Worry, anxiety and stress are all different. Here’s how to tell them apart

Between the climate crisis, rising cost of living and global conflicts, many of us are feeling more stressed, anxious and worried.

Indeed, anxiety disorders are the most common mental health conditions in Australia, with a higher prevalence among young people and those in the LGBTQ community, while the National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing found 15 per cent of Australians experienced high or very high levels of psychological stress between 2020 and 2021.

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But if you had to take a beat and pinpoint exactly which of the three you were feeling, could you?

Worry, stress and anxiety are all different, although related, responses and it’s important to know the difference because each requires different coping strategies.

Stress

Elizabeth Talbot, a clinical psychologist and founder of Clinical Therapy in Sydney, says stress is one of the biggest presentations clients are coming to her with at the moment.

Stress is a response to external factors, she explains, such as work or relationship breakdowns. It can be short-lived (acute stress) or ongoing (chronic stress).

Michaela Pascoe, a senior research fellow at Monash University, says stress is something that happens in the body or brain, and isn’t always a bad thing.

As our inbuilt fight or flight response, stress was an evolutionary essential that kept us safe from predators. Stress’s survival function is called adaptive stress, says Pascoe, and maladaptive when it has no function.

But how we cope with it matters. Building resilience and learning to deal with stress can prevent the development of chronic stress, which keeps our bodies in a prolonged fight or flight state and can have serious health implications.

“If we think about it in our plus and minus column, if we’re depleting our resilience because of the various stressors we encounter, we can build up our resilience as well by doing things that are positive for our mental health and wellbeing,” Pascoe says.

How to cope with stress:

• Managing stress is about managing external factors, says Talbot. This might involve prioritising certain tasks or dropping commitments that can be dropped.
• Use relaxation techniques, such as breathing and muscle relaxation exercises, to manage the physical effects of stress.
• Of course, not all sources of stress can be eliminated. In these situations, Pascoe says it’s important to do things to alleviate stress, such as spending time with friends, leisure-based physical activity or going out into nature.
• Avoid “maladaptive” stress responses, such as drinking alcohol, says Pascoe.

Worry

Worry is an emotional state and behaviour, and “a symptom of anxiety that’s very future focused”, says Talbot.

“It’s all of the ‘what ifs?’... A lot of people will sit in worry because they’re trying to manage symptoms of anxiety in the present by worrying about the future.”

How to cope with worry:

• Schedule time to worry: Set aside 15 to 30 minutes each day (morning is best) to write down anxious thoughts and worries. It can be helpful to categorise these into those you can tackle, and those you can’t, to help with problem-solving and to feel more in control.
• Get out of your head: Since worry often involves ruminating on future events, Talbot says trying to stay in the present, often through mindfulness practices, is important.
• Talk it out: “Reach out and lean into your trusted relationships,” says Pascoe. “The thing about the experience of worry, anxiety and stress is that it can be quite isolating, so it is really important to get some social support.”

Anxiety

Both stress and worry can culminate in anxiety, which Talbot describes as “the body’s threat detector”.

But unlike stress, which has an obvious trigger, the causes of anxiety are often more abstract.

“Ongoing stress actually changes the way our brain functions and its structure. It makes us more primed to identify sources of danger, and more biased to look for them,” says Pascoe.

Those who are exposed to ongoing stressors are more likely to develop anxiety, she explains.

“We know that in childhood, while the brain’s developing, greater exposure to stressful events can prime people in adulthood to respond more strongly to stressful triggers and to find it harder to return to a state of calm.”

So even in the absence of a clear trigger, people can experience stress-related symptoms.

Anxiety is an umbrella term that encompasses different disorders, of which generalised anxiety is the most common, and can vary in severity.

How to cope with anxiety:

• Exposure therapy: Typically done under the supervision of a professional, this involves gently building up a tolerance to feared scenarios, says Talbot.
• Seek professional help: Pascoe says if you are dealing with anxiety, it’s important to talk to your GP and come up with a mental health plan, or to talk to your therapist or psychologist.
• Learn self-soothing techniques such as grounding exercises and guided meditation.

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