Ouch. That *is* bad. Your description reminds me of how I felt
   in school. I'd get a thought in my head and it wouldn't go away.
   People looking even close to my direction were distorted; always
   negative and judgmental or mocking in some way. I'd get nausea,
   tunnel vision. My mother said I'd get into inconsolable states.
   [I was talking with Jay about this earlier, so he gets a repeat]

   At 11, my mother took me to biofeedback. I learned to "breath
   through my feet" / "be a bottle in the warm sand". There were
   these tapes of guided meditation and I had to control a
   computer's beeping with my mind and make the tone go down in
   frequency and volume.

   [this was back in 1983 when biofeedback was considered a bit
   quackery. She also fed us homemade yogurt a lot, which wasn't
   half bad].

   Anyway, it worked. Breath in for 6 seconds, breath out for 6
   seconds. That's the gist of it in a nutshell.

   Didn't cure the anxiety problem but it gave me my first handle
   on it - something I could _do_. I picked up vipassana meditation
   at some point, found other outlets like manic piano playing or
   fast typing.

   I did recently find that magnesium + zinc (regular amounts) were
   a big help; my body reacts to it the same as it did when I had
   Lorazapam (atavan?) in my mid-20s. Occasionally I'll use it even
   now.

   Sounds like you have it far worse than me though.