Often, people contact me about working with me and they want to know, whether what they are experiencing is stress, or anxiety. Some of the symptoms are the same or similar, so how can you know what you are experiencing, and more importantly, what steps can you take, to deal with it?
How To Tell If You Are Experiencing Stress
Stress is a response to something, usually something that is happening externally, outside of you. The situation becomes too much and your body begins to give you warning signs that the external pressure is becoming too much for you. Things that create stress for us can include money problems, work problems, relationship problems, and stress can begin by a small seed of worry.
This small seed spirals and grows, and before we know it we are not eating properly,. we are not sleeping properly, and our body and physical health, as well as our emotional and mental health begins to suffer.
Stress can manifest as physical symptoms such as palpitations, rapid pulse and higher blood pressure, insomnia and feeling tired, headaches and migraines and digestive issues.
The way to handle stress is to identify the pressures and external ‘things’ that are causing stress for you and then look at what you can do to minimise them. Talk to your bank, talk to a therapist, make sure that you are exercising and eating right. Stress usually resolves itself when the things that are stressing you are identified and addressed.
How To Tell If You Are Experiencing Anxiety
Anxiety can feel very similar to stress in terms of the physical symptoms. However, where the root cause of stress can often be pinpointed, anxiety tends to be less logical. Anxiety tends to be based around worrying about something that hasn’t even happened yet. It can be illogical, or logical, but it is often fear based, and is related to the what ifs in life.
Anxiety can be all consuming and does not have to be about something specific, it can be generalised.
However, anxiety CAN be specific, it can be related to a specific fear or phobia for example, and can be something that is triggered.
So How Do You Treat Anxiety If You Are Not Sure Why You Are Feeling Anxious?
We talked about reducing stress by addressing the actual things that are going on for us, but what if you are not sure what is going on for you? What if your anxiety is more generalised? Well, the way to treat anxiety is to treat the actual symptoms rather than the cause, because often the cause of our anxiety is up for question.
We can work on our anxiety, we can reduce the feelings and symptoms, and in doing so, we get to change our experience.
To help you with this journey, I am offering 50 % off my ANXIETY BREAKTHROUGH KIT so that you can start actively tackling your anxiety immediately. All you need to do enter the code take50 at the checkout and you will get 50% off your total.
I hope that this article helps YOU to identify whether you are experiencing stress or anxiety and as always if you would like talk to me to find out about working one to one with me, please do book your free phone consultation here.
I hope that you have a great week
Speak soon
Christopher Paul Jones.
