For the millions of American adults who suffer from anxiety and panic disorders, panic attacks may be one of the most prevalent and persistent symptoms. And while the experience of a panic attack is different for each individual, there is one universal truth for all who suffer from them: They're terrifying.
"When someone suffers from one of these disorders, it's completely debilitating," Todd Farchione, a clinical psychologist at the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders at Boston University, previously told HuffPost Healthy Living. "Partly just because people recognize that what they’re experiencing is irrational, but they've learned to respond in a certain way in those situations so it's a natural response to those experiences. It can be frightening."
Perhaps one of the worst parts of panic attacks is the uncertainty of their appearance. They can occur at any time -- even in your sleep. The fear-inducing experience peaks around 10 minutes, but the exhausting physical symptoms can extend far beyond that.
In an effort to understand what it's really like to suffer from these conditions, we invited our Twitter and Facebook communities to explain what a panic attack physically feel like. We selected a few of their descriptions and illustrated them below...
[For more of this story, written by Linday Homes & Alissa Scheller, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...eling_n_5977998.html]
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