Fear is a common everyday experience. Everyone faces fear at one time or another. Fear and
anxiety are often linked together. When one
feels frightened about something, one often feels
anxious too. Although anxiety and fear are closely related, they are subtly different.
Anxiety is the uneasiness over an expected threat. It relates more to one’s expectation of facing something dreadful. Anxiety is then, more concerned with the future, and it is often in anticipation. Fear, on the contrary, is a respond to immediate danger. Fear is concerned with the ‘here’ and ‘now’. A person
experiences fear when he/she sees a fierce dog in a narrow alley. A person experiences anxiety when the company is undergoing a retrenchment exercise and nobody knows yet who will be laid-off.
Fear and anxiety trigger off the body’s sympathetic nervous system. This leads to muscle tension (clenched fist or jaw), increased heartbeat and breathing rate, perspiration. Fear is often described as an evolutionary survival instinct. When you feel afraid, the
physiological reactions actually help mobilize your body to react to the danger (either to flee or to fight with all your might). Hence, when you see the ferocious dog, you will most likely run for your life in order to escape from being bitten. Anxiety, on the other hand, prepares you to face expected threats. Hence, when you feel anxious about your job security, you may put off spending on a new car.
Both fear and anxiety are not pleasant experiences that everyone likes to go through often. However, they are valuable and
adaptive to survival in their own ways.
More summaries about the Fear and Anxiety