When Stress Becomes Anxiety: Is It a Problem or a Prediction?
All through September, we talked about your nervous system: stress signals, regulation, and the idea that calm isn't the only healthy state. This month, we're taking that conversation one step further into anxiety.
Anxiety doesn't always look like a panic attack. Sometimes it looks like overthinking, irritability, procrastinating, or being incredibly productive. Sometimes it's asking "are you sure you're not mad at me?" for the third time, Googling the same question for the fifth time, or lying awake at 2 a.m. holding a very serious meeting with yourself about a problem that doesn't exist yet.
In this episode, Jessica breaks down the difference between stress and anxiety, why anxiety has such a hard time with uncertainty, and one simple question that can help you create a little space between you and the worry.
In this episode, we talk about:
How stress and anxiety overlap, and how they're different
Why stress usually responds to what is happening, while anxiety responds to what might happen
Anxiety's difficult relationship with uncertainty, and how it tries to create certainty through overthinking, preparing, Googling, and reassurance-seeking
Why planning and worrying are not the same thing
The key question: Am I dealing with a problem, or a prediction?
Why your body reacts to an anxious story as if it's happening right now
Why the goal isn't to stop worrying, but to start recognizing what's happening when anxiety shows up
Try this this week:
When you notice yourself getting caught in a worry, pause and ask:
What is actually happening right now?
What am I predicting might happen?
Is there an action I need to take, or am I trying to create certainty?
You don't have to make the anxiety disappear. Just notice.
Coming up next week: Your anxiety is actually trying to protect you, even when it's making your life harder. Understanding why your brain learned to do this can help you stop fighting anxiety and start responding differently.
Free resource:
Feeling disconnected from yourself, or so used to pushing through that you're not sure what you need anymore? Download Your Personal Care Plan, a free guide to help you slow down, check in, and think intentionally about what actually supports you. Find it in the resource library at heal.jessicacolarcolcsw.com.
Want to go deeper? Explore courses and other offerings at heal.jessicacolarcolcsw.com.
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Transcripts
Jessica (:
Welcome back to Healing is My Hobby. I'm Jessica Colarco, a licensed clinical social worker, therapist, and someone who believes that healing doesn't have to become
Another thing you have to perfect. All through September, we talked a lot about your nervous system. We talked about stress signals, we talked about regulation, we talked about the idea that calm isn't the only health state. And we talked about paying attention to what your body might be trying to tell you instead of immediately trying to make the uncomfortable feelings go away.
And this month, I want to take that conversation one step further. I want to talk about anxiety. This is obviously a big topic for me. Anxiety is something I work with every day in my therapy practice. And over the years, I've seen just how many different ways it can show up. Because anxiety isn't always someone having a panic attack. Sometimes anxiety looks like overthinking, irritability.
Sometimes it looks like needing to know exactly what the plan is. Sometimes it looks like procrastinating. Sometimes it looks like being incredibly productive. Sometimes it looks like asking someone, Are you sure you're not mad at me? And then asking again twenty minutes later. Sometimes it looks like Googling the same thing for the fifth time because somehow the first four answers didn't quite give you the certainty you were looking for.
And sometimes anxiety looks like lying in bed at two in the morning, having a very serious meeting with yourself about a problem that does not actually exist yet. If you've ever done that, you are definitely not alone. So today I want to start with something really foundational. What actually is anxiety? And how do we know when ordinary stress has shifted?
into anxiety. Stress and anxiety are not exactly the same thing. Stress and anxiety overlap, but I think it could be helpful to separate them a little bit. Stress tends to have something concrete attached to it. I have a deadline tomorrow, my child is struggling, work is overwhelming, we have unexpected expenses, someone I love is sick, my calendar is packed.
There is something happening in my life right now that requires something from me. And your nervous system responds accordingly. Your heart rate might increase, your muscles might tense, you might have trouble concentrating, you might feel restless or irritable. Your body is essentially saying, something requires my attention. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Remember what we've been talking about, your nervous system isn't.
Designed to keep you calm all the time. It's designed to help you respond to your environment. If something needs your attention, we actually want your nervous system to mobilize you. Anxiety gets a little different because anxiety often involves responding not only to what is happening, but to what might happen. What if I don't meet the deadline? What if my boss is disappointed?
What if my child doesn't figure this out? All the what ifs, I always say, if you're asking what if, we already know that's anxiety, right? Notice how quickly we moved out of the present moment. We moved from here is a problem in front of me, to let me predict every possible problem that could happen next. And anxiety loves prediction. Anxiety wants certainty. One of the things I tell
my clients all the time is that anxiety has a very difficult relationship with uncertainty. Anxiety wants to know. It wants guarantees. It wants to know that your child is going to be okay. It wants to know that your relationship is okay. It wants to know that the test result is going to be normal. And here's the problem. Life doesn't offer us that kind of certainty. So anxiety starts trying to create it. Maybe I can think about this enough to figure it out. Maybe I can prepare enough.
