How to tell the difference between anxiety and stress
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Loading... - mohammed eva
- 20 Jan 2023
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The terms ‘anxiety’, ‘feeling anxious’ or having an ‘anxiety attack’ are spoken about a lot as we move into an era where there’s less of a stigma around talking about mental health. However, with that often comes a lot of confusion or self-diagnosis for any mental health concerns.
We might often hear someone say ‘I suffer from anxiety’, however, they may not have been officially diagnosed with anxiety and instead could be suffering from excessive stress. The confusion lies in the fact that they both have very similar symptoms.
Both anxiety and stress are concerns that should be appropriately managed, but it is also a good idea to understand the difference between the two.
Lysn psychologist Nancy Sokarno explains the differences and ways to manage both stress and anxiety.
What is anxiety?
Anxiety is both a physical and psychological experience, involving excessive worry, heightened arousal, recurring intrusive thoughts, disproportionate fears to stimuli, racing heart, etc. In a nutshell, anxiety can be recognised as a disorder if it has effects on your day-to-day functioning (differing from the emotions around stress, which is often attributable to current or upcoming events/stimuli but, of course, can still impact your day-to-day).
Beyond a general feeling of worry, some tell-tale symptoms of anxiety can be restlessness, lack of concentration, racing thoughts, or unwanted thoughts, excessive worry, fear, feeling of impending doom, insomnia, nausea, palpitations, trembling, or headaches. Underlying common symptoms of anxiety is often a fear around something bad happening or feeling anxious about the future (sometimes you have this fear but can’t pinpoint what the cause is). Read More…
