Hi, I can share some things from when I was about that age which I just attribute to fanciful thinking if you will. They helped me fight boredom, and just made the world more interesting. There were a lot of monsters or wild animals in my experiences. Generally it usually started off as a sort of game I played by myself, but over time, became more detailed and more compelling. There was the monster that lived under the house when I first stepped on the stairs up to the front door. He was a bit stupid and slow, but had malicious intentions for sure. It was okay though, as long as I kept moving up the stairs he wouldn't catch me. Monsters under the bed, lions an tigers at the edge of our property, but only in a specific spot they never left, and so sly that they were never seen. The monster in the toilet who took the stuff all away, but might bite you by mistake if you were foolish enough to flush the toilet while sitting on it. A weird Traditional arctic pullover top with a hood brimmed with fur that would let me turn into a polar bear, monsters in the attic, monsters walking just below the level of my windows who wouldn't see me as long as I couldn't see them. It goes on and on.

I'm not sure if it did any real harm. There was the time a feral cat was under the stairs and was started when I stepped on the stairs. I was absolutely terrified but found the whole thing rather amusing in retrospect. Then there was the time a particularly loud toilet scared me so badly that I ran for the door and accidentally bumped into someone, that was awkward.

I never got into conflicts with people, or tried to convince people of the reality of all these things. It was like they were real to me, but I had the insight that they were not likely real to other people. That's a critical difference there.

I'm nearly fifty now, I'm still afraid that something is under my bed. Even though I know it's not true, it still scares and worries me. I'm mindful of not letting my feet hang over the edge of the bed at night.

All these things were major distractions which often changed the way I interacted with the world a bit, and I suppose there is a cost to ignoring the world as it really is, and I'm sure I could have put the time I've spent thinking about those things to better use.

Most importantly, all thst stuff has never really affected my ability to function and do what I'd like to do in that life so despite the delusional and obsessive compulsive thinking going on I consider all of that just sort of quirky and harmless. That is to say, not pathological.

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