Ask HN: Freelancing and social phobia

Hello HN, I'm an international student living in Auckland, New Zealand and studying Computer Science at Auckland University of Technology.

Since I live in the city, my living expenses are quite high. I do freelancing to help cover living costs but I barely scrape by on that. I have a love hate relationship when it comes to freelancing. It can be a decent source of income and the more interesting the job/client, the more I learn in my given field. Unfortunately I'm not very good with people.

I've battled with depression for a good portion of my life. Being around a large crowd of people makes me panicky. I worked a retail job once and would suffer panic attacks when having to deal with difficult customers. I suffer from a similar problem with freelancing. It doesn't matter whether I'm communicating solely through emails and phone calls, dealing with clients, particularly difficult ones, leaves me panicky and kills any productivity I have for the rest of the day.

I don't know how long I can continue working this way. Is there any tricks to the freelancing trade that can help me? I'm looking for advice from anyone who has dealt with similar issues while trying to ek out a living as a fulltime student and freelancer?