What's the difference between anxiety and just being nervous?

Everyone gets nervous. It's completely natural and a normal part of human function. It can even help us to perform at our best. However, if your nervousness persists, is very intense, stops you from functioning, and applies in situations where most people would not feel nervous, this is anxiety. Anxiety can be debilitating but there are a number of techniques you can perform at home that will help, as well as therapy and medication.

Anxiety many times causes complete inability to move forward. It also causes the same thought to be processed over and over again until the worst case scenario is played out in one's head. Being nervous tends to last a shorter length of time.

Nervous is being in a condition when you don't expect how your mind will behave and you have not been in such condition earlier and you easily get agitated whereas anxiety is a state where there is a constant array of worrying or unease of something with an uncertain outcome .

Nervousness is a short term response to an specific situation. Anxiety is a nervousness that doesn't go away. It i s a nervousness that becomes habitual. You find that you are nervous even though there is nothing to be nervous of, so you ask yourself "Why am I nervous right now?" And you think and think until you find something that seems worthy of what you are feeling and you attach the nerves to that thought. An exam for example, but it could be something less significant like meeting up with some friends, or even going to the shop. It depends on your level of anxiety if you only listen to your thoughts instead of the nerves than it will continue to develop until almost everything makes you anxious.

Being nervous is a normal reaction. Anxiety is a constant gnawing fear with your heart pounding at what feels like 200 beats per minute over something you know is trivial (like asking the girl next to you if you could borrow a pen).

If it is recurring and causes a lot of distress than it maybe anxiety, but it also may not be. Anxiety happens in certain situations and nervousness is just general tension that passes after the event is over.

Anxiety is much more serious, you can suffer from anxiety and it can affect your social lifestyle terribly.

You know the feeling you get when you have to speak in front of the class? Take that and multiply it by 10. Anxiety sticks with you no matter what activity you're doing. It comes and goes, sometimes provoked, sometimes when you're just sitting at home doing nothing.

There is state anxiety, related to the moment or events in that moment, and there is trait anxiety, related to specific events that trigger the anxiety. Sometimes nervous behavior is a prelude to anxiety in general but this is really mild anxiety because the event in the current time frame is causing the nervousness. Keep in mind anxiety is a perception that is formed based on past experiences which form our beliefs about the issue related to anxiety.

Anxiety is something you feel very often, this can be having panic attacks and feeling anxious a lot of the time, whereas nervous may just be for a day or maybe an hour, its a shorter length of time.