Anxiety vs Stress: Understanding the Difference
When something feels off but you're not sure what to call it.
You might be here because you've been Googling at midnight, trying to figure out whether what you're feeling is stress or anxiety. Or maybe someone said "you seem stressed" and you thought, that's not quite it. Something else is going on. Something quieter. Something that doesn't leave when the busy season ends.
This page is here to help you sort through that. Not to diagnose. Not to alarm you. Just to help you see your experience a little more clearly, so you can decide what feels right next.
They can feel the same, but they are not
Stress and anxiety overlap in a lot of ways. They can both keep you up at night. They can both make your chest tight and your thoughts loud. They can both leave you feeling like you're carrying more than you should.
But there's a meaningful difference between them. And understanding that difference can change how you respond to what you're feeling.
Stress is usually a response to something identifiable. A deadline. A conflict. A season of too much happening at once. It tends to rise and fall with the situation. When the thing passes, the stress usually softens.
Anxiety is different. Anxiety can stay even after the stressor is gone. It can show up on a quiet Sunday morning. It can follow you into a vacation. It can hum in the background when everything in your life is technically fine.
If you've ever thought, "I should be okay right now, so why don't I feel okay?" that's often the moment where the difference between stress and anxiety starts to become clear.
What stress usually looks like
Stress tends to be tied to something tangible. You can usually point to it. There's a reason your shoulders are up by your ears, and if that reason resolved, your body would probably settle.
You might notice stress showing up as feeling overwhelmed by your to-do list, snapping at people you care about, having a shorter fuse than usual, or feeling like there aren't enough hours in the day. There may be trouble sleeping because your mind is running through logistics. You might feel emotionally drained but still able to function once the pressure lifts.
Stress can be uncomfortable, even painful. But it usually has a shelf life. It responds to change. When you take a break, you actually feel a break.
That said, chronic stress is a different story. When stress is constant, when it doesn't have a beginning or end, when your system never fully comes back down, it can start to reshape how your body and mind operate. And that's often where the line between stress and anxiety and burnout starts to blur.
"I should be okay right now, so why don't I feel okay?" That's often the moment where the difference starts to become clear.
What anxiety usually looks like
Anxiety doesn't always need a trigger. That's one of the things that makes it so confusing.
You might wake up with a sense of dread before your feet hit the floor. You might find yourself scanning for problems that haven't happened yet. You might replay conversations, recheck emails, or mentally rehearse for situations that may never come.
Anxiety often sounds like:
- What if something goes wrong?
- I should have said that differently.
- I can't stop thinking about this.
- I don't know why I feel this way. Everything is fine.
It can show up as overthinking that won't stop, difficulty making decisions because every option feels risky, the need to control or plan in order to feel safe, a constant low-level hum of something being wrong, or avoiding things you used to do without thinking.
Some people experience anxiety as worry that loops. Others feel it more as a physical tightness or restlessness. Some experience sudden surges of fear that come out of nowhere. And many people, especially those who are high-functioning, don't realize that what they've been calling "being responsible" or "staying on top of things" is actually anxiety running the show.
When stress crosses into anxiety
There isn't always a clean line. For many people, it's more of a slow shift.
Maybe you went through a hard season. A breakup. A job change. A loss. A period of too much with not enough support. The stress response made sense at the time. Your system activated to help you get through it.
But then the situation changed, and your system didn't come back down. The alertness stayed. The tension stayed. The scanning for what could go wrong stayed.
This is often how stress becomes anxiety. It's not a failure. It's your nervous system doing what it learned to do. The alarm was useful once. Now it's stuck in the on position.
You might notice this showing up as feeling on edge even during downtime. Not being able to relax even when you want to. A sense that something bad is about to happen, even when there's no evidence. Difficulty trusting that things are okay. Or a growing avoidance of situations that used to feel manageable.
If any of this resonates, you're not imagining it. And you're not overreacting. You're noticing something real. That awareness is worth paying attention to.
How they show up in the body
Both stress and anxiety live in the body. Not just in your thoughts.
