Worry Vs. Anxiety: What’s the Difference?

What Is Anxiety?

Anxiety is a mental and physiological response to a perceived threat. When the part of our brain called the amygdala is activated, it triggers the acute stress response, also known as the fight or flight response. This response can look different for each individual. Symptoms of anxiety include racing thoughts, hyperfocus on past or future events, increased heart rate or sweating, nausea or stomach discomfort, and difficulty breathing, amongst others.

Though anxiety is a normal emotional and physiological response to different experiences, it can become overactive and hinder a person’s ability to function. When this happens, it can spiral into a type of anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorders impact over 40 million individuals in the United States, and symptoms can begin as early as three years old.¹

What Is Worry?

Worry is a way for the brain to anticipate possible outcomes by focusing on potential threats. Research theorizes that the purpose of worrying is to be able to plan accordingly for those threats.² Worry looks like those common “what if…” thoughts and is temporary.

When paired with a lack of confidence in problem-solving capabilities, lack of support, other mental health conditions, or adverse experiences, worry can turn into anxiety. Worrying without anxiety is when we have a “what if…” thought, and we respond to it without our acute stress response being activated; we simply respond with no physiological response.

What Is the Difference Between Worry Vs. Anxiety?

Worry is a temporary mental experience that is prompted by a concern. When we are anxious, our worry thoughts become overwhelming and cause us to have physical responses. Worry tends to be on occasion and for specific things, and anxiety becomes generalized or catastrophized.

Here are eight key differences between worry and anxiety:

1. Worry Is in the Mind: Anxiety Affects Mind & Body

Worry is a thought process that occurs when we are presented with an experience that has potentially threatening consequences. These are the “what if… then this will happen…” thought process. When we are experiencing anxiety, these worry thoughts activate our threat response systems, and our body reacts.

2. Worry Is Specific: Anxiety Is Generalized

Worry occurs in specific situations, and it can be resolved. In contrast, anxiety is when the worry thought is expanded to all things that can be associated with the initial worry. Someone with anxiety tends to be on edge and overwhelmed by a variety of things. Sometimes, anxiety can even seem to occur for no reason, with no triggering situation.

3. Worry Is Temporary: Anxiety Is Long-Term

Worry is a thought that comes and goes as the moment passes and the situation is remedied. Anxiety is a mental and physiological experience. Anxiety can keep a person up at night or cause a person to feel on edge and alert for months.

4. Worry Is Based on Reality: Anxiety Is Often Catastrophic Thinking

Worry tends to be more rational and based on the actual severity of the situation, whereas anxiety tends to take a worry thought and run wild with it. Spinning it into the worst outcome possible. Anxiety thoughts spiral and activate the body’s defenses, causing symptoms like increased heart rate, exhaustion, and fidgeting.

5. Worry Doesn’t Impact Our Ability to Function: Anxiety Does

Worry is temporary, feels manageable, and mostly sticks to the mind. Anxiety can cause brain fog, impact a person’s ability to focus at work or school, feel irritable in social situations, impact their ability to eat, cause gastrointestinal issues, and many more symptoms that impair a person’s ability to participate in their lives effectively.

6. Worry Is More Manageable: Anxiety Can Be More Challenging to Manage

Worry can be managed by sharing the concern with others and talking it through or anticipating the negative outcome and addressing it. Worry can simply be a fleeting thought that is easily rationalized away. Anxiety, on the other hand, requires more effort and intention to manage it. Since anxiety comes with a physiological component, it can feel more intense and consuming.

7. Worry Is Prompted By Negative Thoughts: Anxiety Is Prompted by Underlying Emotions

Worry stems from negative thoughts about the current situation and possible outcomes. If it remains as worry, these thoughts won’t linger and aren’t as recurring as they would be if they were anxiety-based. When we experience anxiety, this tends to stem from fear and feeling threatened. When our brain is activated by a distressful emotion and becomes overwhelmed by it, it turns into anxiety which then activates our automatic responses that can look like avoidance, becoming aggressive, or dissociating.

8. Worry Is Motivational: Anxiety Can be Detrimental

Worry can prompt us to stay on time or study for a test, while anxiety can paralyze us and cause us to freeze during a test or avoid going in for a meeting out of fear of judgment. Worry and anxiety in small doses can be adaptive and helpful to us. When anxiety becomes unmanageable, it can have a significant negative effect on our lives.

When to Seek Professional Help for Anxiety

If you find yourself experiencing worry thoughts more often than not, and it is affecting your ability to function effectively at work, school, or in social situations, then you may be experiencing an anxiety disorder. If this is the case, seeking support from a mental health professional can help you work through this. 

When beginning your search for a therapist, you can ask your general doctor for a referral or ask family and friends for a recommendation. You can also ask your insurance for a list of therapists they cover. Alternatively, an online therapist directory is a useful tool for finding therapists in your area who specialize in treating anxiety.

