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Maladaptive Daydreaming: where wild minds come to rest

Treatment week 4

Oh dear lord the stress at work is getting higher and higher. BUT BUT BUT... the MD is lessening, and I'm back to being a chronic procrastinator -_- not very useful either, but I can stop that more easily.

At least I have been able to identify that the root causes are similar. Basically, my trigger to get into daydreaming or procrastinating is when

(1) I have stress "jolts" , remembering something I have to do, a stressful phonecall, some stupid task, my heart rate and anxiety goes up and I daydream to calm myself

(2) when I am faced with something difficult that I don't want to do.

MDD is basically my mind that goes on "mission abort, let's get the eff out of here."

Also, I am slowly becoming more emotional, or at least more emotional in real life. This is weird because I am used to being a blank surface of calm. Monday I had a medical intervention and for one reason or another that was really triggering, and some physically stored memories came up and poured out. I think the lid MDD keeps on those things is coming off. I didn't know exactly what I remembered, but it was old and deep and I didn't know why I was crying and shaking but I knew it was at least getting out. Then I had a few drinks and had to go to work, not too proud of that but I needed to be functional. I've also managed to be angry! It was during a LARP game, but I have rarely been actually able to portray anger properly. It was weird, but it felt energetic and I wanted more of it.

I unfortunately have noticed that I turn to alcohol more to try to make some distance between me and my emotions. Also, a lot of somatic pains are coming up. Seems like MDD cuts me off really well from myself actually. So right now things are pretty shitty, but "good" shitty. This is for me a very good indicator that I should stay away from medication, because this kind of things numbs you and keeps you separated from your true emotions.

I might try out some more alternative things, because I really need to access some part of me that is not "rationally" there if I want to get to the root of things, and then you're left with stuff that is outside of normal talk-therapy.

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Comment by Ivy White on March 18, 2015 at 2:40am: Strangely enough I had this phase where I was completely into typology and I kept ending up with INFJ, so what you say sounds very correct.

Comment by MatthewR on March 17, 2015 at 5:44pm: I totally agree. :)

Also, I used to type myself as INTP, too. I was convinced that because i had a fascination for design and architecture, art, writing and history and all that, that i must be a rational type. But i found this other forum about certain personality types misidentifying themselves, and one of the more common cases was that of INFJs thinking they are INTPs. INTPs don't really get hung up on people. In fact they're one of the types least equipped to deal with other people's emotions, let alone to have emotional fits themselves. The reason, according to the article, was that INFJs who don't recognize their emotional side, or who suppress it outright, will rely on the next function in their personality stack, which is introverted thinking. This combined with their tendency to organize and think in the abstract gives them the wrong impression that they are INTPs. I just thought this was so fascinating, and it certainly gave me a lot to think about. I know I have a tendency to get weepy, I just don't like to acknowledge it.

Comment by Ivy White on March 15, 2015 at 5:24am: I think I'm a tiny bit older than you, but I went through the same. For me, as a girl, it also came with looking down on everything that was feminine, emotional or "soft", and I always typed myself as INTP. Now I'm not really sure what I'd be but deffinitely not that. Our society does that in general, rational, logical intelligence is favored over everything but human beings just don't work this way.

It's strange how allowing yourself to be more of a mess actually makes you less of one.

Comment by MatthewR on March 15, 2015 at 2:38am: I think I'm going through a very weird phase right now. I have always considered myself a very cool-headed, rational person. I'm not sure if it was something i was taught while growing up, or whether it was something i gleaned from the environment, that being an emotional person is not a good thing to be, either because it's weak and unruly, or that it's just not appropriate if you want to be smart. While i always maintained a somewhat cold and standoffish demeanor, it didn't change the fact that i would have these crying spells almost daily as well as intermittent emotional "fits" that didn't quite fit the situation. Anyway, I've been lurking on various typology websites and i finally came to the conclusion that i'm probably not a thinking type at all, that my conception of myself as this distant, robot-like person is probably a defense against some pretty deep-seated fears and anxiety. Since acknowledging this, the random emotional outbursts have stopped, and I've taken to sorting through all the uncomfortable bits bubbling up from the unconscious. I didn't realize how much of myself I'd been holding back, and yeah i get those weird pains, too. sometimes i feel like a mess, but i guess it's working itself out.