Stress is a state of mental or emotional strain caused by adverse circumstances, stress is a normal reaction to everyday pressures, but can become unhealthy when it upsets your day-to-day functioning.
Anxiety is a mental state of both distress and arousal set off by sensing uncertain danger. It is characterised with a continuous feeling of worry and fear in anticipation of some future bad outcome. It decreases the quality of life and can even prevent a person from doing things which should be a part of a normal life.
Both stress and anxiety are emotional responses, but stress is typically caused by an external trigger.
Such trigger can be short-term or long-term. But regardless of its trigger stress can cause a wide range of negative mental and physical symptoms, such as irritability, anger, exhaustion, racing heart, muscle pain, digestive troubles, difficulty sleeping etc.
Anxiety, on the other hand, can occurred without a particular stressor. But is characterized by persistent, excessive worries that don’t go away on its own.
Anxiety has very similar or even nearly identical symptoms as stress like insomnia, difficulty concentrating, tiredness, muscle tension, excessive irritability etc.
Other similarity between the two is that both mild stress and mild anxiety respond well to similar coping mechanisms, for example regular physical activity, yoga, meditation, deep breathing exercises, a nutritious and healthy diet, good sleeping habits, and other techniques which are used to decrease the tension of the body and mind.
So, instead of wasting your time on trying to figure which one do you have…do something about it, educate yourself about different coping techniques and just pick one! Find a healthy way to relax and unwind!