68 | The Grief Nobody Tells You Comes With Anxiety

• What has anxiety taken from you?
• Why does it hurt more than people realize?
• What if you are not weak, but grieving?

In this episode, Jessica Davis breaks down the grief that can come with anxiety. Not the kind of grief people always recognize, but the quiet grief of missed opportunities, lost friendships, avoided moments, and the version of yourself you thought you would be by now.

Jessica explains why anxiety can make your world smaller over time and how that loss can turn into self-blame, shame, and harsh inner criticism. You’ll learn how to name what anxiety has taken, respond to the inner critic, build a stronger countervoice, and begin moving forward without pretending the loss did not matter.

What You’ll Learn in this Episode:

• Why anxiety can create real grief
• How to name what anxiety has taken from you
• Why self-blame keeps you stuck in the loss loop
• How to recognize the inner critic, worrier, perfectionist, and victim voice
• Why a countervoice helps you push back against negative self-talk
• How letter writing can help you process grief and imagine a future beyond anxiety 

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

Transcript

When Anxiety Is Really Grief

Jessica N. Davis 0:07

Sometimes what you're feeling isn't anxiety. It's grief. Grief from the relationship that anxiety made you pull away from. Grief from the opportunity you turned down because it felt too scary. Grief from the Friday nights you spent watching everyone else's stories because your anxiety made you feel like leaving the house was impossible. And grief for the person that you thought you would be by now, the one who had it together, the one who wasn't still fighting this fight. That's real loss. And if no one has said it yet, I want to be the first person to say it. You're not dramatic, you're not weak. You are just grieving. Today I'm going to try to be really intentional about not just rushing past the grief to get to the practical steps. We are going to sit in it first because there's a specific reason your brain is keeping you in this lost loop. And once you name it, the anxiety actually loses its loudest voice. So let's talk about a subject that sometimes gets overlooked.

Welcome And Free Toolkit

Jessica N. Davis 1:11

Hi, and welcome to Black Out the Noise, a space to fight the noise of anxiety, self-doubt, and overthinking. I'm Jessica Davis, licensed therapist, my sec coach, and the creator of the Courage Method, a framework designed to stop letting fear define your identity and decisions. If you want extra support while you're listening, please go download the Anxiety Survivor Toolkit in the show notes. It includes coping skills, audio tools, a full breakdown of the Courage Method, and a guided meditation. 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 health line. You don't have to go through the home. Okay, let's

What Anxiety Has Taken From You

Jessica N. Davis 1:57

jump in. This is a hard topic to discuss because I think it isn't something that people talk about at all. It kind of gets brushed to the side. And it's a heavy topic because when you're talking about grief, we often think about more of the type of grief where you're at a funeral or you're sending flowers. Grief is actually just the response to any significant loss. And anxiety creates significant loss, often slowly, subtly, but then years later you see how much has been taken from you. When things fall apart, or when you finally see clearly what anxiety is taken, that heavy, hollow feeling that is grief, you're you're grieving so many different aspects. You're grieving what you lost, you're grieving what you thought you would have had. And I see this a lot, especially with our young adult population who are feeling stuck. And there is this loss, especially, you know, we talk about the kids who experienced COVID their last years of high school. There's so much loss for them on their first couple of years of college. So much loss, so many things that they didn't get to experience, and so many things that now have led to more increases in anxiety that many of us are grieving without even knowing it because we've been so focused on managing the anxiety itself that we never stopped to try and name what it took from us. So that's what I'm going to challenge you to do. What did anxiety take from you? Was it a friendship, a class that you dropped, a part of yourself you used to like? Not saying everything fell apart because that's not specific enough, but naming the actual thing that it took. Because once you name it, it stops feeling like a fog. Something you can name is something you can actually create. But before we jump into another big piece of this, I want to kind of sit with how this really looks and why it does what it does. Because when your life feels like it's blowing up, it's easy to think that you are the problem, but

