Anxiety And Panic Attacks: What Leads To What?Is it a progression or a vicious circle? Aniexty and panic attacks have been considered a lot of things: close cousins, father-and-son, even molehill-and-mountain. Is one stronger than the other? How are they related? Let us consider the subject. Aniexty is often a feature of panic attacks. People feel anxious just before the onset of a panic attack and during a panic attack. Aniexty and panic attacks are in that sense father and son, one leading to another, though the exact assigning of father and son is difficult to pin down. Who is the father and who is the son in this relationship between Aniexty and panic attacks? Let us look into the matter. Anxiety is defined in psychiatry as a state of Â"extreme apprehensionÂ". This brings it very close to the dictionary meaning of panic. But an interesting thing results: panic is actually defined as an overpowering fear or anxiety. This can be very interesting in defining the relationship between Aniexty and panic attacks. If panic attacks are more intense forms of anxiety, doesnÂ't that raise some significant questions? For instance, why is it that anxiety attacks are taken very seriously while panic attacks are dismissed as one-off events? The answer goes beyond the semantics. Aniexty and panic attacks have a strange historical relationship. While one was always higher than the other (panic was higher) in terms of conventional dictionary meaning, anxiety got psychological credence before and became a loaded term used to describe a whole range of weighty psychological disorders. This reversed the traditional dictionary hierarchy that Aniexty and panic attacks were arranged in and put panic far below in seriousness and impact in the psychological sense. However, the common parlance sort of stuck on and if a mental health professional asks you if you are experiencing anxiety, he is referring to the dictionary meaning, but if he diagnoses you with an anxiety disorder, it means you are in for a lengthy period of therapy. In that sense, the common feeling of anxiety is the real link between Aniexty and panic attacks. The anxiety disorder makes itself manifest in other ways, particularly in ritualistic behavior of OCD patients, and is therefore strikingly different from panic attacks. Aniexty and panic attacks therefore share an ambiguous relationship when viewed in the psychological context, but they fit in hand in glove when we look at them from a more generic point of view. At any rate, we will not be splitting Aniexty and panic attacks anytime soon Â- we can expect Aniexty and panic attacks to be linked and mentioned in the same breath for many years to come. |