I've been doing therapy for the past 8 months. It has changed my way of
thinking a bunch, but I still get jittery, my heart rate increases, my
hands sweat, and my body shakes when I'm in a social situation. Yes, I
went many many years like this, but why continue any longer?

Its sort of like that classical experiment where they ring the bell and
feed the dogs. After a while the dogs begin to druel when the bell is
rang because they expect food. When I was younger, my mind associated
social situations with bad, bad things, so whenever they come up, my
body goes into whistle-emergency-panic-siren mode. Also when I was
younger, because of my horrible upbringing, my undeveloped mind
couldn't deal with what was coming at me, so I developed a nasty
"avoidant personality" to deal with it. To this day I have trouble
making eye contact with people. Sure I can force myself, but I'll never
atcally enjoy doing it.

All the therapy has helped me realize all of this, but it will never
make it all go away. Just like how you can't wish away cancer, you
can't just make your body react a different way when your body has been
reacting that way since childhood. Hopefully the medication will end
all of the anxiety that my brain has been trained to release when I'm
in a social situation, so I can retrain my mind to act cool.