First of all, why care if you’re feeling anxious vs. irritated?
Because you will use different healthy ways to combat and soothe each.
Anxiety can be based on fear, worry, feeling (or being) attacked, threatened, stuck, or overwhelmed.
Irritation can come from situations you encounter or people who do things that offend you. Or if you’re in an environment that frustrates you.
The easiest way to tell the difference if you’re anxious or irritated is by your bodily functions. The body tells the story truth. It expresses with your being balanced or imbalanced.
The Body – Are you anxious vs. irritated?
One of the easiest ways to examine if your body feels anxious is if you’re constipated. I know that’s a strange way to start a topic, but many anxious people suffer from this regularly.
On the other hand, if you find yourself going to the bathroom non-stop with diarrhea tendencies, then you most likely harbor anger, irritation, annoyance, or resentment.
Anxious or irritated feelings are often confused.
The other big difference between feeling anxious or irritated is whether you have an internal cold or heat in your system that has nothing to do with the outside season or weather.
When you feel the heat inside your body, and on your skin, that is also derived from irritation. If you feel cold, then that can be from anxiety. This is especially true if it’s a warm day outside and your internal body thermostat is colder than usual.
To discover further if you are feeling anxious or irritated, here are some simple, external ways:
Music.
To further get clues, listen to music. If you’re feeling anxious, then classical music such as jazz won’t hurt you, but it won’t necessarily help you either. Music with an irregular rhythm is good like Enya.
If you’re irritated on the other hand, then light and classical music will be soothing.
Smell scents.
If you have candles, if you smell orange scents and that appeals to you, then you can be anxious. If you smell rose, sandalwood, or jasmine scents, and they appeal to you, then you can be irritated or even be holding anger. You may have perfumes that carry these scents and undertones to help you figure out your current balance/imbalance.
Tastes.
You also have tastes that can influence your body. Spices, teas, and types of food all matter. You may wonder why you are gravitating towards oranges (food and scents). And if you’re anxious, you may opt for sweet and salty foods (over sour or bitter tastes).
Do you remember in school (maybe they still do this or maybe you missed that day?) when you learned about the different taste sections on your tongue? This is what we learned… sweet is in the front, salty and sour to the sides, and bitter in the back. So if you et something sweet in the front of your tongue, it will taste different than in the back of your tongue. …Interesting, huh!? Still fascinating for adults.
Regarding tea, warm cinnamon tea is going to help you if you’re anxious. If you’re irritated, not so much. For irritation feelings, you want to first go for colder teas like iced teas.
Uh-huh, there’s the mystery behind why you want a cold drink vs. a warm drink despite the temperature outside.
And you could try lavender, chamomile teas are good for stress or relaxing from anger or irritation.
If you’re anxious-irritated you’re going to be gravitating towards both anxious and irritation soothing ways (e.g. a warm drink at times, and a cold drink at other times).
Activities.
Anxious people don’t crave exercise as much as they do distraction from anxiety.
Irritated people want to work off their anger or irritation. Doing a cooling sporting activity will help such as swimming in the water, ice skating, or skiing. Lifting weights and cardio is good for stress, but you can overheat quickly so be sure to have accessible cold water to drink to help cool down.
The body is just one major part of you to keep healthy. Your mind is another area (and story). You could have an anxious body and an irritated mind running at the same time, or any combination of mind/body and anxious-irritating. You can pacify/soothe all.
The goal is to balance your mind and balance your body if either has an imbalance. Your balance/imbalance will change.
Your Mind – Are you anxious vs. irritated?
You could have an anxious mind from overwhelm, worry, or sad or bad memories.
More than usual, if you are super forgetful on small things, and jump from thing to thing, then you most likely have an anxious mind imbalance. Picture yourself in your day. When an activity hits your mind do you leave your current task at hand, so you don’t forget to do this urgent in the mind activity? If yes and this happens throughout your day, then you probably have an anxious mind. If you have this tendency, this can change depending on your imbalance.
People who multi-task, can also prioritize. They are not necessarily anxious-filled. But if you mix both then you get multi-tasking with unimportant activities throughout your day. It can be hard to focus on the task at hand if you’re anxiety-minded.
People who are irritated in their minds, act differently. They often get frustrated easily and are critical of others. Think about the person you know or in the cubicle that has a short fuse or expresses impatience with others.
The faster ways to impact the mind (or counterbalance anxious or irritated minds), is by sounds and scents/smells, as noted above. The reason these tactics work for both mind and body is because of the mind-body connection that exists.
Take the body quiz to learn more about how to calm your anxious or irritated moods.