Fueling stressful stories is a form of avoidance.
Often, we think of avoidance as distraction, compulsion, overthinking, blame, guilt, going into ideologies, and so on.
And yet, avoidance can also be fueling scary and stressful stories. We make them more catastrophic and make them seem more real to ourselves. And that helps us avoid actually looking at it.
It helps us avoid looking closely at the scary stories and find what’s more true for us. (Which is usually more peaceful, at the very least because it’s more aligned with reality and we know it.) And it helps us avoid feeling the sensations of the fear in the body, rest with them, and allow them as they are.
Examining the stories and resting with the sensations is how these stressful stories can resolve. By avoiding them through fueling them, they tend to stay and perhaps be reinforced. And by meeting them and examining them, they can relax and our relationship with them can relax.