70 | When Anxiety Looks Exactly Like Depression

• Why do you feel stuck, not sad?
• Why does everything feel too heavy to start?
• What if anxiety is the real root?

In this episode, Jessica Davis breaks down why anxiety can sometimes look exactly like depression. Not showering, falling behind, avoiding messages, staying in bed, and wondering what the point is can all look like depression from the outside. But sometimes, underneath that fog is untreated anxiety that has become so overwhelming your nervous system froze.

Jessica explains the difference between being stuck and being frozen, why self-attack makes the freeze worse, and how small body-based steps help you start moving again. You’ll learn a simple three-step reset to regulate your body, get outside, and bring your mind back to your own life instead of comparing your pace to everyone else’s.

What You’ll Learn in this Episode:

• Why anxiety can look like depression
• How freeze is different from laziness
• Why self-criticism keeps you stuck
• How small wins help rebuild momentum
• Why regulating your body comes before mindset work
• How comparison makes the freeze feel worse
• Why the goal is to shorten the freeze, not never feel it again

RESOURCES:
Get your FREE Anxiety Survival Toolkit to help you when your anxiety is overwhelming!

JOIN our NEWSLETTER! Get weekly emails about upcoming podcasts, but also how to fight against anxiety!

📱 Follow Us:

Instagram | Facebook | Threads 

🎙️ Presented by Davis-Smith Mental Health

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.

Links: 
Anxiety Survival Toolkit:
https://www.blockoutthenoisepodcast.com/anxiety-survival-toolkit/

Newsletter:
https://blockoutthenoisepodcast.substack.com/welcome

Davis-Smith Mental Health:
https://www.davis-smithmentalhealth.com/

1:1 Confidence Coaching:
https://tidycal.com/blockoutthenoise/confidence-coaching

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

Transcript

The Shame Of Falling Behind

Jessica N. Davis 0:07

Here's a sentence you'd never say out loud. Not to your friends, not to your family, not to anyone. It feels like everyone else cracked the code, and I'm the only one who didn't. You know the things you're supposed to be doing. The message you keep meaning to answer, the thing you keep meaning to start. It all just sits there and you can't make yourself touch it. The dishes are piling up. You can't remember the last time you actually felt clean. The person who used to handle all of this feels so far away. You've got the talent, you've got the ability. For some reason, you're watching people who aren't even as gifted as you are move forward, getting it done, figuring it out while you're staying stuck in the same spot. People who, if you're being honest, aren't trying any harder than you are. Maybe something fell apart to get you here: a job, a class, a relationship, the version of your life you were sure you'd have by that. Either way, the question keeps getting louder. What's the point? When it gets loud enough, you stop, you freeze. So before you decide you're just lazy or that something is wrong with you, stay with me. I don't believe in lazy. I think you've been treating the wrong thing.

Stuck or Frozen?

Jessica N. Davis 1:31

Hi, and welcome to Block 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. Today I'm going to show you why your brain went into a freeze and the exact reset we're going to use to get your momentum back. Let me say this plainly. You are stuck. You're frozen. Those are not the same thing. That difference is what this whole episode is about. Lazy is the word people reach for when they can't figure out why someone isn't doing what they think they should be doing. It's a label we slap onto a behavior we don't understand. And after enough times, you start to wear it. From the outside, it looks like, why can't they just do it? Nobody can figure it out. So they call it lazy. It was never lazy. A freeze isn't a choice you're making, it's the absence of action when your whole system has locked up. The cruelest part is that you're watching everyone else seem to move while you can't. People who honestly don't have half of what you've got. Hold on to that feeling because we're going to come back to it. Here's what's actually happening, though. And it's the thing I wish most people understood, including some in my own field. What you're living looks like depression. The not showering, the not doing, the what's the point mentality. Sometimes that read is ripe, but sometimes, though, the depression treatment isn't working. The fog won't lift no matter what anyone tries, and that's the clue. Depression was never the root. Underneath it is anxiety, untreated anxiety, fear that grew so loud and so constant that your body did the only thing it knew how to do.

