[cluelessgal]

Past 17 yrs or so, I've been really addicted to maladaptive daydreaming (m.d). I'm 30 now and I am nowhere close to kicking this habit.

I've been unemployed for past 7 yrs now, but I am more concerned with lives of my characters. My exams for masters is coming up in a month, but I am more concerned with emotions my characters feel.

It's almost as if my life has stopped being important for me and I am more concerned with the life, sexual tension, feelings, emotions, romance of my characters. I feel more for my characters than for me or my family...

They are kinda helpful as I feel emotions I feel through them....which I generally may not feel.

But I am falling into a rut. I don't have a career. My masters would give me a qualification, but I don't care abt my exams. Everyday, I am getting closer to a heart attack due sedentary lifestyle. I have no love life and I am as far away from marriage as pluto is from sun. My life has become a groundhog day.

Worse, my family just doesn't understand it. Worse, I've even stopped feeling guilty about it all. I am getting worse and more irresponsible with every passing year.

Is anyone else is coping with MD here? Just want to see if working on it together may help....

I really appreciate your thoughts on it....Thanks for reading.

[kaliope]

i just have noticed that this post has been sitting here a while with no answer. i wonder if what i do is considered MD. i have a whole world of characters but i pretty much only go there at night when i am trying to fall asleep. i have done it since i was about 14. i find i have gone years without, but that is only when my life has been going well.

it certainly sounds like you have a loss of motivation. i would talk about setting goals for yourself but it doesnt sound like you are in that frame of mind.

have you considered therapy to help you past this rut you seem to be in?

[mountain human]

I'm like this too, but I'm older than you and have been doing it longer. It's the opposite of living in the moment. I try to practice mindfulness, which is the exact opposite of MA. However, my default setting is being in my "perfect" fantasy world, which is much easier to control than reality is. It seems that a great majority of my waking hours are spent daydreaming.

[JadeAmethyst]

Same here, though for me MD didn't have a name, and it sure does ring true what you all have shared. This "world" inside has been a default most of my life even while working IRL situations....just never had a clue about how much of an influence and what triggered it. Even after therapy it's taken a while to catch up with myself today. This is an old habit and coping mechanism that goes a long way back.

So, yes family won't get it, neither will anyone else, but sounds like you are making efforts.
What's been helpful for the last couple of weeks has been journaling, questions and answers about the ruts or stuck point are in this habit.

Feel free to PM me.

Jade

[cluelessgal]

@kaliope - Thank you for reading and replying! If I put it in terms of drinking - some don't drink, some drink socially, some everyday at night after a hard day, some keep drinking so that they don't face the day at all. You may be in the 3rd category and I am in 4th. I neglect all my responsibilities just to daydream.
I tried therapy and want to start again. Unfortunately, many reasons stopping me from getting help.

@mountain human - Thank you for reading and replying! Yes, that's what I do too. I try meditation but before I realize it, I am in my "perfect" fantasy world. Would you like to work together, since people who suffer from MD only understand each other...if you are interested, feel free to pm me.


@ Jade - Thank you for reading and replying! I didn't know it too. So it was reassuring that I was not alone. Many psychologists have also not heard about it. There was a short brief time when I almost stopped it. Then things come back to full swing...

[mountain human]

I thing MD is a bad habit that becomes ingrained in us through long-term repetition. Like any other habit, it can be gradually undone with effort. Mindfulness and meditation are the 2 best ways I know of. Like almost anything, it takes practice and sticking to it. If you have trouble meditating because your mind wants to "drift away", guided meditation may work better for you.

Here is a link to a site that offers guided meditation
Wildmind Buddhist Meditation - Learn Meditation Online

There are also lots of You Tube videos that have guided meditation and tips on mindfulness. Like you, I see MD as a habit that eventually became an addiction. My body is present but my mind is not.

[Thought+Broad.Girl]

so THAATS what my voices are? LOL i hear people talking to me mostly at night. i realize it is probably a fantasy but my mind just can't stop thinking about it because the voices are usually nicer to me then my other "delusions of mind reading" where everyone in my surroundings can read my mind.

the voices are people i supposedly knew as a teen, they tell me i am dreaming and to "wake up" and they are sweet to me, running their fingers through my hair and such.

