[Staple]

I have a weird coping mechanism for dealing with my anxiety.

One, perhaps more ordinary thing, is that I pace a ton. Sometimes I'll pace back and forth for hours. A few times my legs got sore, so I had to lie down. While I'm pacing, I'm obsess about my reading schedules (planning when I want to read which books, which papers, etc...I know it's weird).

But I've also created this artificial academic world that I exist in disjoint from the actual academic world I exist in. And I constantly obsess about the schedules and duties I have in this other (fake) world. In this other world, I've created this elaborate structure of professorial titles, promotion procedures, and fake courses I teach and academic committees I serve on. Basically I've created this imaginary world to give myself academic purpose because I feel like my actual grad program is boring and I'm not really working with anyone in it.

When I get anxiety about my life (usually in the form of worrying about my future, which I do all the time), I escape to this other world with all of complexities I've endowed to it. It gives me a sense structure (even if it's all just imaginary), and the structure makes me feel safe since it gives me purpose. I don't feel like I have purpose in my actual program, or my life for that matter.

My daily life is a constant oscillation of depression and anxiety--riddled with feelings of social inferiority and intellectual superiority.

[winter4me]

If it works for you, it could be similar to people who get lost in playing video games where they have a chosen character, with another "life" to be lived...and there is nothing wrong in that.
If it interferes with, or creates problems in your daily life, you need to work on other coping mechanisms.
My thoughts anyway.