When Anxiety Looks Like Depression

Jessica N. Davis 3:20

It froze. You've heard of fight or flight. There's a third response nobody really talks about. Freeze. When a threat feels too big to fight and too fast to outrun, your nervous system slams the brakes and plays dead. To an anxious brain, that mile-long list of everything you haven't done is a threat. Every unanswered message, every assignment or bill you keep meaning to deal with, everything you keep telling yourself you'll handle tomorrow. Your body reads it as danger. So it shuts the doors. Not because you don't care, you care so much. And it all feels like so much that your system locked up to protect you. We all have a threshold, a line. Up to that line, stress can actually move you. Past it, though, the whole system flips. And the exact same pile that would have lit a fire under you a year ago now flattens you like it's impossible to move forward instead. So let me paint you a picture because this is the part I really want you to hear. When you're frozen, what's the first thing you do? You turn on yourself. You're lazy, you're behind, you're wasting your life away. Everyone else is doing it. What is wrong with you? Here's the cruel twist. That right there is quicksand. The harder you struggle against yourself, the faster you sink. Beating yourself up has never once pulled a person out of a freeze. In fact, it hasn't pulled you out of anything, in my opinion. It pulls you under. The more you fight it with negative thoughts, the worse it gets. The longer you stay in it, the harder it is to get through. A psychologist named Dr. Scott Eiler says the same thing about depression. And he's right. When you're already depleted, already stuck, the worst move available to you is to attack yourself harder. Someone who's depleted doesn't need a drill sergeant. They need a hand. I want to share with you that when you're in this type of state, when you feel as though the world is against you and life is stopping you from doing all the things that you want to do, it can be so easy to wallow in that feeling and to feel so frozen, so riddled with anxiety and negativity and frustration, that it can be hard to do the small things that most people would say are the things you should be doing, right? I should get out of bed, I should shower, I should take care of myself, but it feels like a huge weight to do some of those things. And when you feel that weight, when you feel that heaviness of things that people would potentially say are basic things to just live life, it can be really hard then to feel like if I can't do these things, how can I do the big things? And that mindset makes it hard. But I just want you to know that no one knows the weight that you're carrying. They don't know what it feels like to be you. And being in that state is a hard place to be.

Why Beating Yourself Up Makes It Worse

Jessica N. Davis 6:22

So if beating yourself up only pulls you deeper, what actually gets you out? The opposite of that. Something gentle. And it starts smaller than anyone tells you. We're going to do this in three steps, and one rule runs through all of them. You do one thing, then you stop and you let it count. You celebrate it before you reach for the next. Instead of beating yourself up and carrying so much grief, because I think a big piece of this is grief, but that's another episode for another day. Help yourself by understanding the importance of celebration, the importance of embracing how far you have come. Because who knows if someone else carried the weight that you were carrying, if they would fall over or just quit immediately. We don't know. You don't know. That little celebration of I did that is what carries you to the next step. The celebrating isn't the reward at the end, it's the fuel between each step. I know what you're thinking. Celebrate drinking a glass of water. Yes. Yes, celebrate that glass of water. When you've been frozen and you can't move, and you finally do, that is not the bare minimum at that point. That's the whole thing. So celebrate that one step because when you are so deep in a hole that you feel like you can barely get out of, one step, one drink of water is worth celebrating. And I say celebrate it as loud as you can. This is the smallest things you can do, and you only pick one to start off with.

The Three-Step Reset

Jessica N. Davis 7:51

Step one, regulate your body. So if you've been struggling getting out of bed, then that would be it. Try to get out of bed and sit in a different room. Drink a glass of water, eat something with a little bit of protein, open the blinds and let some sun come in. Take a shower if that's something you haven't been doing. Even moving to the other side of the bed counts because sometimes a different spot is all it takes to shift something inside of you. If you're going to be on your phone anyway, and let's be honest, you are pointing at a meditation or a breathing video. And instead of scrolling, that keeps you feeling unhappy and stuck, feeling frozen. Whatever one you manage to do, that's a win. Let yourself feel it before you move forward on anything. Step two, get outside. Once you've stacked a couple of those small wins, or even one, depending on how quickly you feel like you can move them step to step. This one is the bigger one. It's not a whole production. You don't even have to shower to do it. Grab a blanket, a hoodie, whatever makes you feel comfortable. Sit in the sun, let the air hit your face. When you do that, that counts too. What are you gonna guess? Am I gonna say celebrate it? Yes, celebrate that too. Hopefully, more than the last time you celebrated. And I know you're gonna get tired of hearing that, but it is so important at this stage to try and uplift yourself throughout this by acknowledging that you took a hard step. Step three, come back to your mind. This one comes after your body settles, not before. Remember that feeling I told you to hone on to, watching everyone else move while you couldn't. Here's where we deal with it. Bring your eyes back to your own life. Their progress, their pace, their highlight reels. Every glance over there confirms the lie that you're behind. Their journey isn't yours. Their gifts aren't yours. Them having theirs doesn't take one thing away from what is yours. You still have everything you were given. Fear just buried it for a while. That's the whole reset. Not one big leap, one small win. Felt and counted, then the next and the next until you have built this momentum, the belief that you can is a muscle. And every step you celebrate helps build it. Celebrate and embrace the wins, even if it feels small, even if it feels insignificant, because ultimately every step that you're taking that was hard for you is worth celebrating. I feel like when I celebrate things, most people probably would think, I can't believe she's celebrating that language. But I do. I'm gonna celebrate because I don't have someone here all the time to tap me on the back and say you're doing a good job. But I believe in me. And at the end of the day, that's all that matters. If I am struggling to get out of bed and it's been days of me laying in bed, you better believe that I'm gonna tell myself. Good job on just getting to the couch. Good job on just getting up and eating and doing those basic things. Because you know what? To do those basic things, it took all this energy out of me to do that. And it's worth celebrating. The more you celebrate, the more you realize, like, yeah, I did that. I did it when I was fighting my own mind all day long. Because once you start to celebrate it and realize, yeah, I did something hard and I don't care if anyone else thinks it's small or minor, then it becomes easier to do those smaller things. And then when it comes to the bigger things, it makes it easier to fight your mindset. It makes it easier to challenge the thoughts in your head that tell you you're not good enough. And the more you follow through on what you're thinking, the more you say I'm gonna get out of bed, and then you do get out of bed, the more your mind starts to trust that you can do things because it has played so many tricks on you and told you that you can't, you can't, you can't. But when you start to believe you can, it unlocks this ability of realizing, like, I can do so much. And when the thoughts start to go a different place, you're able to reel it back in and let it know, no, we're not going back in that direction. But even if you did go back in that direction, the whole point is to keep pushing yourself to eventually realize that that time period isn't as long. The season isn't the same length. If you take nothing from this video, I hope you take that you can keep fighting, that you have been fighting such an exhausting, difficult battle this entire time and you still haven't given up. Even on the days where you wanted to, you were still here. You were still fighting, you are still coming to this channel to find information to help support you. That shows that you have this fighter instinct within you. So you are capable. You do have the ability to get through this. You can get unstuck. And I want to celebrate with you when you do. I'll be honest, I have been frozen too. We all have a threshold, and I have hit mine at different points and different times. For me, it will look different than how it looks like for you. It's not about measuring someone else's spot of how they've handled their low point or their point where they have felt so overwhelmed and exhausted that they didn't know how to move forward. But I share this to help you to see that everyone at some point could be where

