Anxiety follows the same neural pathways as learning.

If you almost got hit by a car at an intersection, the next time you approach that intersection you'll feel a dose of fear. This is your brain's way of teaching you "there is danger here." This is our sympathetic nervous system (SNS) firing. Physical manifestations include: abdominal pain, chest pain, fatigue, dizziness, insomnia, headaches.

Fear is our most powerful biological learning tool. Anxiety, at its core, is fear turned into habitual worry.

Scientifically speaking, fear is the most painful experience for our brains. Feeling a lack of control is also very painful. In order to feel less pain, our brains aim to get some control over the fear. This "control" manifests as "worry." If we are thinking about something, then we have some control over it. This protects us.

When does worrying turn into anxiety?

When it becomes habitual. When you wake up in the morning and experience racing thoughts, you're experiencing fear. If you don't explicitly acknowledge and accept that "I am afraid of ___ right now," then you're setting yourself up for an anxiety response.

Anxiety happens when you recycle "worry." Instead of accepting and welcoming the fact that you're experiencing fear, you unknowingly suppress that emotion and bandaid it with worry. The fear didn't go away though.

Worrying without addressing the underlying fear is a net loss. The fear will persist and the worry doesn't actually address it.

A note on psych drugs

Anti-anxiety drugs are most often in the "benzo-" chemical group. Benzos decrease anxiety but in doing so they also inhibit your learning pathways. You really can't have one without the other. Taking psych drugs isn't bad — sometimes they are the only viable path — but you should know the price they come at and proceed with extreme caution.