Ok, sports psychology doesn't work, someone suggest something please?!

I had this problem, it was brought on by an instructor who made a massive deal of it if I made a mistake to the point where I was amazed my poor suffering horse ever jumped a pole on the ground for me again.

I changed instructors to one who would make a big deal of what I do right and then just tags on something like an afterthought to improve on for example "Ok that was really good, you dodn't drop the contact and you didn't collapse your position and you kept your leg and stayed nice and straight. Come round again but this time maybe try and take the two exrta strides out in the middle" This would be when I put 5 strides into a 3 stride combination because I was hooking back.

I've kind of learned from her that the world will not end if I make a mistake and to try and see the good things about what I've done and focus on them rather than the bits where I've ridden like a plank.

There is always a positive, even if its just ' I didn't leave the dressage arena when I did the 20m egg at A' or ' I may have done everything wrong over fence 2 but my horse trusted me enough to carry on' You know you can try and improve the less good things but if you concentrate on finding the positives then you might be more positive yourself?
 
To go back to the apology question: as Tarr-Steps has suggested, it becomes almost a reflex. You've taken possibly the most important step to working through it, which is realising that it's self-destructive, and probably extremely annoying to your surroundings. I think two things will be very helpful to you; first, learning to validate yourself by your successes, and second, learning to be conscious of how often you reflexively apologise---and slamming the brakes on the words "I'm sorry!" if you can!

For the first, I agree with many others, that supportive mentors or experts are very very important in building self-esteem. One failed uni interview is not the end of the world: even if you are as successful as, say, Julius Caesar, you'll still have many many failures ahead of you. I'd recommend you find a teacher whom you trust and respect, to talk to about the interview and your uni future in general.

However, a painful thing to learn is that in some ways, you will outgrow your loved ones in your areas of expertise: the better you do, the harder those who are not in the same field will find it to understand your experiences. Depending on your family background, you may have hit that point already with this interview. So if their questions are, at the moment, a bit painful for you, try to remind yourself that the situation is possibly outside their experience. Does this make any sense?
 
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