So, Kari, here's the thing:
They - the rich ones, the ones you think you can mind-read - they can't do anything to you. No-one can make another person feel anything.
So it's got nothing to do with them.
You - you have a ton of shame, as you've said.
The way to work on that is to work - hard - at identifying and challenging the thoughts that surround those feelings of shame, disgust, regret. If you haven't learned how to do a thought-record in CBT, now is a good time to start. If you did learn how to do it once upon a time, but you didn't like it for whatever reason - get past that and try it again.
You need to re-wire your mind. It's very practiced in those grooves of self-loathing. It needs to be given grooves of self-respect. They will not be given to you, and they don't come without work. But it's more than doable. And as you develop those new grooves, you are simultaneously going to start to see that rich people, poor people...it's all just people. There are assholes in every strata. There are good folk in every strata.
In the US, it's only old, old money that works a bit like how it is in the UK. For them, it's about blood. Literally, bloodlines. You are descended from nobility, you remain noble. You come from the working poor, you are always of the working poor. It is a system that is very, very, very slowly, slowly, slowly dying. But it was in place for hundreds of years.
In America, any pauper could be king, if he worked hard enough. The streets were paved with gold. That was the myth, but it's influenced a great number of ways that we interact with class. So, yes, there are Carnegies and Rockefellers and Chases and Kennedys. But, there are also hard-working people who want to change their neighborhoods, their poverty, and so, they do. I think it will always be a challenge for people who grew up believing they were a 'bottom', to understand that it's all just some made-up concept. That's hard.
Probably harder still with PTSD.
But, it can be done. So you decide - you do it, or you don't. I hope you do, because your title acknowledges that you are working towards something.
So, what's the point of bettering yourself if it just means more to regret? Well, what's the point in not trying, if it just means more of the same?
Life is risk.