First of all, I know exactly what you mean. My life has gotten worse than anything I could have imagined from anxiety. Except for the fact that I'm not homeless but I have a underresearched disability that keeps getting worse. And because I'm the youngest in my family, if I live a whole life since my disability is not the kind that is fatal, there could be a point where all my family has passed away and I think it actually could cause me to become homeless at that point because even though I don't have help in the areas I need my family to help me and they control almost everything that I do now including what types of mental health treatment I can try (they won't let me try almost anything and just say all the ways it could go wrong even when I'm willing to try something as long as it's not most psychiatric medications since the 2 that I tried gave me multiple new disorders and caused my depression to get even worse - I used to be able to go to college and be productive during the day even with severe suicidal depression & social anxiety before trying them) and whether I can see the only counselor I found who has some experience with treating people with my disability and some other disorders that I probably have. (I can't access them without help and my parent has no concept of privacy. They are virtual only & my house is small.)
And I know this is probably not what you want to hear, but if you have never ever done therapy before, I think it could be okay to wait. Because sometimes therapy alone can really help people.
If I had been able to do therapy before I tried medication that basically disabled me, I feel like it could have possibly worked. Because there were a couple types that did feel like they helped me when I did it, but I wasn't able to continue the exercises on my own and my therapist kept saying that they didn't think it would help when I asked to try it. (Because it was one of the few things that I did feel like was helping me.) And they were not a bad therapist, they did help me with certain issues, I just wish they had listened more sometimes. They also were open to hearing me talk about if something they did or said had upset me.
I was also able to meet new people who did become friends even with extremely severe social anxiety where I had to force myself to leave my room and approach everyone and hated going to class and large events and any social event and doing class presentations. (Idk if this would have been a little easier if I had tips from a therapist because I had never seen one at that point.)
And later, I learned to drive even though I wasn't able to get more practice and my driver's license until after severe effects from the psychiatric medication. (I didn't get it right away because I wouldn't have been able to drive at that point, but let's just say I was really not in good shape and somehow, I was able to do it. I did also have some experience driving with a permit but I hadn't done it since 3+ years before that)
Sorry for mentioning my life so much on your thread. I just wanted to illustrate that I think some of this is still a possibility for you (it might be slower or take longer to do which it did for me. It took me a year and a half to feel more comfortable around most of the friends that I made) & if you had never tried therapy before & it's available to you, it might be early to decide. Because they might have ideas about how you could do some of these things. Especially if they specialize in social anxiety treatment because there was a method that really helped me but sadly I wasn't able to keep doing it because of health problems and life situations that kept happening to me.
I am really not trying to invalidate your feelings and I'm sorry if I did because I know people have done similar things to me and sometimes I also do it to other people without realizing.
I just remember when I felt like this & was able to make some progress in these areas and I didn't realize how much worse my life would get because I'm unable to do these things now because of the level that my worsening disability has gotten to and would give anything to go back to that time. (Well, not the worst of the psychiatric medication effects time because that was literal hell, but the time when I was physically able to try learning to drive and meeting people. Not saying that it is easy, but I really wish I could go back to physically being able those abilities now.)
I also have almost no way to access a method now because of how dependent I am on my controlling family who goes through everything in my room now. (I need help accessing & finding things, but they are also planning to organize my room and go through everything.) And my only method now is on the bottom of the effectiveness list. (My original choice was the #1 method for effectiveness which would have still been accessible to me before my disability got even worse and made me almost completely dependent for transportation. Which would now be impossible for me to be able to get. But, at the time that I was taking steps toward accessing it, I got too scared and decided not to buy it :( Instead of realizing that just because I bought it didn't mean I would have to use it and I could just have it as a backup if things got worse)
Also, I am sorry about your pain levels and the difficulty with making friends, driving, getting a job, etc.
I've been on another website recently where people are asking for advice, so this might be annoying of me. I guess I thought I would tell you in case you were still looking for more ideas for getting out. Or came back to this when you were. Please ignore my suggestions if I'm being annoying & (accidentally) oversimplifying the issues.
It's just some stuff that had helped me some at certain points if I would have been able to keep doing it & not had a bunch of traumatic things unexpectedly happen at the same time in my life that took away a lot of my control. And sometimes I was wanting people to give me suggestions of what to do when everything was really overwhelming.
Department of Vocational Rehabilitation is a place if you are in the U.S. that helps people find and apply for jobs and can make it less overwhelming because they help with the process.
There are also a lot of issues with them because they are not always very understanding and some people who work there are better than others. (Also, it's annoying because they sometimes try to act like your therapist even though they aren't and you don't want them trying to give you feedback or advice like that that they think is helping when they're not even trained in psychology & how therapy works).
But I just thought I would mention it in case it helps and if you do decide to talk about some of your ideas with the therapist.
I was also able to kinda make friends by going to group activities like church (not the judgy kind, the more accepting & open-minded kind of ), school, extracurricular clubs
And got some social experience from Meetups (the last one I didn't really make friends because the people going changed a lot and I also wasn't really able to attend consistently, but could be good practice)
