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Sydney Sweeney on Panic Attacks: What Helps

The actor has spoken publicly about panic attacks and social anxiety during an overloaded schedule. What panic attacks are, and what actually treats them.

4 min read

Sydney Sweeney in a head-and-shoulders photograph, smiling, hair tied back, wearing a black jacket and a silver ear cuff, in front of a blue Berlinale backdrop.
Photo by Elena Ternovaja on Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Cropped and recompressed.

Key takeaways

  • Sydney Sweeney told The Hollywood Reporter in 2022 that she had begun having panic attacks, describing being unable to quiet her mind or sleep, and linked it to a period of working on several productions at once.
  • Panic attacks are common. Community survey data put lifetime prevalence of panic attacks at around 28 percent, far higher than panic disorder itself, so having one does not mean having a disorder.
  • The mechanism that turns isolated attacks into panic disorder is catastrophic misinterpretation: reading ordinary bodily sensations as evidence of imminent catastrophe, which produces more of the sensations.
  • That model is what cognitive behavioural therapy targets, and it is why treatment works on the interpretation and the avoidance rather than on eliminating the physical sensations directly.
  • A public account from someone visible is useful for one narrow thing: it makes clear that panic attacks happen to people whose lives look successful from outside, which is the assumption that keeps people from seeking treatment that works.

Sydney Sweeney told The Hollywood Reporter in 2022 that she had started having panic attacks, describing being unable to quiet her mind or sleep during a period when she was working across several productions at once. [thr-2022-sweeney] That account is worth taking at face value and no further: what follows is about panic attacks generally, not about her.

What a panic attack actually is

A panic attack is a surge of intense fear that arrives with physical symptoms and peaks quickly, usually within about ten minutes, before subsiding. The symptoms are the body’s alarm response running at full volume: racing heart, breathlessness, chest tightness, dizziness, sweating, trembling, and frequently a sense of unreality or of losing control.

The single most useful fact about them is that the symptoms are not dangerous. They are extremely unpleasant and they are not evidence of a heart attack, suffocation or collapse. This matters practically rather than as reassurance, because the belief that the sensations are dangerous is part of the machinery that produces the next attack.

Common, and much commoner than the disorder

Panic attacks are not rare. Community survey data from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication put lifetime prevalence of panic attacks at around 28 percent, well above the prevalence of panic disorder itself. [kessler-2006-panic]

That gap is the part worth holding onto. Having an attack, or several during a punishing stretch of work, is a common human experience rather than a diagnosis. Panic disorder is narrower: recurrent unexpected attacks, plus persistent worry about more of them or a meaningful change in behaviour to avoid them. Many people have the first and never develop the second.

The mechanism that turns attacks into a disorder

The influential cognitive model of panic describes a loop built on catastrophic misinterpretation: an ordinary bodily sensation is read as a sign of imminent catastrophe, that interpretation produces more arousal, and the extra arousal produces more sensation. [clark-1986-panic]

The loop is what distinguishes people who have an attack and move on from people whose lives narrow around it. A racing heart read as “I drank too much coffee and slept badly” goes nowhere. The same racing heart read as “something is badly wrong with my heart” recruits the whole alarm system, which produces exactly the escalation the interpretation predicted.

This is why treatment targets the interpretation rather than the sensation. You cannot reliably stop your heart rate rising; you can change what it means.

Attacks, or something that has organised itself around them?

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Why a busy period so often precedes the first one

Sustained pressure, short sleep and high caffeine all raise resting physiological arousal, which means the body is already generating more of the raw material a panic attack is assembled from. Poor sleep also makes the interpretation of those sensations more alarming rather than less.

That is a general mechanism and not an account of anybody’s particular case. It does explain a pattern people find confusing, which is that a first attack often arrives during a demanding stretch rather than at the worst moment, and sometimes just after it, when the pressure lifts and the arousal has not yet come down with it.

What a public account is actually good for

There is a narrow and real value in someone visible saying this happened to them, and it is not inspiration. It is that panic attacks are widely assumed to happen to people who are visibly struggling, and that assumption keeps people whose lives look fine from outside away from treatment that works well.

It is worth being equally clear about the limits. A public statement is not a case study, nothing here diagnoses anybody, and a celebrity’s account of what helped them carries no evidential weight next to trial data. The reason to read it is that it makes the thing sayable, not that it makes it understood.

When to seek help

Speak to a doctor if attacks are recurring, if you have started worrying between them about the next one, or if you are avoiding places or situations to reduce the risk. Ask about cognitive behavioural therapy by name, since it is the treatment with the strongest evidence here and it is not offered everywhere by default. Chest pain and breathlessness should be medically assessed the first time rather than assumed to be panic, because the symptoms genuinely overlap with conditions that need a different response.

How MyFreud can help

Recording what you were doing, how you had slept and what you first noticed in your body before an attack usually reveals a pattern, and the trigger is more often a physical state than an event. Our panic attacks guide covers the condition in depth, including what a panic attack feels like.

Download MyFreud and start today: App Store or Google Play.

Frequently asked questions

What did Sydney Sweeney say about panic attacks?

In a 2022 interview with The Hollywood Reporter she said she had recently started having panic attacks, describing being unable to get her mind to quiet down and often being unable to sleep, and attributed it in part to her schedule during a period when she was working across several productions and public appearances at once. She has also spoken publicly about social anxiety, telling Women’s Health in 2023 that it can feel overwhelming when there is a lot going on at once. Those are her own public statements, and nothing beyond them should be read as a diagnosis.

What actually happens during a panic attack?

A surge of intense fear arrives with physical symptoms: racing heart, shortness of breath, chest tightness, dizziness, sweating, trembling, and often a sense of unreality or of losing control. It typically peaks within about ten minutes and then subsides. The symptoms are alarming and are not dangerous in themselves, which is a genuinely important thing to know because the belief that they are dangerous is part of what drives the next attack.

Does having a panic attack mean I have panic disorder?

No, and the gap between the two is large. Community survey data put the lifetime prevalence of panic attacks at around 28 percent, far above the prevalence of panic disorder. A single attack, or several during a stressful period, is a common human experience. Panic disorder involves recurrent unexpected attacks plus persistent worry about further attacks or a significant change in behaviour to avoid them, which is a different and narrower thing.

Why do panic attacks so often start during a busy period?

Sustained pressure, disrupted sleep and stimulant intake all raise baseline physiological arousal, which means the body is already producing more of the sensations that a panic attack is built from. Add poor sleep and the interpretation of those sensations becomes more alarming rather than less. That is a plausible general mechanism rather than an explanation of any individual case, and it is one reason first attacks so often arrive during an overloaded stretch rather than during a calm one.

What treatment works for panic attacks?

Cognitive behavioural therapy has strong evidence and works by changing the interpretation of the physical sensations rather than by trying to stop them. That typically involves learning what the symptoms actually are, testing the feared prediction, and deliberately approaching situations and sensations that have been avoided. Medication is also used and is sometimes combined with therapy. Both are worth asking a doctor about by name.

References

  1. 1.The Hollywood Reporter ( 2022). Sydney Sweeney interview on schedule, panic attacks and industry pressure. The Hollywood Reporter.
  2. 2.Kessler RC, Chiu WT, Jin R, Ruscio AM, Shear K, Walters EE ( 2006). The epidemiology of panic attacks, panic disorder, and agoraphobia in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Archives of General Psychiatry. doi:10.1001/archpsyc.63.4.415
  3. 3.Clark DM ( 1986). A cognitive approach to panic. Behaviour Research and Therapy. doi:10.1016/0005-7967(86)90011-2

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