There is a difference between having panic attacks and living in a state of anxiety, and most people who cross from one to the other can't say when it happened. The episodes used to have edges — a trigger, a peak, an aftermath. Then at some point the edges dissolved, and what's left is a low constant hum: heart never quite settled, always braced for something.  

A 1613 Korean medical text describes both states, distinguishes them carefully, and — this is the part that surprises people — names the crossing itself.  

Two words for two states  

The Donguibogam devotes a chapter to the spirit (신 神), which is where Korean medicine keeps its psychiatry. Two of its sections sit next to each other:  

• 경계 (驚悸), fright palpitations — the acute state. The text's description is unmistakable: at worst the heart leaps and one feels about to faint. It lists the triggers as a loud sound in the ear, a strange thing struck by the eye, meeting danger — and one more, which is the interesting one: being touched by an affair and losing one's purpose. Not just fright. Being knocked off your footing by something that mattered.  

• 정충 (怔忡), fearful throbbing — the chronic state. Here the definition is one of the best descriptions of generalized anxiety I've read anywhere: a restless stirring within the heart that will not settle — apprehensive, as though someone were about to seize you. And the timing marker: arising at no fixed time.  

Then the line that connects them:  

Fearful throbbing comes of fright palpitations grown long-standing.  

That's the clinical arc, stated in 1613. Panic left untreated long enough stops being episodes and becomes a background state. The chapter isn't describing two unrelated conditions; it's describing a progression.