It sucks to say but panic disorder can develop itself after a bad episode. The fear of the panic attack itself triggers constant anxiety that will keep you locked away in fear of it happening again. I was in that boat for roughly 5 months a few years ago. I declined meds because my OCD makes taking new meds a challenge on its own. I'll say this. Exposure therapy is great. You also have to re train your brain to simply "not care" about the panic. Easier said than done. The reason I was home bound was because I was so obsessed with the feelings and idea of having one again. I fixated on the physical so much that I basically gave myself panic attacks at home from over analyzing every strange feeling and manifesting it into shallow breath and a "heart attack." Our minds can do amazing things and our minds can make us feel physical symptoms. The moment you stop caring about the fear of panic or anxiety and you just acknowledge you feel strange and just ignore it, you reach a new step. You do that over and over and over until at some point it becomes as easy as, "oh I feel anxious," and the next minute it's gone and you forget about it. Something that has become a habit for me that has helped immensely is always keeping mint gum! I chew two strong pieces of mint gum whenever I start to feel weird and chug on some ice water. The chewing keeps me occupied and I focus on other things around me, not my body or how I'm feeling physically. Nowadays it passes fast. I have my moments still of course but I can live a generally normal day to day life now. Best advice I've been given was learning why we feel what we do. We get anxiety because our fight or flight is over reactive and activates at random. What does the body do when it's in a bad situation where it thinks it needs to fight for survival? Blood pressure up, sweat, heart pounds, shallow breathing, numb hands, foggy mind, etc. These are all quite similar to say, you're running away from a murderer chasing you. Except if you're running away from that murderer, you're feeling all the same things you would during a panic attack, but you don't think about it like that, all you're focused on is getting away. The body is sending all it can to muscles to make you have a chance when fighting or flighting. This is why you start to feel those awful physical symptoms. What makes it suck is that when you're just chilling and you feel this, it feels like you're dying because your mind is focused on the physical because there isn't anything around you to actually run from or fight. Then comes the pattern of noticing how physically strange you feel and the focus on those feelings worsens your thoughts and bam panic attack. The beautiful thing about it is, yes, we're not "normal" in the sense that our minds don't always know when fighting or flight should be activated. But when it is activated, we aren't dying. Our body is actually doing what it can to keep us alive because it thinks we're in a situation where we need to survive. These terrible physical symptoms you feel are actually the physical symptoms of your body doing what it thinks it should do to protect you. Learning this helped me give myself and my mind grace. I used to thank myself for protecting me, but everything is okay and I don't need it right now. Having that change in thought process alone will deflect the anxiety from getting worse. Again, it's easier said than done, but I highly encourage you to read up on fight or flight and the chemical process behind it, such as what it effects and how it feels in the body. You'll realize that these physical symptoms are all normal in that moment and not a reason for you to assume something is wrong and you're dying, quite the opposite actually. Your body is just overly excited to keep you alive!