Understanding Stress and Anxiety

Stress vs. Anxiety

Most people are familiar with the feeling of stress, which is often experienced in the body as tension or discomfort. While stress is commonly mistaken for anxiety, they are distinct concepts. Everyone experiences stress, but not everyone experiences anxiety. However, when stress becomes excessive, it can lead to anxiety. To better understand these conditions, it is helpful to examine their differences and similarities.

What Is Stress?

Stress is a normal response that occurs when we are threatened, in danger, or confronted with a situation we perceive as challenging or overwhelming. It is not inherently problematic; rather, it acts as the body's natural defense mechanism. Experiencing a reasonable level of stress is healthy and can be beneficial, motivating us to take action and helping us manage difficult situations.

Stress can take many forms and arise from both external and internal factors. External sources include unexpected financial issues, changes in relationships or jobs, adverse weather, conflicts with friends, and looming deadlines, as a few examples. Internal causes come from the narratives we create about our circumstances, negative thoughts, and physical discomfort, such as low blood sugar, allergies, fatigue, pain, toxins in the body, or medical conditions. Some people refer to stress originating from internal conditions as “false anxiety” because the stress response is considered a normal reaction in these cases. Nonetheless, these internal states can prompt anxious thoughts, which may trigger anxiety.

When a person possesses adequate skills to cope with stress, it usually dissipates, and life returns to normal.

What Is Anxiety?

Anxiety is an internal condition that develops gradually. The body's defense system becomes hyperaroused by excessive worry or fear, stemming from real or imagined threats. Factors such as trauma or intense stress can contribute to anxiety, but inadequate coping mechanisms and the personal meaning assigned to these experiences are also critical contributors. Anxiety is primarily associated with uncertainty about what might occur in the future, rather than concerns about the present. The brain often attempts to predict future outcomes based on past experiences. As Justin Brewer explains in Unwinding Anxiety,

“Anxiety is born when the prefrontal cortex doesn't have enough information to predict the future accurately.”

When information is lacking, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) can generate countless scenarios of what may happen and how to respond, leading to feelings of nervousness about the future. The PFC loses its grip on reason and logic when the emotional regions of the brain take over, creating conditions for panic. Anxiety is fueled by questioning thoughts, fears, and an overactive imagination, and is often triggered by real environmental or internal events. The intensity of anxiety can vary from mildly challenging to highly uncomfortable physiological states of hyperarousal.

Shared Characteristics

Stress and anxiety have many physiological similarities, including irregular or increased heart rate, changes in breathing, difficulty concentrating, digestive problems, trouble sleeping, fatigue, excessive sweating, restlessness, mood changes, muscle tension or pain, feelings of uneasiness, and headaches.

Anxiety as an Internal Threat

For individuals with an anxiety condition, the response can be triggered automatically even in the absence of an external threat; the perceived threat originates internally.

When a person has an anxiety condition, it can be triggered automatically, in the absence of an external threat; the threat is generated internally. Anxiety is linked to an acute biological stress response, which can perpetuate itself. We play a role when we react to the biological stress response and interpret or make meaning out of events. For example, a person might have a natural ache or pain. For various reasons, they fall into a pattern of worry and rumination, a repetitive internal thought (RUT) — that something terrible is wrong. This perception or story activates the body's defense systems, producing feelings similar to those experienced if the worry were true. The brain and the body attempt to restore homeostasis, but we are out of hormonal balance, and equilibrium is not possible at that moment.

Differences Between Stress and Anxiety

Although stress and anxiety are related, they are fundamentally different. Stress is common and adaptive, helping us respond to challenges. Anxiety, on the other hand, can be all over the place, chronic, overwhelming, or occasionally problematic. Physiological stress or “false anxiety” may serve as a warning signal from the body, which can be helpful. Clinical anxiety is a physical change in a person’s nervous system, which results in the person quickly and more easily entering into or getting stuck in highly activated states of high physiological arousal.

Triggers and Narratives

The autonomic nervous system responds unconsciously to perceived threats, whether they are real or imagined. These responses can be prompted by triggers linked to previous stressful or traumatic experiences, such as thoughts, sounds, smells, places, scenes from movies or TV, being in crowds, specific times, or even physical sensations. The narrative that accompanies anxiety is negative, suggesting a threat or that something is wrong, something bad is happening or will happen, or that the person is losing control or unable to recover from a mistake. Such narratives activate the body's defense systems, leading to fight, flight, or immobilization responses. The meaning a person assigns to these episodes and triggers can intensify feelings of threat. Unless there is a real threat, the most accurate narrative is that you are experiencing anxiety; the nervous system is responding automatically to learned triggers associated with previous threats.