by POPSUGAR Beauty AU 0

We've been talking about stress for the past few weeks — what stresses you out; how to combat it; what celebrities do to de-stress; and how it can affect your skin — and we thought it would be a good time to talk about the differences between stress and anxiety.

It's pretty much a given that every person will experience stress at some point in their life, but according to the 2007 National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing, 14.4 percent of Australians suffer from some form of short-term anxiety disorder with women experiencing higher rates of anxiety than men. Age-wise, it is twice as dominant in women aged 25-34 than men. So how does it show itself? Well stress and anxiety can have similar symptoms:

• Feeling especially tired or like everything is an effort
• Unable to get to sleep or very restless sleep
• Feeling especially worried about something
• A change in your skin and increase in breakouts
• Feeling irritable and sometimes irrational
• Having an unexpected pain, especially in the jaw from clenching your teeth

The difference between the two is that stress is often the result of feeling nervous or under pressure about something. Anxiety on the other hand is the continuation of those feelings, with or without a stressful event in your life, and as it's an on-going feeling, it can be much more crippling. I've already shared my top tips for combating stress and for those suffering from anxiety, Beyond Blue has some great advice on coping with anxiety.