Is It Anxiety or Just Stress? How to Tell the Difference

“I am so anxious.” “That gives me anxiety.”

These are some of the dramatic proclamations I hear quite often these days. We all like to throw some of that vocabulary around, using psychological distress as a kind of shorthand for our experiences.

However… are you really feeling anxious?

The problem I find with these kinds of phrases is that, by the time clients come to me, they have already decided they “have anxiety” or “have depression.” And here’s the thing - when did we start labelling normal life experiences as psychological distress or mood disorders? The line between anxiety (a clinical condition) and stress (a normal adaptive response) has become increasingly blurred.

You’re overwhelmed. Your chest feels heavy. Your thoughts won’t slow down. And suddenly, we are naming this anxiety.

In some ways, this can make sense. Stress and anxiety can feel and look very similar in the body: racing thoughts, irritability, tension, the inability to switch off. But while they overlap, they are not the same - and perhaps we need to be a bit more conscious or intentional about how we name our emotions and feelings.

It’s a sad reality that people use diagnostic words like “I have anxiety” or “I have depression” when really, we’re just feeling stressed or low. Understanding the difference isn’t about diagnosing yourself or minimising what you are feeling; it’s about making sense of your experience. When you know what you’re feeling, it becomes easier to know what you need.

Sometimes, what I’ve found with clients is that something as simple as how we talk about our emotions ; as in the actual vocabulary we use - helps. It’s not about minimising a genuine experience; it’s about being able to name the experience accurately.

Stress and Anxiety as a Spectrum

Let’s think about stress and anxiety as existing on the same spectrum.

On one end, we have stress; a natural and healthy response to a perceived demand or pressure in our external world. You have a deadline, an exam, a hospital appointment, a difficult conversation coming up, and your body activates to help you cope.

If stress sits on one end of this spectrum, then on the other we have anxiety; an irrational, sometimes disproportionate or maladaptive response to a perceived fear of what is going to happen next. It is often more a reaction to our internalworld than our external one.

Stress often has:

• A specific trigger (work pressure, financial worries, a busy week)

• A physical response (tense shoulders, headaches, faster heartbeat)

• A clear start and end point (when the task, threat or event ends, the stress begins to settle)

Anxiety tends to:

• Last longer than stress

• Be less connected to one specific event

• Spiral into other worries and “what if” thinking

• Show up as restlessness, muscle tension, overthinking or avoidance

• Feel harder to control, even when you know you’re safe

  
  

In small and manageable doses, stress can actually be useful. It helps us take action, focus, meet responsibilities, and navigate life. It’s also a very normal response. Heightened cortisol is meant to be a driving force that helps us get things done.

There’s a term I came across while reading, coined by Nassim Taleb: “antifragility.” It highlights that people can benefit from stressors and challenges, that we can develop an internal sense of resilience when we undergo periods of manageable stress. You can visualise this like a muscle strengthening after strain: antifragile systems improve when exposed to tolerable challenges.

As a mental health activist, I love that mental health has become part of everyday conversation. Awareness campaigns have encouraged self-reflection, self-identification and psychoeducation, and that’s a good thing.

However, it also means that psychological language has entered our daily vocabulary in ways that can blur the boundaries between normal discomfort and clinical distress. The risk is that people begin to interpret natural emotional pain or stress as evidence of a disorder.

And there is a difference.

Where stress usually has a clear, external cause, anxiety can often persist without an identifiable trigger. Stress is temporary, it subsides once the stressor passes. Anxiety is chronic, it can linger even when life is calm.

Stress is adaptive: it motivates action, focus, and problem-solving.Anxiety is maladaptive: it drives avoidance, hyper vigilance, and exhaustion.

In short:

Stress is a response to life.

Anxiety is when that response becomes your life.

Sadly, we now live in a context that removes normal challenges while simultaneously amplifying perceived threats, constant digital comparison, 24/7 news cycles, curated perfection, and the pressure to be “well” at all times.

This makes it even more important to ask the question:

Is it stress, or is it anxiety?

Learning to distinguish between the two helps us normalise stress as part of being human - it’s our nervous system doing its job. And encouraging manageable exposure to challenge helps us strengthen our capacity to cope, to become what Taleb might call “less fragile.”

So let’s not medicalise the very real and necessary stress that comes with being alive - without, of course, minimising when stress does cross the line into anxiety. Because there is a difference.

If you’re curious about how anxiety and stress shows up for you or finding ways to better manage your stress or anxiety, then therapy may be for you. Book an initial free consulation here.