Anxiety and Fear

by Haridas Chaudhuri

What is the difference between anxiety and fear?

"Fear is our emotional reaction to some recognizable external danger. While walking in the street, a person sees at a short distance a tiger let loose. He becomes afraid. Since his fear has a definite object, he can try to do something about it. Either he screams so that people may come to his aid, or he runs away to take shelter in the nearest house. Or he reaches for some suitable weapon in order to defend himself against the tiger. Or if he is too weak-minded, he faints then and there, so that the awareness of the great danger, along with its unbearable nervous strain, is blotted out of his mind.

Anxiety is not attached to any definite object. It is an indefinable state of mental uneasiness of malaise which seems to be objectless. When a person is in the grip of anxiety is asked what is bothering him, all he can say is, "It is nothing." So anxiety is somehow related to "nothing." It is produced by the power of nonbeing . . ."

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