The Difference Between Anxiety and Depression… Or Are They the Same?

It was the middle of the night when my three-year-old son started screaming.

Not a restless whimper or a bad dream he’d shake off in a few seconds… full-on panic.

My wife went in first, trying to soothe him, to find out what was wrong. He was still in bed, the room still dark, but whatever was happening was real to him.

There was a chicken in his bed. (or at least, that’s what he believed).

A terrifying, unwelcome chicken.

He begged my wife to get rid of it. So, thinking quickly, she told him she had. That it was gone. But this didn’t work. If anything, it made things worse. He calmed slightly, but only because he now needed reassurance that it wouldn’t come back.

So she tried another approach. She told him it was just a dream, that there had never been a chicken in the first place. But this was even worse.

Because of course there was a chicken.

He had seen it. He had felt it. And now, not only was he terrified, but no one was believing him.

I went in to see if I could help. But the moment I touched him, his panic surged. He thought the chicken had come back.

It seemed nothing could console him.

Are Depression and Anxiety the Same Thing?

The question comes up a lot: Is depression the same as anxiety, or are they different?

At first glance, they seem like opposite experiences.

Anxiety tends to come with a sense of urgency, restlessness, or unease. Depression has a tendency to feel slow, heavy, like being pulled under something that can’t be escaped.

It’s easy to think of them as separate conditions, one making you hyper-alert, the other draining your energy. But when we take a closer look, the difference between anxiety and depression isn’t as clear-cut as it seems.

How Depression and Anxiety Go Together

If anxiety had a best friend, it would be worry.

If depression had a best friend, it would be rumination.

Worry and rumination may feel different, but they are built from the same thing.

Worry is a kind of forward-focused thinking. It anticipates, it prepares, it warns. When it looks real, the body responds accordingly. Maybe a tightening, speeding up, releasing adrenaline, as if something truly threatening is about to happen.

Rumination, on the other hand, is backward-focused thinking. It replays, it holds on, it loops. When it looks real, the body follows suit, slowing down, dampening itself, numbing in an attempt to cope with something it perceives as inescapable.

Different? Maybe in how they feel. But at their root, they are both doing the same thing.

They are interpretations of thought and sensation.

And when thinking looks real, the body does what makes sense based on that perception.

The Spiral of Depression: A Different Kind of Anxiety

For years, this was my experience with depression.

The familiar sensations of sadness would appear, and my mind would start searching for an explanation.

"Oh. Here it comes."

And with that, confirmation bias would kick in.

I’d start seeing evidence everywhere. My mind would scan my life for reasons that justified why I felt this way. I’d dig through past conversations, analysing words and silences to prove that my friends didn’t actually like me. I’d look at my life, my work, my progress, and decide I wasn’t enough, I wasn’t successful, I wasn’t going anywhere.

And the more I searched, the more I found.

Because when you go looking for sadness, you find sadness.

And so the cycle would begin, a self-reinforcing loop of thoughts proving to me that my experience was real. Not just real, but inevitable.

Some of these spirals lasted days. Some, weeks. Some, months.

Sound familiar?

So What Happened?

Back to my son.

There he was, crying in the dark, terrified.

And in that moment, it hit me:

Of course he doesn’t believe us. To him, the chicken is real.

So nothing we said, no logic, no reassurance, was enough to shake that reality.

So what did we do?

We turned the light on.

That was it.

No reasoning. No convincing. No trying to fix the experience.

Just a simple shift that allowed him to see for himself.

The moment the light came on, he looked around the room, saw there was no chicken, and the entire experience collapsed in an instant.

And then, just like that, he went back to sleep.

What Happens When You Stop Searching?

For years, I tried different strategies to cope with depression.

I distracted myself. I reframed my thoughts. I tried to force the narrative in a different direction.

But just like the chicken problem, as long as I believed it was real, nothing ever changed in a meaningful or lasting way.

It wasn’t that the sensations stopped appearing. They still do.

But now, when I feel those same sensations, I don’t immediately explain them.

I don’t call them depression. I don’t even call them sadness.

I certainly don’t search for proof that they mean something about me or my life or my future.

Most likely? I’m tired. Maybe I’m hungry. Maybe even just slightly dehydrated.

Or maybe it’s nothing at all.

And because I don’t go looking for the cause, the spiral never begins.

Just like my son’s chicken in the dark, the only thing keeping them alive was my belief in them.

Depression or Anxiety? Or Just Interpretation?

For some people, anxiety and depression seem like opposite experiences. One is high-energy, the other is low. One feels urgent, the other feels heavy.

But for many people, including me, they exist as two sides of the same process.

Because at their root, both anxiety and depression are interpretations of thought and sensation.

Not things that do something. Not forces that act upon us.

Simply thoughts that don’t look real.

Or thoughts that do.

And when they do, the body responds. That’s all.

The body isn’t failing. It’s simply responding to what looks real in the moment.

An Invitation to See More Clearly

The more we fight anxiety and depression, the more real they seem. The more we try to argue with them, the deeper we get trapped.

But just like my son in that moment, we aren’t reacting to reality, we’re reacting to what looks real to us.

And that means the way out isn’t about controlling thoughts or getting rid of them.

It’s about seeing them for what they are.

So here’s my invitation:

The next time you notice the onset of anxiety or depression, pause for a moment. Not to fix it. Not to make it go away.

But to notice:

What looks real in this moment?

What happens when you stop trying to remove the chicken and instead, just turn on the light?