Worry vs. Anxiety: The Difference & Why It Matters

Worry, anxiety, and fear are part of the human experience. In fact, they serve important functions that have kept us alive for thousands of years.

While these terms are often used interchangeably, they’re distinct experiences with different purposes. And because they can have a negative impact on your quality of life if not managed properly, it’s important to understand these differences.

Let’s explore all three threat responses, starting with worry vs. anxiety: what they are, how to tell which you’re experiencing, and how to manage them better. In our next post, we will take a closer look at fear.

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Worry vs. Anxiety: What Are They?

Understanding the difference between worry and anxiety can help you understand what the mind and body are trying to do, choose the right coping strategy, and interrupt the cycle that can keep you stuck.

Both anxiety and worry are usually concerned with uncertainty, especially about the future. Using what we know from the past and present helps us to predict the future, which increases our chances of good outcomes and prepares us for possible challenges.

“The human brain is an anticipation machine, and ‘making future’ is the most important thing it does.”

Grupe & Nitschke, 2014, p. 1

While they share this function, they are distinct emotions.

Worry

Worrying is a cognitive process: a stream of repetitive thoughts about potential problems or threats, such as, “What if I fail the exam? Is she angry at me? What if I don’t find another job soon?”

It’s an attempt at problem-solving when there’s uncertainty about a specific, identifiable event or situation (Davey & Hampton, 1992).

Moderate unease can help you stay alert, motivated, and emotionally prepared. For example, if you’re worried about failing an exam, the act of worrying might make you study more, which will increase the chances of a good outcome. We explain this further in our article “Why I Worry.”

Anxiety

Anxiety is a whole-body state: physiological (bodily), affective (emotions), and cognitive (thoughts). Anxiety is anticipatory, meaning your fight/flight/freeze response is prepared for possible danger (Grupe & Nitschke, 2013).

It keeps your body on standby so it’s ready for whatever might happen. Stress hormones are coursing through you, your mind is preoccupied with threat, and you feel tense.

While it can be accompanied by specific worries, it’s often vague — just an uneasy feeling in the belly, a sense of dread, or a racing heart.

How to Tell the Difference Between Anxiety and Worry

To tell the difference between anxiety and worry, ask yourself these questions:

• Is it thought based (cognitive)?
• Is it specific?
• Are you trying to solve a problem that might occur?

If you answered yes to these questions, it’s probably worrying. For example, you keep thinking about a particular health, financial, professional, or relational problem in an attempt to solve it.

It’s more likely to be anxiety if you answer yes to these questions:

• Is it a physiological experience? For example, do you have a fast or pounding heart, sweating, trembling, or shortness of breath?
• Is it also emotional and cognitive? For example, are you experiencing apprehensive thoughts, feeling tense, on edge, or a sense of dread?
• Is it a general feeling without a specific or single cause?

It can be difficult to differentiate the two because anxiety and worry are related. Worry is often part of anxiety and can cause it, but you can be worried about something without being anxious (Gana et al., 2001).

How Worry Can Turn Into Anxiety

Worry can turn into anxiety when its problem-solving function gets blocked.

Worry is designed to help you consider and find solutions. But when a situation feels uncontrollable or you don’t trust your ability to cope, the mind keeps generating more what-if scenarios without finding any solutions.

This can create a vicious cycle: the more you worry without resolution, the more tense, restless, and uneasy — in other words, anxious — you feel. When you’re anxious, you worry more trying to regain control, but without a solution, the cycle is perpetuated (Davey & Hampton, 1992).

Factors that make this spiral more likely:

• High external locus of control
  A high external locus of control is believing that outcomes are beyond your control.
• Biased information seeking
  This is when you focus on the problem, rather than on solutions.
• Vacillatory worrying
  This is endlessly weighing up options and second-guessing decisions.
• Catastrophizing
  Catastrophizing is imagining worst-case scenarios and being unable to escape the what-if loop.

Managing Worry and Anxiety: Key Strategies

The goal isn’t to eliminate worry and anxiety; it’s to have some strategies to manage them more effectively.

Worrying

Because worrying happens in the mind, tools that interrupt unhelpful thoughts and stop the spiral are particularly useful. Here are some examples:

Can you control it?

Focus on what can be controlled, or at least the controllable elements of the matter. For example, I can’t control whether it rains on my wedding day, but I can control how I respond to it.

Structured planning

Find the source of concern and then write down what the problem is and what steps you can take to solve it. This can help you to organize your thoughts, create structure, and make the issue seem more manageable.

Build problem-solving confidence

If you doubt your ability to solve problems, practice this skill. You can solve smaller issues for an instant win or remind yourself of how well you’ve dealt with challenges in the past.

Anxiety

Anxiety is a whole-body experience, so body-based tools might be more effective.

Practice mindfulness

Anxiety can make you feel like you’ve left your body, entered some sort of trance, and spiraled out of control. That’s why mindfulness can be particularly helpful for anxiety: it brings you back to yourself and the present moment (Kraemer et al., 2020).

Cultivate self-acceptance

Learning to trust and accept yourself with or without anxiety can take time and effort, but small acts can make a big difference.

• Recognize your effort.
• Allow for mistakes. Everybody makes them, and there’s no need for perfection.
• Speak to yourself as you would to someone you love.
• Acknowledge the inner critic and replace harsh self-judgment with compassionate, realistic statements.

Have compassion

Trying not to feel anxious when you’re already feeling that way is often counterproductive. Remember, it’s OK to experience these feelings, and although it feels uncomfortable, it’s actually trying to help you.

Therefore, have compassion for your anxiety and yourself. Acknowledge, “I feel anxious right now” and then use body-based tools instead of chastising yourself.

Seek support

In some cases, it can be difficult to manage excessive worry or anxiety on your own.

So, if you’re feeling overwhelmed by what you’re experiencing, it might be helpful to seek support from a trained professional, such as a therapist. They can help you to understand what’s happening and explore strategies to suit your unique needs and circumstances.

Constant worry can have a detrimental impact on health. We examine this in our article “Worry and Health: How Chronic Worry Undermines Health.”

Use anchor cards

Anchor cards are physical pocket-friendly cards that you can slip in your wallet and keep with you at all times. These card each have different prompts to encourage anchoring yourself in the present moment. Pull them out whenever needed, and use the minitools pause, breathe, and reflect.  You can order these convenient anchor cards here.

A Take-Home Message

Understanding worry vs. anxiety can help you respond appropriately. Worrying has a problem-solving function, while anxiety prepares your mind and body for a potential future threat.

In moderation, both can be helpful (even necessary), but when they spiral out of control, they can affect your quality of life. The good news is that in most cases, worry and anxiety can be managed with a few tried-and-tested tools.

What next?

If you’ve ever asked yourself, “Why do I worry so much?” the linked article takes a deeper look into that. You might blame yourself for being a chronic overthinker, but there is good advice for chronic overthinking in the linked articles.

In the next article, we’ll turn our attention to the difference between fear and worry, and why this distinction is important.

We hope you found some insight in this article. Don’t forget to download our five positive psychology tools for free.