Latest / College Is Fine, Everything's Fine / #29 Microdose Episode Part 1: Stress vs. Anxiety

Transcript

#29 Microdose Episode Part 1: Stress vs. Anxiety · College Is Fine, Everything's Fine

Okay. One of our student ambassadors came to us with a question we actually get a lot, which is, what is the difference between stress and anxiety? So there's a lot of overlap. In general, stress is something that we all experience. It's typically related to an external trigger. Something like exams, a fight with a friend.And the idea is that once that trigger is gone or resolved, the stress goes. Sometimes stress can be long-term, like dealing with systemic racism or struggling to find a job after college. But 10 out of 10 people experience stress because life hands us all stressful things to deal with in varying doses.And then you have anxiety, which is stress that lingers once the stressful thing goes away, or it's wondering if something stressful is going to come. Both anxiety and stress show open your body in really similar ways, so stomach aches, muscle tension, insomnia, fidgeting, And then you have worry. That's essentially how your anxiety plays out in your head. So it's the thoughts you have when you're anxious or stressed. This exercise might help. So imagine you're in a boat and things are really calm on the water and they're calm in your mind. Then you see storm clouds in the distance.You start to think about what might happen, how you can plan for the storm, that kind of thing. And you've never been in a storm before. So you start to paddle, but you're not really fast enough. So the storm catches up to. You're drenched and the water is rising in the boat. So now you're bailing water like crazy.Your muscles are tense and your heart is racing. This is stress, and eventually the storm passes, the water drains from the boat. Your body and your mind start to calm down. Now that you're not in danger anymore. Okay, now think about the next time you're in a boat. Okay, now think about the next time you're in a boat, and there are a lot of ways it can go, but now that you've experienced a storm, you might be more likely to think ahead and wonder about if a storm could come or predict it might happen, even if the sun is shining when you leave the dock.This is anxiety. And what if you're not even on the boat, but you spend a lot of time thinking about what you might do if you ever got on the boat again, or your mind pulls you back to the time you were in the boat and your heart race is just thinking about it. This is worry. And if you can't seem to get rid of these worry thoughts, they just keep cycling back with no helpful conclusion.That's called rumination. It's basically worry thoughts that just feel a little stickier and they're harder to get rid of or let go of. In a lot of ways, the definitions of this stuff has a lot of overlap, and it's not always useful to know where the exact line is drawn between them.The bigger question is whether or not your stress, your anxiety, your worry is unrelenting. It's not improving when the external world is calmed down or is it getting in the way of things for you, like your friendships, your sleep, or your classes? If you feel like stress, anxiety, or worry is a part of your life, then stay tuned because we're gonna be sharing some microdose episodes on this topic in the coming week. We're also gonna have a full episode in stress management this month. If you can't wait, then there are a few episodes in the hopper that might help, which we've listed in our show notes.So that's all for now, but if you wanna be one of the first to get these micro episodes coming up, then make sure to subscribe.