People with Panic Disorder have a complex experience of suffering that is sometimes misunderstood.
A panic attack, as I define it, is not just a moment of severe anxiety, but comes with a lot of physical symptoms, such as heart racing and pounding, hands tingling and sweating, feeling like you're going to have a heart attack. Some of these symptoms are caused or worsened by hyperventilation. Together, they feel like you're going to die if the symptoms continue.
For people with frequent panic attacks, they may have a "fight or flight or freeze" threat response system (mainly involving the ironically named sympathetic nervous system, as well as some hormones and parts of the brain) that is on overdrive, that can be set off randomly, or set off by a tiny trigger or action that elevates heart rate. In other worse, our body reacts as if there is a threat when there is none.
For people with Panic Disorder, the real misery happens in between the panic attacks: worrying about the next one, and altering one's life in attempts to avoid an attack. Worrying, and being hyperaware of any symptom related to panic (say, rapid heartbeat after climbing the stairs), can turn ordinary symptoms and situations into a panic attack about the fear of a panic attack. Avoiding situations that might trigger an attack can escalate into Agoraphobia if the person seeks 100% certainty of never having an attack.
With my clients who are prone to panic attacks, I describe an analogy to a smoke detector that is oversensitive, and goes off even when there is no smoke. There is a loud annoying alarm sound when there is no real threat. Obeying the alarm just interrupts your life unnecessarily. Avoiding the alarm means avoiding part or all of your home! The key to dealing with a false alarm is to find it annoying rather than finding it threatening. The key to dealing with a panic attack is learning to wait for the symptoms to pass rather than escalating them by worrying about them.
Sometimes treatment includes intentionally raising your heart rate or making it hard to breath (breathing through a straw) to practice finding the symptom uncomfortable instead of finding it as proof that there is a danger that we need to run away from. Treatment can also include gaining master over the symptoms by learning to slow down and deepen one's breathing (rapid shallow breathing messes with the body's O2/CO2 balance and can lead to tingling palms, palpitations, dizziness, and more).
In between panic attacks (for some people with severe panic disorder, there has not been an actual panic attack in a year, but still daily misery worrying and avoiding life): The key to getting better is to realize that there never was real danger from outside; the real threat to a happy life is the worrying and avoidance itself.
Reversing this escalation of worry and avoidance is the key to treatment; trying to avoid panic attacks themselves is not treatment, it's the problem, it's what stresses people out and distorts lifestyles and relationships in between attacks. If you've practiced handling symptoms of an attack itself, you can then practice not giving in to the alarms, not trying to avoid something that is just going to happen randomly, gaining confidence that if the sympathetic nervous system "burp" happened, you'd be able handle it, by waiting it out, not letting it gain power over you, not worsening it by shallow/hyperventilating breathing.
Panic Disorder, and its treatment, varies from person to person. I hope that what you take away here is that full Panic Disorder is much more complex and troubling than a single panic attack itself.
One of the big Aha! moments of treating this or any other anxiety problem is realizing that the real problem, the misery that fills up the day, is the anxiety itself, and worse, the attempts to avoid anxiety.
The liberating "Aha" moment in Panic Disorder Realizing that, although it's annoying to deal with, we don't have to fear, or obey, a false alarm. We can occasionally be annoyed, and the rest of the time, freely live.
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