Worry vs Anxiety: What’s the Difference?

Disclaimer:  This is an informational post written by a trained mental health therapist however, said therapist is not your healthcare provider. Always consult with your own healthcare professional. This post is not a substitute for medical advice. 

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Worry vs Anxiety: What’s the Difference?

When I was a kid, I worried about everything.

I worried about waking up for school on time. I worried about disappointing my friends and family. I worried about my dad getting in a car accident on the way home from work and I worried about my parent’s finances.

Yes, my parent’s finances. 

A bit of context about the finances worry:  My dad was ill with Graves’s disease and missed a lot of work. We had mounting medical bills, insufficient income, past-due bills, and sometimes, not enough food in the home.

Now, obviously these were not “normal” worries for a nine-year-old kid but I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t a normal kid. 

But, it’s perfectly normal for a kid to be affected by their parents’ suffering especially since I was highly sensitive and empathetic and very much an old soul.

I learned later on that there is a term for a person like me:

an empath.

Empaths don’t like change and turmoil and there was quite a bit of both in my home life.

By the time I turned twelve, I was an old soul and full-blown worrier. People called me high-strung. They called me uptight. 

What the adults around me failed to see was that I was suffering from unchecked worry and for all I knew, everyone dealt with worry.

Around the age of fifteen, my worry crossed a line. I was no longer just worrying in my head, I was worrying in my body too.

 
Around the age of fifteen, my worry crossed a line. I was no longer just worrying in my head, I was worrying in my body too. Click to Tweet

Being a teenager is hard enough but when you add in symptoms of anxiety, it was a recipe for disaster.

As soon as my alarm went off in the morning, anxiety set in.

I frequently felt nervous with a faster than usual heart rate.

My palms were often sweaty and I always had a sense of doom and gloom or that danger was nearby.

It was exhausting. 

Now you might be wondering why the adults in my life didn’t notice how much I was struggling. That’s a story for another day but all I can say is my parents did the best they could with the cards they were dealt.  It’s pointless to think about the would’ve, could’ve, should’ve at this point.

From the age of fifteen to seventeen, several life-altering things happened in my family. These things shook me to the core and made me doubt myself and others. It made me question my entire life.

While I was questioning everything, worry and anxiety multiplied and came galloping into my life. They trampled all over me. I seriously felt like I was losing my mind.

Considering I was a college student at the time, losing my mind was not an option.

And the thought of losing my mind scared me.

Fear can be a motivating factor.

It’s what prompted me to reach out to multiple health care professionals (my primary care physician and a mental health therapist).

This turned out to be one of the greatest blessings of my life. Through hard work and tears and denial and resistance, I worked through my heavy load of shit and came out scarred but stronger on the other side.

Looking back, it’s clear to see that had I received help during those early worrying days, it’s possible I would not have transitioned into the anxiety phase. 

To understand this, it’s important that we examine the difference between worry and anxiety.

Worry vs Anxiety

• Worry is a thought process that happens in our mind and brain while anxiety is something that we feel in our mind and bodies {sweaty palms, faster heart rate, etc.,}.
• Worry is how our brain works to solve problems and it’s a perfectly normal response (with some exceptions) but anxiety? It’s not there to solve any problems. It’s there to cause problems.
• Worry creates mild to moderate emotional distress but anxiety creates moderate to severe emotional distress. It interferes with your day to day functioning and interrupts many aspects of your life.
• Worry generally occurs because of something specific {like turmoil in my family home, job stressors, etc.,} while anxiety has a tendency to be vaguer. We may know we’re experiencing anxiety but sometimes we can’t explain why we’re experiencing it.

In summary, anxiety is what happens when you avoid dealing with chronic worries and stress. My childhood story is proof of that.

You want to work on getting that worry under control before it turns into anxiety. 

How do you do that? 

• Acknowledge that you have a worrying problem.
• Explore what you can control vs. what you can’t control. =>This post explains more on that.
• Practice mindfulness. Get started by downloading Headspace or Calm.
• Start a worry journal. After twenty years of piecing together my own worry journal with sticky notes and scraps of paper, I finally sat down and wrote a minimal, straight to the point worry journal. 
• Use Progressive Muscle Relaxation before bed to help calm your mind and body.
• If you feel you need additional help, schedule an appointment with a mental health therapist.

The therapist that I saw in my late teens and early 20’s truly changed my life and let me tell you, we did a lot of hard work. Less than a decade later, I went on to become a therapist myself.

I earned a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and a Master’s degree in Mental Health Counseling. Over a ten year period, I had the honor of paying it forward and helping others change their lives.

Who would’ve ever thought that the girl with the old soul, with worry and anxiety, would go on to survive, thrive, and help others? 

Anything is possible my friends.

 

I hope this post has helped you understand worry vs anxiety more clearly. Let me know if you have any questions!

 

Worry vs Anxiety: What’s the Difference?