This day has been followed by a plethora of similar circumstances. 

I studied philosophy and political science at a good university, and in my first year I got an award for being top of my year. I thought someone must have made a mistake, or that everyone else must have not tried at all, because there was no way I could have done so well. I still feel as if I did not deserve that award.

A couple years after graduation I enrolled in an English-as-a-second-language teaching course. I was selected along with another woman from among my classmates to go and teach a group of soccer players from another country. I didn't follow through with it due to anxiety, much worsened by the fact that my deeply unsupportive father raved on and on about how I had to make sure I was really engaging otherwise the students wouldn't take me seriously. After I pulled out (having organised a replacement) he hatefully berated me, telling me I'd fucked everyone over and that I was a pathetic person. Despite being a grown man I cried in front of him, and he laughed psychopathically in my face telling me something like "fuck off, little crybaby". 

Even when I was 15 years old I gained a scholarship to travel on a cultural exchange to Japan, after undergoing an interview process and them selecting me as one of the two best candidates in my city (there were only two other competitors but we had been narrowed down by means of the essays we wrote explaining why we wanted to go etc). 

Anyways, now I'm 26 years old and have been sitting at home with extreme anxiety for many years. I keep getting horrifying feelings that I've wasted all my young years being scared of everything; I've even been too unconfident to try going on a romantic date for the last 2 and a half years. I have intrusive thoughts most moments throughout the day of other people essentially telling me I'm useless. I've never really had a job so I have no references, and I have no confidence to get a job let alone follow a career path - I sweat profusely on my face when I'm nervous, too.

I've thought about going back to do graduate studies in philosophy but every time I think about it I just imagine people in my life who've questioned my intelligence, and imagine the students I would eventually have laughing and jeering at how "slow" I am (an adjective my father used to use to describe me). I also used to want to follow a career involving writing, as it was always my forte, but I haven't read - let alone written - anything of substance for several years. My mother told me "But heaps of people are good at writing" when I expressed this desire to her years ago, which has stuck with me and made me feel as if I have no talent at all. Due to a lack of practise, it's turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy wherein I actually am no longer a very articulate speaker or writer.

I'm really struggling. I guess I'm ultimately just hoping for some words of support.