I think i have social anxiety, what can i do to help me through this?

im 16 and im pretty sure i suffer from social anxiety but i could be wrong....when i was younger i seemed to be alot happier around my family and was always doing something either with my friends or family, but when i turned around 12 i noticed i started becoming a lot quieter for some reason and stayed in my room almost all the time on my computer. i noticed i started becoming further apart from my friends and i just felt like i was scared to call them and they never called me much so i felt like they didnt even think of me as a friend so i didnt know what to do. i dont really know what caused me to become quieter around people and more shy at school. i always feel really scared around people like their judging me and staring at me and i start to really panic and get really hot and start sweating and my heart beats so fast when i have to talk around many people i dont know or even one person i dont know really and somtimes i feel this way around my friends even...by 8th grade i barely had any friends and it just seemed really hard for me to talk to many people, i just get really scared about what someone might think of me and a lot of times i just dont know what to say to people. in the 8th grade i started becoming really depressed and cried almost everyday and thought about suicide a lot because i was so lonely and thought my life wouldnt get any better...i didnt tell my parents i was depressed until a year later and they put me on some depression medicine and took me to a therapist for a while to help with this depression. none of this has really helped much...iv been to 3 therapist and none have made me feel any happier or less shy really ;\ i stopped taking the medicine and i felt the same as when i wasnt taking it..so that didnt help either. iv also been having a lot of problems with sleepiness and i dunno what to do about it, i always feel very tired and i can sleep up to 20 hours a day when im not in school. i just feel like my life is going to hell and no1 can help =[ i just wish things would get better but i dont see how they can really...just wish i wasnt so shy and lonely, i dont really have any1 to talk to in real life thats very close to me, the only people i really talk to are some "friends" at school i eat lunch with, i never see them outside of school though and i feel like they dont care much about me.

my parents always try to get me to do somthing outside of the house like go to the park or go to the mall or try to get sum1 to do somthing with me but it just seems so hard for me to do much and i get really nervous when i have to go somewhere around many people or if im going out with a friend. i dont think my parents really understand me. its just really hard for me to talk to many people or even look at them for very long if i dont know them. my dad thinks i have this problem because something really dramatic happend to me in my life but i really cant think of anything bad thats happend to me to cause this and he always asks me why im so quiet....i really wish i knew why im like this. if anyone could give me some advice itd be really helpful. i really wish i could change .

also does this really sounds like social anxiety or just shyness? and is there any medicine that could actually help me with this at all that i should ask my doctor about or any sort of therapy that actually deals with social anxiety itself that could possibly help me? i feel like nothing could ever help me really and that my life will always be this lonely but i really hope im wrong. please post anything here, and sorry i wrote so much but i hope u understand what im going through.

ya you definitely have some type of social disorder. what you are talkin about describes how my life was since middle shool. I was a very outgoing person throughout my childhood but puberty messed me up. i started having negative thoughts about my appearance, lost all friends except one and just feeling lonely and depressed. personally, i have social anxiety disoder since i was about 13. im 18 now.

my AIM name is kghalo21, feel free to talk

Hey I totally understand what you are going through. When I was younger I was very outgoing I had no problems talking to anyone I just did not care. But now I am afraid of talking to people, I don't understand what happened. I used to take lexapro and see a therapist but neither worked for me. I am now 22 and live with my girlfriend and live in a really nice apartment. I play xbox a lot and I have no problem talking to people online, I don't get it. The symptoms you were describing are the one I have I just want it to end (not my life or anything like that) but the way I feel. I suppose I feel scared for some reason but I don't know why.I suppose you could say I also say that for some reason I yearn for a life full of people and places and I am afraid of it. I always thought that it was something that happened to me when I was young something traumatic and now I want to stay home all day. I have like two friends and I hardly call them at all and they don't call me. I don't call them because I was always afraid that they did not like me.

Hows it going, a lot of people experience what your going through. For me, it was a fear of what people would think of me and I would also avoid public places. But lately i've learned to overcome it quite well by repeating in my head "Who cares what these people think of me? Im gonna do my own thing and screw them if they don't like it" For me it calmed me down and allowed me to act more natural. And also, DO NOT USE ALCOHOL to overcome this fear. It may work for a few hours but eventually this will leave you with alcohol withdrawal and will make your problem MUCH worse, leaving you visible shaking and having panic attacks