<strong><span style="color: #000000;">What is the difference between anxiety and fear?</span></strong>

Anxiety is based on fear but it is not the same as fear. For example, imagine that as you read this post, a scary person came into the room and threatened you with a gun. You would instantly be afraid and react to this "fear stimulus". Your body is wired with the sympathetic nervous system "flight or fight" response. This means that you are either going to fight back, or want to run away, or freeze until you can figure out what to do.

Taking this same example, anxiety would be if you spent time wondering "What if the bad guy comes back again?" Anxiety means that you are feeling the flight or fight response when there is no fear stimulus in your present environment.

Of course, there are very realistic reasons why we worry about bad things happening. This is usually based reasons such as past experiences, or bad news that we learn about from the media, or learned behaviors from other people.

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