What are panic attacks and is there a difference between anxiety attacks and panic attacks? Now this is a topic that a lot of people want to know about and a lot of people suffer from and they have no idea what to do about.
Anxiety Attack vs Panic Attack
So I want to talk about the basics, and I want to start out by saying that there is no difference between an anxiety attack and a panic attack. Sometimes people get these terms a little confused and they wonder if there’s a difference. There’s no difference. It’s just a different word for the same thing.
What is a Panic Attack?
So what’s going on with a panic attack? Well, you know you can have bad anxiety that affects your life without having panic attacks. What’s going on with a panic attack is your system has gotten so overwhelmed that you start to either hyperventilate, you might have extremely high blood pressure, sweating, lots of bodily symptoms going on with a panic attack versus just general kind of broad anxiety or something like OCD happening.
With a panic attack, it’s usually going to shut you down in the moment and you’re not going to be able to keep doing whatever important task you were trying to do. And it’s just going to kind of overwhelm you.
Now there are definitely times when people have panic attacks where no one around them would know and you’re able to push through and there’s a lot of physical symptoms going on in the body. But in general, you will be experiencing symptoms that someone around you would notice and it’s the classic, you know, kind of hyperventilating needing to calm your breathing. That’s usually what’s going on when we are talking about an anxiety or panic attack.
How to Calm a Panic Attack
What’s my number one tip for dealing with a panic attack? It’s a little counterintuitive, but it is to tell yourself that it is okay that this is happening. What most people want to do when they’re having a panic attack is fight it, tell themselves this isn’t okay, this has to stop, you know they kind of want to like push it away as if they’re standing in the ocean trying to push back a wave.
Well it’s the opposite. You want to try to ride it and tell yourself mentally, talk to yourself, “this is okay.” There’s of course a lot more I could say about panic attacks, but that is the basics and I hope that you find it helpful. Stay tuned for more on the topic of anxiety.