Social anxiety disorder or shyness?

[melodycurl]

I'm a 19 year old female and I feel like I just put a name to what I've felt like my whole life.
I ran into this forum site after looking at this thread:
http://www.socialphobiaworld.com/do...ant-to-do-something-big-with-your-life-17555/

I became really emotional because I've never had anyone describe to me how I feel everyday. I started looking around the site and people's stories seemed more and more familiar to me. But I still don't know.

I read about the symptoms, and I feel as I meet maybe half or 3/4 of them.
I have an irrational fear of meeting new people, and cannot call strangers. I know it's ridiculous but my heart and breathing starts going really fast and I freak out. I once cried an hour before a job interview, and just introducing myself in a small class scares me. But I don't know why! I thought that was a normal reaction until I looked at this site. People just tell me to "get over it" but I don't think they understand. I'm a totally different person around my close friends than with strangers. I feel like I'm on the outside looking in when I'm with strangers, like I hear myself saying things I don't know why I'm saying and I KNOW it sounds stupid/not the right thing to say? In big groups I never really contribute to the conversation worried about what to say. When I start being close to people though, I'm fine, I'm myself. I don't know if this makes sense, I'm still really new to this all.

Also, I don't know if this has anything to do with SA, but I feel like if I'm on a different time clock than everyone else, I always have been. I'm genuinely not sleepy until 3-4AM and I'm not really awake until 12-1PM. I hate "society's clock".

Any comments would be great, I don't know how to feel about this, it's just been a shock finding this site.

 

[melodycurl]

It disrupts my life feeling like I'm never going to get a job because I have no experience and so when it all comes down to the job interview, I know I'm screwed.
It disappoints me that I find it so hard to meet new people, and just a phone call to a stranger I can't handle. =/

Does SA tend to get worse/better with time or the your life situation? I just moved out on my own to go to college and I feel it getting so much worse. I make my boyfriend do everything social related for me [calling people, meeting people for me, etc.] I feel so useless, it's ridiculous. How come people are like this and how do we fix it?