What's the difference between stress, anxiety, and worry? And why does it matter?
Most people talk about stress, anxiety and worry interchangeably as if they're
the same thing. For example: "my test really stressed me out. I was so worried
about it." or "I'm so worried about this upcoming performance that is making my
stomach hurt." Now the lack of differentiation between these different
aspects of anxiety leads to difficulties in knowing how to resolve the effects of
them so today we're going to talk about the difference and why it matters.
Worry is the thinking part of anxiety it happens in our frontal lobes the part
of our brain that plans and thinks and uses words and it has to do with
thoughts like "Is she mad at me?" or "what's going to happen at my upcoming
performance?" Now we humans have developed this part of our brain for important
reasons. Worry helps us solve complex problems by thinking about them, perhaps
over and over again. But if worry becomes distorted, compulsive, or stuck into a
repetitive cycle then we can develop disorders like depression and anxiety.
Now stress on the other hand is the physiological response to fear- so it's
what's going on inside of our bodies when we're reacting to something that's
perceived as threatening or dangerous. It's the fight, flight freeze response.
It's rooted in the reptilian brain. It's instinctual and unconscious. Stress
serves a perfect function in helping us to escape real threats for example the
sweating that comes along with stress helps us stay cool or the adrenaline
helps us perform in situations where we have to run away or fight off a physical
threat. However if stress becomes chronic and remains unresolved it can have
serious consequences in our body: high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer and
chronic illness are all associated with stress.
Anxiety is the intersection of
these two reactions the thinking and the biological response.
It's rooted in the limbic system and it has to do with this feeling of
foreboding or dread like something bad is going to happen.
Anxiety helps people be watchful for danger but if it dominates our lives it
can make it hard for us to feel joy and to move forward in the direction of our
values. If we want to learn to manage our anxiety we need to learn to tailor our
interventions to the different aspects of stress. So in order to manage our
worry we need to target those thoughts with cognitive interventions-changing
how we think and changing what we're constantly imagining and visualizing in
our minds. And if we want to change the stress response we need to take a
bottom-up approach incorporating our body's reactions and responses into
interventions that change those reactions and responses into a healthy
way. The first step of emotion management is awareness. Start to pay attention to
what it feels like when you're having an anxious response. Is it rooted in your
mind? are you having thoughts or imagining some future catastrophe? or is
it rooted in your body? are you having these physiological reactions like an
upset stomach or sweaty hands? As you start to pay more attention to these
reactions and gain more awareness around them you'll develop greater abilities to
learn how to respond to these these instinctual reactions in a more helpful way.
See if you can distinguish between the two aspects of anxiety- the worry and
the stress maybe even spend some time writing about it. And stay tuned to this
channel for my next videos on how to regulate each of those aspects of
anxiety. I hope this was helpful and thanks for watching
Take care!