This is an issue that should be discussed soon with your primary care doctor, as poor sleep can affect your health in many ways, not just affect your quality of life. While you don't provide any additional details, I would be interested to know if you are overweight. The symptoms that you are describing sound very much like obstructive sleep apnea, which is more common in people who are overweight. In this increasingly common disorder, the soft tissue in the back of your throat relaxes while you sleep, and then it falls into the airway. During the day you don't notice this because you can swallow or adjust the soft tissue in other ways, but this obstruction while you are asleep gradually causes you to feel that you are not getting enough oxygen, which eventually sends a signal to your brain. Your brain feels this panic feeling that you are describing, and then wakes you up in order for you to swallow and breathe appropriately. Then you fall back asleep and the cycle repeats itself.
Please see either your primary care physician
to diagnose this condition and see if anything else is happening, or he or she will refer you to either an ear-nose-and throat surgeon
(AKA ENT AKA otolaryngologist
) or a sleep medicine specialist for a more complete workup, possibly including a sleep study. There are treatments available.