Treatment Options for Anxiety

Though worry itself does not require professional treatment, anxiety can be debilitating. Anxiety disorders oftentimes feel unmanageable and out of control and impact different areas of a person’s life, like their relationships, work, school, or physical health. If worry is turning into anxiety, there are many different treatment options available.

A comprehensive treatment plan for anxiety may include:

Therapy

Therapy for anxiety provides a person with a safe place to explore the underlying causes of the anxiety and coping skills for anxiety to manage the anxiety symptoms better. When meeting with a clinician, you will work together to decide the frequency of sessions that works best for you and what you are experiencing. Weekly and biweekly sessions are more common, and as the anxiety becomes more manageable, the sessions can continue to decrease and spread out until you feel ready to manage on your own.

Common types of anxiety therapy include:

• Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT): CBT for anxiety is a psychotherapy that focuses on teaching skills to interrupt and change negative thoughts.
• Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT): ACT for anxiety is a form of psychotherapy that utilizes mindfulness and behavioral strategies. Unlike other treatments, the goal of ACT is not to reduce symptoms but to encourage people to act in ways that are meaningful to them based on their values, even when doing so results in difficult thoughts and feelings.
• Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT): DBT for anxiety focuses on identifying problem behaviors and teaching mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, & distress tolerance skills to implement more adaptive behaviors.
• Exposure therapy: Exposure therapy for anxiety builds up the ability of the individual to be able to tolerate distress by gradually exposing them to the source of the anxiety. Over time, it decreases anxiety and builds up confidence and tolerance.

Medication

Medication can be a beneficial part of an anxiety treatment plan. Anti-anxiety medication can reduce the symptoms, allowing the person to be more comfortable to engage in therapy and open to learning ways to manage the anxiety while still being able to engage in life.

Common medications prescribed for anxiety include:

• Antidepressants: SSRIs increase the amount of serotonin available in your brain. SNRIs affect the chemical messengers in the brain, which, for some, may help regulate mood and relieve anxiety symptoms. Tricyclic antidepressants function by inhibiting the reuptake of neurotransmitters like serotonin.³
• Beta-blockers: Beta-blockers help reduce anxiety by blocking epinephrine, also known as adrenaline. This allows the body to regulate more easily when faced with a source of anxiety.
• Benzodiazepines: Benzodiazepines tell your brain to release a certain neurotransmitter that decreases the reactivity of the nervous system, thereby reducing symptoms of anxiety.⁴

Lifestyle Changes

The first step to managing worry and anxiety doesn’t have to be jumping into therapy if that is not something you are comfortable with just yet. There are lifestyle changes that can make managing anxiety more achievable. However, it is important to note that therapy combined with lifestyle changes proves to be the most impactful.⁵

Common lifestyle changes to help cope with anxiety include:

• Maintaining a healthy diet
• Getting daily exercise
• Getting enough sleep
• Avoiding alcohol and recreational drugs
• Practicing meditation for anxiety
• Developing a yoga practice 
• Spending time with friends and loved ones

How to Cope With Worry & Anxiety

Though worry and anxiety are a normal part of the human experience, there are many effective ways to cope with both when they seem to be occurring more frequently or if they feel out of control. It is important to remember that both worry and anxiety are adaptive when experienced in moderation and when the mind and body are able to work through it.

Here are some coping strategies for worry and anxiety:

Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness for anxiety looks like accepting thoughts and feelings without judgment while working to stay present in the moment. Staying in the moment allows us to appreciate the value of the situation as opposed to losing ourselves in anxiety or worry about things that happened in our past or that might happen in the future.

Stop Watching the News

The news can be very stressful. If you notice yourself having a physical and psychological response to it, limit it or turn it off. Our bodies and minds can be easily overwhelmed when we are trying to process and manage all of the things going on in the world while also trying to get through our personal life stressors.

Decrease Social Media Use

If you find yourself doomscrolling frequently and notice feeling down or anxious after, it might be time to cut back. Social media impacts mental health and can cause us to compare ourselves to others, which promotes negative self-talk.

Try Journaling

Journaling about your anxiety or worries is a great way to see the negative thoughts from a different viewpoint and allows for a more visual way to challenge them.

Take a Few Deep Breaths

There are many deep breathwork techniques, such as box breathing, that help regulate the nervous system. Deep breathing can tap into our parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which is responsible for resting and digesting. The PNS shuts down when we are anxious and stressed.

Limit Stressors

Identify stressors in your life and, when possible, work to prioritize self-care and remove points of stress. There are many different types of self-care, so experiment and find what works best for you.

Open Up to Others

Lean into friends and family that you feel safe around. Connection naturally regulates our nervous system. When we reach out to others, it can also help us problem-solve or rationalize our negative thoughts.

Practice Grounding

Engaging in grounding techniques can help us get unstuck from our negative thoughts and physical symptoms of anxiety by reorienting us to the present moment. Examples of grounding techniques are the 5-4-3-2-1 technique and progressive muscle relaxation.