It's funny that you mention changing your environment because that's exactly what I did this year. When I went to college two years ago, I went to a school 2500 miles away from home. But this year I went a step further still, went to an entirely different country altogether... This is such a large problem for me actually; I go as far away from home as I can possibly manage but everything is still the same. Then I think that the problem wasn't my environment at all, it was just me this entire time. I am the problem. No matter how far away I go, I am still stuck with me. And as much as I try to, I can't seem to change the things I don't like about myself.

I think that is the worst part: I want and try to improve but I never see any progress. My agoraphobia used to be so bad that I couldn't leave the house to get the mail. But now I go out to bars, to go movies, traveling, am living on my own in a foreign country, stumbling along butchering the language, etc. So I would think this is progress, with a lot of hard work and therapy and such so that now I can do these things. Right? But then I think of the result, and I realize that I am still just as lonely as I was when I didn't leave the house at all, and have just as many friends. So then what's the point of leaving the house, what did that actually accomplish? Maybe that's a stupid way to look at it, but this was what I so desperately wanted to change in the last year but have completely and utterly failed!

I had been told over and over again in therapy that if I could just be less anxious and more sociable I could make friends of my own, but I don't think this is true at all, because I am the problem. Not my anxiety, not my environment. Just me.

But thank you everyone for your response, it means a lot to me, I appreciate it more than I could possibly even write here...