Panic Attacks in the crate

Looking for advise on crate training. I know there’s alot of post on her regarding crate training, but I don’t see much about the panic attacks.

My puppy is 9 weeks old (Dutch shepherd x Belgian Malinois mix). When we first got her (2 days ago) she hated the crate, cried, howled, bit at the bars and was panting so I let her out. I took a new approach and got her comfortable to go in with treats and we played crate games. Now when she’s tired I put her in there and she will sleep in it until she wakes up. At night, the crate is in the play pen. I put her in there when she’s tired, leave the door unlocked and limited the playpen area to just a small section so she can atleast get out the crate. Today is night 3 and I want to try to put the crate by my bed and lock it to see how it goes.

Ultimately, I’m nervous about the panic attacks she initially had at the start and don’t want to mess up progress but want to move forward with trying to 1) sleep in the crate with the door locked and 2) leave her without seeing me so she’s comfortable being alone in the crate.

I do have the week off, so she won’t be alone much, but next week I do go back to work (2 days out of the week) and she will need to be crated for atleast 4 hours while I’m gone.

Any advise?

**side note for the playpen, she’s already learned how to climb out of it so leaving her in the just the playpen while I’m gone is not going to cut it.