[Silverkat]

So I’ve been maladaptive daydreaming since early childhood. I didn’t really think anything of it since it’s quite common for children to do this. I carried on in my teens and the older I got the more often and intense it got although it didn’t really affect my life all that much. But in the last 2 years it has prevented me from fully living, I much rather lay in bed all day and daydream rather then live my life and that’s extremely worrying to me as I am only 21 and feel like I am wasting my life away and not living my life. I only found out that this is an actual thing and I’m not the only one suffering from this which has already made me feel a lot better.

Also in the last 2 years I have been extremely depressed, developed anxiety and a binge eating disorder (which I have now overcome), have bad sleeping habits and had a paranoia episode more than a year ago.

I’m aware that all those are definitely adding to this issue especially depression and anxiety. As for the causes I haven’t really experienced any “trauma” apart from bullying which I know has had an effect on me and my self esteem which is really bad atm. I’m also an only child and I have been quite lonely for the last 2 years (which was when I attended college) and I find it really hard to make and keep friends and I don’t leave the house anymore due to my self esteem which I know is not healthy. I have decided to take the first step to recovery and started seeing a therapist online, my first session is tomorrow.

My triggers are music, tv shows/movies/YouTube/ books and even real life situations. Although I don’t think daydreaming in itself is bad and can actually be quite practical and motivating, but maladaptive daydreaming has prevented me from achieving my goals coupled with low energy, procrastination and short attention span. I have also lost interest in things that I used to love doing- reading, learning languages, learning and gaining knowledge on interesting things, which makes me really sad as I feel like I lost the spark that I used to have.

What makes it so much worse is the intensity and the obsessiveness that I have when I create these AUs and characters. I create an entire universe with extremely detailed storylines and a load of different characters mostly taken from tv shows and movies and I am usually a different person, with a different life. The only difference is I have had a real life crush and I just used to daydream about us being together in my real life. I used to literally play out scenarios and talk to myself. This definitely did a lot of damage to my already delicate mental state. I have since stopped daydreaming about my former crush as I have not seen this person for more than 6 months and I’m fully over him.

I have also been obsessed with a male celebrity which features in all of my AU daydreams and is a huge trigger for me. This is a real obsession as I have found his telephone number and address online, I obviously would never contact him in real life or stalk him but I still fantasise about meeting him in real life which I know is impossible. This obsession started about 5 years ago when I saw him on a TV show. The thoughts that I had was wow he’s really good looking and funny I’d love to be his girlfriend. It was more about imagining him as a certain character. Then I started watching everything that he was in, after that I googled him and read all the interviews and watched all the videos he was in. I became more obsessed when I started following him on social media and seeing his personal life. Then he became a mixture of his real self and a made up character in my daydreams. In the last 2 years this has become a huge issue for me. I would spend on average about 2 hours a day looking him up on the internet and about another 2 hours daydreaming about being with him/ him in a AU universe. I lost countless hours of sleep in order to daydream and I had issues with concentrating on my work as all of the sudden I would imagine this person was with me and I would start playing out scenarios and talk out loud.

From my research so far this obsession is likely due to my low self esteem, loneliness and the need to have a significant other/need to feel loved.

I finally realised that I need help after finding out that my celebrity crush has a new girlfriend and becoming irrationally angry and jealous. My obsession has lead me to daydream about him as a real person and form a one sided relationship with him (I know that I’m not actually in love with him). I was also incredibly sad as due to the daydreaming I let myself think that we could actually be together in real life, but seeing his girlfriend I realised that even if we met he would never be interested in me (so my already low self-esteem got even worse). This is when I realised how incredibly destructive the daydreaming has been for me. I decided to completely eliminate my celebrity crush as a trigger by stopping myself from googling him, looking at pictures of him, watching anything that he’s in and following his social media and any people that he is associated with. Basically pretending that he doesn’t exist. Out of sight out of mind, I’m treating this as an actual break-up lmao. It’s sad as I’m actually a big fan of him but at this point my mental health is more important than anything. Once I have dealt with my mental health issues I will eventually follow his work again. I know that this is very childish and immature and I’m actually mad at myself that I had let this rule my life and become an obsessive daydreamer.

The hardest thing for me right now is going to bed/ falling asleep as daydreaming is usually how I relax and it’s easier for me to fall asleep that way, I also start daydreaming as soon as I wake up and I tend to oversleep that way. I also have issues with concentrating on my work and my mind wonders off easily. I am taking the next 1/2 years to fully focus on myself and sort out my mental health and my life in general. I know that MD is not something that can be present in my life as I spend to much time and energy on it, never mind the mental toll that it takes on me. I plan to go to medical school as becoming a doctor is one of my biggest goals in life and I can’t do that by wasting my life daydreaming. So far I have tried grounding techniques- counting colours, yoga breathing and pinching myself. I don’t find the pinching useful and I don’t want to start any issues with self harm so I’m probably not going to start doing that.

