Anxiety Attacks Vs Panic Attacks

Learn About Triggers, Symptoms, & Solutions For Anxiety & Panic Attacks

Oct 20, 2023

Anxiety is one of the most common mental health issues in the world. Anxiety is a relative of fear, and both occur in response to a threat. Fear causes the body to release stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, which increase your heart rate, and make you more alert and aware of your environment. These hormones are part of the fight-or-flight response that helps you to move quickly so you don’t get eaten by wild animals. At its best, fear is a survival mechanism that’s meant to protect you.

However, most of the time, we find ourselves in situations where there's no actual threat to our survival, like when we're at home alone, at work, or in social settings. Yet, these everyday situations can trigger feelings of fear and anxiety, even though there's no real danger present. In such cases, it suggests that our nervous system is dysregulated or misfiring, causing anxiety or panic.

While people often use the terms 'anxiety,' 'anxiety attack,' and 'panic attack' interchangeably, it's important to understand the differences between them."

Anxiety

Anxiety typically develops gradually and can range from feeling mildly activated to being moderately triggered. It commonly stems from the stress of worrying or contemplating future events. Here are the most common mental and physical symptoms associated with anxiety:

Racing or circular thoughts (including worrying, negative thinking, catastrophic thinking, black-and-white thinking, rumination, obsession, and paranoia).
Shortness of breath, hyperventilation, or a sensation of breath being trapped within the body. During a panic attack, individuals may even fear death.
Tightness in the throat, chest, or stomach area.
Feeling disconnected from oneself and the surroundings, or experiencing detachment from the body (dissociation).
Feelings of dread.
Heart palpitations, excessive sweating, or sudden temperature changes without any specific cause.
Difficulty falling or staying asleep.
Psychosomatic symptoms such as muscle tension, back pain, joint stiffness, nausea, jaw clenching, stomach pain, digestive issues, and dizziness.
Engaging in compulsive behaviors like cleaning, chain-smoking, excessive shopping, binge eating, or substance use.

Anxiety Attack

When anxiety symptoms become severe, intense, overwhelming, and difficult to control, it may be classified as an anxiety attack. During an anxiety attack, thoughts may spiral out of control, making them challenging to manage. These attacks are more intense than general anxiety but not as sudden or severe as panic attacks. Anxiety attacks are primarily linked to stress, persistent overthinking, or excessive worrying about future events, whether likely or unlikely to occur.

Panic Attack

Panic tends to come on abruptly, and quickly sends your nervous system into a fight, flight, or freeze response. During a panic attack, you’ll feel afraid or threatened by something that’s happening in the moment. You might feel like you’re going crazy or about to die. Your heart will beat quickly and it’ll be difficult to breathe.

Common Causes For Anxiety

Genetics and Trauma

If anxiety or panic runs in your family, you might have a genetic predisposition, even if it skips a generation. The field of epigenetics has revealed that trauma, stress, and the environment can activate or inhibit the expression of certain genes.

Unresolved personal and intergenerational trauma stays active in the limbic system, the brain center that deals with memory, mood, pleasure, and emotions like anger and excitement. This unprocessed trauma can be triggered at any time and set off an alarm in your brain, causing anxiety or panic.

In this case, it is essential to work through personal and inherited trauma and create new neural pathways in the brain.

Lifestyle Factors

It is essential to assess your lifestyle to determine whether something in your routine or life is causing anxiety. Stress, codependent relationships, major life transitions, and medical conditions can cause or contribute to feelings of anxiety. Isolation or leading a sedentary lifestyle can also amplify symptoms of anxiety. For some individuals, substances including caffeine and alcohol can trigger anxiety. Additionally, foods that cause glucose spikes or inflammation in the gut can send an inflammatory signal to your brain, activating anxiety.

Suppressed Emotions

Suppressed emotions, such as anger or sadness, can contribute to anxiety and panic, especially if these feelings are tied to trauma. Many people don't know how to tolerate the discomfort of feeling difficult emotions without numbing out or acting out. It can be overwhelming to face the past without getting flooded with painful feelings and thoughts. These suppressed emotions build up and can trigger anxiety and panic at unexpected times. Suppressed emotions can also lead to fits of uncontrolled anger and rage.

If you are dealing with anxiety triggered by trauma or suppressed emotions, it's important to work with a mental health professional to address the trauma and find non-destructive ways to release pent-up emotions.

