THAWING ANXiETY
Anxiety is a generalized mood that can occur without an identifiable triggering stimulus. As such, it is distinguished from fear, which is an appropriate cognitive and emotional responseto a perceived threat. Additionally, fear is related to the specific behaviorsof escape and avoidance, whereas anxiety is related to situationsperceived as uncontrollable or unavoidable. Another view defines anxietyas a future-oriented mood state in which one is ready or prepared to attempt tocope with upcoming negative events, suggesting that it is a distinction betweenfuture and present dangers which divides anxiety and fear. In a 2011 review ofthe literature, fear andanxiety were said to be differentiated in four domains: duration of emotionalexperience, temporal focus, specificity of the threat, and motivated direction.Fear is defined as short lived, present focused, geared towards a specificthreat, and facilitating escape from threat; while anxiety is defined as longacting, future focused, broadly focused towards a diffuse threat, and promotingcaution while approaching a potential threat. While most everyone has anexperience with anxiety at some point in their lives, as it is a commonreaction to real or perceived threats of all kinds, most do not developlong-term problems with anxiety. When someone does develop chronic or severeproblems with anxiety, such problems are usually classified as being one ormore of the specific types of AnxietyDisorders.
source --- wikipedia
