In our fast-paced, industrialized, and technologically driven society, stress and anxiety are par for the course. Almost no one gets off Scott-free when these cards are handed out, although some people are more prone to succumb to their pressures than others are. There are many reasons why some people are more resilient than others are.

If you are suffering from chronic stress and anxiety, you can feel reassured that there is much you can do to lessen the impacts of stress on your physical, mental, and emotional health. As you probably know, stress is responsible for, or at the very least, exacerbates, up to 90% of diseases. Anxiety is in fact a by-product of stress.

When you are calm and relaxed, you cannot be anxious at the same time. Stress, by definition, is the body’s survival response to a perceived threat. Adrenaline surges and gets us ready to flee or fight the danger. When this survival response does not get turned off, because we are faced with multiple perceived threats per day, our stress becomes chronic and our health inevitably suffers.

There ia a difference between stress and anxiety. Stress is your body's reaction to a trigger and is generally a short-term experience. Stress can be positive or negative and is a response to a threat in any given situation. Anxiety, on the other hand, is a sustained mental health disorder that can be triggered by stress.

In Stoicism it is the perception of situations and environments that trigger these.

Meditations 7.16 states The ruling faculty does not disturb itself; I mean, does not frighten itself or cause itself pain. But if any one else can frighten or pain it, let him do so. For the faculty itself will not by its own opinion turn itself into such ways. Let the body itself take care, if it can, that is suffer nothing, and let it speak, if it suffers. But the soul itself, that which is subject to fear, to pain, which has completely the power of forming an opinion about these things, will suffer nothing, for it will never deviate into such a judgement. The leading principle in itself wants nothing, unless it makes a want for itself; and therefore it is both free from perturbation and unimpeded, if it does not disturb and impede itself.

Emotional symptoms of stress can vary from irritability, anger, and impatience to depression, insomnia, and of course anxiety, worry, and fear.