I think stress is something you feel in specific situations. It tends to dissipate when you’re no longer in the situation causing the stress. You can become stressed if you have too much going on at work, or if your kids are having trouble at school. When your workload lightens, or your kids start doing better, you no longer feel stressed.Anxiety is more pervasive and persistent. If you have generalized anxiety, you feel anxious in many types of situations that may not have much in common with each other, and getting out of one stressful situation doesn’t alleviate your anxiety for very long. If you suffer from social anxiety, for example, you may feel temporarily relieved when you leave a party, but you quickly start to worry about the next social situation on your calendar.With anxiety, you are often preoccupied with the future. If you have persistent anxiety, you probably anticipate that things won’t go well for you. This worry is often accompanied by a sense of powerlessness to control future events.I also think it’s important to say that anxiety isn’t always a bad thing. Your anxiety can be a signal to you that something is genuinely dangerous. If you become anxious when you think about walking down a dark alley alone, it makes sense to listen to your anxiety and take a different route. On the other hand, if anxiety is keeping you from doing the things you want to do in your life, and if your life feels unsatisfying because of it, it’s worth talking to a therapist who can help you feel less controlled by your anxiety.What are the origins of anxiety? Anxiety has many causes. It can be the product of trauma. We tend to think of trauma as the result of a major event like a car accident or war; however, trauma can also result from chronic neglect or abuse. If you had abusive parents, you might feel chronically anxious because you feel that if you let your guard down for even a second, others will try to hurt you. If you suffered from neglect, you might feel very anxious in relationships, fearing you will be ignored or abandoned. Having an anxious parent can also be a cause of anxiety. Anxiety is contagious. If you have an anxious parent, you can come to feel that your parent’s anxiety means that the world is a dangerous place. You can end up experiencing the same anxiety as your parent, without recognizing the source of your anxiety.Can anxiety get better? Anxiety can definitely get better. Often people who are anxious get down on themselves. They tell themselves that their feelings don’t make any sense and that they’re just being “irrational.” One of the ways therapy can reduce anxiety is by helping you to stop blaming yourself for your anxiety. Anxiety is not irrational. It might seem irrational to be afraid of social situations, or to worry that a disaster is right around the corner. It’s true that most social situations aren’t harmful, and the vast majority of the disasters we imagine never happen, but you come by your anxiety honestly. Paradoxically, the more you can see how your anxiety makes sense, the more it dissipates. The more you can see that your fear of impending disaster, for example, is related to the powerlessness you felt in the face of your parents’ divorce or some other painful event, the more you can feel released from that anxiety in the present.How would you treat stress and anxiety differently? If stress is related to actual things happening in the present, the best way to address it is to help a person problem-solve about how to reduce the external stresses to the extent that’s possible, and then to develop strategies for dealing with the remaining issues. For example, becoming more organized at work can reduce some of the stress that comes from feeling overloaded.Developing strategies for dealing with anxiety as it comes up in particular situations is also useful but, in some respects, it’s like putting a Band-Aid on an open wound. In the long run, what really helps is understanding the source of your anxiety, recognizing that your anxiety makes sense, and relieving yourself of self-blame.Click to learn more about anxiety therapy and treatment with Dr. Jane Rubin.