Is it Stress? Or Anxiety? And Why You Should Care.

Stress and anxiety are two very common mental health issues. They’re also very different, which can make things confusing for people who are trying to understand their own experiences (or those of their loved ones). In this article, I’ll explain what the difference is between stress and anxiety, what you can do manage them.

Stress

Stress is a normal part of life. It can be good (eustress) or bad (distress), depending on the way you react to the situations around you. Stress is not just about work — it can be caused by any situation that makes demands on your time and your ability to cope with stress.

When we talk about stress, we usually mean negative responses to events in our lives. But positive forms of stress are also important for survival: They help us adapt when faced with challenges or threats that require us to grow beyond where we are now. So how do we tell the difference between good and bad forms of stress?

Good stress is good because it challenges us to go beyond our comfort zone. It’s the kind of stress that makes you feel alive, excited, and energized at the end of a really busy week. It’s also important to remember that everyone experiences stress in different ways — you might not experience the same reaction as someone else who’s going through the same situation.

Acute stress occurs when we have to perform in front of others or handle high-pressure situations. Chronic stress occurs over a long period of time, often from having to deal with multiple life challenges at once like being in a toxic work environment, illness, and caring for a sick family member.

Anxiety

Anxiety is a feeling of worry or fear about something that hasn’t occurred yet. Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the United States and affects over 19.1% of adults.

Anxiety can be mild, moderate, or severe. It may also be physical or psychological. Generalized anxiety disorder involves constant worry about many events, activities and things that have never happened before, such as having panic attacks when there are no real dangers present.

Other types include social phobia which causes someone to fear being judged by others, obsessive-compulsive disorder where a person experiences obsessions (repeated unwanted thoughts) and compulsions (repetitive behavior). Or social anxiety, the fear of being judged when in new situations or in front of people (this one disrupted my life for over 30 years!).

Anxiety can cause physical symptoms like headaches/migraines; stomachaches; muscle tension; nausea/diarrhea; dizziness/lightheadedness etc. But so does stress.

The difference between stress and anxiety

Stress is a normal reaction to a situation. Anxiety, on the other hand, fear or worry about a situation that hasn’t occurred yet.

It’s important to understand the difference between stress and anxiety because it can help you identify when your anxiety symptoms are related to stress versus something else. Anxiety in itself isn’t bad; it’s actually necessary for survival since it alerts us when we need to do something or take action in order to survive (like fleeing from an approaching lion).

It can also be helpful because it helps us work harder at tasks that require more effort than just doing them right away (like studying for exams). However, too much anxiety can lead to problems such as high blood pressure and heart disease if left unchecked over time. Which is why learning how we respond under anxious and stressful situations is so crucial!

They’re one of the most common mental illnesses out there today — but some people suffer with these conditions without even being aware they’re experiencing them until they start seeing changes in their behavior over time such as avoiding social situations due having trouble concentrating during class activities since their mind has been elsewhere thus causing distractions which makes others around them uncomfortable too!

Causes of anxiety

The causes of anxiety are not always easy to figure out. Sometimes it can be traced back to a stressful situation or event, but other times it’s simply a matter of genetics — some people are naturally more anxious than others. Some high achieving professional women have high functioning anxiety and don’t even know it.

Causes of stress

Stress causes anxiety, but anxiety doesn’t always mean you’re stressed. For example, if you’re at a party and your heart is racing from excitement, that’s not stress. That’s excitement!

But if you’re worried about making a bad impression on your date, that’s anxiety. Because it hasn’t happened yet.

However, if you feel like the walls are closing in on you to the point where breathing becomes difficult, and your thoughts become disorganized and paranoid — that’s anxiety.

Anxiety can be triggered by many different types of situations including job interviews or presentations at work, family gatherings with distant relatives whom you rarely see but feel obligated to visit every year when they come through town (and who always seem bored by how much time it takes for them to eat). Even daily tasks like grocery shopping or going out into public places can bring on an attack of nerves if done without proper preparation beforehand.

How to tell if you’re stressed or anxious.

Stress and anxiety are very similar. They both involve a part of the nervous system called the autonomic nervous system (ANS), whose job is to keep our bodies in balance by regulating things like heart rate, digestion, breathing, temperature, and muscle tension.

Stress can be triggered by a situation — for example, you might feel stressed when someone else makes you angry or jealous. Anxiety usually occurs when we worry about something that hasn’t happened yet — it’s not clear if this is an inherited trait or learned behavior but most experts believe it’s both at different stages of life. For example:

• An eight-year-old girl who has been bullied at school may become anxious about going to school because she doesn’t want any more negative experiences there; this would be considered normal behavior for someone her age (and could also be considered “normal” even if it didn’t happen at school).
  
  But for some adults who were bullied as children — or teenagers who were never bullied at all — being put on edge by stressful situations like driving through heavy traffic could still cause them some degree of discomfort even decades later! This means that people experience stress differently depending on factors such as age group/social class background etcetera…”

Suggestions for managing stress and anxiety include…

• Breathe.
• Exercise, even just a little bit.
• Practice meditation or some other relaxation technique.
• Talk to someone about your feelings and experiences — a friend, family member, or mental health professional — if you can’t find any other way to relieve stress in your life.

It’s important to know the difference between stress and anxiety so that you can get the right treatment.

Stress is a short-term reaction to a specific event or situation. Anxiety, on the other hand, is a general sense of unease that can last for months. The symptoms of stress and anxiety are similar — but you may feel them differently depending on where they originate in your body. Stress can cause headaches, stomachaches, and irritability; anxiety tends to make people feel nervous and many of the symptoms experienced when we’re stressed.

If you’re struggling with anxiety or stress, it’s important to know the difference between these two conditions so that you take the right steps.

Increasing your mental fitness is the key to effectively coping with stress and anxiety. Mental fitness is your capacity to respond to life’s challenges with a positive mindset rather than a negative mindset (Shirzad Chamine Positive Intelligence, Inc).

Building your Mental Fitness results in you thriving amidst the demands and pace of the 21st century so that you easily overcome stress, anxiety, as well as self-sabotage, overwhelm and burnout.

Which means that you achieve clarity of mind and purposeful action so that you can find peace in the midst of chaos. And ultimately take control of your thoughts and feelings so that you can focus on what matters most in your life.

You can you build your mental fitness with easy doable steps that result in

1. Spending more time at your peak performance

2. Increasing well-being and peace of mind’

3. Enjoying healthy relationships

If you’re feeling stressed and anxious, it’s important to know the difference between these two conditions so that you can take the right steps. And building mental fitness is the right solution to resolve both stress and anxiety.