Learn more about how to deal with anger.

Mindset and Thought Patterns

While negative thinking is a symptom of anxiety, your thoughts can also trigger anxiety and other emotional states. Most people engage in unhelpful automatic thought patterns, such as overthinking, rumination, worrying, or future thinking. These thought patterns can drastically change your mood and even your physiological state very quickly. Unconscious thoughts and negative limiting core beliefs can also contribute to your mindset and how your brain perceives the world. If you find yourself engaging in negative thinking patterns, CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), mindfulness, and meditation can help you gain more control over your thoughts and emotions.

How to Manage Anxiety and Panic

If you are dealing with anxiety or panic and are unsure of what to do, here are 13 actions you can take today:

Design a Less Stressful Lifestyle: This might include reconfiguring your priorities so you can enjoy more time and space to slow down, rest, exercise, and engage in activities that nourish and soothe your nervous system. Plan each day ahead of time and make sure to block off time for meals and self-care. Identify where you need to implement boundaries and commit to upholding them in your personal and professional life.
Spend More Time in Nature: Spending about 20 minutes in the forest, near a body of water, or any quiet place in nature can reset your cortisol levels.
Practice Mindfulness, Relaxation, and Stress Reduction Techniques: Help your mind and body relax by practicing present-moment awareness, meditation, breathwork, yoga, tai chi, journaling, drawing, or reading inspirational literature. These practices can help you interrupt the stress signal in the body and quiet the mind, especially if you're dealing with negative or fear-based thinking. With repetition and consistent practice, you can change your automatic response to stress or anxiety while reprogramming your brain.
Deep Breathing: Deep, slow breathing practices will help you gain more control over your thoughts, emotions, and mood. Shallow breathing can lead to hyperventilation. Practice taking deep, slow breaths into the diaphragm throughout the day.
Exercise Regularly: Practicing movement or exercise for at least 20 minutes per day can help you release stress and pent-up emotions.
Grounding and Embodiment: Any physical activity that engages your leg muscles can help you get out of your head so you can access the power in your body.
Work With a Mental Health Professional: Talking to a mental health professional can help you heal your brain by addressing unresolved trauma and suppressed emotions. DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) and CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) can empower you to change your thought patterns and how you respond to stress and anxiety.
Work with a Medical Doctor: Discuss your symptoms with a doctor and, if possible, request a full panel blood test. This will allow you to rule out or address any underlying physical conditions contributing to anxiety.
Reduce Inflammation in the Body: Researchers have found that neurons and neurotransmitters in the gut can impact the brain, our mood, and our emotional states. Inflammatory foods and beverages, such as alcohol, processed sugars, excessive dairy, or white flour, can cause inflammation in the gut, which sends an inflammatory signal to the brain, triggering symptoms of anxiety, panic, and depression. Eating an anti-inflammatory diet mitigates inflammation in the gut, which reduces anxiety.
Reduce Glucose Spikes: Fluctuations in glucose can profoundly affect your mood and exacerbate anxiety. Explore strategies to mitigate glucose spikes through dietary modifications and mindful food sequencing, as these measures can play a pivotal role in stabilizing your mood and mitigating anxiety.
Chant or Sing to Improve Your Vagal Tone: Chanting, especially making a long "OM" or "VOOO" sound, stimulates your vagus nerve, which helps increase feelings of safety and relaxation.
Take a Warm Bath or a Cold Shower: A warm bath with Epsom salts can relax your muscles and release tension to help you feel less tense. A cold shower can stimulate your vagus nerve and make you feel more relaxed afterward.
Improve Your Posture: Your posture can impact your breathing and increase or decrease the tension and stress in your body. You can improve your posture through stretching, foam rolling, or practicing the Alexander Technique.

Things to Remember

Your body is intelligent and wants to keep you safe by making sure you’re alert to potential dangers in your environment. However, most people are on high alert even when there’s no threat. This means the brain and nervous system are misfiring, and you’re flooded with unnecessary stress hormones that cause more harm than good.

Ignoring anxiety doesn’t tend to make it go away, and it often worsens over time. If you’re dealing with anxiety or panic, it’s important to seek support and address the underlying cause while learning tools for managing anxiety so you can access sustainable relief. As you progress through this healing process, the symptoms of anxiety and panic will become more manageable, and the frequency and intensity of attacks will be significantly reduced.