The Line Between Stress and Anxiety

Molly Belmont writes in the Albany Times Union about the blurred line between stress and anxiety.

The article posits that a clear delineation between the two is easily derived. Stress is based on actual events and eventually dissipates, where anxiety is a more pervasive worry aligned with various aspects of ones life.

John Forsyth, an associate professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Albany has written a book, The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Anxiety, and he’s a proponent of a new therapy technique called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT.

According the Forsyth, the key of ACT is to get patients to separate their disorder from how they feel about themselves. That sounds a little like the concept of self-compassion that I wrote about in my posting Compassion for Self Healing .

Psychologist Terry Mooney provides some common examples to point out the differences Mooney sees between stress and anxiety:

Most people wake up in the middle of the night once in a while. People with an anxiety disorder wake up several times a week, and can’t fall back asleep for 15 minutes or more. Sometimes, they wake up flailing, or suffer from nocturnal panic attacks, Mooney said.

Most people feel nervous in social situations. People with an anxiety disorder wouldn’t go into social situations. They would avoid them, or they would drink or use substances to numb themselves, Mooney said. High co-morbidity exists between alcoholism/substance abuse and anxiety disorders.

Most people worry about family and loved ones. People with an anxiety disorder worry mostly about themselves, Mooney said. Without assistance, their health, their job, their ritualized behavior can become all-consuming, leaving little room for the other people or activities in their lives that they enjoy.

The blurred line between stress and anxiety

Stop Being a Jerk in 5 Steps

ZenHabits has a cute entry on how to stop being a jerk in five tiny steps.

Why would I link to such a thing here? Because some of the concepts are very applicable to developing a clear mind, free from worry, dread, and anxiety, and these things can help us improve our behavior and how we interact with others, all of which will serve to introduce a sense of peace and calm. And who couldn’t use a little of that?!

1. Admit you’re not perfect – now, it’s not like any of us control freaks and anxiety sufferers are perfectionists or anything. Right? We all find it incredibly easy to just say, “Whoops, messed that up! My bad!” And we never beat ourselves up afterwards, right? Bueller? Bueller?
2. Place  yourself in the shoes of others – that one is pretty obvious, but let me add a twist to it. When we spend time and energy learning different perspectives, it also gives us insight into how we might be seen by others. The results are often interesting.
3. Act with compassion and kindness – we’ve already had some discussion about self-compassion and how often we’re willing to cut others slack but not ourselves. So practicing kindness toward others is a good way to develop a sort of psychological muscle memory to remind us to do it all the time – and not just with others.
4. Practice, practice – again, a no-brainer, but persistence is really important, especially in dealing with panic and anxiety. We’re not always going to be successful. We’re not always going to get it right. But the old sports adage is that you play like you practice, because it becomes habit.
5. Do 5 little things – ZenHabits refers to performing 5 simple acts of kindness each day as a way to ward off your inner-jerk, and that’s good advice. Can you commit to performing a couple of kind acts for yourself everyday too?

5 Tiny Steps to Quit Being Such a Jerk