How anxiety, fear, terror and panic differ. A therapist explains

There are situations when the whole world turns upside down. It is impossible to control and understand to the end, what will happen to us and our loved ones in the future. Many people are familiar with the feeling of fear, anxiety, which can be manifested both in actions and in internal feelings. But how to understand whether it is fear, anxiety or something else?

psychotherapist, wellness platform expert level3mind

Often we have a feeling of anxiety. It is commonly called anxiety in psychology.

Many people try to organize the infospace, constantly scrolling through the news, as if it reduces the level of anxiety. But, in fact, it only increases it. Some people, on the contrary, try not to look at the latest news or tell themselves that everything will be fine.

Olesya: This is called the withdrawal reaction. I’m not here, and this situation is not here either. It gives me a certain amount of discomfort, and I won’t look at it.

When the future is blurry and uncertain, it’s normal to feel anxiety. It can be high and low, situational and personal.

• High. If you tend to dramatize and exaggerate the seriousness of circumstances that just might happen.
• Lowered. If you are engaged in extreme sports and quite calmly tolerate excitement.
• Situational. Normal reaction of the body to the uncertainty of the future.
• Personal. A tendency to exaggerate the negative consequences.

If we consider anxiety as a psychological phenomenon, we can distinguish two features:

• it is always about the future, that is, about what has not yet happened;
• it is always uncertain, unknown.

What are the peculiarities of fear?

Olesya: The first step in working with anxiety is to concretize it. And when we start to look inside and understand what exactly is in this anxiety, we experience fear.

It is always concrete: I am afraid of falling from a height and crashing, I am afraid of losing my loved ones or of being unemployed. Fear is a normal reaction of the psyche to something dangerous that can cause real damage.

Olesya: Let’s imagine, for example, a big scary lion. If he is behind a closed door and I hear growling, my body will react with anxiety. But if I realize that this big lion might eat me, there will be a sense of fear, a concrete threat to life.

In the case of fear, two strong reactions can be observed: hit or run. For example, seeing a spider, someone will try to swat it, and someone will try to run out of the room. Both are quite natural. Aggression in fear and even inherent in humans by nature – it helped our ancestors to survive when faced with danger.

What is the “terror reaction”?

Olesya: If suddenly the door from the lion example opens and this big scary beast enters the room, there will be nowhere to run, and fighting with it will not work. When the “hit or run” response doesn’t work, there is a sense of terror – the person becomes frozen and can’t move.

Terror comes when we are unable to realize in reality the situation that is happening to us. When the event is so out of our picture of the world that it seems unreal. It can’t happen, not to you, not for real. Freezing, emptiness inside and shock all accompany the feeling of terror.

How is panic different?

Terror is one side of extreme fear. The other is panic. If the situation is so uncertain that it is impossible to focus on it, we feel a thirst for action and go into hyperactivity mode. Sometimes it manifests itself as a panic attack, when the body twists the mental capabilities to the maximum: the heart races, breathing is confused, you want to jump out of your body.

Olesya: In a state of panic we can make very impulsive decisions. We try to run somewhere, to do something, just not to sit still. The main thing in such a situation is to take a break. To breathe out, metaphorically and literally.