Why Change Feels Urgent but Motivation Feels Low When You Have Anxiety

“How Come Motivation Feels Hard?”

Struggling with low motivation and anxiety? Learn from an anxiety therapist in Los Angele why change feels urgent but hard to act on—and how safety helps you move forward.

As we continue exploring how anxiety shows up in your life, you may notice how often it’s treated as an inconvenience, especially in moments when you know something needs to change. It can feel like a nagging presence inside of you, creating urgency while also making everything feel immovable. The stuckness takes over.

In my work as an anxiety therapist in Los Angeles, CA, I see this pattern in many forms.

It might be the chore you keep postponing, the homework you avoid opening, or the conversation you’ve been dreading. Maybe it’s the text waiting for a reply.

All of these situations share something in common: the anticipation that something uncomfortable or painful might happen.

You know these things need to get done. You care. You feel a sense of responsibility as an adult, student, parent, sibling, or partner. But pressure does not always create momentum.

Especially when learning to move through anxiety is new, and you’re unsure how to cope with what comes up.

Instead of motivation, your body may feel heavy. Avoidant. Tired.

The Confusing Push–Pull of Anxiety

Anxiety often creates urgency when something feels uncertain. It sends the message that the only way to feel better is to act — quickly. This is your nervous system activating. It recognizes a familiar emotion and searches your history for what has helped you feel settled before or what it believes will help.

But those responses are not always aligned with what the present moment actually requires.

Imagine noticing your friends went out the night before and didn’t invite you. If you carry past experiences of being overlooked, unheard, or ghosted, your body may react immediately. Thoughts of rejection or embarrassment surface. The urgency becomes: How do I hold this together? How do I protect myself from feeling hurt again?

Slowing down to consider other possibilities or to communicate directly can feel nearly impossible in that moment. And, this is where urgency and readiness are on conflicting paths.

You may genuinely want to respond differently. But if your nervous system senses risk, it may move you from activation into shutdown. That freeze is not laziness or a lack of care. It is protection.

So when you struggle to get things done, make changes, or practice new ways of communicating, it may not be about discipline.

It may be your body shifting from mobilization into shutdown because something feels unsafe.

If you’ve read my previous blog about feeling stuck despite knowing something needs to change, this is often the missing piece. Insight alone does not create movement when the nervous system does not feel safe.

When Your Nervous System Doesn’t Feel Safe to Change

Becoming more attuned to your body is such a vital piece of therapy for anxiety. It helps you understand how your system responds to stress, discomfort, and safety. It helps you understand why motivation sometimes disappears when you feel overwhelmed.

A simple framework I often share with clients is this:

Change = uncertainty.

Uncertainty = threat (to the anxious nervous system).

Body attunement is a skill learned in anxiety therapy in Los Angeles, where you step closer towards understanding how motivation and anxiety are connected with each other.

For many adults — especially first-generation, BIPOC, and Queer individuals — uncertainty has not always felt neutral. It may have been tied to high expectations, unspoken pressure, cultural sacrifice, conditional acceptance, or environments where success determined belonging.

When choosing has historically carried emotional risk, your nervous system remembers.

That is why motivation can drop in moments of change. Not because you do not care. Not because you are incapable. But because your body has learned that uncertainty can cost something important.

I’ve written more about how anxiety lives in the body and shapes decision-making in another post. When your nervous system has learned that choosing can lead to criticism, disconnection, or instability, motivation does not disappear — it protects you from anticipated pain from past events you have experienced.

And protection can look like low energy, avoidance, or shutdown.

Why Overthinking Feels Productive — But Drains Your Energy

When motivation drops, it doesn’t mean that you stop trying. Often, anxiety finds other ways to redirect the energy of productivity.

Instead of taking action, your mind begins working overtime. You replay conversations. You analyze every possible outcome. You walk through scenarios, searching for the safest option. Overthinking can feel productive because it creates the sense that you’re doing something.

And cognitively, you are. But thinking something through is not the same as feeling ready to move. By the end of it, you may feel mentally exhausted. Decision fatigue sets in. The energy that could have gone toward action gets spent on analysis. And what started as an intention to move forward leaves you feeling more depleted than before.

In my work as an anxiety therapist in Los Angeles, I often see this pattern in high-achieving adults. There are days filled with mental productivity, but very little emotional readiness to practice something new.

Overthinking can feel like preparation. But often, it is protection.

High-Functioning Anxiety and the Quiet Burnout Cycle

If you have always been someone who has always been the responsible one, dependable, strong, or the one who “holds it together,” you may not immediately recognize anxiety in yourself. You may see the productivity. The reliability. The strength.

But over time, constant self-pressure can lead to emotional exhaustion.

As urgency increases, overthinking intensifies. Thoughts spiral. You search for the “right” move, the one that won’t disappoint anyone or cost you connection. The fear of making the wrong choice can quietly build eventually towards a crash.

Internally, it feels like hitting a wall. The motivation you were trying to manufacture disappears.

Burnout rarely comes out of nowhere. It grows from years of pushing through without tending to what your body needs. And you do not have to wait until you are completely depleted to respond differently.

Motivation Returns When Safety Comes First

Change does not require a big action. It can begin with noticing and being curious with it. Noticing when urgency arises, when your body feels heavy or frozen, or when overthinking replaces movement.

Instead of forcing yourself forward, gently ask yourself: What would help me feel safe enough to take one small step?

Sometimes that looks like slowing down your decision-making. Making the change smaller than you initially planned. Co-regulating with someone you trust. Reaching out for support.

Returning to the earlier example of feeling left out by friends — it could mean pausing with the hurt instead of immediately shutting down. Getting curious about what past experiences are being stirred up. Asking yourself what you need in order to feel steady before responding.

These are small practices. But they create sustainable change.

When you learn how to return to safety, you build the capacity to tolerate uncertainty without collapsing into self-criticism or shutdown.

Working With Anxiety Instead of Fighting It

As an anxiety therapist in Los Angeles, therapy is curated to provide a space for BIPOC, First Gen, and Queer adults to practice slowness and be with their anxiety in small ways.

That is at the heart of my work as an anxiety therapist in Los Angeles, CA. I help clients build the internal steadiness that allows change to feel possible. Therapy becomes a place to practice that safety. A place where patterns can be slowed down instead of judged. A place where you do not have to override your body in order to grow.

Throughout this blog series, we’ve explored a simple but powerful truth: change begins with safety. When you slow down enough to understand what your anxiety has been protecting you from, you can begin creating a more compassionate relationship with it and with yourself.

You don’t need to “try harder.” You don’t need to carry this pressure alone.

As an anxiety therapist in Los Angeles, CA, I support adults—especially first-generation, BIPOC, and Queer adults—who are ready to stop holding everything on their own and want a more compassionate relationship with themselves and with others.

You deserve support that honors who you are, where you come from, and who you’re becoming.

Whenever you’re ready, I’m here.

Schedule a Free Consultation at (323) 493-6644 or Book Here.

Ligia Orellana, LMFT (#122659)

I’m an anxiety therapist in Los Angeles, California, certified in LGBTQ+ Affirmative Therapy and Somatic Attachment Therapy. I help first-generation BIPOC and Queer adults who feel the pressure to hold it all together move through self-doubt, anxiety, and relationship struggles. My work creates space for deeper connection and self-trust through emotional safety and cultural understanding.

Learn more about my work with relationship stress, people-pleasing and self-doubt, and online therapy, or visit my About page to learn more.