One of my best friends called last week while he was stressing out about a festival he was roped into organizing (and providing logistical support for). He said that talking to me helped with the stress because I served as a reminder that an outside world existed (where said festival was not anywhere close to being a life or death matter).
And that's just an example of a stressful situation that can get magnified until it becomes our reality, until we have trouble seeing beyond it.
And it's great that we can get caught up in things because absorption, after all, is the key to happiness. Happiness though, can just as easily be substituted by any other totality of emotion.
So I told my friend that besides talking to sane, other-reality-based friends, that there was no better reason to write. Writing allows you to plug into the you that is utterly without interference, the you that exists when no one is around to see or care or judge.
It is a gift that you can give yourself in the midst of a situational reality trap: an escape. But also a return: to you.