So far my plan of action is this- attend therapy, remove my big obsessive trigger (already done but need to continue with this) keep myself busy, practice mindfulness, keep a journal and carry on with grounding techniques. I also plan to make a worksheet with the qualities that my AU personality possesses e.g hardworking, successful ,athletic, and take the next 2 years to bridge the gap between the imaginary me and the real me, as I definitely daydream as I am not satisfied with my life atm. So in essence I think I would stop completely if I just change my outlook and circumstances in my real life.

I realise how long this is and I apologise, but I really need to get this off my chest and it actually took me a long time to write this and think through everything. I would also like to know how you guys have eliminated AD from your life and what did do.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

[amandalouise]

Originally Posted by Silverkat

So I’ve been maladaptive daydreaming since early childhood. I didn’t really think anything of it since it’s quite common for children to do this. I carried on in my teens and the older I got the more often and intense it got although it didn’t really affect my life all that much. But in the last 2 years it has prevented me from fully living, I much rather lay in bed all day and daydream rather then live my life and that’s extremely worrying to me as I am only 21 and feel like I am wasting my life away and not living my life. I only found out that this is an actual thing and I’m not the only one suffering from this which has already made me feel a lot better.

Also in the last 2 years I have been extremely depressed, developed anxiety and a binge eating disorder (which I have now overcome), have bad sleeping habits and had a paranoia episode more than a year ago.

I’m aware that all those are definitely adding to this issue especially depression and anxiety. As for the causes I haven’t really experienced any “trauma” apart from bullying which I know has had an effect on me and my self esteem which is really bad atm. I’m also an only child and I have been quite lonely for the last 2 years (which was when I attended college) and I find it really hard to make and keep friends and I don’t leave the house anymore due to my self esteem which I know is not healthy. I have decided to take the first step to recovery and started seeing a therapist online, my first session is tomorrow.

My triggers are music, tv shows/movies/YouTube/ books and even real life situations. Although I don’t think daydreaming in itself is bad and can actually be quite practical and motivating, but maladaptive daydreaming has prevented me from achieving my goals coupled with low energy, procrastination and short attention span. I have also lost interest in things that I used to love doing- reading, learning languages, learning and gaining knowledge on interesting things, which makes me really sad as I feel like I lost the spark that I used to have.

What makes it so much worse is the intensity and the obsessiveness that I have when I create these AUs and characters. I create an entire universe with extremely detailed storylines and a load of different characters mostly taken from tv shows and movies and I am usually a different person, with a different life. The only difference is I have had a real life crush and I just used to daydream about us being together in my real life. I used to literally play out scenarios and talk to myself. This definitely did a lot of damage to my already delicate mental state. I have since stopped daydreaming about my former crush as I have not seen this person for more than 6 months and I’m fully over him.

I have also been obsessed with a male celebrity which features in all of my AU daydreams and is a huge trigger for me. This is a real obsession as I have found his telephone number and address online, I obviously would never contact him in real life or stalk him but I still fantasise about meeting him in real life which I know is impossible. This obsession started about 5 years ago when I saw him on a TV show. The thoughts that I had was wow he’s really good looking and funny I’d love to be his girlfriend. It was more about imagining him as a certain character. Then I started watching everything that he was in, after that I googled him and read all the interviews and watched all the videos he was in. I became more obsessed when I started following him on social media and seeing his personal life. Then he became a mixture of his real self and a made up character in my daydreams. In the last 2 years this has become a huge issue for me. I would spend on average about 2 hours a day looking him up on the internet and about another 2 hours daydreaming about being with him/ him in a AU universe. I lost countless hours of sleep in order to daydream and I had issues with concentrating on my work as all of the sudden I would imagine this person was with me and I would start playing out scenarios and talk out loud.

From my research so far this obsession is likely due to my low self esteem, loneliness and the need to have a significant other/need to feel loved.