Maybe I can Google enough. Maybe I can ask enough people. But there is a really important distinction here. Planning and worrying are not the same thing. Planning usually gets you somewhere. Worrying often brings you right back to where you started.
Is this a problem or a prediction? Here's a question I want you to start practicing this week. When you notice yourself getting anxious, ask, am I dealing with a problem or am I dealing with a prediction? A problem might be I have a presentation Friday and I haven't prepared. Okay, there are actions available to you. Open the presentation, make an outline, practice it, do all the things you need to do.
But anxiety might say, what if I completely freeze during the presentation? Everyone realizes I have no idea what I'm talking about. My boss starts questioning whether I'm actually good at my job. That's not a problem you can solve right now. That's a prediction. And your brain may be asking you to solve something that hasn't happened. And this distinction can be incredibly powerful because when we're anxious, predictions can start to feel like facts. I'm gonna mess this up.
They're upset with me. This isn't going to work. Something is wrong. I won't be able to handle it. These are thoughts. They may be very convincing thoughts. They may come with very convincing physical sensations, but they're still thoughts.
Your body doesn't necessarily know the difference, right? And this is where our nervous system conversation from September comes back in. Your body responds to perceived threat. And sometimes a threat is happening right now, but sometimes a threat is happening entirely inside a story your brain is telling about the future. Think about lying in bed, worrying about something that might happen tomorrow. Nothing has actually changed in the room. You're still in bed.
You're still safe in your house. But your heart starts beating faster, your chest gets tight, your stomach feels unsettled, your muscles tense, and suddenly you're wide awake. Your body is responding to the story as though something needs to be handled right now. That's one of the reasons anxiety can feel so convincing. Your body joins the conversation. And then we often make another very understandable mistake. We think if I feel this anxious,
There must be something wrong. Not necessarily. Sometimes feeling anxious means your nervous system has detected a threat, and sometimes it means your nervous system has detected a possibility. Those aren't always the same thing.
And I don't want to turn this into another thing to fix because this is healing is my hobby, and I want to put an important reminder out there. Please don't take what I'm teaching you today and turn it into great, now I need to stop worrying. That's not the goal. You're gonna worry sometimes. You're gonna have anxious thoughts, you're gonna imagine outcomes that haven't happened, you're gonna want reassurance, you're gonna want certainty. You're human. The goal isn't to never experience anxiety, the goal is to start.
Recognizing what's happening when anxiety shows up because awareness gives us choices. Instead of immediately following the anxious thought wherever it wants to take you, you can begin to notice, my brain is predicting now. This feels urgent, but maybe it isn't actually urgent. I'm trying to get certainty about something I can't know yet. I have a feeling and my brain is turning that feeling into a story. And that little bit of space matters.
So here's what I want you to practice this week. When you notice yourself getting caught in a worry, pause and ask yourself three questions. What is actually happening right now? What am I predicting might happen?
Is there an action I need to take, or am I trying to create certainty? You don't have to make the anxiety disappear. Just notice. Because we're going to build on this. Next week, we're going to talk about something I think changes the way people understand anxiety. Your anxiety is actually trying to protect you. Even when it's making your life harder, even when it's keeping you awake.
even when you're so tired of listening to it. There is a reason your brain learned to do this. And understanding that reason can help us stop fighting anxiety and start responding differently.
Before you go, if you've been feeling disconnected from yourself lately or you've gotten so used to pushing through that you're not even sure what you need anymore, I have a free resource called Your Personal Care Plan. It's designed to help you slow down, check in with yourself, and think intentionally about what actually supports you. You can find it in my resource library at heal.jessicacolarco LCSW.com. And remember, you don't have to believe everything your anxiety predicts. Sometimes your brain is giving you information.
And sometimes it's giving you a possibility. Learning to tell the difference is part of the work. I'll see you next Monday. And if you want to connect with me outside the podcast, I'm in all the places. Now I'm on TikTok, you guys. I'm having fun with TikTok. So on TikTok, I'm at Jessica Colarco LCSW, Instagram Jessica Colarco LCSW. And I'm also on Instagram, Healing is My Hobby. And you can catch me at healing is my hobby.com. And if you'd love to learn
more about my clinical practice, you can go to Jessica Colarco LCSW dot com. And again, if you want to know more about my courses and other stuff I'm offering, if you want to dive even deeper than we go on the podcast, you can go to heal h-e-a-l dot jessica colarco lcsw dot com and all of those links are in the show notes. See you next week.
