Anxiety vs Worry

Post Reply New Topic

Is there a difference between worrying about something and being anxious about something?

The short version:

Worry can lead to anxiety.
Worry is fear.
Fear is worrying taken a step further.
Anxiety is fear gone berserk.
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Worry: "oooh, I hope, this isn´t going to happen" (tense, but in control).
Fear: "I´m afraid because this may be a dangerous situation coming up. I don´t know how to cope and I want to know how to get out".
(Rationalizing and still in control) That is being anxious about something.

Anxiety: "OMG, it is happening" - followed by a number of physical symptoms, even if "it" objectively isn´t happening.
You lost control over your worrying and your fears have gone out of proportion. You are overwhelmed by your fear and in emotional chaos.
I believe, that´s it.

Anxiety is more like worry that has gone beyond attempts to control it. It is more of an inteference in daily function - for example I might worry about paying a large bill, though the worry may have the effect of prompting me to find solutions; anxiety is when you get interference such as shaking hands when you even think of dealing with something frightening, and you can't think calmly and rationally, because there is too much adrenaline and cortisol activating the autonomic nervous system and disrupting its normal function. Anxiety always involves worry, worry does not always involve anxiety. Worry can be productive (I must swot for that exam, time is passing); anxiety is generally counterproductive (I try to swot but my concentration is all over the place and I can't remember what I've just read). Big difference.

Yes! Good answer.

I like that answer too. But I still don't know whether I'm clinically anxious or just a bit of a worrier.

Worry, anxiety, or fear (call it what you will) seems to pervade my life, and I often wish I could be free of it. But when I look at how it affects my behaviour, I can't see anything terribly wrong there, and I wonder if all that's really happening is that I have a perfectly normal amount of worry which feels bad because it's meant to, in order to drive me to solve problems and protect myself. If I notice a potential threat, and haven't been able to think of a way to mitigate it, it's surely natural for that to worry me, and I think that's pretty much the only time I do worry, except when I catch myself thinking too "black-and-white," e.g. a mistake in an important matter usually feels fatal unless I think about it and assess its true gravity. I really wish there was some way of knowing how a "normal" person experiences worry. Could it be like the Aspie sensory problem, where the slightest irritation is perceived as overwhelming?