I would like to think they are real people because we have a lot of fun together LOL. but their stories change too often for me to believe it fully. Sometimes they are people, sometimes angels, sometimes Jesus christ, sometimes my dead great grand parents.. etc.

the voices are usually fairly faint. so it is hard for me to fully understand what they are saying to me but i feel like they have my back waaayyyy more then the people reading my mind in this reality. so it is kind of hard for me to let them go! :P

[Gyrthis]

I am 15 yrs old and i have MDD. I didn't go out in almost two weeks. It's said that MDD is caused by a childhood trauma, but I can't recall anything that could lead to MDD. I feel the annoying need to do it. Because it makes me feel good. It makes me feel in control of everything. It gives me the control i don't have in the real world. I even have a best friend there. And he's helping me a lot. My mother is the only one that knows... although i didn't tell her everything.

So.... My MDD started when i was six years old. I create a story (which is planned so well) and then i am acting it out. The thing is... i can do this for 6 to 12 hours and i would not get bored. I am frustrated because once i daydream, i don't wanna do anything else. I am ignoring my friends, my family... and it's getting worse. Even when I'm out i am imagining things, people that i'd like to interact with. Even when i'm writing this i'm imagining.

I just need someone to understand what i'm talking about. Because my MDD leaded to depression and anxiety....

Thank you.

maladaptive daydreaming is actually a term?

*shakes head*. not impressed by the way society seems so attached to creating new labels and disorders...

not sure how this is an addiction? seems more like an aspect of an anxiety/mood/personality disorder...

but, oh, why must we turn everything into an illness!

there isnt an artist in the world who wouldnt be labelled as mentally ill by this system.

maybe figure out why you do it... for instance, if you dont like your life, of course you are going to find ways to escape it... look for what you like in the world and maybe you wont want to escape...

[laceyf5]

Originally Posted by somat

maladaptive daydreaming is actually a term?

*shakes head*. not impressed by the way society seems so attached to creating new labels and disorders...

not sure how this is an addiction? seems more like an aspect of an anxiety/mood/personality disorder...

but, oh, why must we turn everything into an illness!

there isnt an artist in the world who wouldnt be labelled as mentally ill by this system.

maybe figure out why you do it... for instance, if you dont like your life, of course you are going to find ways to escape it... look for what you like in the world and maybe you wont want to escape...

I've had Maladaptive Daydreaming since I was 5, and it's irritating how most people laugh or dismiss it when many people feel ashamed and totally disrupted by it.

It is a coping mechanism for stress, and I believe for most people it's probably related to ADD or OCD as many of us have a "tick" associated with it.

Personally, I pace the room, sometimes dance and twirl while shaking a lightweight object in between my fingers. I can daydream for as little as 20 minutes to as long as 10 hours at a time, although since my teenage years I have cut back significantly.

It is self meditation, the daydreams are extremely elaborate and realistic. Sometimes you talk or sing and don't even realize you're doing it. I try to hide it from my family members, although my husband, parents and sister know about it.

Cutting back can be facilitated by ADD medication, as stimulants speed up your brain waves and allow you to get out of the Theta brain wave state and focus on real life activities. Having a demanding, stimulating job and family will also help. I love my job, but it requires high levels of concentration. I'm married, own horses, am a semi-pro musician on the side plus I have a kid on the way and exercise daily. This has lead to me only day dreaming around 15 minutes a day, sometimes not at all for a few days at a time.

You do experience anxiety from not being able to do it as often at first, but it starts to diminish with less and less daydreaming.

[EllieGreene]

I am interested in MD because I am trying to help my son who has been running around the house in his own world, laughing and occasionally talking to himself. He tells me he has "made up memories" that he has created. He says he sometimes gets confused as to whether something "happened" or was "made up". When he goes to school he figures out some of the memories were "made up memories". Does this sound like MD to you? He is very anxious socially and we think he has Asperger's Syndrome (now referred to as high functioning autism). He is smart and creative, however, lately he has not cared very much about how he does in school. He is 15 years old.