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Understanding the differences between worry, stress, and anxiety can help provide a feeling of comfort.
Rather than irrationally suffering with all of these feelings, learning about it can help you deal with it.
Keep reading to understand the differences and develop more awareness around your mental state.
What is Worry?
Worry happens when your mind dwells on negative thoughts, uncertain outcomes or things that can go wrong.
It tends to be repetitive thoughts.
Worry happens only in your mind, not in your body.
How does worry work?
Worry does offer some value to us. It enables us to problem-solve or take action.
When we think about an uncertain situation, such as not getting the job you want or not being able to cover your bills at the end of the month – your brain becomes stimulated.
Worrying calms the brain down, it is a way for the brain to handle problems to keep us safe.
It only becomes an issue when you get stuck on those repetitive, unhelpful thoughts.
What is Stress?
Stress is a physiological response connected to an external event.
For the stress cycle to begin, there must be a stressor. This is usually an external deadline, such as a work deadline, or the end of the month is coming up and you don’t have any money.
When our body faces stress, whether from an internal or external source, a vital response kicks in which is known as ‘fight or flight’ response.
Thousands of years ago our biggest threat that sparked this response was trying to avoid a wild animal attack or wondering when you’d next eat.
What happens to the body in fight or flight mode?
When the body is in fight or flight mode, adrenaline and cortisol is released.
The heart rate goes up and blood gets pumped to your limbs and away from the digestive and reproductive system.
Pupils dilate to help you see and the mind becomes hyper-vigilant.
The blood sugar levels go up too.
What is Anxiety?
If stress and worry are the symptoms, anxiety is the culmination. Anxiety has a cognitive element (worry) and a physiological response (stress), which means that anxiety is experienced in both mind and body.
Do you remember how stress is a response to a threat?
Anxiety acts in the same way, but there is no threat.
To put this in an example: you show up at work and your boss gives you an off look.
What do you do? You start to have all the physiology of a stress response because you’re telling yourself that your boss is upset with you. The blood is flowing, adrenaline is pumping, your body is in a state of fight or flight.
But there is no predator, and your boss isn’t mad at you.
Final thoughts
Understanding the difference between worry, stress, and anxiety and why our bodies create the sensation it does can begin to reduce the negative impact that is felt.
Worry happens in the mind.
Stress happens in the body.
Anxiety happens in the mind and body.
I don’t always know the difference. I know I feel stressed at times, but when I have anxiety it’s more of a panicked feeling.
I like the way you broke up the differences into easy to process chunks of information. This is a great way to give clarity to people that may be confused about these terms.
This was good info to learn. Now to learn how to manage them all.
I learned a very long time ago that stress can become a killer. Your body just can’t handle it. Anxiety was a part of my life too at the same time, but I learned I needed to get off of caffeine and my B12 was extremely low. Now all is good.
It is very detrimental. I’m glad to hear you conquered it though!
This is a really good clear explanation or each term. I think many get them confused easily.
Great post about the difference of these! I often forget about the mind-body connection and how it relates to anxiety. Thanks for sharing!
The post is too interesting and heart touching. It’s always crucial to know about the differences 💞
Now its crystal clear. Thank you for thoroughly explaining the difference of these three. I thought these there are all the same.
You broke this nicely. I like this short article. Dealing with worries, threats (real and imaginary) and fears (also real and imagined) are perhaps the greatest challenges facing humanity today.
You definitely explained everything well, and I think this is important to learn by many.
Now I know the difference. This can help to avoid some situations!
Now I know the differences. We don’t want all of these but they’re always part of being human
It’s good to know the differences. Managing stress and anxiety is definitely important too. I use exercise to help my mood
This is very insightful, the details you have shared above are really important and the kind of information which everyone needs.
This is such a great post. I’m glad you separated them all and let us know more about the differences between them all. All of these can be hard to deal with.
Good information, so that you can accurately know what is going on and what to do about it.
This is such a really great and very informative post! Thank you so much for sharing this with us! Now its crystal clear
Thank you!
I don’t like the anxiety at work, I try to avoid it by not hacing to deal with anything going wrong and make sure I do everything correct. Awesome information! Thank you for sharing!
The differences matter. Stress and anxiety may seem similar, but they’re not the same.
Stress affects a lot of people, and can influence your health. But its part of us. Dealing with it well is important. So as anxiety
The body always fascinates me when it comes to the fight or flight mode….the speed at which all the processes happen to make that choice is unbelievable!
The same thing was explained to me by my psychologist. Knowing the difference between these three terms can help us to understand the symptoms. and know when to seek professional help.
I love that you discussed all three terms in an easy to understand way. Stress is an everyday thing for me, and for anxiety, well, for me, it “comes and goes.”
I don’t think I ever thought through the differences between these different emotions. It is good to know how they are different and how to address them.
I learned a lot about this post. I tend to worry a lot and I often associate it to stress. Glad it was clarified.