miscellaneous
[Mixed Trope] The realistic panic attack
i don’t dislike these scenes at all and some of them are really good, but it feels like this very specific way of showing a panic attack has started showing up a lot in the last few years, especially since Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. loud heartbeat, breathing gets worse, everything around them starts fading out and there’s usually some kind of grounding until it passes. at this point it’s starting to feel a little overused.
Jax (The Amazing Digital Circus). after everything finally catches up with him he starts shutting down. his breathing gets heavier, his heartbeat takes over the audio and he doesn’t have some joke or response ready.
Puss in Boots (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish). after seeing Death again he runs off, can barely breathe and ends up on the ground struggling to talk. Perrito doesn’t try to give him some big speech, he just lies against him until Puss starts calming down. probably the example everyone thinks of now.
Riley (Inside Out 2). starts having one in the penalty box where her breathing gets faster, everything around her starts fading out and she completely loses track of what’s happening. she eventually starts grounding herself with what’s around her until she calms down.
i like this trope when it fits the character, i’ve just seen this kind of scene enough times now that i usually know what’s happening almost immediately.
This panic attack scene is my 2nd favorite Dean Norris performance, my number 1 favorite expression he makes is when he discovers that he was tricked into leaving the RV as he got a fake call about his wife Marie getting into an accident. Genuinely got scared that he was gonna kill someone immediately
The movie is all about how Tony's world changed after the battle of New York, and about how scared he really is. After all, unlike the other Avengers, he is a completely normal human. Two pivotal scenes of the movie are actually Tony's panic attacks: one at the resturant, when the first thing he thinks is that he is having a disease, or he was poisoned. Then, the second one while he was driving, Harley manages to help him out (after unknowingly causing it) by getting his brain to focus on what he does best, building something.
Yeah. Tony had a very realistic panic attack. Especially with it gradually building. And I love his reaction when he’s told he’s not dying or having a heart attack but instead experienced a panic attack “me?”
uh, well if im gonna be honest this is how most panic attacks go ngl. like in personal experience, yeah. its like- the most common kind, there are others, but this is what we see the most
I think the problem is a lot of people trying to claim that X media is deep because of those and creators putting in those just to get some cookie points since The Last Wish did it
yeah im not saying panic attacks dont actually look like this, i just think this specific “realistic panic attack” scene has started showing up a lot in the last few years, especially since The Last Wish. it feels a bit overused now.
i think this was the most accurate one I have seen. the way he doesn't know why but he just wants to leave the place causing the attack without realizing running makes it worse
Hollyhock later has one when she realizes there's drinking at a party she's at. This one also involves another character (Pete Repeat) teaching her some true-to-life grounding techniques.
Feather minigame from Celeste.
After the gondola breaks, the game has a pretty emotional scene followed by a minigame that actually does a good job at relaxing Madeline (and the player)
Adaine Abernant from Fantasy High / Dimension 20. A caracter from a D&D actual play, who has panic attacks a few times but most importantly in the final boss battle where she runs away and is met by the new school guidance counselor, who goes into a monologue about the fact that she's not a coward, that the sickeness being real and not defining her. He gives her a bunch of loose Xanax and she comes back to the fight, fireball blazing !
I had a character of mine have a panic attack as the party was getting bodied by a demon we were not prepared for and he ran away from them, thinking they were already dead. He showed back up like 3 months later completely different, new class, lost a couple of limbs that were now mechanical. After he found out the party survived, he felt so ashamed that he went on side quests to save a friend of the party in the background until he was sure he had a way to save them.
Thats so badass ! Two seperate times, with different DMs and different games, I made the choice to flee because I wrongly assumed that the fight was not winable, the other players will never let me forget that..
The Patriot (2000) when Mel Gibson watches his eldest son die. He already watched his younger son get killed earlier in the film. When the life finally leaves his body Gibson’s character freaks out quietly, hands jittering, quick heavy breathing, repeating “oh god help me oh god help me” until he finally breaks down into tears
Invincible Season 4- after being defeated by Thragg and going back to Earth, Mark has ptsd and sees illusions of Thragg murdering his friends and family, while Mark is breathing heavily and unable to move
The sudden feeling that you cant sit up, the rushed breathing causing shortness of breath, feeling like you’re dying cuz you’re depersonalizing and the hyperfocusing on your heartbeat making it more emphasized, and every sense feeling like its stronger, was all shown and acted so well, and the only editing used is a slow mo on the nurses voice to symbolize his detaching from reality
Where it fit the character was showing that Holdens lack of careful measures and obsession made him put himself in a position of grave danger, and the panic that came from it was realizing hes not in control and could’ve become a victim
https://giphy.com/gifs/tg0YUrrLpW0qrWVDVA
People can say what they want about this dude but I saw a clip of him having a panic attack because of overstimulation and I related to it so much.
