During anxious mind-wandering situations which demand avoidant behaviour enter the mind. For example, an individual with obsessive compulsive disorder may visualise that they are contaminated (imagined experience) and therefore must wash their hands (the avoidant action; Mcguire et al., 1994). Alternatively, an individual with social anxiety disorder might im-agine being in a conversation and having nothing to talk about (imagined future scenario) and therefore will avoid entering a conversation (avoidant action; Richards, 2013).
However in dreams I am suggesting that the situations imagined call for un-avoidant behaviour. For example Tim's dream in the paper:
> Tim’s father gives him a large volume of prescription drugs which he knows could kill him if he takes them all. Tim’s father wants him to swallow all the pills at once. Tim does not want to! However, he swallows the pills without protest.
In this situation it is clear that avoiding the confrontation and swallowing the pills is not a sensible decision. The situation calls for un-avoidant behaviour (saying no to his father). It is in this way that I am arguing that dreaming is the inverse of anxious mind-wandering.
It is interesting that those who do a lot of mediation have been seen to be less reactive to norepinephrine (a neurotransmitter associated to stress).