Feeling embarrassed by my feelings

Well I can remember once my g/f that I was living with in California, going to college in the 1970's saying to me that I could not be the only person in the world with this problem. I believed that must be true. But I had not thought anyone else went through the same craziness I did. I am convinced this addiction or dysfunction or whatever is 99%-100% bad and harmful and detrimental.
Fast-forward to about the year 2008, talking with a counsellor who was paid by the Veterans Administration hospital to be my counsellor for my Post-traumatic Stress Disorder that they had determined was a 100 % disability, trying to explain to her how I was not present most of the time - that I was in fantasy land. Difficult because with this woman, whom I admired and esteemed so much I had a good rapport and I was able to express myself coherently and be respected by her as i decent human being - trying to explain that out there in the world I was constantly screwing up and not functioning well and not taken seriously, that I commonly stuttered when trying to talk in social situations in which I perceived people were judging me, that I missed out on appointments because I commonly got lost going to places because I was not paying attention to the signs and I forgot essential things all the time, being off my game because my mind was elsewhere. This day-dreaming disorder did not fit in with any established, named conditions that warranted drugs for treatment. She asked me if I had ever done harm to anyone by this behavior. The answer was no. And I had a great feeling of relief - that this condition is not as terrible as what some people go through. But, still I wanted it to go away.
I watched the movie "The secret life of Walter Mitty" and I recalled the short story with that title that I had read in H.S. literature class and had then felt that the author had fantasized about a person who lived in a fantasy world but did not know there really was a person that did live in day-dreams: me. But the movie in a sense glorified this day-dreaming thing and in the end the dreamer was able to succeed in life and have a happy-ending in spite of it all. So for this movie character it was O.K. But for me it has not been O.K., since I am a failure in my life and I have not had the good fortune or the good judgement or talent or whatever to be the hero that he was.
For me the solution has always been - as my hippie g/f in the 1970's taught me was to practise present-time awareness, by meditating. And after all these years and many courses and therapies I have made very little progress at becoming present.
Now, today, at the age of 71, I find that there is an online community of us. ANd I find from the articles I had perused that people are also embarrassed or ashamed by this and this is a terrible curse.
I wish I could say it is not "our fault" that we have this addictive behavior. I am not completely sure of that since we are responsible for going down that road into day-dreaming - but that happened because of the abuse/trauma/neglect that happened to us. And maybe it was adaptive at one time - speaking for myself now - but I would let it go now if I could and face the world as an adult now.
For now, I now have a sense that this deep, secret, crippling condition I have is legitimate and I do not have to go on with it alone anymore.