Everyone of us has experienced an intense anxiety attack (panic symptoms) at one time or another. Experts estimate that one in 30 people will experience a panic attack at some point in their lives. And according to research results, about 1.7 -2.5% of the adult population of the United States (in Russia, unfortunately, there are no such statistics) have symptoms of panic disorder (women get sick 2-3 times more often). How does an anxiety attack differ from a panic attack and from panic disorder? To understand what a panic attack is, you need to understand what fear is. Fear can be thought of as an automatic alarm that goes off when there is danger. For example, what happens if a dangerous animal approaches you? Most people will experience an intense anxiety attack (panic) at this point. It is accompanied by a number of physical changes: increased heart rate and breathing, increased sweating, all in order to respond to the danger that has arisen in front of you. This “alarm signal” forces us to either flee or “work ourselves up” physically enough to be able to defend ourselves. Panic (the peak of the anxiety response) is essentially an important survival mechanism, globally it is the body's response to stress. STRESS RESPONSE When real danger exists, or when we believe that it exists, we experience a series of physical changes called the “stress response.” "("fight or flight"). It helps us respond to real physical danger and our body undergoes a number of changes. We all experience these sensations when we are afraid or anxious. In reality, our bodies release certain chemicals when we feel threatened and need to either run away or stand up and face the threat. There are important reasons for our reactions:□ Increased heart rate and increased heart rate pump blood and oxygen through the body faster, so we feel like our heart is “pounding wildly.”□ Faster and deeper breathing allows more oxygen to enter the body. As a result, you sigh, yawn, or feel shortness of breath, suffocation, tightness, and chest pain. It also causes a decrease in blood supply to the brain, and although this is not dangerous, you may feel dizzy, lightheaded, blurred vision, disorientated, a sense of surrealism and fever.□ Removal of blood from areas of the body that are not as important for survival, e.g. skin and fingers and toes, to large vital organs. Your skin becomes pale and you feel cold, numb, and tingling in your toes and hands.□ Increased sweating makes your body more slippery, making it more difficult for predators to catch you, and also cools your body and prevents it from overheating.□ More light enters the dilated pupils, causing As a result, we study our environment more closely for danger. You may experience temporary blurred vision, notice spots before your eyes, or become more reactive to bright lights.□ Reducing the activity of your digestive system allows you to channel more energy into the stress response. Decreased salivation leads to a dry mouth, and decreased activity in the digestive system leads to nausea or a feeling of heaviness in the stomach.□ Tensing muscles in preparation for a stress response leads to a subjective feeling of tension, sometimes pain and trembling. All these physical reactions occur together, after which we usually feel exhausted. However, all these physical alarms occur not only when faced with danger, but can also occur during a false alarm when there is no danger, and then it will panic attack. Intense fear, if there is no danger, i.e. A false alarm is often triggered when a person does not expect it. This primary panic attack is the shortest and