Stress and anxiety can get mixed up, as one often leads to the other. According to the National Institutes of Health, stress stems from something that makes you feel frustrated, while anxiety causes you to feel uneasy and fearful, usually from multiple stressors or a long-term stressor. An excessive amount of stress can compound into an anxiety disorder, where you have symptoms that interfere with your life and require medical attention.
Fight-or-Flight Response
Both stress and anxiety are caused by the fight-or-flight response, which is the body's response to a stressor, or an incident of stress, according to the Help Guide website. The fight-or-flight response is a reaction of the sympathetic nervous system, a division of the autonomic nervous system, which causes symptoms like a racing heart beat, sweating and labored breathing. After the stressor goes away, the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in and relaxes the body. Severe anxiety, like an anxiety disorder, differs from stress because the sympathetic nervous system activates without a stressor present. For example, if you have a panic disorder, you can have a panic attack even if there is no trigger.
Need for Medical Intervention
Another difference between stress and anxiety is how they are treated. Stress can usually be dealt with by relaxation and stress management. With stress management, you identify, eliminate or lessen the cause of the stress. You can also use relaxation techniques, like meditation, to diffuse any built-up tension. The Help Guide website adds that when you are stressed out, you can also strengthen your existing relationships to create a support system to help you cope. A patient with an anxiety disorder, however, may require additional medical intervention to deal with symptoms. One treatment option is therapy, such as cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure therapy, which helps the patient identify the cause of the anxiety and develop healthy coping mechanisms. Medication, like antidepressants and benzodiazepines, may be prescribed to lessen the severity of the symptoms.
Duration
Since stress is a response to a particular situation, the duration of symptoms lasts as long as the situation. When you have a continuous stressor, like job problems, that leads to anxiety, the symptoms can last much longer. For example, if you have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a type of anxiety disorder cause by a traumatic event, you may experience symptoms for the rest of your life, if the cause is severe enough.