With stress, you might notice muscle tension, headaches, fatigue, irritability, or stomach issues that come and go with pressure. Your body ramps up when things are hard and settles when things ease.
With anxiety, the physical symptoms can feel more persistent. More confusing. More disconnected from what's actually happening around you.
Common physical symptoms of anxiety include chest tightness that isn't related to anything medical, jaw clenching or teeth grinding (especially at night), a knot in your stomach that doesn't go away, shallow breathing or the feeling of not being able to take a full breath, restlessness or an inability to sit still, and fatigue that doesn't match how much you've actually done.
These aren't just "in your head." They're signals from your nervous system. When your body stays in a state of activation, your fight or flight response keeps running even when there's no immediate threat.
Over time, this can affect your sleep, your digestion, your mood, and your ability to feel present.
In therapy, one of the things we work with is learning to read these signals with curiosity instead of fear. Not to silence the body, but to understand what it's communicating.
You do not need a diagnosis to start asking questions
One of the things that keeps people stuck is the belief that they need to meet some threshold before they're "allowed" to seek support. That it has to be bad enough. That they should be able to handle it on their own.
You don't need to know whether what you're feeling is stress or anxiety to talk to someone about it. You don't need a diagnosis. You don't need to be in crisis.
If something feels off, that's enough.
Therapy isn't only for people who are falling apart. It's also for people who are holding it together but noticing the cost. It's for the people who function well on the outside but feel tight, tired, or on edge most of the time.
If that's you, you're not making it up. And you're not wasting anyone's time.
Support for stress and anxiety
Therapy for stress and anxiety isn't about learning to think more positively. It's not about being handed a worksheet and told to challenge your thoughts.
It's about slowing down enough to understand what's happening in your body and your mind. It's about noticing what patterns have been running in the background, sometimes for years, and gently finding out what they're protecting.
In individual therapy, we might explore what your stress response looks like and where it started. We can look at how your nervous system learned to stay activated and what helps it settle. We can work with the body, not just the mind, because anxiety is rarely a thinking problem alone.
Some of the things therapy can support include understanding the root of chronic worry or tension, learning to notice when your system is activated and what it needs, building a relationship with your body that feels safer, finding language for what you've been carrying, and creating space between a feeling and the automatic response it usually triggers.
This kind of work is quiet and steady. It doesn't happen in a single session. But over time, things begin to shift. Not because you've forced yourself to calm down, but because your system has learned that it can.
Leanne offers both in-person sessions in Kitchener-Waterloo and virtual therapy across Ontario, so support is available in whatever format feels right for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
It is completely normal to have questions before reaching out.
Stress is usually connected to a specific situation and eases when that situation changes. Anxiety tends to linger even when things are objectively fine. If the tension, worry, or physical symptoms don't seem to match what's happening around you, anxiety may be part of the picture.
Yes. When stress is prolonged and your nervous system stays activated over time, it can shift into a more chronic pattern that looks and feels like anxiety. This is especially common after difficult life transitions, ongoing pressure without recovery, or experiences of burnout.
No. You don't need a formal diagnosis to begin therapy. If something feels off, if you're noticing patterns that concern you, if your body is holding more tension than feels sustainable, that's reason enough to reach out.
There is no threshold you need to meet. Therapy works well as a preventive space, not just a crisis response. Starting earlier often means less to untangle later.
Leanne's approach is trauma-informed, relational, and nervous-system-aware. That means we don't just talk about what's happening. We work with how your body is responding, what your patterns are protecting, and what helps your system feel safe. You can read more about this on the anxiety therapy page.
Yes. Virtual therapy is available to anyone in Ontario. In-person sessions are available in Kitchener-Waterloo.
You don't have to figure this out alone
Whether what you're feeling is stress, anxiety, or something in between, you deserve support in sorting through it. Not because something is wrong with you. But because carrying it alone takes more energy than it should.
If you're ready to explore what's going on, you can book a free consultation. And if you're not ready yet, that's okay too. You can start with the free guide and take things from there.
There's no rush. Just an open door.