Understanding Anxiety and Panic Attacks

Anxiety is your body’s natural response to stress. It’s a feeling of fear or apprehension about what’s to come. But if your feelings of anxiety are extreme, last for longer than six months, and are interfering with your life, you may have an anxiety disorder.

4 min readNov 15, 2020

What is Anxiety?

Anxiety is a normal reaction to danger, the body’s automatic fight-or-flight response that is triggered when you feel threatened, under pressure, or are facing a challenging situation, such as a job interview, exam, or first date.

If anxiety interferes with your everyday life, the feeling of fear may be with you all the time, it’s intense and sometimes debilitating, then you may have anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorder can cause you to stop doing the things you enjoy. If left untreated, the anxiety will keep getting worse.

Anxiety symptoms

Anxiety feels different depending on the person experiencing it. Symptoms of general anxiety include:

Feeling nervous, restless or tense
Tense muscles (especially shoulders and neck)
Anticipating the worst
Having a sense of impending danger, panic or doom
Heart palpitations
Sleep problems
Shortness of breath or Breathing rapidly (hyperventilation)
Nausea
Dizziness

Anxiety disorder

Anxiety disorders are characterized by a general feature of excessive fear and can have negative behavioral and emotional consequences.

Examples of anxiety disorders include generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder (social phobia), specific phobias and separation anxiety disorder. You can have more than one anxiety disorder. Sometimes anxiety results from a medical condition that needs treatment.

Fear is cued by the presence or anticipation of the object/situation and exposure to the phobic stimulus results in an immediate fear response or panic attack.

Anxiety attack

An anxiety attack is a feeling of a sudden overwhelming apprehension, worry, distress, or fear. It can sometimes occur unexpectedly for no apparent reason, but mostly it can be linked to some specific trigger. For many people, an anxiety attack builds slowly.

Since anxiety attack is related to some specific trigger, it tends to build up and continue for some time, but usually passes after the event (trigger) passes.

Panic attack

A panic attack is a sudden episode of intense fear that triggers severe physical reactions when there is no real danger or apparent cause. Panic attacks can be very frightening. When panic attacks occur, you might think you’re losing control, having a heart attack or even dying. — Mayo Clinic

You need to remember that panic attacks usually lasts between 5 and 20 minutes (in rear cases more than 30 minutes, but that’s not you!), although the effects may last longer, you will not die of a panic attack!

Anxiety Attack vs Panic Attack

Panic and anxiety attacks may feel similar, and they share a lot of emotional and physical symptoms, but they are not the same.

Both panic and anxiety can involve fear, a pounding or racing heart, lightheadedness, chest pain, difficulty breathing, and irrational thoughts.

However, in a panic attack, these are far more severe. The person may genuinely believe they are going to die.

When to see a doctor or therapist

See your doctor if:

You feel like you’re worrying too much and it’s interfering with your work, relationships or other parts of your life
Your fear, worry or anxiety is upsetting to you and difficult to control
You feel depressed, have trouble with alcohol or drug use, or have other mental health concerns along with anxiety
You think your anxiety could be linked to a physical health problem
You have suicidal thoughts or behaviors — if this is the case, seek emergency treatment immediately