Fear and anxiety are similar emotions that often co-occur and are easily mistaken for one another. Fear is a strong biological response to imminent danger. Anxiety is marked by apprehension and worry over things that may or may not occur. Both emotions can feel the same, but there are some important differences to note.
To fully understand the difference between fear and anxiety separately, you must review their similarities and their differences. You can start by exploring the physiological, psychological, and physical symptoms of both emotions. From there, you’ll know how to differentiate between the two as they occur. Finally, it’s also important to know when it might be time to seek professional help if you have a repetitive, extreme fear or a generalized anxiety disorder.
There’s a distinct, key difference between fear and anxiety. Fear results from a clear and present danger, while anxiety results from the anticipation of an unspecified threat. Each of these emotions is marked by unique expressions of mental and bodily effects.
Expert Insight
“Fear and anxiety can feel like the same thing as the symptoms are quite similar. While it’s difficult to tease it out at the moment, gaining insight if one is experiencing fear over anxiety is important. Anxiety often stems from an unclear threat, while fear is based around a real and clear threat. It’s not to say that fear and anxiety don’t work together, but that they tap into different triggers.”Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC), MS Minkyung Chung
Fear is an uncontrollable survival emotion that serves to protect us from real danger. Humans have evolved over time, with their sense of fear intact, to stay alive and safe from harm.
The limbic system is called your “emotional brain.” We experience fear when it’s a perceived threat, like when someone suddenly touches your back, or when you hear an animal running up toward you, or when you smell smoke coming from your child’s bedroom.
Fear can cause marked changes in smell, taste, hearing, touch, and vision — all the senses that provide information about the perceived threat you’re facing. Fear prepares you to either enter into battle or flee for your safety.
The sensation of fear is immediate and beyond your control. What you can control, however, is how you manage fear symptoms. That said, you can’t always stop them from occurring in the first place.
The purpose of fear is to fuel your flight-or-fight fear response to external stimuli. It causes multiple symptoms that are similar to those of anxiety. Let’s take a closer look at the symptoms that fear can cause.
As emotions go, fear causes some of the most noticeable changes in the brain and body. That’s because we’re forced to pay attention to our fear. Anxiety, on the other hand, is not imperative for survival. That’s why we sometimes don’t feel symptoms of anxiety quite as strongly or instantly as we might experience fear.
There are some common physiological, psychological, and physical symptoms of fear.
Physiological symptoms of fear:
Psychological symptoms of fear:
Physical symptoms of fear:
Anxiety is a sense of vague apprehension. It can be difficult to know how to diagnose anxiety disorders. It makes you feel unpleasant, negative thoughts and you often can’t understand why. What causes anxiety is imprecise threats that may or may not have any foundation. It’s a general sense of dis-ease, like how you might feel when walking down a dark, quiet city street in the middle of the night.
Anxiety is believed to have evolved in humans as a mechanism for protecting us against threats that may not even exist. Overwhelming anxiety gives us warnings that something dangerous might be about to happen.
For instance, you might get anxious because you believe that you could be attacked by a bear while walking in the woods. However, there may be no bears for miles around you. Anxiety isn’t completely useless though, because there actually could be a bear nearby. Ultimately, anxiety can serve to help keep you alert but causes harm when it goes too far.
Physiological symptoms of anxiety:
Psychological symptoms of anxiety:
Physical symptoms of anxiety:
Fear and anxiety both cause similar co-occurring physiological, psychological, and physical symptoms. Though the symptoms can overlap, it’s not uncommon if you experience an independent, unique experience, either.
Sometimes, it can be challenging to tell the difference between fear and anxiety, especially when you’re actively having symptoms. Still, if you’re experiencing fear or anxiety (or both), it’s not likely that you’ll even be questioning the differences at that time.
The differences in symptom expression between fear and anxiety are centered on several factors, including:
In short, the difference between fear and anxiety are:
Fear starts very suddenly as a fight-or-flight response to a well-defined threat.
