The Nuance
Are You Stressed or Are You Anxious?
There’s a difference. Here’s why it matters.
In common parlance, people use “stress” and “anxiety” interchangeably. Even mental health organizations tend to lump the two together.
The Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA), for example, has resources to help people manage “anxiety and stress.” But it takes some digging on the ADAA site to find an explanation for how the two differ, and that explanation is also unhelpfully brief: “Stress is a response to a threat in a situation. Anxiety is a reaction to the stress.”
Even among psychiatrists and psychologists, “there is not widespread agreement on how to contrast these two concepts,” says Richard Maddock, MD, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, Davis. While both stress and anxiety can produce similar responses in the human body — responses that are associated with a range of health conditions, including depression and heart disease — they’re not the same, Maddock says.
Stress is a broader concept than anxiety, he says. Stress can be either psychological or physical and either good or bad. Maddock points to exercise as a form of physical stress that, while challenging to the body, can result in positive changes. Similarly…
