Am I Stressed Out or Anxious?
What’s the difference between stress and anxiety? And how do you know if you have one, the other, or both? While one is easy to mistake for the other, they do have different causes and can impact you differently.
What is stress?
Stress is what we feel when we experience external pressure to perform. That might be getting your work done, studying for a test in school, or completing all your chores. That feeling of muscle tension and increased blood pressure comes from knowing that we are expected to get certain things done - even if we were the ones who put those expectations on ourselves. Importantly, stress dissipates quickly when those expectations are fulfilled.
When your stress gets too high, you can experience things like insomnia, a short temper, irritability, and even physical illness. Too much stress can reduce your immune system and cause you to get sick more easily. It can also cause other physical symptoms like tension headaches, muscle pain, rashes or acne, and even hair loss.
What is anxiety?
Anxiety is what we feel when our minds decide that something is scary or threatening. Anxiety is very closely related to fear. So while stress is caused by external pressure, anxiety is caused by our internal threat assessment system. This is why our anxiety doesn’t easily go away when we have completed our tasks - because your brain can always come up with something else to worry about.
Symptoms of anxiety include having racing thoughts, accelerated heart rate, pain or pressure in your chest, nausea, and feelings of dread. These symptoms are especially frustrating when we know that our anxiety is irrational. Sometimes it is very clear that you have no logical reason to feel anxious, but for some reason your mind has latched onto a worry and just won’t let it go. That’s why the treatments for anxiety and stress are different.
Therapy for stress management vs anxiety
You can struggle with stress, anxiety, or both. But the treatment for each of these issues is different - and it’s important that your therapist understands that. Stress management therapy often focuses on strategies for increasing efficiency, maximizing self-care time, and prioritizing your personal needs and values. Therapy for anxiety can include many of those things, but it also focuses on specific strategies for responding to and “resetting” your mind’s automatic response to anxiety triggers.
Thankfully, both stress and anxiety are problems that have effective treatments.
Read more about our approach to therapy for anxiety.
Ready to start working on your own stress and anxiety?
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