Today we're talking about stress versus anxiety, how they're the same and how they're different. We get into how the body reacts to threatening situations and how chronic unprocessed stress can lead to anxiety. And you already know I'll be sharing practical tools and practices to help manage your stress and anxiety, like movement, mindfulness, meditation, and more
As we dive deeper, I also highlight the importance of identifying triggers and practicing nervous system hygiene. We discusses how to manage stress before it becomes chronic, offering valuable insights that could change your life.
From a chat about the significance of social support to the role of proper nutrition and hydration, this episode has it all. Remember, this conversation is focused on generalized anxiety, but why not take a trip down memory lane and check out episode 147 with trauma therapist Megan Irwin? There, you'll find an in-depth discussion about different types of interventions.
What is up? Hello there. My name is Jessica Paching Bunch, you can call me JPB, and this is Brain Body Resilience. This is a podcast dedicated to growth, human development and stressing a little bit less so you can go ahead and live a little bit more.
Speaker 2:
Hello, my friends, and welcome back to another episode of the Brain Body Resilience podcast. This is episode number 153, and I am, of course, still your host, jpb. We're going to talk about the difference between stress and anxiety. Today I was talking with someone about stress and anxiety and what the symptoms are attached to either, how they are the same and how they are different, and so I thought that would be a good thing to go over here with you as well. So let's get into it.
Speaker 2:
Stress and anxiety are both natural responses to threatening or worrisome situations. They both come from the fight or flight response from the sympathetic branch of your nervous system to prepare for danger. Stress is the body's reaction to that threat and anxiety is the reaction to stress. So you can imagine chronic, unprocessed stress can lead to chronic anxiety. Now, just to be clear, I am talking about generalized anxiety, not any of the specific anxiety diagnoses out there. I am not a clinician, but if you take a look back at episode 147 with my friend Megan Irwin, who is a trauma therapist, we talk a lot about different types of intervention for varying needs. So that's a good resource. If you haven't listened to that one, go check that out. So both stress and anxiety can be managed with the things that we talk about here, the things that make up our nervous system. Hygiene, so that we don't get there. Movement, breathwork, mindfulness, meditation, time in nature, proper nutrient and hydration, the basic sleep, as well as things like journaling and social support, is a big one.
Speaker 2:
Even though stress and anxiety are natural responses, they can be overwhelming, as we know. When we sense a threat, the body kicks into that sympathetic state which releases stress hormones into the blood, which makes your heart beat faster, sending more blood to your organs and limbs in order to be able to fight or flee. However, you need to deal with that situation. If that is the response, you also begin to breathe faster, your senses become sharper, your body releases nutrients into the blood to make sure you have all of the energy to do these things you need to do. The fight or flight response can be activated at any time. We feel real or perceived physical or emotional threat. So, as humans who live in a world where we depend on other people and social acceptance and we have a lot of emotional stress, especially in the way that we live here, in our fast-paced modern world, where it just never stops in its constant stimulation. A lot of this is subjective, because it is a real or perceived threat that activates the stress response.
Speaker 2:
With both stress and anxiety you might feel things like faster breathing, faster heart rate, faster heart and eat, anxious thoughts, general just unhappiness or thoughts of dread and worry, loneliness, overwhelm, digestive issues, things like dizziness, fatigue, brain fog. These are all shared symptoms between the two. A few things that are specific to anxiety things like sweating, tenseness in the muscles, tension in the muscles, nervousness, restlessness, which makes sense if anxiety is your body's reaction to stress. These are physical symptoms of the body's response to stress. So this is your sign that the stress is chronic and you are exceeding that stress threshold. Because these things do share so many of the same symptoms in the body, it can be hard to tell them apart and I often reference them both as a couple stress and anxiety and you may not always have anxiety with stress, but there's certainly chronic stress with anxiety. So they do go together as a pair and some people differentiate. I'm having a hard time talking. Some people differentiate with the idea that stress is short term while anxiety lingers a little bit. But chronic stress is long lasting too and it contributes to anxiety. That is long term. So you see the way that they are tied together.
Speaker 2:
We can approach both of these responses by accepting that we cannot control everything, which is a really hard thing for some of us to accept. We've talked about this a lot. The only things we can control are the ways that we respond, the ways that we show up the practices that we have. We can also celebrate our efforts rather than expecting perfection, because, if you're honest with yourself, it will never be good enough if we're seeking perfection, because there is no perfection. We are humans. Nothing is perfect. That's just how it is.
Speaker 2:
We need to learn what stresses us out, what are those triggers, what are the things that we need to pay attention to, that we can maybe use those tools that we have in advance to help us as preventative measures. I am having a tough one Preventative measures. I'm going to keep it rolling. I'm not editing any of this out. I am a real human person who obviously is not perfect. I love this example that ties into this.
Speaker 2:
So we have to learn what stresses us out, what our triggers are, so that we can use our tools as prevention, as a buffer to that stress, so that we are not getting to that point and only using these tools in crisis. We can also pay attention so that we know when to pause and use the tools that we have again in a crisis situation or as preventative measures to help us buffer so that we don't get to crisis. Something else to think about is, again, our intake the things that we're watching, the things that we're putting in our body, the things we're listening to all of this. Our diet is a huge one, and a couple of things that contribute greatly to stress are caffeine and alcohol. They both add to the stress response. Then we can just remember the basics Get enough sleep, move your body daily, eat your fruits and veggies, drink water, and remember that stress and anxiety are not necessarily bad things that we need to avoid. They are necessary responses that keep us alive and they give us information about what is important to us. But if we're not intentional about processing and managing our stress daily and using the tools that we have as preventative practice rather than just to put the fire out, so practicing your nervous system hygiene, we can manage the stress before it is chronic, and it takes practice and it takes intention Things that we're not going to be able to show up and do are things daily, but that's why our nervous system hygiene tools are not lengthy.
Speaker 2:
They're not an hour at a time, they're not an all day event. They are things that we can take two minutes to ourself to do while we're at work or anywhere else, while we're in the car driving. We can take five minutes here and there. If you have 20 minutes, if you have an hour, great, do that. But we know that's not really realistic in our daily lives a lot of the time, and so it's those little pieces that we can practice over and over again that add up. That is all for today. I want to thank you for being here. You know that I do not take your time and attention for granted. If you found this episode useful, please do share it with a friend so they might also find some use in it. We'll do this again next week. Until then, I hope you have a beautiful week. I am out of here.