Anxiety vs. Stress

I wanted to highlight a little bit of the difference between anxiety and stress. The majority of the book is focused on women who struggle with anxiety, and helping them learn how to let go of the constant struggle with anxiety, worry, and stress. It’s helpful to break it down into what the difference is between the two. 

Stress is a response to a specific situation. For example, if you have an interview coming up or a presentation, you might have a stressful response to that stressor. You might not notice that the stress goes away until you’ve actually gone through it. Typically, what you’ll notice is once that stressor is gone and you’ve gone through it, then the stress goes away. After the interview or after the presentation you feel like back to your normal self. 

Dr. Stoddard also explains that it’s helpful to think of stress as a state where you’re prepared for action.  In this example, you’re prepared to take on the interview or prepared for the presentation but you need to be wary of thinking the stress is just because of a stressful situation. It’s your appraisal of this situation because it’s something that you might perceive as stressful, but a friend, partner, or family member might not. For instance, I know I get stressed when I’m out with my friends or out in a restaurant and I feel like we’ve taken too long at the table. When the waiter or waitress is walking back and forth, I start to get stressed by that by thinking we’re wasting their time taking a table and we should probably go. My friends find it funny because they don’t feel stressed by this and this doesn’t cause any reaction for them because this isn’t something that is stressful for them. 

When we think of a situation and appraise it as a threat, we also appraise our ability to handle it as less than. So, we may feel our coping mechanisms might not be successful and we feel like we might not be able to cope with it which causes more stress. 

Anxiety is a bit more consistent and it lingers. It’s not necessarily just situational. It can be but, once the situation resolves itself, the anxiety is still there. Back to the interview or presentation example, even after kicking butt on the performance or presentation, you still feel nervous about your job performance and you still have an overall sense of anxiety about it. Even though the stressor has gone away, the anxiety lingers.

Another helpful way to think about it is when you’re prepared for perceived danger, and I say perceived because a lot of time our anxious thoughts aren’t always correct or accurate, recognize the Three Amigos that fuel anxiety. 

The first one is intolerance of uncertainty. The second one is perceived lack of control, so not feeling in control and not liking that feeling of a lack of control. Most people don’t like that, but when you notice there’s an elevated discomfort for you. The third one is when there’s an over-inflated sense of responsibility, so you feel responsible more so than some of your peers to take on challenges or handle situations.