Webster’s defines panic as follows…
“1. An overwhelming feeling of fear and anxiety.
2. Sudden mass fear and anxiety over anticipated events; “panic in the stock market”; “a war scare”.”
Anxiety is defined as…
“1. A relatively permanent state of anxiety occurring in a variety of mental disorders.
2. A vague unpleasant emotion that is experienced in anticipation of some (usually ill-defined) misfortune.”
And lastly, they define panic attack as…
“1. A sudden attack of fear.”
Wikipedia gets it a little closer with this…
“A panic attack is a period of intense fear or discomfort, typically with an abrupt onset and usually lasting no more than 30 minutes. Symptoms include trembling, shortness of breath and sensations of choking or smothering.”
I personally suffer from Panic Disorder as well as Major Depression (We’ll get into that one next time) and know fully what anxiety is. The best way I can think of to describe it is this. You know that feeling when you know something bad is about to happen? I have that feeling all the time. I am always jumpy and on edge, my stomach is always in a knot, and sometimes I even get nauseous. My neck and shoulders bother me from always being so tense. When something minor goes wrong or even something out of the ordinary happens my mind begins to swirl. Suddenly, in my mind, the fact that D (my ex that lives with me; we’ll get into that later too) doesn’t come home on time means something is wrong, Should I call him to see if he’s ok?, No, it’s not my place to keep tabs on him anymore, What if I call and he doesn’t answer because he’s with some other girl?, But what if he needs help?, He might have got a DUI and be sitting in jail, Oh my God! If he was drinking he could have had an accident, Maybe he won’t be able to answer, Should I call the police or the hospitals?. I know it’s irrational but all this flies through my head in a second or two. Before I know it I am in a state of panic. My heart begins to race, my chest feels tight, my stomach is knotted so tight that I feel as though I am about to vomit, my hands begin to clench and my arms and legs go tingly, I have tunnel vision. Now the pain in my chest is so bad that I feel like my heart might burst, I’m gasping but can’t seem to get any oxygen. And this can go on for quite a while. It usually ends with me exhausted and crying. I have smaller anxiety attacks, quite frequently, if there are too many people around but the one I just described is a full fledged panic attack. The sad part is that I recognize that this makes no sense but in that moment I can’t get my mind or my body to believe it. All of those thoughts flying through my head are reality and it’s hard for me to take a step back and say “Calm down, you’re overreacting”. So unless you’ve actually experienced it I don’t think you can fully understand what it is. You certainly can’t understand what causes it because even those of us who suffer from these attacks can’t. I guess what I was getting at is that panic attacks don’t just feel like fear, as Webster’s has it defined, but they feel like your mind and body have simultaneously turned against you.
