Anxiety vs. Panic: What’s the Difference?
Anxiety is something I’d say we all struggle with to varying degrees.
I know that I’ve got my share of anxieties to wrestle with: worries over financial stability/instability, concerns for my teenagers (growing up way too fast), fear that the book I’m working on or releasing next won’t be good enough, and the list goes on.
To a certain extent, everyone in the world copes with anxiety on some level.
But panic is quite a different beast. While anxiety is worrying that something bad might/will/could happen, panic is believing that something bad IS HAPPENING. Worse, they’re in the middle of that something bad, and there’s no escaping it.
Anxiety isn’t usually rational; it often persists even when that thing we fear doesn’t rear its ugly head. It’s all in our brains, where our amygdala is releasing stress hormones as a result of our fears. We end up in a state of “alarm” when our anxieties are allowed to grow.
Thankfully, most of the time, that state of alarm is down-regulated by our brains to a state of interest. We’re no longer as afraid of whatever caused that fear before, so we have a chance to examine that fear and recognize that it’s not as realistic as we initially believed. That sort of logical examination and rationale helps us to get past the fears.
But when you don’t down-regulate your fears (either consciously or unconsciously) and the fears keep growing, that feeling of alarm persists. Thanks to our vivid imagination—the ability to see the worst in every possible situation—the fear becomes more and more real the longer we remain in that state of alarm.
Until finally, BOOM: panic!
Anxieties become panic when we believe the terrible thing we feared isn’t just about to take place—it’s here and happening now. We end up panicking because we feel trapped in the situation and unable to escape our fears.
When we’re in panic mode, there are really only a few things we can do to regain some sense of control:
Controlling and regulating your breathing
Tensing and relaxing your muscles, one limb at a time
Exercising
The key to panic is always PREVENTION.
By realizing that our anxieties will turn into panic when not controlled, it gives us the power to prevent those fears from growing and spreading. We can take steps to manage anxieties and fears that, though they will never go away fully, don’t have to have power and control over us or cause panic.
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