[Pants123]

Can you have anxiety/panic without freeze fight or flight? When I search about anxiety/panic, talks about fight or flight a lot. So either, wrong diagnosis, or being super stressed and tense is not anxiety/panic or there's more than one neural pathway to have anxiety/panic, just the common one is fight or flight.

I know it isn't freeze fight or flight with me as I know what freeze fight flight feels like. 2 examples of freeze fight flight:
1. Driving on the highway, oncoming traffic wants to turn in front of into a side street and they only stop at the last moment, so for a few seconds I have heart in mouth feeling, adrenaline or something in blood, that fight or flight feeling.

2. If sitting somewhere and two people start serious yellowing I want to freeze/be invisible and then after that a little shaken up even though I wasn't part of the yelling/fighting. Then you get the jelly legs for 60mins afterwards, perhaps that's 'shock'.

But my condition, there is no 'shock' or 'freeze, fight or flight'. It's like, too much energy, definitely no jelly legs. I'm definitely agitated when this mood happens but it's not like in the above 2 examples.

Is being agitated a form of panic/anxiety, or is that on a different neural pathway and therefore not the same thing?

[Tryingtoheal77]

If I'm understanding your explanation correctly, I think the answer is yes. My understanding of the fight or flight mentality causing anxiety isn't so much that that's actually what you *do* during anxiety, but that's your body's response and the tension/anxiety/agitation arises from those hormones/chemicals whatever coursing through your body and brain.


Sometimes when I'm anxious I get tense muscles, sometimes I feel the urge to pace/rock, sometimes I just want to curl up and hide.


Hope you feel better soon.

[hprodf]

I think you're right based on what you're saying, because the reactions of fight or flight for example are more instinctive reactions that will occur based on how your hypothalamus will process a given situation.

But I'm pretty sure equally speaking people discuss anxiety with other conditions such as stress or depression. As TryingtoHeal77 points out, this would be related to hormone and chemical imbalances, such as serotonin or dopamine.

They're quite distinctive in terms of how you feel and react. I'm not sure if that helps, but I hope you find the right resources you're looking for.