I finally realised that I need help after finding out that my celebrity crush has a new girlfriend and becoming irrationally angry and jealous. My obsession has lead me to daydream about him as a real person and form a one sided relationship with him (I know that I’m not actually in love with him). I was also incredibly sad as due to the daydreaming I let myself think that we could actually be together in real life, but seeing his girlfriend I realised that even if we met he would never be interested in me (so my already low self-esteem got even worse). This is when I realised how incredibly destructive the daydreaming has been for me. I decided to completely eliminate my celebrity crush as a trigger by stopping myself from googling him, looking at pictures of him, watching anything that he’s in and following his social media and any people that he is associated with. Basically pretending that he doesn’t exist. Out of sight out of mind, I’m treating this as an actual break-up lmao. It’s sad as I’m actually a big fan of him but at this point my mental health is more important than anything. Once I have dealt with my mental health issues I will eventually follow his work again. I know that this is very childish and immature and I’m actually mad at myself that I had let this rule my life and become an obsessive daydreamer.

The hardest thing for me right now is going to bed/ falling asleep as daydreaming is usually how I relax and it’s easier for me to fall asleep that way, I also start daydreaming as soon as I wake up and I tend to oversleep that way. I also have issues with concentrating on my work and my mind wonders off easily. I am taking the next 1/2 years to fully focus on myself and sort out my mental health and my life in general. I know that MD is not something that can be present in my life as I spend to much time and energy on it, never mind the mental toll that it takes on me. I plan to go to medical school as becoming a doctor is one of my biggest goals in life and I can’t do that by wasting my life daydreaming. So far I have tried grounding techniques- counting colours, yoga breathing and pinching myself. I don’t find the pinching useful and I don’t want to start any issues with self harm so I’m probably not going to start doing that.

So far my plan of action is this- attend therapy, remove my big obsessive trigger (already done but need to continue with this) keep myself busy, practice mindfulness, keep a journal and carry on with grounding techniques. I also plan to make a worksheet with the qualities that my AU personality possesses e.g hardworking, successful ,athletic, and take the next 2 years to bridge the gap between the imaginary me and the real me, as I definitely daydream as I am not satisfied with my life atm. So in essence I think I would stop completely if I just change my outlook and circumstances in my real life.

I realise how long this is and I apologise, but I really need to get this off my chest and it actually took me a long time to write this and think through everything. I would also like to know how you guys have eliminated AD from your life and what did do.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

first welcome to the dissociation board...

this board is for anything to do with dissociating. (things like feeling numb, as in emotionless having no physical sensations because of dissociation not physical, feeling spaced out and not connected to your self and your body, not feeling emotionally connected to others outside your body due to being triggered into dissociation problems.....

we also have members here with all kinds of dissociation disorders. thats when the above problems because of their dissociative reaction to triggers cause the above problems to be so severe that they fit the diagnostic criteria for the various dissociative disorders.

I see that you are not located in america. here in america daydreaming is no longer ...........labeled..............as a dissociation symptom beyond the normal.

what that means is those of us that have this have to go about solving the problem differently then the way dissociative disorders are solved, just because our treatment providers dont recognize it as a dissociative problem or disorder.

What I did for my daydreaming problems is did a bit of research on what maladaptive daydreaming was.... then I formulated my own way to get through it.

example

I learned maladaptive daydreaming is just normal every day daydreaming but it has a personal behavior part where a person doesnt or cant control their imaginations and out of stress, boredom, not getting the right kind of sleep that helps the mind with concentration skills.... all kinds of stuff can trigger a person to start daydreaming through out their awake times.

I also learned something interesting. children are actually taught to use their imaginations, they are taught with lets pretend games, playing house and other things too, to do the same skills that are used for daydreaming..

I took all this great information and taught myself how to not daydream at the wrong times. when I was talking with someone and I started to daydream I would remind myself the daydream is not real life it is just my imagination pulling me out of touch with reality (a psychosis symptom for me)

then I would look at the person that was talking when I was daydreaming and admit to them what was going on...."Im sorry could you repeat that, I didnt hear you because when you said ______ it reminded me of something else and I started daydreaming about it."

everyone I have said that to have said things like dont worry about it I daydream and remember things too...

if I am watching tv, listening to music or other wise using devices when I notice I have been daydreaming I get up and do something different than watching tv, listening to music and what ever...

my point I would purposely catch myself and correct my behaviors on this of doing something about it instead of going further into it, I have also changed my nightly routines so that I make sure I get enough REM sleep (the brains natural dream state when someone sleeps) I make sure I eat a healthy diet and I have an exercise routine.

all this together has helped me to not be so prone to daydreaming at the wrong times in my life.

hope this has helped.

[Michael W. Harris]

That was me. I was totally compulsive about daydreaming. I would imagine that I was the hero in a movie that I saw on TV. I actually had to daydream to put myself to sleep. I came up with all types of fantasies (spelling???). I cannot not seem to remember how to spell that. Okay, I had it almost correct. I believe that this abnormal obsession with daydreaming came from the abuse and lack of intimate loved ones that actually cared about me.