I've had social anxiety all my life!!
Was never popular in school but things started to get really bad in years 9-11 when I was being pychologically and emotionally bullied pretty badly, which wrecked my confidence and my grades. Being socially awkward/shy/nervous etc.. made me an easy target to these kinds of people. I know I would have the potential to get great GCSEs but depression seemed to take over my life and it came with a lack of motivation to do anything. I passes all my GCSEs and they are well above average, (but not by grammar school standards), I got into 6th form, but I know I could have done better. I can't help but compare myself to other people, and think about how many other people, who had a great life in school, great friends, got better grades than me. For quite some time I have wanted to get into LSE but having recieved crap GCSE results (by their standards) my chances are pretty slim. I changed to another sixth form just to avoid certain people (even though I'm sure that some of the people who bullied me are off to college now) and find my life here much better, and it's nice to start on a clean slate but I've still had people bitch about me behind my back and I can't help but think that I'll just be known as the weird nervous freak as I was in my previous school.
I spend a lot of my time worrying about all the stupid things I've done in the past, things I wish I didn't do, times I've embarassed myself, etc.. I can trace back from the early years of primary school and still worry about things that happened back then. It's just regret, regret, and more regret. My mum won't let me go on medication. I started self harming very regularly (at one point I was cutting almost every day) in yr 11
It's something I will have to live with I guess.