Stress vs. Anxiety

What is Stress?

–Let's take a moment, close your eyes, and hear that rustle, the struggle, and the fear, what do you notice?

–According to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, Stress is a physical and emotional reaction that people experience as they encounter changes in life.

–It is an automatic response.

When we feel stressed, our body will react in a certain way, sometimes our tummy feel odd, headache, everything seems to be overwhelming.

And that’s true!!! Imagine you have a plate of food and you felt full, but someone tell you that you must finish your food.

Or your exam is coming, you spent hours and hours to study, and the next day morning, you felt like you did not learn or remember anything.

When you are stressed, you may not be able to sleep, sleeping late because you tried to study, not eating because your body didn’t feel it, felt like time is not enough, everything just comes to your way, right?

A stressful event can trigger our fight flight freeze mode where our brain trying to solve or analyze that event. Sometimes, your non-essential systems like digestion, immune and reproductive systems will shut down to save energy. Your breath may get shorter taking small quick breaths so you can take in more oxygen, your heart beats will increase, and your muscles may tense up so you can run and fight, and many more.

Sometimes, worry, stress, fear and anxiety are felt when our thoughts are on the future like: I have so much to do, time is not enough, I am worried about … and what if traffic is backed up and I am going to be late...

Stress and anxiety are closely related, but they are NOT the same thing!

–Stress = response to a threat in a situation

–Anxiety = reaction to the stress

You may think about the physical vs emotional

How to challenge, change and let go of stressful thoughts?

–Reframe and reflect

–What can I learn from this situation?

–What is another way to look at this situation? What else can this mean?

–What is the worst thing that could happen?

–How real is this?

–If it does not turn out, how are you going to cope with that?

–What is the best thing that could happen?

Acknowledge those stressful thoughts and when you feel stress, mad, anxious, sad, or anything, take a deep breath, flip the switch, connect with your inner self, evaluate how important, how real the situation is, look at the process, giving yourself the credit of starting, moving forward, or even noticing it, and let yourself know that this stress can turn into something good.

Stress might be telling me I need to take ONE step at a time

Anxiety might be telling me I need to be BRAVE

What Stress and Anxiety trying to tell you?