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Fear and anxiety have to do with the future…something that has not yet happened.  With fear, the danger is real…something bad could very likely happen.  With anxiety, the imagined event is extremely unlikely to happen.  Fear and anxiety feel different.  If you’ve experienced both emotions intensely, you may know what I mean.

When a tiger is snarling at you, and looks poised to pounce, you don’t feel anxiety…you feel FEAR.  It’s not a fear of snarling tigers, it’s a fear that the snarling tiger is going to maul you to death.  It’s adaptive…it prepares you for action…to run away or to fight (Gavin De Becker’s Book, The Gift of Fear is a very good explanation of the purpose fear plays in our lives–minus the evolutionary psychology aspect).

Some examples of anxious thoughts are, “I’m going to make a complete fool out of myself.”  “I’m going to be so embarrassed.”  “I just have a feeling something horrible is going to happen.”  “I think there is something wrong with my mind.”  “I must be going crazy.”  “This plane is probably going to crash.”

Some examples of fear-related thoughts are, “Uh oh!  If I fall, I’ll probably die! [standing on the edge of a roof]“  “That dog is going to bite me! [snarling dog running at you]“  “This might be it. [car careening out of control]“

So both fear and anxiety share things in common.  They are both ‘danger signals’ as Freud called them.  And they both serve a purpose.  Anxiety and fear both tell a person, “something is wrong be careful or be ready for action.”  Just like physical symptoms are a communication, “I’m hurt…Something is wrong with my foot…[and so forth].”

Anxiety may not seem to serve any consciously identifiable purpose, but it does serve a purpose.  The purposes are many and varied.  Sometimes, it serves a purpose of keeping a person’s rage or anger in check.  In other words, if they were to really speak their mind, there would be very negative consequences.  Sometimes it is to force a person who is overly independent, to start to depend more on others.  Sometimes, it is to maintain a less than mature way of dealing with the world.  Sometimes, it is purely a communication about something traumatic that happened in the individual’s past.

Again, it is very specific to the individual.  Sometimes the anxiety is organized around a traumatic event.  Such as a person who had an early trauma with their testicles, might have unusual anxiety about their eye “balls.”  They might have frequent dreams that involve balls (Chinese eggs, basketballs, footballs, and so forth).  All of these concepts are connected on an unconscious level.  That’s just an example, and the forms it can take are unlimited.

But to reiterate, anxiety is about things that are very unlikely to actually happen, and fear is about things that very likely could happen.  Anxiety can develop in the vastly different experiences of human beings.  Fear has to do with something that very well may happen.

Now, an interesting thing is that a moderate amount of anxiety is adaptive.  ALL normally functioning human beings have some anxiety.  It actually makes you work harder, and prepare more for the future.  It becomes a problem when it starts to interfere with your ability to function.  At that point, you want to seek some help.