(((safe hugs)))) I'm sorry to hear what you're going through transient, and I regret to say there's not that much help I can offer on the family side of this. My family has been supportive of me and have never been the ones to hurt me.

Regardless, I can speak to the anxiety. I have social phobia as well, and I understand how terrifying it is. I wouldn't leave my house, not even to do groceries, for about a year to a year and a half. Being afraid of people - what they think of you, how they see you, THAT they see you - is quite damaging and seriously cripples a persons life. I wasn't able to make phone calls, not even to my mom or best friend, without serious anxiety.

I got really fed up with it though. I got fed up with myself and with my life and not being able to go anywhere or do anything or have fun or a normal life. I really wanted to go back to school, and to have conversations with people about normal things, and maybe even travel. So I went to hospital and did an inpatient program. It helped - I met people who supported me and I got out of my house a bit more - but it didn't help as much as I wanted. It taught me CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) which, while useful, focuses on things that happened after the fact. It analysed a situation and then you'd figure out a better way to approach it next time, and that just wasn't going to work for me. I needed something in the moment.

The next time I was in hospital I did DBT. DBT is a mix of therapies like CBT, but also eastern philosophies of mindfulness meditations and stuff. It was developed for people with Borderline Personality Disorder, but is used for all sorts of mental illnesses now. It's more reactive - dealing with issues in the now. It helped, but there was a lot of remembering acronyms and stuff. I'm not so good with that, and you said you weren't either.

But then I started doing exposure therapy as part of an outpatient thing. I was doing it one on one with the councillor, though its usually done in groups. This was the most useful thing I ever did. It's terrifying. The most terrifying thing in my life, because it was FACING ALL OF MY FEARS. And not just facing it, but facing it every day. Forcing myself too.

There's a strategy to it though. It's not blighting off more than you can chew. So you work your way up, starting with small thing that make you anxious but not the worst thing, and work your way up. Do you know the 1-10 anxiety scale? You start at 4 or 5. And you work your way up every week until, 10 or 12 weeks later, your doing the things you never thought you could do. The things that would have broken you at the start.

You're never going to get out of there until you face your anxiety and overcome it, and unfortunately the only way to do that is the hard way. So, I wish you luck. If you're feel overwhelmed go to hospital, it's a good place to start when you're at rock bottom and want to get further than you ever dreamed of. And try to get into exposure therapy, focusing on your social phobia, so that you can gain the confidence to leave the house on your own and build a life on your own. Because you're never going to get away from your family until you can take care of yourself, and you're not going to be able to take care of yourself until you overcome your fears.

Good luck. Sorry if this was long. Feel free to PM me. And seriously, I'm sorry for the position your in.