Scared, afraid, anxious, and worried: how are they different? | Psychology 💡
Scared, afraid, anxious, and worried: how are they different?
We often confuse fright, fear, anxiety and anxiety. What distinguishes these phenomena? Why are they needed at all? And how do we distinguish between healthy anxiety and unhealthy anxiety?
- Scared.
It is a reflex reaction to a potential threat. Scared occurs against our will, automatically, when we see, hear, or feel something potentially dangerous.
- Fear, anger, and numbness
We've been frightened; now our brain needs something to respond to that feeling. Depending on the situation, it chooses one of three options: hit, run, freeze.
- Anxiety
This emotion is a reaction to a future threat. It reflects only a premonition of events that are dangerous to us. For example, a dog barking around the corner is fright and fear. We think that now a dog might come around the corner and bark, which is anxiety.
- How do we distinguish between healthy anxiety and unhealthy anxiety?
Healthy anxiety is the kind that objectively improves life. And unhealthy anxiety is about danger, which does not correspond to reality and exists only because of our imagination. You could say that unhealthy anxiety is the construction of a negative scenario in your head that is unlikely to happen.
