Afraid to play -> Help??

Hey guys I know this seems a little embarassing and ridiculous but I need some help as far as playing goes, because, as soon as I reach a better ranking, I get afraid to play new matches, concerned I might lose and get a lower rating. I know there are unrated games, but these feel uninteresting to me. Also, I seem to have very different ratings when it comes to time control, I am much better rated in games with higher time control. Is this normal?

All help is greatly appreciated! Thanks.

Different ratings at different time controls is, I think, almost universal.

As for risking losing some rating points ... that's just the risk there is.  And playing fewer games will probably not help you improve.  I know I got pretty rusty when I took a couple months off.

the rating here means nothing. It's just a few numbers in the world wide web.

and yes, its normal that you have worse rating in faster games.you need a lot of tactics and patterns in your memory in order to play well in games with faster time controls.

forget the rating and enjoy the game