![]() ![]() At this point, you may be wondering, "What could possibly be good about fear and anxiety? Don't these emotions just make people feel miserable?" Well, the answer may come as a quite a shock, but fear and anxiety are actually very important emotions. What happens afterwards determines whether we experience a particular emotion as good or bad i.e., the changes in our feelings, behaviors, thoughts, and physiology. In this respect, anxiety is a normal, beneficial emotion.Įmotions are simply a normal part of the human experience. In an anxious state, people are readying themselves and preparing themselves to cope with a future problem or dilemma that they anticipate will cause some kind of harm if not prevented from occurring. Anxiety reflects the anticipation of fear and represents an adaptive attempt to prevent the fear-provoking circumstance from occurring. In other words, fear is a response to an immediate danger in the present moment of time, while anxiety is associated with a threat that is anticipated in a future moment of time. In contrast, anxiety refers to the anticipation of some potential threat that may, or may not, happen in the future. Fear is the response to a danger that is currently detected in the immediate, present moment of time. The most important distinction between fear and anxiety is the timeframe. Secondary emotions are generally considered an internal, private experience. Secondary emotions, such as anxiety, are not readily recognizable to an outside observer. These primary emotions are: happiness, anger, sadness, fear, surprise, disgust. Primary emotions can easily be interpreted by an observer and exist across different cultures. ![]() Primary emotions refer to emotions that are recognizable through facial expressions. In contrast, anxiety is considered a secondary emotion that represents the avoidance of fear (including the avoidance of fear-producing stimuli). Fear is generally considered a primary emotion. While there is considerable overlap between these two terms, there are some important differences. Let's look more closely at some of the differences between the normal emotion of anxiety, and anxiety as a disorder.Īnxiety, and its close cousin fear, are both considered emotions. While everyone experiences anxiety, not everyone experiences the emotion of anxiety with the same intensity, frequency, or duration as someone who has an anxiety disorder. At the high end of the intensity range, anxiety can become pathological and maladaptive. At the low end of the intensity range, anxiety is normal and adaptive. But unlike the emotion "happiness," which has several different words to convey these differing levels of intensity (e.g., intensity ranging from happiness to joy), anxiety is a single word that represents a broad range of emotional intensity. A more intense expression of this same emotion might be an experience of joy. Anxiety, like all emotional states, can be experienced in varying degrees of intensity. It is often associated with changes in feelings, behaviors, thoughts, and physiology. ![]() Simply stated, an emotion is a subjective state of being. At the most basic level, anxiety is an emotion.
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