Fear and anxiety are a normal and natural part of living. We are born with the capacity to experience fear and anxiety. Of course, you may already know that since it seems you are living with these two feelings all the time. But what are fear and anxiety? How are they similar? How are they different? What role do they play in our lives?

Anxiety and stress are part of life, but in order to keep them from controlling our lives we must develop a new relationship with them. This new relationship happens by being aware of the stress and anxiety when it is actually happening, seeing what it looks and feels like and choosing a different response. Mindfulness is what helps us do that.

We go around appraising situations all the time: at home, at work, in the car, in our relationships, in social settings.  We aren’t aware of this appraising because most of these situations are within our normal range of experience.  But if we decide that a situation has some degree of danger to our security, or it’s something we can’t handle, our body goes into what has been called a “fight or flight” mode.  This is our bodies’ way of keeping us aware and alert so we can decide what to do in this threatening situation.