I relate with all of your feelings of self-consciousness and insecurity. I was doing the same thing in my teens, and unfortunately I'm still feeling the same now at 27. I go out and worry that people think I walk funny. I've been self conscious of my hair since age 14. And I have social anxiety, so I feel utterly unlikable and ridiculous as a person, and worry how I come across. What caused you to feel this way, did something trigger it? Bullies, unhappy home, or just felt this way since before you can remember? I can relate to each cause.

I'm slowly coming to the understanding that we need to have our own backs, like and support ourselves, and take the personal power that we should have. We're both feeling powerless and unworthy; we're doubting ourselves, our abilities, how other people perceive us. How we see ourselves is absolutely everything. It determines whether we look up or look down. It determines whether we talk back or back down. It determines everything in our lives. We need to be 100% best friends with ourselves. Wolfgaze's advice is good - you need (as I also need!) to look within, quiet the mind, and listen to yourself. Your true self is there. Journaling is helpful. It's incredibly hard, I'm struggling with it myself. But at the end of the day we have to refuse to live with the fear and refuse to dislike ourselves based on our environments and the lives and thoughts of other people. Life is too complex to base our opinions of ourselves on the opinions of people near us. People are too complex. We have to let go of the thought of "other people" and hold on to the thought "myself." And "other people" does not come in to "myself" at all, whatsoever. When you think of yourself and immediately think of another person, it's still "other people." You must find you, and focus on you.

Hmm, have I just had a mini epiphany about my own social anxiety? I must remember these nuggets of insight.