How do I escape from this?

It's too complicated to spell it all out, so I'll keep it simple.

I have characters in my head. Sometimes I make them up, sometimes they are celebrity crushes. But I create stories and adventures and fantasies with them. The past couple weeks my characters have been fighting with each other, and I'm so overwhelmed by this. I need a break but I don't know how to think about something else or do something else when it is so overwhelming and consuming.

I can't expect anyone to know how to help me, but I've been very emotional lately and I don't know how I can get my mind to switch over to happy thoughts. Generally the way the characters behave correlates with how I feel, and right now I feel miserable.

Hi I have a problem with characters in my head as well. Sometimes it can be really overwhelming but what's usually happening is related to what's happening in your real life. Maybe you could try to figure out where you might be having trouble in your life? If that's not it maybe you should try imagining a way for them all to make up?

It sounds like when you are little and play with dolls and have them act out things that are going on with you. You just do it in your head. So, I would allow them to act it all out and resolve whatever the two characters are fighting about. Are they fighting about something that means something to you?

Its a vicious cycle with my bipolar mood swings. I am also new at my job and very stressed out. They fight and make up a lot but like i said its a vicious cycle and the more emotional i am the more intense the fights are.

Stories we make up are mirrors just like our dreams. They reflect how we are feeling and how we are seeing life.

I used to have the same problem and I am bipolar as well, I feel like they can go hand in hand some time. Something that helped me a lot was to try to stop caring about how the people in my head felt, to realize that even if they were "real" that they were not my problem. Ignoring them helped a lot and eventually they faded away altogether and stopped bothering me.

I've had characters my whole life that come and go, and I'd be scared to be without any characters. I am so attached to them that it hurts at the thought of letting them go, although eventually they all do leave and new ones begin.

Go to the zoo all the different animals will be a di distraction to the characters

EDIT: The characters are what I use to cope when I have intense feelings by projecting my intense feelings onto them, so I am stepping back and looking at how I feel from a different perspective. I want more control over the times when I am feeling down, upset, angry, emotional, etc and I am looking for healthier ways to cope.

They're with me wherever I go. When I have fun, they're also having fun. It's the bad days I want more control of.

here in my location willfully fantasizing and making up characters in ones head is called fantasy play, imaginary friends, roll paying, visualization, and many other things too. here in america we have many schools and classes that teach a person how to do this.. there is even a therapy technique that teaches a person how to use roll playing, fantasizing, visualizing to learn how to handle ones problems.

my point it may not seem very cool to you when its out of control but I know some people who are paying lots of money just to learn how to do what you are doing.

your question how do you escape from this...

there are many ways you can learn how to control your fantasizing\ creating your imaginary friends (or in your words characters)

check out your nearest school\ colleges drama department
check out some books at your library or online under the heading of learning how to control ones imagination/ fantasies, imaginary friends,
talk with your treatment provider. treatment providers work with all kinds of problems even those where children and adults have imaginary friends.

Thank you for this amandalouise. Once I am settled into my job I will look into either drama classes, art classes, fun classes, or therapeutic horseback riding. Right now, however, I am doing both front desk and housekeeping and that is my biggest priority until I can get transitioned into FT front desk. But I do agree that I need something constructive and creative to get rid of my stress and anxiety.

I would write a book and let them fight it out in the pages. Later you can look back at it and figure out how it fits in and what you might learn from these characters. I have a pretty serious Crush on Michael Pitt the actor and musician (love his old band Pagota). He doesn't start arguments however....that wouldn't be fun. I'm sorry you are stuck in this and hope you find something to help.

Are there any creative outlets I can do until I can pursue something more ongoing? I know I can crochet and read...anything else?

I have done some creative writing regarding the characters recently. Thank you.

I also think pursuing real-life romance would benefit me, as I do most of my romancing with my characters. And I have never had a relationship.

I'm involved with BJD's. Stands for Asian Ball Jointed dolls. They are dolls you can customize and create 3D characters out of the characters from your imagination. It's an expensive hobby but a decent outlet if you need something tangible to correlate with your imagination. Do they have Meet-ups.com where you live? You could meet some real life people through meet ups.....people who share the same passions as you.

Because my two main characters are real-life world-famous musicians, I've been reminding myself as I go through my day that they are just fine, they're okay, "He's busy making a new album" and "He's having fun in the Bahamas" and "They are both happy doing whatever they do best" and when I start to have negative thoughts about them, I remind myself that I need to focus on my job, I need to focus on the real-life, I need to focus on taking care of myself and not try to fix them when I need to fix myself.

At work I am allowed to listen to music while I clean, so I've been listening to the ZZ Ward channel on Pandora, and I put $30 into iTunes and I bought an album by ZZ Ward, an album by Halsey, an album by Elle King, and two songs by Miranda Lambert.

I think it is important to listen to new music to not be sucked into the music of the musicians I listen to on a daily basis, because when I listen to music I do 90% of my role play with my characters. It's hard not to turn on my iPod and not go into the fantasy world....because that is exactly what music is for, it takes you to another world. Unfortunately, some songs get ruined because I get triggered into a certain scene with my characters.

Right now I am listening to Halsey, she is amazing. I love her song Castle, and her music reminds me of Lorde and the movie Twilight. She has a very unique voice and she is very edgy like Lorde.

