What is a severe panic attack? Is there a less severe panic attack? What differentiates panic attacks felt by one person from another?
For anyone who has experienced a panic attack in the past, he or she will tell you that all attacks were severe on its own and that they were all so sudden and terrifying. Frankly, this may be true since severity of panic attacks is a matter of personal opinion. To answer the question whether severe panic attack truly exists, read the paragraphs below.
When panic attack strikes, the sympathetic nervous system is mobilized and your body goes haywire. The sensation of fear felt triggers the hypothalamus to hoist a body-wide stress response in minutes. This stress response results in the secretion of cortisol and the conversion of the norepinephrine to epinephrine (or adrenaline). Together, cortisol, norepinephrine, and epinephrine elicit a system-wide defense mechanism to facilitate the changes in your body that will promote your survival. These changes include an increase in the heart rate to assist the rapid distribution of oxygen and glucose to your leg and arm muscles that need fuel to fight or flee, pupil dilation for better vision, blood vessel wall constriction to increase blood pressure, blood supply diversion from the skin and digestive tract to the skeletal muscles producing hot flushes, nausea, and abdominal distress, and an increase in sweating to cool the body down after a violent activity.
Sadly, the sudden changes elicited by the stress response and hailed without any known potential danger at hand is often times mistaken for a heart attack, considering that symptoms are very much alike. The panic felt plus the fear of not understanding what is happening result in even more fear. This even more fear leads to an even larger SNS response in ten minutes causing severe panic attack.
From the process presented above, you will see that most panic attacks will naturally hit its peak. For this reason, there is no difference in the severity of panic attacks experienced by anybody.
The difference, however, lies qualitatively. Different kinds of people who suffer from panic attacks will not always manifest the same set of symptoms. Some people may experience feelings of impending doom, dizziness, nausea, and fainting. While chest palpitations, shaking, shortness of breath, choking, hot flushes, and chills are experienced by others.
Reports by sufferers confirm that the first time a panic attack strikes is likely to be the one of the worst. However, as the attacks recur and you develop coping skills to fight off the mental, physical, and emotional effects, the attacks become less and less severe over time. Hence, you need to go see your physician and get into therapies that you may be able to cope, control or never experience these attacks again.
