Take this Quiz: Am I Stressed, or do I have Anxiety?
- Ayelet Krieger
- Dec 5, 2025
- 7 min read
Often when we feel stressed, it’s because something in life isn’t going as we’d hoped. Or we’re facing something new and unknown, and we’re feeling on edge.
During those times, you may feel questions, fears, past failures, and future worries churning through you. You feel out of control, and your body is responding with symptoms to let you know something isn’t right. Your palms and armpits may be sweating profusely. Your heart may start racing and your breath might get short. Your muscles may suddenly tense.
But is this stress—a part of the normal ebb and flow of our lives that will pass once we get through tonight’s deadline or new date?
Or is this anxiety, a condition that stays with us most of our waking hours, and which may require professional intervention in order to help us restore a sense of balance to our lives?
If you’re feeling worried and overwhelmed right now and wondering whether you are simply caught in a bout of stress or are experiencing the deeper symptoms of anxiety, we’ve prepared a 5-question quiz to find out.
Remember, what one person finds stressful may be a source of deep anxiety for another person, and may not even be a trigger at all for someone else. What matters is how you respond to the situations in your life.
So as you’re reading the following questions and answering them, answer as honestly as you can.
OK, let’s get started.
1. Is what's worrying you a concrete event or situation? Or are you worried about the fact that you always feel worried, even though you don’t know why?
a. I know what is worrying me. There’s this deadline (or family gathering or new person I’m seeing or uncomfortable conversation I need to have.) It’s stressing me out!
b. Sometimes I know what’s worrying me and sometimes I can’t quite pin it down. When I can’t name it, everything feels overwhelming.
c. I don’t know why I’m always so stressed. It’s so many things. I’m always feeling worried. I don’t know why. That’s making me feel more worried. Like something must be wrong, even though I don’t know what it is. All this makes me feel overwhelmed.
2. How does your body feel when you are stressed?
a. When I’m overwhelmed or worried, I have trouble sleeping sometimes and feel irritated and fidgety. But I’m still breathing okay and not panicking.
b. Insomnia or restlessness is definitely something I feel when I’m overwhelmed or worried, as well as irritability or crankiness. Sometimes I also feel like my breathing is constricted and I start panicking.
c. When I’m worried or overwhelmed, I have trouble sleeping and I’m really moody. But the main thing is I can barely breathe. I start panicking and then my breathing gets really short. I have had, or have been close to having, one or more panic attacks before.
3. Can manage your stress by creating a plan, talking to a friend, or going for a walk? Or does your stress you leave you feeling thoroughly powerless, not knowing how to go on?
a. Even though I’m super worried about what’s going on, I do know that I can make a plan to get through this. I might not want to do what I need to do, but I know how to gather my courage together to tackle this.
b. Sometimes I feel like what’s worrying me has a solution I know how to implement. Sometimes I feel utterly out of control and crippled by what’s worrying me.
c. I feel utterly powerless. What’s worrying me is so huge that I don’t know how to solve it. I feel so alone and helpless, like I’ll never get through this.
4. How long, and frequently, have you felt this way?
a. Stress, fear and overwhelm tend to come and go with big life stressors, but overall I return to myself after the stressor resolves.
b. Sometimes stress will last under six months, but sometimes it will stay for longer than six months. Some months I feel like I am stressed all the time, and other months feel more normal. It’s not really predictable.
c. Stress, fear and overwhelm tend to stay for longer than six months, even for a year or years at a time. And during that time, more days than not I feel anxious. It’s hard to even remember what “normal” feels like anymore.
5. Does fear, stress and overwhelm come and go through your life, still allowing you to live your life fully? Or have these feelings taken over your life so that you don’t experience joy anymore?
a. Stress, fear and overwhelm tend to come and go. When they are present, they can feel very (very!) strong. But they always go. And then my life returns to how it was, with moments of happiness too.
b. Sometimes stress will come and go, and sometimes it will seem to stay forever. When that happens, it feels like stress has taken over my life.
c. Stress, fear and overwhelm have taken over my life and I feel like I don’t even know who I am without those emotions anymore. This makes me feel even sadder and more overwhelmed. Like I don’t know who I am.
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Great work! We know these questions can be hard to ask, and the answers can be hard to face. Remember, through all of this, that you are not alone, and also that while stress and anxiety may be part of your life, they are not the sum total of who you are.
