Stress and Anxiety

Stress and Anxiety, while certainly different experiences, often feel very similar in their manifestations. Let's start with some of the differences within each area.

When talking about stress, it is important to understand that there are 2 main forms of stress: Positive stress, like a healthy relationship, and negative stress, like being stuck in traffic. All too often, people don't realize that positive stress is still stress, and calls for self care to avoid burnout; most of us, however, do understand the need for self care in response to negative stress. This is not to say that positive stress should be avoided or minimized in one's life. . .rather, it is simply to say that we have to cultivate self care for both. If not, we run the risk of turning the positive stress of a healthy relationship into negative stress as we begin to take our burnout on our loved ones. It is not difficult to see the not-so-healthy pattern that can emerge from this. . . and the pattern only creates more stress. Left to its own devices, unmanaged stress can lead to experiences of fear or anxiety (often fear/anxiety about getting more stressed, or about one's ability to effectively manage stress - especially the further out of control it spins).

Anxiety can range from relatively common fears and worries about failure, rejection, or pain, to more intellectual concerns about existential and spiritual beliefs. The forms of anxiety are too broad for this website, but I will list just a few of the more common:

Social Anxiety - Sometimes related to performance anxiety. A persistent feeling of being judged or watched by others, especially in social, romantic or professional situations. This anxiety often causes a person to withdraw from others (as a wallflower at a party, or by just not going to the party at all in order to avoid this feeling). People suffering from social anxiety often express a difficulty in grasping social norms in the moment. . . that they understand how to have a conversation in theory, but when faced with a new person to talk to, the understanding seems to vanish. Please understand, a person who is shy or introverted (shy and introverted are NOT the same though) may not suffer from social anxiety.

Performance Anxiety - Sometimes related to social anxiety. Most of us can remember the pangs of anxiety just before a major exam in high school or college; perhaps the nervousness before a theater production or band performance. Performance anxiety is more than just the normal butterflies before a production. Like social anxiety, a person may very well understand that they know the material, but the idea of performing in front of others becomes overwhelming, sometimes to the point of nausea or a full-blown panic attack.

Existential Anxiety - Anxiety relating to the meaning of life and death, etc. See existential link on this website for more information.

Financial Anxiety - This relates to concerns about being able to meet one's basic needs, and/or the basic needs of their family. In our society, our basic needs (food, clothing and shelter) are directly tied to our finances . . . if we are concerned about our money situation, it is likely because we are not sure where we are going to get rent from, or groceries, etc. When this type of anxiety manifests, it often keeps people on edge during the day, and awake at night.

Health Anxiety (in the extreme, where there is no actual physical problem, this may be referred to as Hypochondriasis) - When concerns about one's health becomes overwhelming due to actual physical conditions, or if one becomes consumed with anxiety about the possibility of declining health (i.e., finding out that you have worked for 15 years in an office with asbestos (a cancer causing material)). Here's an example of health anxiety can feed upon itself and make itself worse:

A man goes to the doctor to get his high blood pressure checked. . . the doctor comes into the room and tells the man that his blood pressure is still quite high . . . to this news, the man begins to talk about how he is certain that he will have a heart attack within the year, then begins to sweat, pace nervously, etc. All of this serves only to increase the anxiety, and the resulting blood pressure, even further.

It should be easy to see how both stress and anxiety have physical manifestations that can feed back into themselves if not addressed.

Genuineness

With stress and anxiety, being willing to call the issue/emotion what it truly is, is very important. To call stress or anxiety by the name 'anger' is neither accurate nor helpful (unless, of course, you understand the link between anger and anxiety--see the 'emotion tree' in 'Build a Better Buddha' by James Robbins). In such an example, to misrepresent an emotion and treat it as another impedes the process of awareness and resolution. However, one may likely experience a wide variety of emotions at any one time; it is important that each emotion be given due attention and accurate understanding. Specifically regarding stress/anxiety, being genuine about its manifestation is a step that keeps us grounded in reality. By being genuine about our experiences, we are brought to a place of clarity where stress begins to release, and action becomes more deliberate and efficient.

Awareness

As with any emotion or experience, awareness helps build a bridge between thought and action. It both presents the raw issue, and options for resolution. To begin, one should realize that the cause of stress could be both internal and external. For example, I may be genuinely concerned about the pain my foot feels when a bowling ball is dropped on it, but I can also complicate the stress of pain by losing control and flailing about unnecessarily. While easier said than done, recognizing that sometimes we create our own suffering will help us to minimize further stress, and very likely help to resolve the situation(s) at hand more effectively.

Trust

Trust your ability to manage stress and anxiety. Trust that the little things DO help. Also trust that other people will be able to help you, as long as you ask . . .nicely. Remember that giving trust also involves earning trust. When asking or offering help in stress/anxiety management, it is important that both people be honest to facilitate accurate understandings and interaction. By checking in occasionally, people are able to build trust by showing that they are listening and are hearing what is being said by simply stating it back to the speaker. This sort of active listening is called Reflecting, and does help to earn trust, as well as give it. By clarifying what you are hearing, you also offer trust to the other person; that they will correct you if you have made a mistake in your understanding. In turn, the other person comes to trust that you will make every effort to listen and genuinely understand their stressful/anxious situation.

Empathy

As Genuine Awareness facilitates Trust, all 3 combined facilitate Empathy. Since stress and anxiety are both similar concepts, and since they are both relatively global feelings that we all experience at one time or another, empathic support is already primed to help. Remembering that we all respond differently to our unique experience of various emotions, we can at least narrow down, via empathy, which direction to go in to help ourselves and others. Obviously, when somebody is stressed out or anxious, they will likely not need a high-energy, fear based pep talk. You know this because of both your own experiences of what has been helpful when stressed, and because of your instincts that have developed over your lifetime. Empathy for yourself, by definition, requires you to somewhat step 'outside' of yourself (meta-cognition, meta-awareness, 'witness stance') and to have compassion for your 'self.'