yes it is a panic attack, I had my first one when I was in a deep sleep, scared the heck outta me because it never happened before. I woke up with a racing pounding heart,my left arm was buzzing..I went to the E.R because I thought I was having a heart attack. I had to learn all about anxiety and panic attacks and they are caused by us we have a chemical imbalance and for some reason our brain gives the wrong message to our body and tells it we are in trouble so our adrenal starts going up because of a wrong signal...cognitive therapy that you are doing is the right thing. eventually we have to retrain our brain that this is not an emergency but yet our symptoms are real....we have to accept it as anxiety and it's not going to hurt you even tho the symptoms are pretty scary....my life did a 360 turn when this happened I changed my lifestlye and walk,walk, walk this raises all the good endorphins in your body and you are forced to focus on positive things. When I get the feeling like I'm losing control I talk to myself and say "ok,I know what this is it will pass and it won't hurt you and they slowly pass it has taken me months and they don't scare me anymore so they are getting farther and farther apart. I just know because I have been to "H" and back and there is alight at the end of the tunnel. Good luck and your doing the right thing.