Is there a difference between panic attacks and anxiety attacks?
Published by Pierre Benoit, s.c.c., RCCH in Wellness · Thursday 13 Oct 2022
Words are just labels for certain experiences, and because of this, different people choose to label things in different ways. Some people use the phrase “anxiety attack” to refer to a less intense panic attack.
Other people use it to refer to a more “cognitive” panic attack, where there are less body sensations and mainly just fearful thoughts. Most people, though, tend to use the two phrases interchangeably, to mean the same thing.
Now, I believe that it is important to be accurate, panic and anxiety are actually two distinct phenomena. While there are a lot of commonalities between the two, and it is often hard to separate them, panic and anxiety involve different brain circuitries, different hormonal profiles, and different biology.
For example, a panic attack is literally an adrenaline rush, with very little, if ANY, of the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol, though, is predominant in anxiety. Psychologically, panic is a fear response that relates to specific perceived IMMINENT threats.
Anxiety, on the other hand, is best described more as worry than fear. It is related to what we perceive as being more distant, more uncertain, and often more abstract threats. So, while most people use the words anxiety and panic to mean similar things, from a scientific point of view, they are actually distinct phenomena.
Having this understanding, you can appreciate that the term “anxiety attack” might be inaccurate. People might feel anxious about having a panic attack and their anxiety might lead to a panic attack. However, the word “attack” implies a fast, dramatic, intense response and scientifically that’s a fear or panic response, not anxiety.
So why is ANY of this important? And how does this directly relate to you having a more care-free, panic-free life? Well, if you suffer from anxiety or panic, since they’re related but distinct phenomena, as a Clinical Hypnotherapist, I need to give you the best tools to help you with both.
I hope this blog post has been valuable to you. I’m Pierre Benoit, and thank you for reading.
