Anxiety and Panic Attacks
 
What's the difference?

[NOTE: This is transcript of a spoken presentation. Please excuse the conversational grammar.]

I'm often asked what the difference is between an anxiety attack and a panic attack. The short answer is really: "nothing". For all practical purposes, they're the same thing.

Anxiety itself can encompass a lot of issues, including generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety, agoraphobia, post traumatic stress disorder and so on - including panic disorder. So from a medical standpoint, panic disorder is just one type of anxiety disorder. A person that has panic disorder suffers from what are as known as "panic attacks", which are periodic and intense onsets of severe anxiety... to the point that many people with this disorder might think that they're losing their sanity, having a heart attack, or even about to die. Its literally an episode of panic... But it's usually being triggered by stuff that's going on internally, in the mind, rather than by external danger that causes typical panic.

So the term panic attack is basically synonymous with the term anxiety attack. Its just that by saying panic attack you're being more specific about the category of anxiety. So the difference between the two? Nothing. But you could say that panic disorder is just one type of anxiety disorder.

Now if someone doesn't really understand the nature of a panic attack, and is just referring to an intense onset of general anxiety, then there is quite a difference between the two attacks. For example, if someone experiences an intense episode of anxiety while giving a public speech, after receiving some bad news about their health, or while being stalked in a dark alley, they may describe the sensation as an "anxiety attack". But in those situations, one knows full well the reason for their anxiety (it's an instinctive survival/safety mechanism), and can take steps to remove the source of the anxiety. In other words, the experience lacks the escalating characteristics of a panic attack:

However, if no action is taken to resolve general anxiety issues, they can certainly become contributing factors to panic disorder.

Stop General Anxiety and Panic Disorder