Lysn psychologist Nancy Sokarno
The terms ‘anxiety’, ‘feeling anxious’ or having an ‘anxiety attack’ are spoken about a lot as we move into an era where there’s less of a stigma around talking about mental health. However, with that often comes a lot of confusion or self-diagnosis for any mental health concerns.
We might often hear someone say ‘I suffer from anxiety’, however, they may not have been officially diagnosed with anxiety and instead could be suffering from excessive stress. The confusion lies in the fact that they both have very similar symptoms.
Both anxiety and stress are concerns that should be appropriately managed, but it is also a good idea to understand the difference between the two.
Lysn psychologist Nancy Sokarno explains the differences and ways to manage both stress and anxiety.
What is anxiety?
Anxiety is both a physical and psychological experience, involving excessive worry, heightened arousal, recurring intrusive thoughts, disproportionate fears to stimuli, racing heart, etc. In a nutshell, anxiety can be recognised as a disorder if it has effects on your day-to-day functioning (differing from the emotions around stress, which is often attributable to current or upcoming events/stimuli but, of course, can still impact your day-to-day).
Beyond a general feeling of worry, some tell-tale symptoms of anxiety can be restlessness, lack of concentration, racing thoughts, or unwanted thoughts, excessive worry, fear, feeling of impending doom, insomnia, nausea, palpitations, trembling, or headaches. Underlying common symptoms of anxiety is often a fear around something bad happening or feeling anxious about the future (sometimes you have this fear but can’t pinpoint what the cause is).
Anxiety symptoms can vary in intensity, ranging from mild to severe, with symptoms often becoming gradually more intense over time. Panic attacks can be unexpected (you might not know the root cause) or expected and related to situations which you can anticipate as stressful or threatening.
Panic attacks related to stressors can be looked at in event versus reaction; it is often disproportionate in nature. When someone is suffering from a panic attack, they may feel a sense of heightened arousal, heart palpitations, and difficulty breathing/shortness of breath. Fear is often induced in these situations by direct stressors, such as being followed while walking home at night, someone breaking into your home, or being chased by a dog (proportionate responses, depending on every individual).
Many people use the phrases ‘stressed’ and ‘anxious’ interchangeably and those specific phrases can mean different things to different people. If someone says that they had an anxiety attack, they often mean they felt anxious or were suffering from feelings of stress and worry or perhaps they felt the symptoms of a panic attack.
What is stress?
While stress isn’t recognised as a mental health disorder, it is still absolutely a mental health concern. The difference is that most humans will experience stress regularly (sometimes daily) whereas not everyone has a diagnosed anxiety disorder. Stress symptoms range from feeling irritable, moody, nervous, afraid, having difficulty breathing, feeling fatigued, experiencing sleep issues, indigestion, headaches, and a range of other physical symptoms. Understanding the differences between stress, worry, and anxiety can be difficult because all of these conditions can have similar feelings and symptoms. Stress can infiltrate any area of our lives and if not managed properly, can take control over a person’s wellbeing. The good news is that we can avoid the negative effects of stress if we learn how to manage and reduce the effects.
Long-term stress can have physical and mental health impacts since it can cause your gut to consistently release the stress hormone cortisol. Worrying and stressing constantly can also lead you to develop other disorders such as anxiety or depression or cause you to experience panic attacks. On a physical level, consistent worry or the worry cycle can cause headaches, dizziness, and stomach pains. Symptoms can vary in intensity, ranging from mild to severe, with symptoms often becoming gradually more intense over time if not managed well.
The problem with feelings of worry, stress, and anxiety is that when it gets out of hand and exceeds everyday levels, they can become damaging to a person’s health. Our thoughts can quickly shift from motivating to damaging and when we produce too much cortisol (the body’s stress hormone), this can have negative physical and emotional implications for us.
Here are some ways to manage anxiety and stress
Mindfulness techniques: Mindfulness means different things to different people, however, it is really just paying attention to your life in the present moment (and being engaged with whatever is happening around you and within you). It’s living in the now rather than looking to the past or future too much and being grateful for the position you’re in. Mindfulness is often perceived as being linked to Buddhist practices but today it encapsulates a lot more and there are many activities associated with it, such as meditation, yoga, journaling, or even art.
Self-care activities: There are a range of self-care activities you can do that have been proven to help ease feelings of stress, worry, and anxiety. It’s all about spending some time allowing you to do the things that you love or that help you relax such as taking a bath or getting your nails done, journaling or debriefing with a friend
Relaxation techniques: Oftentimes our brain is feeling stressed because we are overwhelmed with our thoughts about something. We might be feeling like we have too much to do, not enough time, or just feeling pressure from a particular area of our life. Meditating or relaxation techniques can help our minds to de-clutter and focus solely on singular thoughts (rather than letting thoughts get away from us). It can help us to be mindful about what we are thinking and try to remove anything negative from our minds. It allows us to slow down, think more clearly, and gives us a mental ‘time-out’ from anything that is stressing us. Take some time to relax, even when you feel like you don’t have the time. You’ll certainly notice the difference afterwards. The aim of these exercises is to get yourself into a state of calm and relaxation and it can be anything that helps you to do this. Perhaps it’s trying breathing techniques or taking yourself to a meditation or yoga class.
Dietary adjustments: Our diet can affect our overall health, and if we’re not fuelling our bodies with the appropriate things, it can have an impact on many areas of our lives. Try making some adjustments guided by a health professional to ensure you are consuming the adequate nutrients for you.
Exercise: Exercise in any form has been proven to have many mental health benefits. It doesn’t need to be a full-on cardio workout; it can just be walking to the office, a yoga class, or doing some light stretching (or enough to get exert some anxious energy).
Get more sleep: Sleep in my opinion is a highly underrated tool for any mental issues and in particular stress. Not enough sleep means our minds aren’t functioning properly and a lot of the time, the stress can feel worse because we’re running on a low amount of shut-eye. If you’re finding it hard to fall asleep because of the stress, download a calming app or read before you go to bed – it may help your mind wind down more effectively. Try to avoid watching TV or scrolling through your phone right before bed – this will mean your sleep will be negatively affected because of the blue lights affecting your circadian rhythm.
Sessions with a psychologist: Sometimes if you’re feeling stressed, being able to verbalise those feelings can do wonders. It might help to have someone there for you to vent your feelings, and it might help to have someone offer advice to manage it. Seek out a loved one or friend, however, if you don’t feel comfortable chatting with them, seek the help of a professional. Services such as Beyond Blue and Lifeline provide free over-the-phone support with trained experts. Services such as Lysn provide access to psychologists via video chat, which can be accessed from the comfort of your own home. A psychologist can provide coping techniques or Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to help you manage any of those feelings of worry.
Seek immediate help: If feelings and thoughts or worry are persistent and don’t seem to go away with any of the techniques mentioned, speak to a professional immediately or dial 000. This is especially important if those feelings and thoughts are damaging other areas of your daily life like relationships, work, study, sleeping, eating, or affecting you financially.
Nancy Sokarno is a psychologist at Lysn. Lysn is a digital mental health company with world-class wellbeing technology, which helps people find their best-fit professional psychologist while being able to access online tools to improve their mental health.
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