"Fear, Itself"

This episode seemed like a reprisal of “Nightmares.” Only now the fears of the characters have grown more complicated and less tangible. We are no longer dealing only with spiders and walking into class naked. In “Fear, Itself” Xander becomes invisible to the other characters, a fear that, in a less literal sense, is preyed upon by Anya earlier in the episode: “I mean, they go to college, you don’t. They no longer live at home, you do.” Xander is afraid that he will be left behind now that his friends have moved onto college.
I think much the same dynamic is at work in “Normal Again.” Buffy’s world was certainly much simpler before she found out she was the Slayer. She had both of her parents and she didn’t have to worry about being attacked by vampires at every turn. However, as much as Buffy might miss her old life, “slaying” has certainly become an integral part of her identity. Through it, she has gained Giles and the rest of the Scooby Gang and a sense of power and agency that few people have. So, while slaying is dangerous, Buffy would likely be worse off without it. Buffy’s fear of losing her power is part of what fuels her delusions of being in the hospital, if they are delusions at all. I haven’t seen all the Buffy episodes, and so, for me at least, it’s possible to imagine the series culminating in the revelation that Sunnydale is nothing more than Buffy’s delusion. In this way, Buffy is just as “awash in ambiguity” as The Turn of the Screw was.