Several mental health related terms get used casually with a lack of understanding of their true meaning and while sometimes it can have the effect of trivialising conditions, other times it can be more about using words interchangeably. One such case is that of the words ‘worry’, ‘fear’ and ‘anxiety’ that can often be seen as synonyms but are psychologically different experiences. The rest of this article explains how these three differ from one another.
The reason for ‘worry’, ‘fear’ and ‘anxiety’ being confused with one another or being seen as the same thing is because they all feel the same. The underlying emotion and responses to each are the same and what differs is the frequency and intensity of the emotion. In any experience of ‘worry’, ‘fear’ or ‘anxiety’, a part of our brains called the ‘amygdala’ is activated and we are pressured to make a quick decision on how to act on what is causing the emotion. What differentiates them is the intensity, frequency and justifiability.
Worry is caused by something real. There is always a genuine external factor causing it. This makes it highly justifiable. Being worried forces us to act on the external factor and avoid any harm it can potentially cause which makes worry a useful negative emotion to experience. Since, it is caused by potentially harmful external factors, it is not likely to be experienced very often as the frequency of such factors coming up in most of our lives is not very high. We don’t constantly or frequently have things to be worried about because we aren’t encountering potentially threatening situations all the time. We may only once in a way find ourselves in a worrisome situation like those where there is a high possibility that we could be physically harmed, have our money taken away from us or find a loved one in a similar situation. The level of worry is determined by the extent of harm (the extend of a potential injury or amount of money that may be lost) which could be caused and even though this level of worry may be high, worry is not a very deep emotion and its intensity remains shallow. It is the first step to deeper emotions of fear and anxiety.
Rather than the potentially harmful factors and what can be done about them, ‘fear’ focuses on the imagined outcomes of the harm. These could be an injury, the loss of a life or money amongst other things. For example, we may imagine falling over and injuring ourself when climbing down a flight of stairs. There is no real reason to be fearful other than the one we make up in our mind. This makes fears less justifiable. There is no external action that can be taken to avoid the feeling since its cause is non-existential. Another reason, fears are less avoidable is because they dwell in our minds and can be accessed all the time. Thus, fear tends to be more than worry. Also owing to being rooted in our minds, it a deeper and more intense emotion because our minds can amplify our worries and create false images for us to believe.
Anxiety is the most intense out of the three. It’s a state of fear that is intense enough to impair daily functioning and can cause bodily responses beyond increased heart rate, heavy breathing and dilated pupils, etc which can be a part of the body’s ‘fight or flight’ response to even worry and fear. The cause of anxiety is not as specific as those of worry and anxiety and can be much more vague and irrational. It is triggered by a much larger variety of stimuli compared to worry and fear which are caused by threatening stimuli and the imagined outcomes of threatening stimuli respectively. The stimuli triggering anxiety may not be directly related to any fear but the intensity of the emotion experienced in anxiety is higher and longer lasting. It is important to note that anxiety experienced beyond a certain degree can be classified as an anxiety disorder but not everyone who experiences anxiety suffers from an anxiety disorder.
We hope this article gave you some clarity on how worry, fear and anxiety are different.
By Niti Hinduja