The Nervous System In Overdrive

Jessica N. Davis 4:01

you aren't. Anxiety is just your nervous system doing something it was designed to do, detecting danger and getting you to survive. The problem is for many of us, the system has gotten stuck in overdrive. Think of it like a phone running an old version of its software and it's filled with all these issues and bugs. It is constantly crashing. Not because the phone is broken, but because the software is outdated. It's firing signals like when you send a text message that it's dangerous, or if you go to a party that it's not gonna work, or a career choice that isn't actually a threat. Living in that state is overwhelmingly exhausting. It drains your battery. Over time, it makes your world smaller. You pull back, not because you don't care, but because your outdated software keeps putting safety first. That process wasn't your fault. And it doesn't have to be permanent either. After anxiety costs you something big, your mind almost immediately turns on you. The story becomes, I should have tried harder. I always ruin things, or why can't I just be normal? This feels like we're being honest and taking accountability, but it's not. There is a difference between processing what happened and punishing yourself

The Four Inner Punishment Voices

Jessica N. Davis 5:16

for it. A psychologist named Edmund Bourne studied the inner voices that drive this kind of punishment. And here are the four in simple terms. The worrier, the one saying, What if this happens again? The critic says, You are a failure. The perfectionist is the one saying, you should have been better. The victim says, I can't do this. It's too late. When anxiety blows something up in your life, all four of these voices show up at the same time. They build a case that you're the problem. But remember, these voices are just symptoms of the buggy software. They aren't the truth. The best way to interpret these voices is to build, in my mind, a countervoice.

Building A Countervoice Persona

Jessica N. Davis 6:01

This is a specific persona you call on when the critic gets loud. And you might be thinking, this is silly, Jessica. Like I'm never going to use this. But one of the things that I try to really focus on with clients with this is that pick something that you already feel embodies characteristics that you have. So for instance, I had a client who came in and we talked about a situation that occurred where she showed tremendous strength. And I said, You're a fighter, like that fighter spirit came out of you in that moment. And they laughed and like, but yeah, that's true. They resonated with it so much. And how can we have that fighter spirit come out more? How can we have that persona stay longer? So it's definitely trying to find a specific thing that feels like it already embodies what you want to be, or you have traits of that already and you just want to strengthen them. These are the ones that I came up with on my own, but feel free to either take them or tweak them or come up with your own, because I do think you will get way better results if you feel like it really resonates with you. So the ones I came up with are the warrior, the magician, and the coach. The warrior, when the critic says you ruin everything, the warrior says, I'm stronger than this thought. I have survived 100 of my hardest days. The magician, when the warrior spins a disaster, the magician says, I see the trick you're playing, brain, but I'm staying in the present. The coach, when the victim says, I can't, the coach says, We're just going to do the next five minutes. That's all. When you're awake at 2 a.m. and your mind is spinning, a generic positive thought isn't going to really cut it. You need a specific pre-rehearsed response that feels stronger than the anxiety. But I even take it a little differently. I don't even think you really need, honestly, a pre-rehearsed response. I think you need the persona that you know you can easily access for yourself so that you can fight against that negativity, that self-credit and pushback. That's why giving your voice a clear identity matters. It makes it accessible when you're too exhausted to think clearly. Refill doesn't just go in a straight line. You don't go from pain to okay in one big step. You move back and forth. Hard hour, maybe a normal lunch, a hard hour again, crying to laughing to just wanting to sleep and not do much. This isn't you failing to heal. This is how healing actually works. It is messy, it's complicated, and it's not a straight line by any stretch of the imagination.