What the hell is that supposed to mean? Like no seriously what does that mean that meme makes 0 sense to me and I’m not in the mood to go to fuckass peterexplainsthememe or joke or whatever to get this meme explained.
So what is the point of the image of Anakin in context with the text? Or is there none and it’s just some random image with no correlation with the text above it?
It does have a meaning or a point if that is better wording that it is trying to convey for comedic purposes. Or do I need to be more robotic when asking what the point of a meme is in correlation with the post it is posted to. Like I know that is Anakin somewhere during one of the prequel movies I never watched them so I don’t know where. Which then correlates to white people when you tell them there will be no realistic depictions of panic attacks in the movie. Which when combined means something.
I’m not overthinking it. I just felt the need to over explain why this meme means something and I’m too much of a dumbass to figure it out. As your initial reply implies that it didn’t have any meaning at all.
All tropes are tools. But overuse can make them less effective or even outright annoying. I'm not sure if it's the case where panic attacks are actually being overused or if they tend to stick out more so they feel overused. Personally I think writers can find alternative ways of showing a character is in mental destress. Not every mental health crisis irl is a panic attack & I'd be cool if fiction could better reflect that.
Morgan - High Potential (S02e12) - Morgan, a normally calm and highly intelligent person has a panic attack due to being caught in a death trap that she can't think a way out of. I think this one is great cause you can also see her trying to use her intelligence to try beat the panic but it doesn't work cause intelligence alone can't overcome a panic attack
As someone who's had panic attacks before, it's pretty accurate. It's not some dramatic outburst of screaming and crying. It's hauntingly quiet and happens when you're alone. Your breath shortens while your throat grows lumpy which leads to dry coughing. Your stomach feels like it's doing somersaults inside you that on occasion leads to vomiting. Your legs feel like jelly while your whole body feels like it's vibrating. You hyperventilate as the question of what you're going to do next pounds in your head. The tears come and you want to cry but your throat is so dry by that point it just turns to more coughing.
I hate seeing them in media, even though I know they should be shown, only because it's triggering for my own anxiety. Before I was medicated, I would have panic attacks to some extent (ranging from slight anxiety to full-blown couldn't breathe/almost passing out) almost everyday after working in a very high stress job at a young age.
Dummies are downvoting you for mentioning Naruto but you are absolute right. As someone who suffers panic attacks, I was really struck by how well it was handled. Appropriate reaction to the information he was given too.
From Hot Wheels: Acceleracers, the character, Porkchop, has hydrophobia and is currently surrounded by ocean in a place called "Water Realm"
He starts hyperventilating, he grips his steering wheel tightly with shaky hands, and he's not even registering other characters calling him via radio to tell him to use his car's escape teleport system, which is a pretty big contrast to how he usually acts (loud, confident, reckless)
Unlike most modern examples it's shown more from an outsider perspective, where you can see the visible symptoms but there's no editing done to actually show the disassociation happening
Buddy is still new enough that I do not want to give too much away, but one of the characters in this image does suffer a realistic panic attack. It is brief, but what is portrayed is realistic.
I remember when The Last Wish came out, it was the meme of the week in my feed. I suppose people found a realistic panic attack in the silly Shrek spinoff a bit much? Personally I found the memes more annoying than the scene itself.
No, panic attacks. A panic attack is extremely sudden, generally, but not always, triggered by a single outside cue. An anxiety attack is a steady breakdown.
In the OP, Jax is actually an anxiety attack because it's been steady preasure, Puss in Boots is a PTSD induced panic attack, and Riley is just a straight panic attack.
Ruby Gillman, I'm pretty sure there's multiple scenes in this movie where Ruby experiences an anxiety attack. Saying that as someone who's watched the film more than once, I can understand that the point is that she's an anxious person. Plus I can especially see her one panic attack where all the information is sprung onto her at once that she's a princess and her grandmother expects her to want to take her place.
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u/Random_Wario_fan 5h ago