Watch the video below to learn more about the difference between anxiety and fear. If you’re someone who prefers to read, keep scrolling down for the blog instead.
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Hey Guys, so today, I wanted to talk about the difference between anxiety and fear.
Fear is a present-oriented state, so that means that our minds have perceived something as a threat. It could be a real threat, or it can just be a perceived threat, but either way, our minds think “danger danger,” and an internal alarm starts going off. That internal alarm activates your sympathetic part of your system to kick-start to prepare you for this threat (real or perceived). When that system gets activated, you will start to experience some physical symptoms. That can look like:
- heart’s racing
- difficulty breathing
- sweating
- getting hot
- getting cold
- feeling dizzy
- shaking
- feeling like you’re choking
- feeling numb or tingling
To name of few potential physical symptoms. That’s you’re fight-flight or freeze response kicking in to make sure you survive. From an evolutionary perspective, this system has developed over time to ensure you stay alive. Although sometimes it kicks in in certain situations where you’re not facing a life or death threat, but in that moment, you don’t know that because you’re distracted by your activated system. Again this happens to prepare you to survive this potentially life-threatening situation. Fortunately, most of the time, you’re not dealing with life-threatening events, but your system still responds the same way.
Anxiety is more of a future-oriented state, so anxiety is more about being concerned that something terrible will happen. I’m afraid that something will happen later, but it’s not happening right now. An example of the difference would be, let’s say I decide to go camping. While I’m camping, I see in the distance there is this huge scary brown bear! You better believe my fear response is going to kick in and activate my fight-flight or freeze response to make sure I hightail it out of there. And I STAY ALIVE!
Anxiety would be more if my friend says, “Hey, do you want to go camping?” and I think, “Oh gosh, but what if a bear shows up?”. In response to that possible threat, I get worried and nervous about something terrible happening in the future. The tricky part is that future-oriented anxiety about something scary happening (potential bear sighting) can trigger a present-oriented fear response (as if the bear were already present) to kick in and incite your sympathetic system. Our system can’t distinguish that our mind has envisioned a future scary scenario in our head (not an actual real event) and acts as if a real threat is already happening. That’s part of the way that fear and anxiety are connected.
To summarize, the main difference is that fear is a present-oriented state, and anxiety is future-oriented. In future videos, I’ll talk a little more about whether fear and anxiety are helpful or not and when anxiety is normal versus an anxiety disorder. I hope this was helpful!