Anxiety and Panic Attacks
What are anxiety and panic?
People often wonder about the differences between anxiety and panic. Anxiety refers to any time someone is worried or scared about something. Panic refers to an episode of extreme anxiety.
Anxiety is a very common emotion to experience, but when it gets out of hand, it can be a vicious cycle that is hard to break on your own. According to a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) about 19% of adults in the U.S. had some anxiety disorder within the past year.
People have anxiety and fear about many, many different things, including:
- an upcoming performance
- others’ opinions of them,
- an upcoming test or task,
- expecting a health diagnosis,
- public speaking, and
- phobias (specific fears such as heights, spiders, and more).
Is it mild anxiety or something else?
Sometimes anxiety comes on, and then leaves very quickly. It may start when you’re anticipating something, get better as you feel ready, and then go away when you’re done. For example, maybe you are performing in a race that is very important to you. And you’re feeling amped up and nervous before the big day. Maybe your stomach is all in knots. After the race is over, the anxiety disappears. That happens to all of us at different times in our lives.
But, sometimes the worry doesn’t go away or it causes a lot of difficulty in some area of your life. For example, if you have to give presentations regularly for work and the worry gets so intense that you have trouble concentrating and you can’t sleep at night. If this happens frequently or lasts a long time, you may have a diagnosis that can be treated so you feel significant relief.
What is panic?
Panic refers to a period of very intense anxiety for a limited amount of time. It can just be for a few minutes or up to an hour or more. Anxious thoughts or feelings often happen along with physical symptoms, like increased heart rate, sweating, feeling faint or trouble breathing. Sometimes it can be severe enough (and scary enough) that it is a full blown panic attack. Panic attacks can be very scary to experience and if they happen enough, it can also lead to a diagnosis. The good news is that there are well-established protocols to help you get rid of those episodes.
When should I get help for anxiety?
Everyone worries from time to time. But, if your worry (or being scared) lasts for a long time, happens over and over (maybe about the same or similar things but can be about very different things), or if it is disrupting some important area of your life (such as making it hard to go to work or school, or you don’t want to leave home or see friends who you usually enjoy being around), it will probably help to talk to a psychologist about it.
Health issues and anxiety
Symptoms of anxiety often coincide with physical symptoms as part of the mind-body connection. This can happen in several different ways. Sometimes the physical symptoms are part of the anxiety disorder. For example, when someone has a panic attack, they often also have physical symptoms, such as trouble breathing, increased heart rate, dizziness, chest pain, or many others. Those symptoms can also occur with many other anxiety issues.
Also, sometimes a person is having a physical health issue (such as sleep problems, headache, pain, or heart disease) and they have anxiety in response to the stress of dealing with that health problem. The health issues themselves can be scary because they’re painful or uncomfortable. Also, it can be anxiety-provoking if it means they have difficult or expensive treatment, if the treatment takes a long time, means they have to take time off of work, or if the outcome is uncertain.
Help is here!
I have a great deal of training and experience in helping people manage anxiety. If your anxiety, worry and panic has gotten out of control and has been affecting your life, it’s time to get some support. Contact me at 512-627-3583, and we’ll get right to work on it!