If you are having a panic attack, you experience a sudden and intense surge of fear and discomfort. Your body is flooded with adrenaline. Your heart races, you feel weak or dizzy, and you may feel tingling or numbness in your fingers or hands. You feel sweaty, you have chills, chest pain, difficulty breathing, and a sense of loss of control. This is accompanied by the fear of something really bad happening, like losing control, having a heart attack, or “going crazy.”
A panic attack is a sudden disruption of the body’s natural arousal system. It seems to come out of nowhere. The body reacts as thought there is a severe threat when there is none. Normally, activation of the sympathetic nervous system is our body’s way of responding to a threat or danger in the environment. It is there to help us to respond to danger.
It’s not fully understood what causes panic attacks. Some people may have a biological or hereditary predisposition to panic attacks. Often there are underlying stresses, anxieties and worries that may trigger the panic. (For some reason, many people seem to have their first panic attacks after having drunk heavily the night before.)
A panic attack qualifies as a panic disorder when you become vigilant and fearful about having future panic attacks. You might begin avoiding places or situations for fear of triggering another panic attack. On it’s own, panic – like anxiety in general – will pass on it’s own with time. Scaring ourselves with catastrophic thoughts is what keeps the threat system in our brains engaged beyond that point. Getting hooked by scary thoughts can lengthen the duration of an attack and can set you up for having more panic attacks in the future. And commonly, becoming preoccupied and worried about the physical sensations that came with a panic attack can also lead to more attacks.