Do you know the difference between worry and anxiety? Is there even a difference? Yes, there is, and knowing what it is can help you to decipher between the two in the long run. Having debilitating anxiety surrounding situations and things in your life can cause severe interruptions to being able to live normally on a daily basis. Sometimes you can feel like you need to isolate yourself until the feelings pass. Other times you may feel like the weight of the anxiety is crushing you. Understanding what worry is, what anxiety is, and the difference between the two can make identifying what you are feeling a whole lot simpler and easier. It can also help you to manage the symptoms.
What is Worry?
Worry is a normal part of life. You worry about whether you locked the front door on your way out of the house for work. You worry about whether you turned the stove off after cooking dinner. This is all a part of everyday life. Feeling uneasy is a normal thing for people. These are not irrational fears. In fact, worry is healthy for people to experience. Worry can help to initiate action. For instance, if you actually did forget to shut the stove on, worrying about it can lead you to get up and check.
What is Anxiety?
Anxiety is different from worry. Anxiety can be classified by intense feelings of fear, dread, and an impending sense of doom. For instance, if you worry the stove is still on, and you go check to make sure it is off. But then that worry persists, even after checking, and you return to check multiple other times. Just to be sure. The difference between worry and anxiety is the massive impact anxiety can have on your life. While worry often dissipates, anxiety lingers. It can manifest quickly, without warning, and interfere with normal daily functionality.
The Difference Between Worry and Anxiety
As previously stated, the difference between worry and anxiety is the impact it has on your life. As an example, if you don’t like riding in a car, you may have some fears surrounding doing so when there is no alternative. That is worry. When you completely avoid riding in motor vehicles for fear of accident or injury, and decline events or activities because they could potentially involve you needing to ride in a car, that is anxiety. Anxiety has such a huge impact on the way you live your life that you can avoid all things that could trigger any uncomfortable symptoms of it.
While worry can be healthy for a person to experience, the difference between worry and anxiety is that anxiety can lead to some awful and uncontrollable symptoms that can be detrimental to you. Anxiety is a stress response, and stress on the body can lead to some responses from your body that you may not understand. Like developing a headache or migraine, or feeling sick to your stomach.
The Brain’s Response to Anxiety
When you are experiencing anxiety, it can throw the body into a fight, flight, or freeze response. This means that the brain is perceiving some form of a threat to your safety, and it is trying to decide whether to fend it off (fight), run from it (flight), or just physically unable to move away from it (freeze). Adrenaline is released. It makes you more alert to the danger and you may not even notice the changes because they happen so quickly.
Symptoms of Anxiety
Knowing symptoms of anxiety can help you to tell the difference between worry and anxiety. Some symptoms of anxiety can include:
- Sense of impending doom
- Intense feelings of worry or fear
- Dizziness
- Dry mouth
- Racing thought
- Elevated blood pressure
- Elevated heart rate
- Muscle tension
- Upset stomach
- Nausea
These symptoms tend to send a signal to the brain that some perceived or actual threat may be coming and send the brain into fight, flight, or freeze mode.
How to Manage Anxiety
There are many different forms of therapies and resources to help you manage anxiety. They are all beneficial and teach you different ways of self soothing symptoms of anxiety, so that you can gain some relief. In combination with medications, your fears and worries can be alleviated and you can begin to regain control of your life again with minimal disruptions.
Get Help for Anxiety in South Florida
Anxiety can be debilitating. Suffering from anxiety disorders can make living a healthy and happy life extremely difficult. It can cause you to isolate, or be extremely uncomfortable on a daily basis. However, there is assistance to help you manage anxiety and gain control of your life back. At the Neuro Research Institute we offer comprehensive care for people who suffer from anxiety disorders and want their life back.
We can help you to begin the path of recovery from anxiety disruptions, and it is as easy as one simple phone call. Contact us today and begin on your path to recovery from anxiety disorders.
