She’s more than just TV’s Blossom or one of the Big Bang Theory gang. Mayim Bialik also holds a PhD in Neuroscience, which she uses as a jumping-off point for articles and vlogs for her Grok Nation website. In once recent article, she addressed the similarities and differences between anxiety attacks and panic attacks, and we thought it was worth sharing the excerpt below with you.
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In an ongoing attempt to use my PhD in Neuroscience to explain Neuroscience stuff to non-scientists, I’d like to discuss two very commonly misused terms: Anxiety attacks and panic attacks are not the same thing, but many people use the terms interchangeably.
Here’s how they are similar.
Anxiety attacks and panic attacks both consist of a potent and psychologically and physiologically upsetting set of reactions in your body. Your mind races, you have worries and fear (sometimes about something concrete, sometimes about nothing in particular, it seems), and your body sends out alarm signals such as an increased heart rate, sweating, and trembling. (Yes, these are also the symptoms of being close to someone you are falling in love with; I’ll save the explanation for that overlap for another time!)
The way anxiety attacks and panic attacks differ is that panic attacks tend to carry with them the symptom of “dissociation,” a clinical term that means that you experience a very tangible sense that you have left your body. Panic attacks can be so disturbing and powerful that your consciousness is altered and you may experience what seem like very real fears of dying, suffocating, or losing control of your body and mind.
Panic attacks are characterized by an intense and sometimes crippling fear that more attacks will come, which does not happen with anxiety attacks. Ironically, this fear can often lead to more attacks; this ‘loop’ of fear, anxiety, and panic is distinct to panic attacks and does not occur if you have a ‘standard’ anxiety attack. Panic Disorder is the diagnosis that comes about when you have acute panic attacks characterized by a variety of physiological and psychological features. If preoccupation about the attacks and fears about more attacks continue for more than a month after an attack, and if you start showing behaviors which negatively impact you and which are only present because of these fears and preoccupations, you likely would meet the criteria for a Panic Disorder diagnosis.