Anxiety onsets in response to an unspecified, possibly non-existent threat.
Expert Insight
“Working through and lowering levels of fear and anxiety are very similar. It’s about teasing out the stimuli that manifested those emotions. Understanding the stimuli reaction helps to define the next steps of working through those emotions.”Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC), MS Minkyung Chung
Chronic anxiety and fear have both been linked to mental health conditions, including generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), social anxiety disorder (SAD), panic disorder, and specific phobias like agoraphobia or arachnophobia.
The National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI) reports that an estimated 20% of adults in the United States experience symptoms of anxiety conditions each year. Women are more likely to be affected than men.
If you’re experiencing repetitive, worsening symptoms like the ones we’ve discussed here, and they’re beginning to interfere with your functioning and daily life, it might be time to learn about how to treat anxiety or fear, as well as go in for a screening. You can reach out to a therapist or contact a doctor to start the process. Your doctor will review your medical history and try to discern a possible cause for your symptoms.
Expert Insight
“The two are so similar it’s hard to figure out what a person is struggling with at that moment. A mental health professional can help with learning the differences and the coping skills necessary to be successful in managing both fear and anxiety.”Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC), MS Minkyung Chung
If a diagnosis is made, you’ll likely be referred to different types of therapy for anxiety and fear such as online therapy. Then, you can begin treatment and learn new coping skills to better control the chronic fear or anxiety you’ve been experiencing. You don’t have to let fear or anxiety take over your life. Get the skills and coping tools you need to overcome your fear and anxiety, and you’ll begin on the path to a healthy, rewarding life.
Tovote, Philip et al. Nature reviews. Neuroscience vol. 16,6 (2015): 317-31. doi:10.1038/nrn3945. Accessed February 5, 2022.
Hilary Jacobs Hendel. NAMI org. Published 2021. Accessed February 5, 2022.
Minkyung Chung has over 10 years of experience and specializes in multicultural issues, specifically issues unique to the Asian American population. She enjoys working within the Asian American community to help reduce the stigma associated with seeking mental health services and normalize the process of it. Her passion for this topic has led her to focus her research efforts in examining how to help the Asian American community.
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Sometimes it feels as if your bereavement will never end. You feel as if youd give anything to have the pain go away; to have the long lonely hours between nightfall and dawn pass without heartache. You are not the only grieving person who has longed for some measure of relief.In the novel, My Sisters Keeper, author Jodi Picoult wrote, There should be a statute of limitations on grief. A rule book that says it is all right to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after 42 days you will no longer turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call out your name.No such rule book exists. Grief counselors and therapists tell us that the length of time it takes anyone to grieve the loss of someone they held dear to them is dependent on the situation, how attached you were to the deceased, how they died, your age and gender. So many variables exist and theres absolutely no way to predict how long it will take for you to adapt to your loss.The Difference Between Normal and Complicated GriefResearch findings have led experts to come up with many differing categories of grief experience ranging from normal to complicated. Normal (or uncomplicated) grief has no timeline and encompasses a range of feelings and behaviors common after loss such as bodily distress, guilt, hostility, preoccupation with the image of the deceased, and the inability to function as one had before the loss. All are normal and present us with profound, and seemingly endless, challenges. Yet, Katherine Walsh says, Over the course of time, with average social supportmost individuals will gradually experience a diminishment of these feelings, behaviors, and sensations. So, how can you know if your bereavement is no longer within the range of normal? Ms. Walsh goes on to say, While there is no definitive time period by which this happens, if an individual or members of a family continue to experience distress intensely or for a prolonged periodor even unexpectedly years after a lossthey may benefit from treatment for complicated grief.A Useful Model for Assessment: Wordens Four Tasks of MourningThere are certain tasks that, when achieved during your bereavement, can successfully allow you to emerge on the other side of loss as a better, stronger, and more resilient individual. James Worden proposed these four tasks: To accept the reality of the loss To process the pain of grief To adjust to a world without the deceased To find an enduring connection with the deceased in the midst of embarking on a new life Instead of focusing on your bodily discomforts, feelings, and common behaviors, this model allows you to better see where you may be stuck or stalled in the adaptive process. Fortunately, Worden also gives us a list of indicators advising that "any one of these clues in and of itself may not be sufficient" for a diagnosis of complicated grief. "However," he continues, "any of theseshould be taken seriously, and the diagnosis of complicated grief should be considered when they appear."12 Clues... 