The hardest part of taking a break from my characters is that I have to sleep "alone". My bedtime routine includes cuddling, and now I'm not sure what to do when there is no one in my mind to cuddle with. I have a body pillow and a stuffed animal, and it makes me sad to think that it's all that they are and I am all alone.

Really, I hate being alone, that's why I've never broken away from imaginary characters. I get really scared to be by myself. It's hard to sleep when my parents are not home, it's hard just to fall asleep until they go to bed. It's a nightmare when my parents go away for a few days. I don't know what to do with myself when I'm alone, that's what the characters are for, so that I'm never really alone or address the fact that I am alone.

well its good u have good days, write a journal and maybe u can discover what makes the good days

It's hard not to let your mind wander. Today was a particularly rough day, and I have had flashes of these characters.

I want to invite them in, but I don't want them to be so violent.

I had two huge bummers. One character IRL tweeted that he hates people whispering in his ear and the smell of peanut butter on people's breath. I am someone who truly enjoys the whispering and I had a scene where he was obsessed with peanut butter sandwiches. So WTF!? This musician is 90% fictional in my head and it bothers me when the real person doesn't match up with who I created him to be. It is sad but it sucks...I love him but I want to love him for who he is and not who I want him to be.

I'm just at a loss with what to do. I'm a slave to these characters as much as I am with cigarettes. I'm addicted and I need it and scared to be without it. I have no control over my characters and that needs to change. I simply cannot make them play nice. They want to be violent and that's how they'll be if I cannot take control.

I was thinking of creating ground rules and boundaries with them. There's a reason they are violent, because I cannot be violent in real life and I have to hide all my inner demons so the world thinks I am fine. Maybe that's a good thing I use these characters for? Let them duke it out while I just smile like nothing's wrong.

But it all gets boring when they are so violent, as surprising as that seems. It's the same old same old, and I want them to just have fun and not be so intense all the time. Is it so wrong for the violent to be so boring?

I have had the same violent fantasy since high school. It started out with me and a boy at school I had a crush on, I had fantasies we were kidnapped and tortured. Now, it transitioned into two musicians who were imprisoned, and then once they were set free one character left and locked himself up into an adult psychiatric ward because I was done with him and couldn't stand him any longer, so I set him free. Now there is one character free from imprisonment and another who is his protector and they fall in love while the protector takes care of him. So I go back in forth between his PTSD flashbacks and the "reality" that he is not the person he used to be and he struggles he will never be the same and has panic attacks and flips out, cuts himself, takes pills, forces himself upon the protector when he is triggered. And he just wants to be normal like everyone else, and he wishes he doesn't need help and wants to be set free.

I can understand how this is like me. I'd like to lash out when I am in my emotional state of mind, but I can't, and I cut myself, so that's normal for my character to do, and I've never taken someone elses pills but I've always stared longingly at my parent's pills and calculated in my mind how many pills it would take for them to notice, and then I've felt used during sex and I'd like to take that anger and force it upon someone else to feel the pain I've felt when I've felt used. So there is a reason behind these violent thoughts. But at the same time I just want to have happy memories of these characters, and sometimes I've brought back some old, old characters who have made me felt happy. When I'm really bad, I'll bring them back and we'll have one last hurrah. That's what I want from these characters, to have happy memories and be glad I had them and have that one last hurrah, not be sickened by the thought of them.

I'm sorry if these ramblings are disturbing. I'm switching T's and I'm scared to bring this up, scared what the newbie would think, not plan this out to "this is the day I tell my T I have characters in my head". I want to get this out of me. I want to be able to reveal that I have inner demons in the form of musicians and lovers and friends and demons. I want to be able to express myself in ways I haven't been able to before. I want you to know that this is a big deal for me. This is something I have never told anyone in real life before. This is all that goes on in my head, and I want that secret out even when this is an anonymous forum. People care about me here, and I don't want them to hurt them with the thought that I hurt but I want to set me free like I do my characters... I deserve to be set free.

LiteraryLark-I am so glad that you've expressed some of your fantasies here!
It is scary when we can't control what is going on in our mind.
I think it's good you want to tell your new T but don't be to hard on yourself if you are unable to tell them about it during your first session. I had to build trust with my T before I could start sharing things with them.
Talking with others IRL (including your T) and posting might help set you free. I want to hug you right now. Surely these fantasies are an outlet for some very intense pain you are feeling. Maybe things would be worse for you if you didn't have this outlet. I don't know.
Just wondering, do you read a lot? Your username LiteraryLark makes me think that you do. When I was a teenager, my imagination was not as vivid as yours. I would tend to occupy my overactive mind but reading novels.
I am not an expert, but I think our addictions are symptoms of our illnesses. For instance, when I am depressed, I binge eat. The only way for me to stop binge eating is to recover from depression. If I try to stop binge eating but I am still depressed, I just get more depressed about not having any control over what I am doing to myself. I plan to follow your future posts. I hope things get better for you!

I am a writer. I have been writing stories since I picked up a pencil and learned how to write.

I met with my new T and I mentioned the characters during my intake. It is something we will talk more about.

I'm proud of you

Thank you.

The characters have been tame the past three days. My mind has been preoccupied on Christmas decorating, Christmas shopping, and the elections. It's been a nice break to not have to think about anything but to be in the moment.

I've been playing Halsey, Elle King, and ZZ Ward on repeat this past week. It's been helping a lot and I've been focusing on the lyrics because it is so edgy and different. I'm enjoying their music and it gives me a break from the music that I find triggering.