Understanding Stress, Anxiety, and Depression: Similarities and Differences

June 9, 2025

Life comes at us fast. Deadlines stack up, relationships shift, finances fluctuate, and sometimes it can all feel like too much. You’ve probably heard people talk about feeling “stressed,” “anxious,” or “depressed” in everyday conversation. But these words, while often used interchangeably, actually describe very different mental and emotional experiences. Knowing the distinctions between them is key to understanding your mental health and seeking the right kind of support.

What Stress Really Is

Stress is your body’s natural reaction to a demand or challenge. It’s part of your built-in survival system. When you face a difficult situation, your body releases hormones like cortisol and adrenaline to help you react quickly and effectively. That rush you feel before a big presentation or during a last-minute deadline? That’s stress doing its job.

But when stress becomes constant instead of temporary, it begins to wear on both your mind and body. Chronic stress can cause muscle tension, headaches, trouble sleeping, irritability, and even increase your risk of heart disease. It also tends to be connected to specific external triggers like work pressure, family demands, or financial strain.

The key thing about stress is that it usually goes away once the situation improves. It’s often manageable with rest, lifestyle adjustments, and time. But if stress lingers and begins to influence how you think, feel, and function, it may develop into something more.

Anxiety: When the Alarm System Won’t Turn Off

Anxiety takes stress and gives it a mind of its own. It is not always tied to a clear event or cause. Instead, it’s a persistent feeling of fear, worry, or nervousness that shows up even when nothing obvious is wrong. You may lie awake at night with a racing mind or feel a tightness in your chest without knowing why. Your heart beats faster, your stomach churns, and your thoughts spiral into what-ifs.

Anxiety can affect how you think about yourself and the world. It can make everyday tasks feel overwhelming and keep you stuck in cycles of avoidance and overthinking. While stress usually ends when the pressure lifts, anxiety can linger for weeks, months, or even years if not addressed.

There are many types of anxiety disorders, from generalized anxiety to panic disorder to social anxiety. What they share is a sense of chronic unease and anticipation of something going wrong. And unlike stress, anxiety can show up even when life is seemingly calm.

Depression: More Than Just Sadness

Depression is often misunderstood as simply “feeling down.” But it’s deeper and more complex than that. It is a mental health condition that impacts mood, energy, motivation, and even physical health. Depression can cause a persistent sense of emptiness or hopelessness that doesn’t lift with good news or rest. It often comes with fatigue, difficulty concentrating, changes in appetite, and a disinterest in things you once enjoyed.

While anxiety revs the system up, depression slows everything down. You might find it hard to get out of bed, make decisions, or find meaning in the day ahead. Even small tasks can feel monumental.

It’s possible to experience depression alongside anxiety. Many people do. They may feel exhausted but restless, flat but fearful, emotionally numb yet overwhelmed. This combination makes daily functioning even more difficult, and it requires compassionate, comprehensive support.

Overlaps and Intersections

Stress, anxiety, and depression often overlap. Long-term stress can lead to anxiety. Anxiety can spiral into depression. Depression can cause a sense of helplessness that increases stress. It’s a tangled web, and untangling it takes time and often professional guidance.

Each condition also shares physical symptoms. Fatigue, disrupted sleep, muscle aches, and changes in appetite can show up in all three. But the causes and emotional experiences behind those symptoms are what make each one distinct.

Why the Differences Matter

Understanding the differences between stress, anxiety, and depression is more than a mental exercise. It’s a vital step in knowing what kind of support you might need. Stress might call for better boundaries and self-care. Anxiety may benefit from therapy that focuses on thought patterns and nervous system regulation. Depression may require a combination of therapeutic approaches and medical treatment.

When you can name what you’re feeling, you can begin to respond to it instead of just enduring it. Naming it gives you back some control. It helps you speak more clearly to doctors, therapists, or even loved ones about what you need.

A Path Toward Healing

No matter which of these experiences you’re facing, you don’t have to go through it alone. Mental health challenges thrive in silence and shrink in connection. Whether you’re overwhelmed by daily demands, caught in the grip of anxiety, or feeling the weight of depression, there is help available, and healing is possible.

