How do you know if you're having a panic attack or just a normal reaction to stress?

Panic Attack Isn't Cowardice

Trauma, Stress, and Panic

About a month ago, on his second night in Iraq, Pogany saw an Iraqi cut in half by heavy machine-gun fire. It was his first exposure to this kind of situation, and he had what he describes as a panic attack. An interrogator assigned to a Green Beret team, Pogany told his superiors he was unfit for duty and needed help.

Instead, he was confined to his room and put on suicide watch, even though he says he wasn't suicidal. Eventually he was moved to a larger military base. A psychologist there diagnosed normal combat stress reaction and recommended he rejoin his unit after a few days' rest. Instead, he was called a coward and sent back to the U.S. for court martial.

Was it really a panic attack? That's what it sounds like to David H. Barlow, PhD, director of the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders at Boston University.

"It certainly sounds like a panic attack," Barlow tells WebMD. "A panic attack is the fundamental emotion of fear. It's the flight/fight response that we all have in us. It involves massive changes in the brain. It is meant to prepare you to deal with this life-threatening event by running away or by fighting, attacking the source of danger."

Barlow says panic attacks occur in two different conditions. One is a "true reaction" to a traumatic event. The other is a "false reaction" where there is no obvious triggering event.

Barbara Rothbaum, PhD, director of the trauma and anxiety recovery program at Emory University in Atlanta, prefers a different term for what Pogany seems to have experienced.

"This soldier's case sounds more like a posttrauma reaction, which many people describe as a panic attack," Rothbaum tells WebMD. "Seeing something like that and having that kind of reaction is basically responding to a trauma."

Barlow and Rothbaum both say that this is a normal reaction to an abnormal event.

"Your emotions take over before your brain can react with rational thought," Barlow says. "In cases with a trigger, like this soldier, any time that something occurred that reminded him of it he will relive it and have flashbacks. That is a part of acute stress disorder. It is not uncommon immediately after major trauma if you were not prepared for it: 50% to 60% of the population would have this reaction."

Why do some people get panic attacks and not others? Barlow says we inherit the ways we respond to stress.

"If a person is under stress at work or home, or even under the stress of a positive thing like getting married, panic attacks can happen," he says. "If you have it within you that this is the way you react to stress, you may have one of these false alarms. Others might get irritable bowel syndrome instead. But all of these ways of reacting to stress run in families."