How so?
Anxiety is a more prolonged emotion that arises from an anticipated or potential threat or a situation that's uncertain. Unlike fear, the source of anxiety might not be real or immediate.
- fear is transient, you feel it in the moment and then it goes away. You can then remember "boy I was scared" and feel the memory of fear but not fear itself. You can project and imagine a situation where you'd be scared.
- anxiety is a persistent state of stressful anguish. There are peaks and troughs. During peaks it can be overwhelming and look like, trigger, or mix with fear. During troughs anxiety is still there somewhere deep, it merely takes a backseat to other emotions. In every moment it biases every process your mind undertakes.
Anxiety is a kind of fuzzy term because it encompasses an overall pattern and cycle as well as the associated feelings. But a useful distinction is that anxiety is driven by avoidance of fear of some uncertainty, and exposure and acclimation to that fear (without avoidance) is what extinguishes the anxiety.
Avoidance can take almost any form, but common examples include worry and rumination, procrastination, compulsive rituals like hand-washing or internet research, self-medicating, and superstitious behaviors. And of course, literal avoidance.
Also, since I’ve already been accused of hair-splitting, I might as well point out:
> can't avoid a panic attack
There’s no need to avoid a panic attack. In fact, trying to avoid a panic attack feeds the panic.