I'm scared.

[Gwenevere]

I think I could quit this whole daydreaming thing.  I've quit it before.  Well, sort of.  I had one foot in the wagon and one off, and performed awkward jumping jacks in that position.   

But I'm scared.  

There are three poles in my existence, and I pinball from one to the other: anxiety, depression, and daydreams. Anxiety scares me out of the daydreams.  Sometimes the anxiety feels like a savior, because it feels good to care about other people. 

But right now, hanging out at this pole of daydreaming, as much as I would like to sleep soundly and peacefully and rid myself of this headache, the thought of returning to Anxiety Land and obsessing about wrongs and rights and different ways to go to hell and realizing how timid, young, and weak I am...hm.  "Hello, Rock, nice to meet you, but I think I'll hang out here in Hard Place for a while longer."  

If the reasons for my anxiety were just based in emotion, I think I could stick out my chest and face it.  I've done that before with other anxieties.  I made myself walk away from locks that I wanted to check, forced myself to keep driving when I wanted to make sure the garbage bag on the highway ramp wasn't actually a person, touched the toilet bowl brush and then touched other stuff without washing my hands, etc.  But this time it's different, and I don't know how to beat it.  I don't even know if I should beat it, or if I should actually listen to it.  I don't know what's true and what isn't.   So, I hide in my daydreams with my fictional characters.  I watch them beat it instead of me, over and over.  I don't want to stop watching them; part of me feels like if I watch them long enough, they'll give me the answer.   That said, I don't know that I'd listen even if they did give it to me.  

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Thanks for reading.  I welcome your commiserations and/or encouragements.

[The1andonlyAbber]

I also experience anxiety and OCD-like symptoms when I'm at a place where I'm not daydreaming as much. I'm not sure how to get rid of them except by daydreaming, though.

[The1andonlyAbber]

You don't necessarily have to stop daydreaming as long as you can get it under control.

[cltreader]

Hi! You sound a lot like me. I pinball around the whole anxiety, depression, daydreams triangle too.  I was doing really well earlier this year and thought I was on my way to having the MDD thing licked. However, a long list of troubles has invaded my family over the past few months, so now I am back to where I was. I have found myself telling myself to just stop the fantasies and they do go away for a few minutes, maybe an hour. But the stress that I am under is just too much. So, I retreat back into the fantasy world because for right now it is the comfort that I can't get elsewhere. And yes I am scared too.

Hang in there!