Understand The Relationship Between Fear And Anxiety

It is the worry one feels in the pit of their stomach when faced with a hard decision. It is the sweaty palms and rapid heartbeat right before a big test. It can be easily confused with fear, but anxiety is a slightly more complex feeling. Unease or nervousness are strongly associated with it. While it is an overall unpleasant feeling, anxiety has the ability to keep one safe. To understand what anxiety is one must understand what causes it, and the relationship between anxiety and fear.
Anxiety is a part of everyone’s life and there are an endless amount of things that can cause it. Unlike the high, Anastasia Toufexis describes, when falling in love, anxiety has quite the opposite response in the body. It is an excessive feeling of unease or tension. It is the worry over an undesired outcome. An example of what may cause anxiety would be a persons’ past experiences. If someone had recently been in a car
Fear and anxiety are closely related emotions. They both cause faster heart beat and sense of unease. They can both cause each other, however they are not interchangeable. There is a distinguishable difference between the two. Fear, generally, comes as a response to outward stimuli. It is a reaction to a perceived threat. In humans, it is felt when we believe we are in danger. For example, someone is walking home alone at night and are suddenly approached by a stranger. The rush of adrenalin felt from this would be fear. With this sudden threat, the body has the fight-or-flight response. The person must decide if they should run or try and confront the threat. Anxiety, on the other hand, would be felt without the stranger to trigger a response. Anxiety, in this case, is the worry that something might happen while one is walking home alone at night. Someone or something might attack. It is a feeling based on unknown future happenings, whereas fear is based on a present perceived