First Blog

[Bethany Klehm]

A few months ago, my sister found a wiki page on Maladaptive Daydreaming. She showed it to me and I was shocked to find that I had pretty much had every symptom; pacing and making fantasies in my head are part of my daily routine. I didn’t really think much of it at first. It just became a part of my life over time. However, it has recently become a problem and now I’m thinking I need an outside source.

 

I believe I started daydreaming when I was five. I’d mostly fantasize about stories with either made up characters or characters that already exited. What triggered me were the things that I watched such as T.V. shows and Movies. Around that time, I only dreamed for maybe twenty minutes.

I didn’t start actually pacing until I was about nine. Everybody I knew thought it was kind of odd that I would sometimes pace on my free time. My explaination for it was that it somehow become a bad habit. However, It was very useful for when I wanted to write a story or draw a picture (these are two of my favorite hobbies). At this point, my triggers expanded to music and things I read in books. This was when I started daydreaming of scenarios and seeing what would happen.

From when I was ten to twelve, you could find me dreaming for over an hour. This is around the time I found out I was making facial expressions when I paced. My mom actually mentioned that my step dad was getting worried about me. My fantasies went from scenarios to having deep internal conversations with myself. I’d think about ideas and refine them to make them better.

From thirteen to now is when it becomes a problem. It’s gets hard to focus on things, especially things I don’t like to do. I do it subconsciously and I sometimes run into people. My stepdad said that I’m actually making a groove in the house with my pacing route. Now, you could catch me pacing for two hours or longer almost every day. I’ve started to lose control over it.

 

About month ago, I got a random idea from watching something and I got up to pace. It was around 2:00 pm when I started pacing about this concept I had. It was almost 7:30 when I got myself to stop pacing because of exhaustion. I spent over five hours of my weekend just daydreaming. I’m starting to feel like I’m wasting my life away.

I told my sisters, my blood-father and one of my brothers about it. Apparently my sister and my dad have it to. They said that I could talk to them anytime. They told me that I should look it up and see what I can find about it. So I looked up a youtube video on MD and in the comments section someone mentioned this web site. So here I am. I was hoping this community could help me get control of it again. And maybe I can get some new friends who have MD to.

[MatthewR]

Hi Bethany, welcome to WM. I think my dd'ing started at the age of 5, too, and became more and more intense over the years, same as you. I started at university and could not finish. Daydreaming took over my life, and I remember feeling so excited to get back to my room, because i couldn't wait to daydream. I make facial expressions and pace. Not everyone is a pacer. Some are shakers, swayers, bouncers (tennis balls, etc.), and runners, to name a few. They all use the repetitive motion to trigger a daydreaming state. I have had day long sessions, and it's terrible because you get nothing done.

So the big question is why are we all lost in our imagination. People may disagree on the criteria for diagnosis, but no one who visits this site doubts that what they are doing is essentially an activity called Maladaptive Daydreaming. I've been trying to understand just what MD is for the last 3 years or so, since i discovered the label, and I have to agree with Source that the causes are so varied that a single solution is probably not realistic right now. I have noted a few things, however, in reading other books about psychology, especially old school writers like Jung, Horney, Adler, and Freud, etc. Many of them describe in similar terms a fundamental "rejection of self" where some aspect of ourselves is repressed thus causing a maladaptive behavior called a "neurosis." Neurosis, in the classical sense, is an inhibition to growth, i.e. an inability to adapt to life that gets us stuck or worse, it causes us to regress to a more infantile state. Something is blocking us that prevents us from moving forward with our lives. In order to generate solutions to our problems, our brains have locked in to a habit of daydreaming--or compulsive problem solving. Maybe we become powerful, beautiful, capable, successful, etc., whatever will fix us and make us have confidence again. Whatever we are missing, we imagine that we have it, whether that's a life partner, a job, or a new body. Obviously just imagining it doesn't help us actually achieve it. In fact, daydreaming too much actively defeats us everyday from being productive.

So that's what I think MD is, a neurotic reaction to frustration in life. It gets more complicated when we try to analyze why we do what we do. Maybe we started daydreaming when we were very young, because it soothed anxiety, but now as an adult, it’s become like an addiction. The problem may have originated in the past, so we may not even remember it. Anyway, I hope this helps. Nice to meet you, Bethany!

[Roel]

Friends you can definetly make here :) No need to be shy, you can talk to the people in the main chatroom anytime ^^

Our stories sound very simular actually. I love to write and draw :D however I'm not good at either of them XD I would say you realy don't daydream that much from what you describe, at least not compared to me. I feel jealous, lol. But if you feel it's becoming too much for you, than you can draw the line wherever you want. It becomes a problem as soon as it interfiers with work, school, or just life in general. It's a good thing you can accuratly tell how long and how often you do it. First step in helping yourself with this weird condition is realising how much time you waste, whene you're doing it etc. etc. So go you! :D

As for what Source said; no need to abandon all hope whene your journey has only yet started yet ;) We know some people that made their MDD dissapear completely, so there is hope. Definetly. The others of us that did less well, (which is indeed a majority :S) do learn how to cope better with it. So even if you don't reach full recovery, you can still become better at living with your MDD and your real life at the same time. It's not always that disasterous. But we still all experience bad times... However with some effort and some luck MDD can stay a simple bad habbit instead of a serious disconnection from reality :)

Don't beat yourself up over the mistakes you make. I just randomly thought I had to say that ;)

Welcome to our humble -and often broken- little website. We're glad to have you here and I hope you'll enjoy your stay

[Bethany Klehm]

Ah, I see... Thank you any way.

[Camoran]

This won't sound encouraging, but don't get your hopes sky high. This place is great in the sense that no one is an alien here because of it, but I don't think anyone here could give you a solution that will work. In fact it seems that there will never be a universal solution, since the causes behind it are never the same from person to person, there's always that little detail that changes everything or a huge difference that does about the same.