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. Snxiety 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 a 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!.