Okay, so now that you’ve answered those questions, take a look below at the scoring categories and next steps for moving forward.
Scoring Categories:
If you answered mostly A’s, you may be “Sometimes Stressed”:
Key features:
You feel a normal range of feelings, including stress, worry, anxiety, joy and contentment.
You feel worried or anxious when stressors arise: looming deadlines or paying bills, or when you are anticipating tough conversations or new social encounters. Then after the stressor has passed, you bounce back to your normal range of emotions.
Even if it’s challenging, you know how to navigate the stressors in your life by creating a plan, talking to a friend, or heading to the gym. You know how to take care of yourself during the ebbs and flows of your life.
Going Forward:
Get to know the stressors that affect you the most, and then pay attention to how those stressors affect you and show up in your relationships and life.
You might journal about this, or find a friend or partner to work with.
The more you can identify the things that stress you and how you respond to that stress, the more you can work on coping.
By developing strategies for managing stress, you can continue moving through your life without as much disruption when a stressor arises.
If you answered mostly “B’s”, you may be “Sometimes Anxious”:
Key features:
You sometimes experience the stressors in life as “stress”, which comes and goes, and you sometimes experience anxiety that lasts after the stressor has already passed.
You feel worried about external situations like going for a job interview, or meeting someone for a blind date. But sometimes you experience a form of anxiety and fear that weighs on you and feels like impending doom.
Sometimes you know how to navigate your way out of stressful situations and sometimes what you’re feeling seems too big or scary to find a solution to. You may feel like you are not living your life fully due to episodes of anxiety, and you may long to be free of this, to live your fullest life.
Going Forward:
Like for the “Sometimes Stressed”, it’s very useful and important to get to know the sources of stress in your life, and how you react to them.
You may want to pay attention to the difference between the stressors that come and go, and the feelings that don’t. When do you feel like you can handle the challenges you’re facing, and when do you feel like you can’t?
he most useful next step is getting to know yourself, and getting to know the variations in how you experience stress and anxiety.
*Resource: Consider tracking your mood fluctuations in a journal or on an app like Daylio (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.daylio&hl=en. Without judgement, pay close attention to what triggers stress or calm in you. This will be a great source of information as you work to develop skills and tools for managing stress.
If you answered mostly “C’s”, you may be “Severely Anxious”:
Key features:
Stress and anxiety have become so dominant in your life that you barely experience feelings like joy and calm and ease anymore.
Feelings of worry, fear and overwhelm don’t just come and go with external stressors, but loom much longer inside you. It’s often hard for you to pinpoint what exactly is causing you such severe anxiety. You feel the sense of impending doom a lot, and can’t see a way forward.
Navigating through the feelings you have feels impossible. You are often left feeling helpless and powerless. You are looking for a way out.
Going Forward:
It’s really important to start by telling yourself—even if you don’t yet believe it— that it’s okay to be where you are, and to be feeling what you are feeling.
These intense feelings of anxiety are felt by thousands of people all around the world every year. Know that you are not alone, and that there is a pathway through this.
And know that the fact that you have identified this today is the first step in guiding you to a richer, fuller life.
*Resource: Read evidence-based books on anxiety and stress management, such as The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris, Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat Zinn, and Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life by Steven C. Hays.
*Exercise: Spend time in nature. Go for a walk where you can’t hear any cars, or drive to the top of a hill or walk along the edge of the sea. Feel the wind, the sun, the rain, the snow. Look up at the stars, and down at the earth. See the trees, listen to the birds, watch the ants— take in everything around you. Let yourself for a moment forget yourself, and just feel yourself as part of this great, vast world.
More and more therapists are testing and proving what the ancient peoples have always known: that it’s healing to be in nature, and that it’s healing to get exercise.
Reach out for help. When caught in a state of severe anxiety, it can often be hard to do the self-examining work of these previous categories without cycling more deeply into the abyss of anxiety.
Finding a therapist who is experienced and caring and who you trust is very helpful, perhaps critical.
You may have worked with a therapist before, or this may be the first time. Both are okay!
The main thing is to recognize that it’s okay to ask for help from a professional, and that it may be the key to starting a whole new life. You deserve to give yourself that chance.
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