Giving myself panic attacks with daydreaming.

[Nina]

Hey! My MD is pretty extreme and takes up most of my time. I'm doing distance learning and I'm too anxious to even leave the house so I'm basically sitting in my bed in front of my computer all day. This leads to me daydreaming most of the time. I recently tried to keep track of the hours and every single day it's up to 9 hours of daydreaming. Sometimes more than that. That's just horrible. I'm clinical depressed and my anxiety is at it's worst. A thing that started a few months ago is that I'm giving myself panic attacks with my daydreams. I daydream about my own life. The situation I'm in right now. I often daydream that I'm a few years older and I'm an actress or something and I'm getting interviewed and I talk about how I beat all this and having a happy life. I talk very detailed about the situation I'm in, the things I'm anxious about right now, how I think the next few months of my life will go. And this gives me panic attacks. I'm starting to imagine worst case scenarios. In these interviews (I hope this isn't getting too confusing) I talk about how back then I felt completely hopeless, thought this was never going to be okay again etc. All the things I am afraid of. And I keep discussing them in vivid detail and even though I feel the panic rise I don't stop. Which often leads to a full blown panic attack. How do I stop this? I tried to stop daydreaming so often. Or to at least reduce it. But I feel like an addict. I had times where I had to leave the room (even at family dinners) and go to the bathroom for 5 minutes and pace and daydream. 

[S.D.]

When you feel yourself getting to the point of panicking in your daydreams you have to stop yourself - I know this is easier said that done, but you literally have to get up and try and distract yourself with anything else, it could literally be you doing anything but just changing something in that moment.

Have you tried keeping a journal and writing this all down? I used to do what you did in your daydreams and my daydreams became absolutely miserable so I started writing in my journal before daydreaming and just getting all that anxiety out helped make my daydreams happier again. Not perfect, but better.

I also started changing my thought process like my therapist said to, so whenever I thought of something negative or bad in my life, something that gave me anxiety I would have to think of two positive things or think of a way to make the negative more positive - looking at it from another perspective.  This is so far relieving a lot of my anxiety because I used to worry so much about things but changing the way I thought about them really lowered my anxiety levels.

The best thing you can do though is what I said above, when you feel your daydream getting out of control and the panic attacks feel like they are coming you have to stop yourself, get up and do something else, then go back to daydreaming and try to regain control of it.

Also the more you try not to think of something the more you usually do, let yourself have these feelings and try to express them in some other way outside of your daydreams.

[maro]

What about volunteering in a group bcuz being wz people make us less attached to dreaming try to be wz people more if u have that attach u will feel better also think wz yourself not daydream but think what u want to do goals try to make daydreaming into reality ...pray to stay awake live moment to its fullest just try : ) ;)