Eli5: What is the difference between being stressed and being anxious?
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Stress is generally caused by something. Work, home, kids, school, whatever. Anxiety is literally and uncontrollable release of chemicals in your brain.
Former mental health professional here. Here’s how *I* would ELI5:
Let’s say you you’re walking through the jungle in Africa and suddenly there’s a lion. Your heart starts to beat faster, you start to sweat, adrenaline begins pumping to help you either fight off the lion or run away as fast as you can. This is stress. It is a physical reaction to something your brain interprets as an immediate threat.
Fortunately for you the lion isn’t hungry and you manage to escape. But you’re still kind of spooked, so you decide to spend the rest of your time in the jungle close to your friends, and you give up your Eau de Bacon cologne, just to be safe. This is anxiety. It’s an emotional reaction to something your brain sees as a potential threat.
At the end of your safari, you go home to your decidedly lion-free hometown with a great story to tell. But you can’t help worry about the lion. What if it manages to track you down? You decide to booby trap your house Home Alone style just in case. This is *also* anxiety, but note the difference: it’s no longer helping keep you safe. This, then, would be akin to having an anxiety disorder.
Stress and anxiety are perfectly normal. They help us survive the lions/chemistry tests/quarterly shareholder reports we encounter in life. We are all anxious from time to time. The internet likes to conflate “being anxious about something” with “having an anxiety disorder.”
Of course there’s a little more to it than that but this is ELI5, so we’ll stop there.
Stress is a natural reaction to immediate danger. Anxiety is a fear of potential, future things.
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