It's always hard to tell through the screen, but I think you're doing the right things to get through this, Anna, and you'll be ok in the long run.
I can definitely relate to your situation because there are a lot of parallels to what happened to me years ago. I downplay it to myself and most people around me don't even know all that happened, but there are effects even years later -- the biggest being that I freeze up whenever I have to go do something "official" cold, because putting it off means I don't have to deal with negative results. Which most of the time is silly because most of the time it's simply picking up some paperwork or asking a simple question, but I'll like hover outside the office for half an hour building up the steam to just go in. Once I'm used to an environment or procedure, I'm fine, and of course 99% of the time there was nothing to worry about in the first place.
On the other hand, I've generally kept an upbeat outlook on things, and when it comes down to it, I
can go do the things I need to do. It also had a weirdly positive effect on my retail career because I became so expert at avoiding conflict by not triggering reactions in other people, that with many years experience, I have almost none of the confrontational horror stories that everybody else seems to have happen on a weekly basis.
Anyway, before
I start rambling for pages (which I can easily do), I guess the only "advice" I can give is that eventually you'll be in a place in your life where you are in control of it all, and I think one of the important things to start doing now and continue doing later is gather a circle of positive people in your life.
It's only in the last year or so that I've really had that, and it's the kind of thing I never noticed until it was different like this. Earlier in the month, a shoot for my cable access show completely fell apart when I found out the day before that the studio had accidentally double-booked and I was the one who had to change. As the shock set in and I felt completely alone, I braced myself to call everybody to tell them the news, and the overwhelming support I received as I put together an alternative shot date nearly brought me to tears.
I think you have a good start on that kind of thing with the people around here. While we all use this blog thread to post some of our woes, there's also a good balance of people reporting happy news, and enough of the pick-me-up support and silliness that really does help. I've had so many "friends" descend into the blogosphere morass of "my tragic life is worse than yours!" where collecting a large count of sympathy posts seems to be some kind of contact sport.
And because I've used up my quota of seriousness, I'll close with the silly non-sequitur of reporting that there's apparently a sci-fi book called "Doppelgangster". I wonder if it's by the same author as "Vampirates", and what the potential is for other kinds of titles like this.
