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Many Anxiety Disorders are intertwined. If your anxiety symptoms are severe enough, they may fall within a specific category. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Hyperarousal, symptoms of heart palpitations, difficulty sleeping, sweaty palms and continuing irritability, to name a few, often lead to Panic Attacks.
More Intense Symptoms
Panic Attacks have more intense symptoms, which include some or all of the following: Tingling in the fingers or fingertips, feeling lightheaded and fighting the urge to pass out, a spinning sensation that the person or their surroundings are rapidly spinning, causing a nauseous feeling, a sensation of choking or suffocating, a rapid, irregular heartbeat, and/or shallow breathing. Some or all of these sensations can continue until there is an urge to scream and the need to run away as fast as possible. This urge may increase to a point that a person feels they are going crazy or is about to die.
Similar to Agoraphobia
Panic attacks can occur at any time without any apparent reason. A person can be having a perfectly normal day and the moment they leave their home to run some errands fear and panic attacks occur. This can easily lead to a vicious cycle causing a fear to leave the safety and comfort of their home.
Agoraphobia is a separate and distinct Anxiety Disorder which is diagnosed as a person having a fear of being in a helpless, embarrassing or inescapable situation, leaving the safety of their home generally, or an avoidance of open or public places, especially to prevent the triggering of a past traumatic memory or a full panic attack.
Attack vs Disorder
When panics become frequent and debilitating, i.e., the person has a fear or feeling they are losing their mind or on the brink of death, they may be diagnosed as having Panic Disorder.
An intertwining of Anxiety Disorders now exists where a person is diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) accompanied by Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia.
If this same individual constantly checks on all the doors and windows in their home to be certain they are secured and locked, they can also be diagnosed as having Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) – another of the Anxiety Disorders.
Differing Treatments
Some doctors would include all of these disorders as part of the person’s PTSD. Other doctors would consider them as separate and distinct disorders, yet related, and provide different treatment for each disorder.
This report is not a diagnosis. We hope this information can guide you toward improving your life.
Review our Knowledge Base or the links displayed on this page for similar and related topics.