Edexcel Maths stress??

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Practice papers. Practice pappers. And more practice papers.
If you run out of papers from your board, just start doing other boards' practice papers (theres no harm in trying)

I sympathise with you but you sound in a good position to go on to get the 8 you need. The marks you are getting now should secure a 7. Around 4.5% of candidates will be given a 9. The grade 8 boundary will be set exactly halfway between grade 7 and grade 9. The papers are genuinely difficult and this will bring down the grade 9 boundary so I think you will be pleasantly surprised at how accessible the grade 8 boundary turns out to be.

In September last year, I was certain I would be able to, but as months go on, I think it's less and less likely - I've checked predicted boundaries (all purely speculation, course,) and gaining half marks on all three papers would only be enough to secure a level 5. I'm certain that with enough effort I can guarantee myself a 7, but I'm really pushing for an 8.

I've been looking around and seeing but from what I've heard, the new exams are going to be much, much harder and I'm concerned that nothing from our past papers are representing the actual exam :/

I agree with this so much oh my God! When doing past papers, I manage to get 90%+ in every paper but in the mock papers (which are supposed to represent the new GCSE maths papers), I end up getting around 70%. Someone please help !!!!

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What course do you do? IGCSE or GCSE?
At least in IGCSE Edexcel, the papers have been consistently getting harder, meaning on the most recent papers I've scored lower in (i.e. 2016 i got 88%...)
BUT, with increasing difficulty, the grade boundaries have been going down.
Check your mark against that year's grade boundaries to see the grade (will be in the old format though, but will gve you an idea).
In the 2016 paper i though I had done really badly but when checked against the grade boundaries i had scored a very comfortable A* (8/9) and was a 96 or something UMS... which would mean a 9 even though it wasn't a particularly great %

I take the GCSE - the papers we've been taking have been created specifically for the purpose of the mocks - there are no official boundaries supplied with them to check against! They're not past papers, just 'official mocks'. It's really annoying, actually!
You seem to have done well on your IGCSE - 8/9 is, despite the percentage, almost a distinction!
On one I took just yesterday, I got 43/80... very crushing indeed, and I pride myself on being a high achiever!

That's almost exactly the same as me! How can people that are clearly good at maths receive 90%+ in other papers, but much, much less than that in 'official mocks'?
It doesn't make any sense!

Wow, that sounds so tricky! The board should release some guidance boundaries because not providing any can really crush your confidence... I'm sure you're not doing badly as you seem to be a good student.
I haven't seen any IGCSE official mocks but will look out for them - our mock papers at school were the not yet released 2016 summer papers which were graded in the old way, but i think our maths department is creating new grade boundaries based on the UMS.
It sounds like you're in a really difficult situation!
My maths teachers mentioned that GSCE maths has suddenly become harder than IGCSE since last year (but we were already well into the IGCSE course so we continued) but i think the current year 9s or maybe even 10s at my school are doing the harder GCSEs now so I sympathise for you!

The only solution I can think of is to find as many difficult questions as possible. There is crash maths, corbett maths, and so much more out there. Check it out. If there is anything you get wrong, understand where you went wrong and correct your mistake. Then, do similar questions to reinforce your understanding.

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Thanks for those recommendations, I have a feeling they're going to come in very useful!