Healing Isn’t Linear

Jessica N. Davis 8:33

So here's what you can do with that, because I do want to give you some practical tools to help you in the moment. We've talked about step one, but I'm gonna kind of go over it again. Step one, name the specific loss. Not everything is ruined. Say, I lost that friendship or I lost my shot at that team. When you name the specific thing, you take away some of its power. Step two, give yourself permission to feel it. Anxiety keeps you in constant disarray. So you don't have to slow down and feel the hurt underneath because there's always another worry, another situation to be focused in on. But grief that doesn't get felt just waits and it doesn't go anywhere and just sits there waiting until the moment that you really don't want to experience the grief that you're hit with it. Give yourself the time. But another piece of this sometimes is that when you have anxiety and when you are highly in touch with your emotions, we can get stuck on number two. We can give ourselves permission to feel, but we feel it so much that it leads us to not be able to move off of the grief and we're just paralyzed by it. So it's really important to give yourself a window of time. And then after that time has gone, really trying to do something that will help you,

Five Steps To Process And Move

Jessica N. Davis 9:50

whether it's like, hey, okay, I'm gonna shower, I'm gonna get up and do something, I'm going to message a friend, not staying in the grief all day, every day, because it just makes the symptoms worse. Step three, when the inner critic shows up, call on your countervoice. So we talked about this earlier. You won't stop the warrior or the critic from showing up. You just stop letting them run the show. Name the voice you hear. Then ask, what does my warrior say about this? What does my coach say? And step four, write a letter you will never send. This by far is one of my favorite things to do. I love letter writing. I love writing a letter at the end of the year to kind of recap things. But in this situation, I really love this idea of letter writing when it comes to grief. And especially grief focusing in on anxiety because it helps you in so many ways. So, what I want you to do is write the person you lost, right? The version of yourself you are grieving. You don't have to show it to anyone, right? And just write out how you're feeling out of your head and onto paper. There is something so therapeutic about writing it down that makes it feel real. And something that feels real can actually be healed and addressed. But then, bonus, after you write that letter, I think it's super important after you've, you know, processed what you've written to write another letter. And it's a letter to the future you, the version of you that got through this hard moment, this grief, made the change and found a way through. Because I do think that we can get so caught up in a grief that we don't move forward. We want to acknowledge it. We want to process, but ultimately we also want to allow ourselves to dream and to picture what the future can be. And that just because we lost one opportunity doesn't mean there's not another opportunity coming. And by writing this future letter, it allows us to have those dreams and have those thoughts and think positively. Then maybe what we've done in step five, get the right support. If your phone software is crashing, you take it to someone you know knows how to fix it. You talk to a doctor and ask for help. You go to a therapist who works with anxiety. Those are the steps that you can take. Don't just wallow in it or don't feel like you just have to manage all these feelings on your own. Getting help is not giving up. It's actually the smartest move you can make to help manage your anxiety and fight that. I want to

Support, Courage, And Closing

Jessica N. Davis 12:18

end with this. You aren't starting over, you aren't starting back at zero. You're never doing that. You are just building off of what you've already learned. And sometimes you learn through loss. Most people who have anxiety just keep going. They push through and manage. And I think sometimes when you don't take a look, that's when you just keep doing the same things and expecting something different. Taking the time to stop and look, that takes real courage. I always tell clients when they have a relationship that doesn't work, stop and process that. Whatever the traits that maybe you missed, what kind of situations did you see, but maybe looked past and now what are you going to do differently in the future? It helps tremendously to not fall in the same type of relationship going forward by just taking a look. So just remember that. I hope this episode resonates. It's a hard topic to kind of talk about and yet provide practical tools and steps to work towards it. I do hope you found some of these tools beneficial and that you try at least one of the things. If I had to choose one, I would say definitely do the letter writing activity or finding the countervoice to fight through the negative self-talk. I think that would be so crucial. If this resonated with you, please share it with someone who you feel like needs it. Also, remember in the show notes, the anxiety survival toolkit, it is there for you. All it takes is an email address. It's not that much. So definitely go get that today. And if you can, please leave us an honest review. It helps more people find this podcast and get the support that they need. Until next time, keep moving forward. Trust yourself. And never forget, you have what it takes to block out the noise.