Treat The Right Root Cause

Jessica N. Davis 13:19

you've been at. I worked with someone once, years deep, and what everyone, including me and them, was certain had to be depression. They would have a job, then they wouldn't have a job, not being able to take care of themselves, convinced they would never get it together. There were days they weren't sure they'd still be here, to be honest. They would say, I'm actually shocked that I made it to this age range. We treated the depression and it would not lift until we looked underneath and realized that it was the anxiety, the endless list, the fear under all of it, the fear of not being enough, the fear of not making it, not being the success that they wanted to be. The freeze had taken over. The moment we went after the right thing, the fog did lift. They told me I can actually do things. If I just take the small steps, it gets better. If I don't fight it in my head and I just act, it gets easier. That same person today has a full-time job, cooks their own meals, has their own relationship, takes care of themselves. It's living a life they're proud of. Same person, we just finally treated the right thing. Here's what I tell people who've been frozen a long time, a year, six months, and they're clawing to get out. The goal isn't to never freeze again. The goal is that the next time it's shorter. This time it might have been months. Next time, it's weeks, then eventually days. Every time you practice the reset, you get faster at finding your way back. Your mindset gets stronger than the freeze. One more thing, and I truly mean

Ask for Help Before It Gets Heavier

Jessica N. Davis 14:58

this. If what you're feeling is heavier than what you expected, if it feels like you can't see your way through, that's the moment to reach out. Tell someone you trust what's really going on. Then let a professional or a therapist or a doctor help you carry it. You were never meant to do this part alone. I want to leave you with a thing that's the easiest to forget when you're frozen. You are not what this week looked like. You are not the dishes, the messages you didn't answer, or the days you couldn't move. That isn't who you are. That's what fear did to someone who feels everything deeply, who cares more than they let on, who has more in them than they can see right now. The freeze convinced you that you'd lost yourself. You didn't, you've been in there the whole time waiting for that fog to lift enough to remember. So let this be the reminder for the days you forget. You are still capable. The freeze is loud, but it was never the truth about you. When you lose sight of that, come back here and I'll remind you. So when you have a win, no matter how small it is, I hope that you will share it in the comments. Share your journey so that other people who watch this video can see the progress that happens when you just take one step, one small step of moving forward, one small step of doing something for yourself. And even if it took you 30 minutes, 40 minutes of fighting in your own head of I need to shower today, but I don't feel like showering. I don't want to shower, or I don't smell that bad, or it's not that bad, whatever the thought process is that it is in your head that you're going through and you finally do it, celebrate it. Share it because that is what will help other people feel that same momentum, get the progress that they need, and keep showing up day after day after day, making the progress that we're all trying to get towards. If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you haven't left a review yet, I would love it if you would take two minutes to do that. It helps more teens and young adults find the show. Thank you for all the support. I truly appreciate it. It truly means the world to me. Thank you so much for being here. Until next time, keep moving forward. Trust yourself and never forget you have what it takes to block out the noise.