New member with a physiology question...

I get mild to severe anxiety attacks from time to time. My physician's immediate solution was to throw pills at the problem, maybe that works for many but medication was not for me, so I made the decision to just deal with the attacks...suck it up, and have been doing so successfully for some time. Like many of us I imagine who choose to carry a firearm, I sometimes wonder how I personally would handle a violent encounter. Would my mind and body function or just deteriorate and collapse into a chalk outline on the sidewalk? I do hope that if violence finds me, the shock of it would provoke useful but not uncontrolled anger instead of incapacitating fear. I am comforted by past personal experience that hints anger would be the natural reaction instead of fear, but there's always that doubt. Perhaps there's an advantage in knowing what a prolonged epinephrine / adrenalin dump feels like. In dealing with anxiety attacks, I've gotten to know the physical symptoms, have felt my heart jack-hammer out my chest, my hands and fingers turn into mitts, tunnel vision, selective hearing, and even my digestion shut down (my understanding of those pesky butterflies in your stomach.) In fact that's how I deal with my attacks- I breath, pay attention to each physical symptom and say "oh yeah, that's what that is, nothing is wrong...my body is functioning normally for a stressful situation, it's just the trigger that malfunctioned...there's no lion in the bushes, its a false alarm." But if there were a real lion so to speak, real danger, would I be able to control my reactions...maybe, maybe not. The trouble is, you don't know until it happens.

So, my question to anyone is: Could a persons own experience and familiarity of the physiological effects of an imaginary stressful encounter, be an advantage in a real violent situation?