Defining Fear & Anxiety

Fear and anxiety may produce the same answers to certain dangers; muscle tension, increased heart rate and shortness of breath are some of the symptoms associated with a response to danger.

These changes are believed to be necessary for our survival. In fact, without this stress response, our mind would not receive the alerting danger signal and our bodies would be unable to prepare to flee or stay and battle when faced with danger.

At first, therefore, those symptoms do not have to be necessarily associated with negativity. Survival is, indeed, a very positive thing. Then, we can infer (and we all know already) that giving up surviving is not positive.

The negative side of fear and anxiety comes when they become a permanent fixture in our lives and start controlling our minds (and, consequently, our bodies). They can be interrelated: fear causes anxiety and anxiety causes fear.

But no matter how many similarities they have, those two are not the same thing at all.

Fear is an emotional response to a known or definite threat.

For example, you are walking down a dark street and suddenly someone points a gun at you and says, “This is a stick-up.”

This would probably make you have a response of fear. The danger is real, definite and immediate. There is a clear and present object of fear.

Anxiety is a diffuse, unpleasant, vague sense of apprehension. It is often a response to an imprecise or unknown threat.

For instance: you are walking down a dark street. You may feel a little uneasy and perhaps you have a few butterflies in your stomach. These sensations are caused by anxiety that is related to the possibility that a stranger may jump out from behind a bush, or approach you in some other way, and harm you.

This anxiety is not the result of a known or specific threat. Rather it comes from one's mental vision of the possible dangers that may result in the situation.

Anxiety is a state over anticipated events, which might not be real, that are perceived as threats.

Can you see the difference?

I would like to mention that this article contains information from this source.

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