HI, I feel your pain, and have experienced (still do on an occasion) the having to tell yourself to breath. I am 37 and panic attacks for the most are gone or very minimal. For me it was so important to understand what was going on with my body. Once I understood why I got panic attacks, then I could start to heal. It took me about 1 year to get them under control once I learned the tricks to help. For the record, I never took drugs to heal... I had friends that did, but eventually they had to kick the attacks without the drugs... so if you can do it without, it is better.
There are many tricks to stopping the attack... for me it was to first realize that it was because I was having adrenaline rushing to my heart that I did not need, and it was physically making me feel ill. So now that we know why your feel that way, it will help. I truly believe that the more we feed into it the more our body feel worst and it can of course lead to agoraphobia... as you are now experiencing.
So stop feeding into it... my pain went away (mostly) the day I did everything that scared me to death (all in one day)... I moved to a city (Boston), with a car (standard) on a hill not knowing how to parallel park, and oh by myself... So all these strangers, loud noises, potential for bugs and no one around to kill them and oh yeah a car (I was SO afraid of driving) that needed to be parallel parked in tiny spots. I remember the day my parents drove away and I was alone. Amazingly enough... panic stopped... that was it. Crazy I know, but I just think that I shocked myself out of it. I still had the feelings of panic from time to time, but it in no way affected me the way it had and the feelings were going in 10 mins.
There is also a breathing technique that I used... simple but key... hold your breath and count to 20... repeat until you feel better. The other thing is get up and MOVE... hop, run, train, clean, etc... use that adrenaline. It helps believe me. It will make you stop focusing on the fact that you are not breathing... and then of course you will, because your body is meant to do it without thought. Just get your mind off how your feeling and onto something else. I am telling you cleaning helps huge... you have to think about cleaning when you clean... so it takes you mind off how you feel.
This does have a fee, but it has helped many people... many of the tricks were ones that I spent years trying to find. If for some reason, you do not have the ability to purchase the help you need...
Hold your breath, clean the house, shrug your shoulders up, hold for 10 sec. and then release... do again. The most important is face your fears and understand that you are FINE... just have a little too much adrenaline rushing to your heart at a time that you DO NOT need it. Live your life, you are young...Good luck.