12 InsightsWhile grief educators and theorists tell us that a diagnosis of complicated grief should not even be attempted until after the first anniversary of the death, if any one of the following symptomatic clues exists for longer than six months, you may want to consider grief counseling or grief therapy: You cannot speak of the deceased without experiencing intense and fresh grief long after the loss. A relatively minor event triggers an intense grief reaction. Your conversations with others are littered with references to loss. In other words, loss is an ever-present motif in your world view. You have issues related to your loved one's possessions. Keeping everything the same as before their death could indicate trouble just as tossing out everything right away can also be a clue to disordered mourning. (You also need to factor in your cultural and religious background) You have developed physical symptoms similar to those of the deceased before their death. Sometimes these symptoms recur annually, on the anniversary of the death, or on holidays. An increased susceptibility to illness or the development of a chronic physical complaint can also be an indicator. If you have made radical changes to your lifestyle, or excluded friends, family members, or even activities associated with the deceased, it may indicate unresolved grief. A long history of depression, often marked by guilt or low self-esteem, can reveal disordered mourning. The opposite is also true: a person experiencing a false sense of happiness or elation could be experiencing unresolved grief. A compulsion to imitate the deceased, in personality or behavior, can be a sign of complicated mourning. Having self-destructive impulses or exhibiting self-destructive behaviors can be significant. These can range from substance abuse, engaging in self-harm, developing eating disorders and suicidal tendencies. A sense of unexplained sadness occurring at a certain time each year (holidays, anniversaries, or birthdays) can also be a clue to unresolved grief. Developing a strong fear about dying, especially when it relates to the illness that took the life of your loved one, is an important clue. If you have avoided visiting your loved one's grave or if you are still unwilling to discuss the circumstances of their death, this could indicate complications in your bereavement. There are many types of complicated grief; it can be delayed, masked, exaggerated, or chronic. Self-diagnosis is without purpose. A year after the death, if you feel your grief symptoms worsening, we advise that you seek a referral from your family physician for professional grief counseling or therapy.Sources: Walsh, Katherine, Grief and Loss: Theories and Skills for the Helping Professions, 2nd Edition, 2012 Worden, James, Grief Counseling & Grief Therapy: A Handbook for the Mental Health Practitioner, 4th Edition, 2009
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Online Mental Health TherapyMental health support from anywhere, available fast Talkspace provides mental health support privately and conveniently online. Receive live video therapy appointments from a highly qualified licensed therapist covered by your Medicare or Medicare Advantage plan with little wait. Individual therapy, psychiatry, or couples counseling covered by your private insurance plan is also readily available.Talkspace provides:A private space to discuss relationships, retirement, grief, health conditions, financial concerns, life changes, and anything thats on your mindLive one-on-one therapy sessions from your computer or phoneTreatment for over 150 mental health conditions including anxiety, stress, grief, depression, OCD, BPD, and moreMessaging therapy allows you to share with your therapist 24/7 and receive feedback and advice, and is proven to be as effective as traditional therapy..Connect with a therapist within daysTalkspace will match you with a therapist who is licensed in your state and should be a good fit for your needs. Start communicating with your therapist in 1-2 days.Receive care on your scheduleTalkspace removes all the scheduling hassles so you can get mental health support anytime, anywhere. Send your therapist text, voice, or video messages through the secure Talkspace platform and hear back daily, 5 days / weekStart your care journey with Talkspace today, visit www.talkspace.com