As usual Opal, that's a lot of great information.
Although I'll be the first to admit that psychiatry is not my specialty, my training is first and foremost as an internist, so I see more than my fair share of people with psychiatric disorders which span the spectrum from depression to schizophrenia to social anxiety disorder. Much of what la petite moi has described sounds like social anxiety disorder. There are a lot of good, randomized controlled trials that show that drugs in the class of SSRI's are pretty good for Social Anxiety disorder. As Opal stated, the ones that work the best, or there is the most evidence to support their use, are sertraline (also known as Zoloft) and paroxetine (brand name Paxil). In my experience, they take a fairly long time to work, but are generally well tolerated.
Psychotherapy is not as effective at treating social anxiety disorder when compared to a mode of treatment called cognative behavioral therapy. This is a multifaceted approach that focuses on exposure to the stressful situation, and in a way, retraining the way in which you react to the stressful stimuli. Cognitive behavior therapy can take even longer than SSRI's to have an effect (up to 6 or more months). To the best of my knowledge, it is also rather costly. Because of those two factors, I haven't seen it used all that frequently.
Again, I'm not a mental health professional. In fact, I only slept at Howard Johnson's last night.
My opinions are just that -- opinions. I'd recommend seeing your doctor. Working together with your doctor should allow you find a plan that will help you with your anxiety. Good luck!