Heart rate as a result of anxiety usually slowly builds up in time (say over 10 minutes). Same also afterwards.
With SVT, one moment your heartbeat is normal and a heartbeat later it's racing like crazy. Likewise, it ends on a heart beat also.
Finally, I would think it's hard to mistake the pulse rate ypical of afib with anxiety racing heart. With anxiety, the rate is fast but even. With afib, the rate is irregular.
Hi!
No one ever told me the difference, but they feel entirely different. With anxiety attack the heart beat starts, but then so does everything else. feeling flush, you can't calm yourself, I would sometimes feel nausea, or I'd wheeze when I took a breath, it's as though everything you are feeling points too...HEART ATTACK, and you feel like you can't stop it....and after a while it just goes away.
When it is not a panic attack, you just think oh, my heart just palpitated, oh huh, it did it again, you check your pulse, and that is about teh extent of it. When it is just your heart, it doesn't effect any kind of emotional side, it is just purely physical.
abl