Is it Shared Psychosis...or, well, shared something at least?

I am curious...I feel like I have pulled my little brother into some sort of shared psychosis with me...and if that's the case, obviously, I feel bad. But I can't stop it. When I read the symptoms of Shared Psychosis, it sounds almost exactly like me and my brother. Him being the passive one. He is 13 years old. The whole unusual closeness, being a family member (We never fight barely ever, and spend almost all our time together.) the pulling him into "beliefs"....except, that's where the whole problem comes in.

I'm not sure if they are delusions or not.

Basically, almost all day long, I have pulled him into my fantasy daydream world, and we do things only involving our obsession. (Which originated as mine.) He never has been as neurotic or as obsessive as me, but I have pulled him in deep. Anyways, back to my explanation. I hope this will actually make any sense to any of you. Anyways, here goes.

All day long, we do this thing, involving the characters from our obsession, and us. Me and my brother each have our own "hour" that we do. He has one hour where I simply talk and put him in situations in a plotline, and then he will do the same with me. In our "hours", we travel around, go on great adventures, and have romance. My brother and I have recently agreed that our relationships with these people feel real, and we both draw pictures of ourselves with our significant others, talk about our "relationships" with them, how we have real life crushes on them, and what we should do in the next hour. Ridiculous, I know...

We both literally feel that these "hours" are an alternate life. We even sometimes acknowledge our real life selves in our hours, and make ourselves say, "I feel like myself, in another dimension, is sitting in the kitchen eating lunch.", if that is what we are actually doing at the time in real life, and then we laugh about it. So we kind of acknowledge it as another dimension...but we both know it's not real. But we both agree on how insanely real it feels to us, and that we could care less about the real world.

My brother didn't used to be like that though. He went out with his friends, and although he still does occasionally, he alienates himself from them much more often. Now he just wants to sit around with me and enter this intense world of vivid daydreaming, that feels so intensely real, we acknowledge them as real memories, almost. I feel sort of bad, but at the same time, he isn't unhappy doing it or anything, and I am extremely happy to have someone to talk to and daydream with 24/7. But I know the prognosis couldn't possibly be good with his social life, especially since he is going into Junior High...ugh.

Would this even be considered psychosis? I'm not sure, since technically we know it's not real, it still feels extremely real. Especially to me. I found myself asking my brother, as a serious question, "What if these hours actually are in another dimension somewhere?" And he just said, "That would be awesome." And then it took me a moment to shake it off and realize what I just said, and have to remark how that's just silly, and we both laugh it off.

So...any opinions on this? I really don't know if it's just a normal crappy problem, or if I am actually pulling him into an actual serious mental state.

Bluhh!

I'm pretty sure by definition when you are psychotic you can't tell the difference between your fantasy and reality- period. Or at least, have a difficult time in doing so. Escapism =/= delusions.

It obviously isn't a very healthy habit to get into, because the cycle of escapism ultimately leads to whatever issues you are having with the "real" world to get worse, because those problems only resolve themselves when you face them head on.

But trust me, I've been there. Not something I shared with anyone, because it was always something I was terrified to talk about irl. But I do know how real it can feel and how it really does call into question your sanity at times. I can't say you should do this-or-that because I'm not a professional and ultimately my advice could be harmful.

What helped me the most was shoving my fantasies down when they popped up in the sense that any time the thought came up that maybe this is real was pretty brutally struck down mentally. "No, that's just a fantasy [list of logical things that debunk said fantasy]" I don't know if this really helped me in the long run or was just a dangerous form of repression, but at least it the short term it made me finally let go of the fantasies and escapism that went above and beyond in the sense that they really did start to warp my perceptions and really affect my life.