Start by being honest with yourself. Track your patterns. Reach out. Sometimes the most powerful step is the one where you say, “This is more than stress. I need support.”

Your mind and body are always speaking to you. Learning their language is the beginning of caring for them well.

smoking

Smoking Addiction

BrainsWay Deep TMS is a noninvasive, FDA-cleared, outpatient brain stimulation procedure with proven clinical results to help patients to quit smoking.  Known as the addiction coil, the H4 coil was specifically designed for targeting the deep areas of the brain involved in addictions.

A large study in 14 centers examined adults who had been long-term heavy smokers, all having failed prior quit attempts using medication, therapy, or other methods. Of those that completed Deep TMS treatment, 28% achieved four consecutive weeks without smoking, most of them not smoking for at least three months after treatment.  Among all participants in the study, the average number of cigarettes smoked per week over the course of treatment was reduced by 75%.  

TMS has none of the side effects commonly found in medication to treat smoking cessation. TMS is well-tolerated with years of safety data supporting Deep TMS. Patients may initially experience minor headaches or pain at the site of treatment which typically subside after the first few sessions. There is no preparation, no anesthesia, and patients are able to resume daily activities immediately after each treatment session. Treatments are done in our office. Each treatment session lasts 25-30 minutes. They are done daily on weekdays for 3 weeks followed by a weekly session for another 3 weeks.

BrainsWay Deep TMS offers a fresh approach that may help to quit smoking using cutting-edge neuroscience. Clinically proven and well-tolerated, Deep TMS is the first non-invasive technology that is FDA-cleared to treat smoking addiction.

addiction

OCD

Deep TMS has recently be approved by the FDA for treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).  OCD traditionally has been treated primarily with exposure psychotherapy, and while it is also treated with medication such as fluvoxamine, OCD does not respond well to medication management.  Medication improves symtpoms greater than 30% in only 50% of patients, and half of OCD patients stop taking their medication due to side effects.  And while exposure therapy might improve OCD, as many as 80% of patients continue to have symptoms after psychotherapy, according to some studies.

BrainsWay Deep TMS is a noninvasive, FDA-cleared, outpatient brain stimulation procedure with proven clinical results for improving the symptoms of OCD.  The technology stimulates the brain using its patented H-coil, known as the H7 coil, resulting in a deep and broad penetration of the magnetic field into areas of the brain that are affected in OCD. Deep TMS is safe and well-tolerated, has a very low rate of side effects, and does not require anesthesia.  

Research has proven a higher level of improvement using Deep TMS.  Almost 68% of OCD patients were able to reduce symptoms by more than 30%, and 87% of those who responded saw sustained improvement for at least a year.

depression

Depression

Major depression was the diagnosis first approved for treatment with TMS, and it is still the most commonly treated condition. Most patients are treated with TMS after failures of medications and psychotherapy, as insurance companies will pay for TMS treatment only after medication failures.  However, TMS treats depression much better than medication, and some would argue that TMS should be the first treatment instead of the last.  

When patients have not improved with medication, they are considered to be “treatment-resistant”. And in treatment-resistant depression, TMS treatment results in significant improvement, defined as more than a 50% reduction in symptoms, in more than 80% of patients.  And more than 60% of patients achieve remission.  That is a very high and a very impressive number of people who are happy for the first time in many years after TMS treatment.

TMS treatments for depression are done in a series of 36 treatments.  Patients have a 20-minute treatment 5 days a week for six weeks followed by 6 more treatments in a tapering schedule over three more weeks. No preparation is needed, and there is no recovery time.  After each treatment, patients are able to leave and go about their day.  Except for a rare seizure, which occurs in 1 of 1000 patients, TMS has only minor side effects of mild headache or scalp soreness in the first few days. 

