Anxiety catches up to me.

[Pokey]

I've got to ask you folks about this lil' problem of mine, because I simply don't know what to do about it. This problem resurfaces all the time while I'm playing, and it eventually gets me to leave. Here it is:

I'm afraid of the tables.

Seriously. Whenever I'm playing poker, I start getting nervous. Hand after hand, my anxiety gradually builds. If I'm in a hand, the tension mounts; if I'm not in the hand, I'm worrying about how soon the blinds will come to get me. I'm always double-counting my stacks, noticing that I've made a pretty penny, and worried that it could all go away if I get a bad beat of two (or three, or seventeen). When I'm down, I'm worried my stacks are getting too short and I'm going to get busted off the table. Always, the short-run scoreboard is in the front of my mind: "if I drop $7, I'll be down for the session," or "$103 profit -- I really don't want to lose more than three bucks" or some such nonsense.

After a couple hours, the tension overwhelms me and I simply have to stop playing to calm down a bit.

This can't be a smart way to play poker. Has anybody else had this problem? How can you deal with it? Is this just something that is supposed to "go away over time"? I need to shift my perspective away, but I'm having a really hard time doing so, and any advice would be welcome.

P.S.: it's not a bankroll issue, either, since I'm usually playing with 400+ BBs. And with my current mentality, even if my bankroll were 10,018 big bets I'd still be saying "I can't lose more than 18 bets or I'll be under 10k BBs in my bankroll."