I was really afraid about the moment I'd graduate from my degree and be in the position of looking for a job. Studying I could just barely get a grip on enough to graduate, though it was grueling on my self-esteem and social anxiety.
I had tried a few job applications before graduation as practice, and was almost never even phoned. I had landed an internship at a normal company during my studies, but unfortunately they gave me almost no meaningful work that I could put on a resume, so I was back in the starting position when I started looking for a full-time job after school.
I avoided looking for jobs seriously for 6 months after work, taking my mom's credit card for a while, which she didn't even approve of. My self-esteem was at one of its lowest points, I couldn't face up to the reality of a job application process. The lying, the brown-nosing, the being rejected for unnamed reasons, the trying to seem talkative, the having to give test answers on the spot with a salary on the line. I started reading stories about people who just never took jobs their whole lives on this forum. It made me feel pretty bad, but I still didn't look seriously.
I did have a handful of interviews that all went significantly bad. There was one interview I didn't go to because I didn't feel like spending a whole month recovering from shame. I explained that I had anxiety and I backed out. The person emailed me a month later saying he thought I would make a good candidate for his company's actual product, a project course where you land interviews at the end.
My instinct was to say no because it cost $1000 or something like that, and don't these things never work? But then I thought that the only times in my life when I have seen anything through was when I was paying the only pennies I had to do it, like school. I only finished school because so much money had been invested into it already.
I took the course, and I really did work on it, and they started sending interviews my way. I failed a few. One week I expended the most energy I've ever spent fighting social anxiety, and after a 3-step interview on one end, and a 5-step interview on the other, I had 2 offers. I took one. I still feel problems of social anxiety every day and an office is not my ideal setting, but by a lot of measures, it is a good job.
I suffer for long periods of time over some trouble of mine and then it gets too much and I kick myself and get it done over a concentrated, painful period, and then the pain is usually over, at least related to that problem.
Thank god I found the energy, I was sure I wouldn't.