Difference Between Anxiety And Panic Attacks
In a person’s life, there occurs several instances where he/she becomes anxious or he/she panics. Even in the life of the strongest and toughest person also, there occurs some incident or the other due to which either he/she gets anxiety or panic attacks. Generally people are unable to distinguish between panic and anxiety attacks as they both seem to have almost similar causes. But if one sees the way the body of the person and his mind reacts to a strenuous condition, then you would be easily able to differentiate between the anxiety attacks and panic. But this can only be done by the person experiencing this if he or she is in a situation of sanity.
To many people anxiety appears to be more serious issue than panic.But in reality many anxieties accumulate to result into panic attacks. Anxiety attacks stay for a much longer time as compared to the panic attacks with some exceptions. Anxiety is a gradually occurring phenomenon that starts slowly and ultimately becomes unbearable for the individual under its effect. Panic attacks on the contrary happen all of a sudden without any prior warning and then completely affects the moves the individual.
The causes of panic attacks are too much of worry negative thoughts, lack of self-confidence, lack of sleep etc. The symptoms of both are almost similar in nature, the only difference being in the degree of severity- panic being more severe as compared to anxiety. Panic may make an individual feel as if he is about to die, although in reality all that happens is that the individual shakes, becomes breathless, trembles etc. The rate of heart beat also increases.
To treat this attack, one has to undergo proper medication. Although these are not completely curable, the attacks’ frequency can be reduced by taking lower doses of anti-depressants. Such kind of drugs must be taken with much care as overdose results in increasing the frequency.
SUMMARY
- The duration of anxiety attacks is more than the panic attacks
- The anxiety attacks occur gradually while panic attacks occur abruptly.
- The severity of panic attacks is more as compared to anxiety attacks.