how can i stop always looking for an escape?

I think your question represents your awareness, the first step to stopping always looking for an escape. You're aware that you spend too much time in your internal world and not enough in the here and now. So let's hold this understanding to enable us to move forward with a new way of being: Sitting/ staying with the uncomfortable in your experience. I offer you a suggestion. Perhaps you think to yourself or write down all that is uncomfortable in your immediate reality. What you write down will be the triggers that drive you to escape into your mind. From here you will want to gradually allow yourself to spend more and more time in the uncomfortable reality while still holding onto the notion that you can always retreat into your mind if it gets too much. The main thing here is to challenge your habitual way of escapism.

Another cognitive behavioral therapy type method for stopping this is to use the ABC method of behavior control/ modification.

A= antecedent (the event, action stimuli or circumstance that comes before the behavior)

B=behavior (your response to the antecedent),

C= consequence (the result of your behavior aka consequence). 

So let's take for example your consistent way of escaping into your mind. To apply the ABC method follow these steps. 

step 1: identify the behavior which in this case is escaping in your mind

step 2: identify the antecedent, in this case ask yourself what proceeds the behavior? Did you encounter a challenging experience or aversive stimuli in the here and now? Did a friend challenge you on something? Were you reminded of a stressful event? Any one of these things can be the antecedent. Trust your own judgement for identifying this, after all you are the best expert of your own reality.

step 3: identify the consequence. In this case it could be a number of things. It could be that the consequence is directly avoiding the aversive situation by fantasizing about happier times or a brighter future within your head.

Having conducted the above 3 steps you now have a mind map of your process and can more accurately curate and change your experience by altering B. For example, you may want to experiment with changing the B. You can force yourself to spend 3 minutes having a conversation with yourself or a trusted individual about how hard this particular experience is or you can brainstorm ways in which you would solve, address or understand this hard experience. Ultimately the main goal here is to increase your contact with the stimuli that you are avoiding, something I view as akin to trial by fire. It won't be easy, it may be scary but the more time you spend in the uncomfortable space the easier it will become over time via the process of habituation.

I hope this helps. You have personal power to change your own experience.... all you have to do is trust and take risks.