@Friday what's the difference between a panic attack and an anxiety attack? My baseline is so high I only notice when I'm not anxious or hypervigilant?
Panic attacks are sudden/sharp/fast/powerful. Most people mistake them for heart attacks, or sudden-violent-psychosis, when they’re new to them. Even if your anxiety is running hot? A panic attack will either drop you, or launch you, between one second and the next. They are a sudden and MASSIVE adrenaline response; vision goes, heart rate doubles or triples, everything goes numb/excrutiating, hearing warbles (whomph, whomph), and your entire being is filled with rage or terror. That. Wasn’t. There. A. Second. Ago. No matter how anxious/afraid/angry, the second before, a panic attack is xZillion.
Anxiety attacks, meanwhile, are like “normal” anxiety… with legs AND “no” rhyme/reason. (Yes, with PTSD, there’s reason, and it’s usually stress) Oozing creeping fear about even the most normal of things… making things like brushing your teeth or getting the mail or talking? Im-f*cking-possible. Snakes in your belly. Fear bordering on terror. Cold-cold-cold. Shivery, jittery, panicky, nauseating, despairing. Sort of like that moment when you know you’re about to throw up. (Also often including throwing up; anxiety puking is part of the void-process, and can mean puking, pissing, or shitting yourself, all of which are “normal” in anxiety attacks). It’s a loooooong, sloooooow, drawn out adrenaline response. That attaches itself to EVERYTHING. As such? Making almost anything impossible. Thoughts/feelings/actions all just as hijacked as if you are suddenly about to puke and have to run to the loo. Everything “pauses” during an anxiety attack, at best, or becomes a shaking/crying/gasping/infuriating/flailing mess at worst. Rendering anything normal? Again, virtually impossible.
Panic attacks can last seconds, minutes, or hours. Recovering from them can last seconds, minutes, hours, or days.
Anxiety attacks? Can last for days/weeks/months. Recovering, though, tends to be pretty instantaneous. As they tend to melt away with no “hangover” whatsoever. Even if they’ve been running for months.
The biggest difference between them? Is the time frame and violence. Long and slow time frame, with distorted awareness = anxiety attack. Sudden violent drop you -or attacking others- meanwhile, with little to no awareness = panic attack.
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My very first panic attack was in a laundry room, of all places. Probably? A lid had banged down. The next thing I knew my sgt was talking to me, as he was sitting next to me, his body locked hard against mine, his hands holdin my face to his forehead, just repeating over and over and over “Everything is temporary. Everything is temporary. Breathe. You’ve got this. I’ve got you. Everything is temporary. Everything is temporary. Breathe.” I have noooooo idea how long we’d been there, before I “woke up” and saw/heard/felt him there. Oh. Hello. WTF just happened?!? <<< I was super lucky. He just laughed, asked me if this was my first one, grinned and told me to prepare for a whole helluva lot more. And there were. Both the on-purpose ones that we triggered (with a few other blokes, over a long weekend) so I could learn how to snatch back control & recover on the fly, and the unintentional ones that cropped up in daily life (after having learned how to snatch back control).