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Maladaptive Daydreaming: where wild minds come to rest

Is it just a daydream or more

Ok so I think my first step is to admit my whole entire life is one daydream. I live my life from when I wake up to when I go to sleep in one fantasy world no matter who i am with or where i am and have done for many years it has now become second nature. I find it so hard to say that my fantasy family thatgo wherever I go is just that a fantasy. What about the house I live in? I see my normal house but in my third eye I am in my fantasy house with my fantasy family. I can't even muster the courage to say its a dream when I am so close to them and it seems so real to me that it can't be made up. How am I going to function in the real world without them constantly in the room smiling at me supporting me. But then again how can I live my life like a zombie, not listening and constantly looking out for my friends in my third eye. I find it so hard to call my own family just a daydream when it's so real.

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Comment by Catauxgory on March 31, 2012 at 6:03pm: I had the same struggle. The fantasy characters are so real, so lifelike, that it's traumatic to hold the idea in your mind that they are actually as impermanent as sand paintings. They are made of nothing more than thought. Why is it that we daydreamers have such an easy time trading off three-dimensional, brick and mortar reality, for something that is so much less than reality, that is only made up of mental conjecture? That is made up of nothing at all? The world with everything in it, from the Grand Canyon to the astonishments of the microscopic world, we reject.

Let me get to what I wanted to say to your post. The reason that we utterly believe our daydreams to be as real and as potent as real life is because we do, and have done so for a long time. Of course by now our fantasy characters are vivid and almost have lives of their own. Anything would be, if a person thought about it that long and wished for it that long. Your fantasies will lose their realism to the extent that you value your reality more. If you take more stock in the world around you, and live there as if it's the only place you do in fact "live," then you may find your characters deflating in your mind in realism and importance. Your emotional reactions to them will be less intense. Your concern for them will lessen. Soon you'll find that some characters you no longer care for at all. This has been my experience.

One of the most important things for a daydreamer to understand, I think, is that the daydreams and fantasies are the products of our imagination. We get so carried away in the experience of our imaginings that we forget this. It is erroneous to mistake your own identity for whatever you have daydreamed. As wonderful as they are, they do not take over our lives. They do not ever become independent from us. We are in control of the experience at all times and have always been. I found that it was within me to create the daydream and imagination experience. I could therefore only conclude that it is within me to create a different way of being in the world, one that did not involve daydreams and fantasies.

Comment by greyartist on March 28, 2012 at 8:19am: Roobles, I can relate to the zombie feeling. It is like you are just exsiting in the real world and living in the fantasy one.

Comment by greyartist on March 28, 2012 at 8:15am: Bilbo, "I'm losing empathy and emotional grounding in my real life."

that is a great way to explain it. I have the same problem.

Comment by Roobles on March 28, 2012 at 4:13am: I understand completely with the disconnecting to family and friends. I bet it's so difficult to be round me. I can be with someone and go somewhere and I will imagine that person to be someone else. I do this all the time with my poor husband and I'm having conversations in my head with his believing he is a member of my fantasy and will envolve anything i see into it. I am so evolved in my own world that I notice people guide me across the road and things. I told my husband about the word md but not what I dream and to what extent and bless him he said u tell me like it's something new I known ever since I met u. Thing is I'm outgoing and talkative to people close to me so most people think I jus have a bad memory and am scatty. But it's gone beyond a point where I can't say no to it but I can't keep it.

Comment by BilboBaggins on March 27, 2012 at 5:50pm: hey there,

i know exactly how you feel. it's starting to become a real problem for me because I'm so interwoven in my fantasy life that I'm losing empathy and emotional grounding in my real life. I'm having trouble connecting with my friends, and even my family, and am losing all sense of emotional connection to them. the worst part is that I try to tell myself that it's a problem, and that i'm worried about it--but i don't feel anything...