I don't think it is an illness, I think it is a bad habit. If we had no place to learn how to communicate with others and get help and comfort when we needed it as children, we had to make a place in our imagination. Once we do that and get in the habit of it, we no longer get practice working with reality and learning we are strong and able to weather its storms, get help when we need it, we don't get further practice checking what is real and what is only made up. When we get older, the bad habits and lack of practice get in our way; it's like not learning to read in school and getting to adulthood, faking it.

It took me approximately 30 years in therapy to "fix" my fantasy world mistakes I did not really discover until I was 20. It was a nasty mess. I do not see how I could have done things differently but. . . I think next lifetime I'm going to try harder to choose a different route.