How do I get through my frequent panic attacks and anxiety?

Anxiety and panic attacks can feel debilitating.  While they are related, the key difference is that panic often occurs without warning and includes intense fear.  Anxiety typically is in response to a trigger or stressor.  Both can cause a variety of physical symptoms such as increased heart rate (that feels either faster or harder or both), tightness in the chest, shaky or dizzy feelings, gastrointestinal involvement and much more.  You may experience a few symptoms or you may experience many symptoms.  And even if you understand what is happening, it may feel very scary.  

To counterbalance the extremely elevated emotional response you experience with anxiety and panic, there are some tips and tricks that may help.  It is important to understand just a bit about the science behind it.  Emotion "lives" in the amygdala part of the brain.  When panic or anxiety set in, this part of the brain is active.  Next door to this part of the brain is the frontal lobe where logic lives.  It stays pretty quiet if emotion is in control.  BUT if we can shift our focus and energy to the frontal lobe so that logic takes a more active role, the amygdala settles (meaning anxiety or panic settle too). 

One way that we can encourage logic to take over is to focus on being present in the environment (in the present).  Coping skills like deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation help us to anchor ourselves in the present.  Another good technique is to engage the senses.  Pay attention to the room you are in.  Name 5 things that you can see.  Four things that you can touch.  Three things that you can hear.  Two things that you can smell.  One things that you can taste.  Information that we bring in through our senses is very logical and helps to ground us in our world, thus firmly rooting us in our environment (engaging the logical part of the brain).  Other activities that may help with anxiety reduction include taking a shower, listening to music, engaging in a favorite hobby (gardening, coloring, crocheting), or exercising.  

A specific point that you made in your question is that your toughest time is at night.  Make sure that you arrange your life so that you can mitigate the anxiety or panic that has greater likelihood to strike at night.  It is not advisable to work the late shift or make big life decisions during a time that these things are more likely to happen.  Pay attention to times that anxiety is at a low point and try to identify why you are feeling good as well as ways you can encourage that feeling to happen again.  Hopefully this helps.