FEAR AND ANXIETY

Physiologically, both fear and anxiety involve the same internal changes, like increases in the rate of heart beat and adrenalin production. To the sufferer, the two conditions feel the same; both are unpleasant, ranging form discomforting to agonizing. Each is accompanied by a sense of danger, the difference being that with fear we can identify what we think is threatening us and with anxiety we cannot. One is afraid of going to war or losing his job, but one is simply anxious and doesn’t know about what. There are borderline cases in which it’s hard to know which edge we think is needed before one’s condition can be called fear instead of anxiety.