There's this feeling that if you put the phone down, you're going to miss something. And that feeling is real. FOMO isn't just a word, it's the constant low-level pull that keeps you tethered to a screen because everyone else is on theirs too. So it feels normal, like just what people do. And when life gets hard, you scroll, you gain, you consume because it feels like it's better than sitting with discomfort. But here's what's actually happening: you're anxious when you have it and you're lost without it. That nervousness that you feel when you don't have your phone, that's not peace, that's dependence. And if we're being honest, if adults struggle to put it down, we can't be surprised that teens and young adults do too. But what it's costing you is your actual life. The more money and access people have, the less they tend to be on their screens because they understand the value of their time. You are dreaming your life away through a device, missing deadlines, falling behind, living on a screen instead of living boldly and fully. And the anxiety is not getting better, it's getting fed. Challenge yourself to stop feeding it long enough to actually see what changes. Less frustration, more focus, better communication.

Stop Overriding Your Body’s Signals

Jessica N. Davis 5:25

Three, overriding your body. Your body is always talking to you. It tells you when it's tired, when it's hungry, when it's had too much and needs you to slow down. And we ignore it. We tell ourselves we know better. We skip the meal, we sleep 14 hours because we're exhausted, but never stop to ask why. Think about it this way: if you had a pet that was whining, telling you it needed food, needed to go outside, needed something from you, and you just kept refusing, kept telling it that what it needed wasn't valid, we would call that neglect. But we do it to ourselves every single day. And eventually your body stops whining and starts screaming, dizziness, headaches, stomach aches, trouble focusing, feeling irritable, lethargic, like you just can't get it together. Those are somatic symptoms. Your body's physical response to its needs not being met. And when that happens, your anxiety spikes because your body recognizes that you are vulnerable and it goes on high alert. It's not overreacting, it's responding exactly the way it should. So, what if instead of overriding it, you started listening to it, staying in tune, treating it like the most important asset you have, because it is. Your body and your anxiety are more connected than you

Why Stillness Makes Anxiety Louder

Jessica N. Davis 6:52

think. Four, staying still. We have become one of the most sedentary generations in history. We sit, we lay, we scroll, we rest, and we call it recovering. But here's what's happening to your anxiety while you stay still. It has nowhere to go. Anxiety is energy, it pulses through your body, trying to activate you, trying to signal that something needs to happen. And when you stay still, you interpret that signal as a reason to stay even more still. But staying still isn't protecting you, it's stopping you. And this goes beyond just physical movement. We stay still in our lives too. We let anxiety convince us not to show up or not to take the step that we know we need to take. But anxiety isn't telling you to stop. It's actually telling you to go. It's trying to say, do. The longer you stay still, the louder it gets because it's trying to warn you that staying where you are is not where you're supposed to be. If you take nothing else from this episode, take that. The more you do, the less hold anxiety has on you. We are wired to move, literally and figuratively. So in a world that has normalized laying in bed until 2 p.m. and wondering why everything feels so heavy, start moving and watch what happens.

Taking The Edge Off Backfires

Jessica N. Davis 8:16

Five, taking the edge off. We have become an addiction happy world. And before you tune out, I'm not just talking about the obvious stuff. Anything that has more power over you than you have over it is an addiction. So when life gets hard and stress feels like too much, we reach for something. Drugs, alcohol, gambling, pornography, video games, food, sugar, whatever makes it feel manageable. We tell ourselves that we're just living life, that everyone does it. But it's feeding your anxiety. It makes you more worried, not less, more dependent, not more free. And now you can't get through a hard day, can't sit with discomfort without reaching for something. Some of us reach for things to feel nothing. Some of us reach for things because we desperately want to feel anything, like to know that we matter, that we're worth something. Either way, the escape becomes the answer to a question it was never meant to solve. And underneath all of it is the real issue. We were never taught how to weather the storms of life. Taking the edge off isn't coping, it's avoiding. And the pit it leaves behind keeps getting deeper until we take active steps to change our behavior.

Daily Self Talk That Drains Confidence

Jessica N. Davis 9:41

Six, your daily dialogue. This one is sneaky because it doesn't feel like a habit. It feels like we're just thinking or sharing the truth. And no one would ever really know what you're doing. But if you are constantly telling yourself that you're stupid, a failure, that you can't get anything right, that you're a fuck up, you are slowly creating a pattern that makes you believe you are completely incapable. And when you feel incapable, it becomes hard to act, hard to try. So you're left with more worry, stress, fear, and anxiety keeps growing because you've convinced yourself that you don't have what it takes. Negative self-talk spreads honestly like weeds. You don't notice one or two because they blend in, they seem harmless. But if you let them go long enough, they take over everything, crowding out every good thing trying to grow. And the worst part, most people think everyone talks to themselves this way. So it never gets questioned. It just keeps spreading. Your daily dialogue is something no one else can hear, but it's shaping everything about you, your confidence, your choices, your future. I know it takes time to undo the cycle. It definitely is not going to change overnight. But every time you choose a different thought, a kinder one, a truer one, you'll be pulling a weed. And slowly you'll start to see what was always trying to grow underneath. I

Pick One Change And Start Today

Jessica N. Davis 11:14

don't expect you to do all six at once. That would be horrible and honestly really difficult to do. Just pick one. And when you do, when you actually commit to changing even one of these things, it will feel like a storm has been lifted. You will start to see that the things you thought were normal were the very things fueling your anxiety. You'll have more clarity, more focus, more control over your own life. And you'll stop feeling like a passenger watching everyone else live while life passes you by. Making one change builds something in you. Because when you feel the difference, you'll want more of it. You'll start tackling the next thing and the next. Your confidence will grow, your anxiety will decrease, and for the first time in a long time, it won't feel like anxiety has a hold of your life. You'll have a hold on it. I said it before, and I'll say it again. Do stop waiting for anxiety to give you permission. Stop waiting to feel ready. You now know what they are and what they're doing to you. Pick one, start today.

Share The Episode And Final Steps

Jessica N. Davis 12:26

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I truly hope it resonated. And if it did, please share it with someone who needs to hear it as well. Also, don't forget, go download the anxiety survival toolkit. It's in the show notes. And if you haven't already, please take a moment to leave a review. It helps more people find this show and know that they're not alone. Until next time, keep moving forward, trust yourself, and never forget you have what it takes to block out the noise.