It is said that after successful TMS treatment, that there is a 50% chance of relapse of depression within the first year.  However, at Hagan Health we consider that statistic to be too high, and our relapse rate is lower.  While treatments are done by certified and experienced treaters, Dr. Hagan is closely involved in determining the location and strengths of settings to provide the most accurate treatment.  In addition, Dr. Hagan meets with patients every week or two before and during treatment, and periodically after treatment, in order to insure the best possible results.  Depression varies from patient to patient, and it is important to get the know the patient and the thoughts, feelings, and circumstances that might lead to relapse.  Using cognitive therapy techniques, patients are taught to be aware of triggers and to be prepared with the cognitive tools used to reduce the chances of relapsing. 

TMS for Anxious Depression

Recently TMS has been cleared by the FDA for treatment of Anxious Depression.  This condition is one in which anxious distress is a major part of the clinical picture while depression remains the predominant diagnosis.  Anxiety which is treated along with depression is also significantly improved, while TMS is not currently considered appropriate for the treatment of anxiety without depression.

Dr. Hagan Bio

So the lesson Al taught me was about my lack of happiness related to feelings of inadequacy. Even though I had become a brain surgeon, I did not have a healthy self-regard. Al explained to me that my father, in his drive to succeed and to push me to succeed, would never let me savor a victory, that whenever I achieved something important, he would ask, . “How could you have done it better?” Or “what is next?”. He was setting the bar at perfection, such that nothing less than perfection was going to be good enough. Al said, “Nobody is perfect”, and that I would be much happier deciding what degree of imperfection I was going to settle for. When one sets the bar at perfection, then every effort falls short of perfection and is therefore a relative failure, it becomes yet more evidence of one’s belief that he is fundamentally flawed and inadequate. He said that we are all always doing our best, and that is not fair for my father or for me myself to tell myself that I am not good enough. It was the single most important piece of wisdom that I would learn for the next several decades, and I have told this story many times to those who, like me, grew up to have similar issues.

After seeing Al for a year, another year or two went by. One day at church I was listening to a talk from a psychotherapist who had grown up in a family in which his mother was an alcoholic and his father was a workaholic. His story sounded so much like mine that I decided to see him professionally to “learn more about this garbage in my head”. I saw Paul for two years.

A few years later, life had become quite stressful. I was married with three small children, practicing neurosurgery full time and doing some farming on the side. It was at this time that I started seeing my third therapist, the one that I would see for most of the next 10 years. Keith was a psychiatrist, an MD like me, who did only psychotherapy. A few months after starting my therapy with Keith, I realized that I liked what he did better than what I did. The process of therapy is that of developing an increasing awareness of how one got to be the way he or she is, starting with childhood issues. Specifically, this type of therapy is called “psychodynamic psychotherapy”.

Dr_Hagan
Terry

Three years into my experience with Keith, I made the final decision that I would rather be a psychiatrist, because I came to love the process of developing insight into one’s own psychology. As I closed my neurosurgery practice and completed a residency in psychiatry, I was so grateful the entire time for the opportunity to turn myself into a psychiatrist. “Who gets to do that?!” Years later a patient was looking at the books on my bookshelf and asked, “So you were a neurosurgeon; did you like it?” I had been asked many times why I decided to give up neurosurgery to become a psychiatrist, but no one had ever asked if I liked neurosurgery. The answer had to be that no, I did not. I did not like who I was. But I have loved psychiatry from the very beginning, and I really appreciate the contribution it has had in my own personal development.

But because of my heavy early experience in psychotherapy, I also became proficient and experienced in both psychodynamic psychotherapy and in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). And I attended the Cincinnati Psychoanalytic Institute for a year to take my psychotherapy skills to a higher level.

During the 17 years that I have been practicing psychiatry, I have continued to grow. The most gratifying experiences I have had have been when I have settled into a psychotherapy relationship with a patient, while there have been many, others with whom I have combined psychiatry with psychodynamic therapy, practicing psychodynamic psychiatry.

Terry
Dr. Hagan Bio

During these same years, I have also been on several mission trips, which have given me perspectives that I would never have learned otherwise. The concepts of loving your neighbor, giving of your time and resources, being kind and gentle and gracious, have come to define me.

I have always been at the head of my own practice, managing my own business. I have experience with other businesses as well, such as being a successful alpaca breeder for 10 years. “They do not teach business in medical school.” In a growing psychiatry practice, running the business is something you learn from necessity.