asked around to find out why there are two such distinct experiences. SANE Australia’s Dr. Mark Cross explains that anxiety tends to play out on the body (somatically) when we haven’t yet come to understand how and why our anxiety happens. This kind of panic attack happens when our thoughts trigger the ancient fight-or-flight mechanisms and we succumb to the response, believing something truly fearful is happening. In intellectual anxiety attacks (one of my spirals) we do the fight-or-flight response while simultaneously being able to understand what it’s about.
