Daydreaming causes sleepiness and reduced mental capacity?

[Feng]

Does anyone here feel that they're not as smart as they used to be? I used to be able to add, subtract, multiply and divide small numbers in my head quite easily. These days I will struggle to do that. I also seem to be quite forgetful these days too. Like, I don't feel that my short term memory is very good and sometimes I would forget what I did 5 minutes ago. Not sure how my memory was before when my daydreaming became a serious problem for me (6 years ago) but I can say that this issue with my memory has never come up before till now.

Daydreaming also seem to cause me to feel very tired as well, even when I sleep for 8+ hours a day. Has anyone here ever felt that, that after many hours of intense daydreaming, your mind feels very tired, not really sleepy tired but more like your mind has been exercising all day - if that makes sense? But what is more alarming to me is that, I am having trouble concentrating when it comes to studying - I would get very sleepy after only several minutes. It's like, I don't feel tired one moment, but as soon as I start to study something (I don't know, Biology?) I would feel like sleeping. But once I stop studying, I would not feel sleepy anymore. Because I am a university student, this is a major problem for me. I find that it helps me a bit if I binge on caffeine - like 2 or 3 cups of coffee. I know too much caffeine is not good for me but when you're a student and you have exams coming up - you must go to extreme lengths to not fail.

[Alice Bassett]

Dear Feng, I'm sorry to hear that your having some problems. I wish I could help, but I have no exact answers for you. I'm geussing that your "lack of smartness" and short term memory problems are probably a result of stress and not an abscense of intelligence. You are just as smart as you've ever been, but cortisone, a chemical that is produced in the body when you're in a "flight or fight" mood, can make a person walk into a room and forget why they went into the room. The more fear and anxiety you have the more cortisone will make you forget things.
I'm also geussing that your excessive need for sleep is as a result of depression and not from daydreaming. Excessive sleeping and sleepiness is a sign of depression.
I'm geussing that studying distracts your mind from anxiety temporarily, and that may enable you to relax and want to sleep. Unfortunately, I don't know what to tell you in order to handle the problem. I'm trying relaxing herbs and I'm also trying guided meditation; but I don't know if that will help you or not.
Good luck with your college life, I hope you are successful!

[Kalie S.]

I have the exact same problem now, it seems like easy mathematical problems are now difficult and if i'm misspelling words that I know years ago i would not have. (Unless there's spell check).

Lumosity.com seemed to help a little though. it's a website that's dedicated to improve your short-term memory, mathematical skills, etc. I hope it helps =)

[Heinriech Heisner]

I haven't really noticed the tiredness issue, but I've definitely been experiencing the math and short term memory for some time now. My therapist did some simple tests and told me my short term was okay, but I don't think she understood what I was talking about. I have a really hard time recalling what I did during the day, let alone the day before. The worst case was when I left my home city for a weekend and when I came back I couldn't layout in my head the map to my house. I walked and recognized landmarks just enough that I believed I was going in the correct direction, but I just couldn't visualize the path at all, not until I made it home.

And the math! If I concentrate well enough I can do a problem fairly easily in my head, but when I see it on paper it doesn't always make sense. I once added up my time card and got three different numbers.

The thing is though I can remember things from like two months ago with vivid details. I tend to think of my memory as a steam roller going down the road. At first the memories are fresh and laid out, but are soon compressed and hard to find. But after some time, after the steam-roller has passed by, the memories pop back into memory.

[Heinriech Heisner]

Wow, today I felt like an idiot. I was asked for an update on a project that I was suppose to be working on from last week and I couldn't remember having starting it. To make it worse, I was frantically trying to start it so I'd have it by the end of the day, but things kept going wrong and breaking. I took a few minutes to calm myself so I could concentrate better. After I did that, I noticed my project laying on the table, three-quarters finished. I felt like I had just walked into the Matrix and I still can't remember having worked on it.

It's a bit fearsome because this is actually my reoccuring nightmare I have from time to time. In the dream I am going to school and near the end of the semester I discover I have this course that I have completely forgotten about and all the assignments from it were never done, which means I will be getting a big F. Of course in this case, I actually did the project, I just don't remember doing it.

[Oxalis Wood]

I'm surprised there weren't more replies to this topic. I'm 39 and have been daydreaming for longer than i can remember. I suffer from a lot of tiredness. I've have had all the usual tests and there doesn't seem to be a physical cause, so recently i've come to the conclusion that it must be the constant daydreaming. That's what led me to search on the web and find this site. But may be others have constant daydreaming and don't feel tired? Or may be there is a correlation, but both could be caused by some other factor eg depression?

I'd love to hear others' experiences.

[Cordellia Amethyste Rose]

I've had sleep issues for all my life. Sometimes it was the daydreaming, and sometimes it wasn't. Even when I'm not in my particular fantasy world, I would stay awake. I also had persistent fears that someone was going to break in & do horrible things to me. I still check my locks and closet (in case someone's hiding in there) obsessively. It never went away, and it never got better. I started taking sleep meds, but with my rapidly growing tolerance, I was taking unhealthy amounts. They weren't working anyway. It was crazy. No matter how tired I got & how ill I felt, my mind would still overpower it & I'd be awake all night. Now I have to rotate between prescriptions. They work a lot better, but I still feel tired all day. It's better than not sleeping. Many people can sleep just a few hours a day, and I don't know how they do it. If I don't sleep enough, I don't just feel tired. I feel horribly sick & painful all over my body. I can deal with being tired. It's the shakes, pain, and complete disconnect from reality that I can't deal with.

I've always been spacey, whether or not I sleep. I've been working on the same 10 pages of my math book since 10am. It's not hard, but I can't focus. I don't know how people follow along in class. I have little concept of what it's like to pay attention. I don't remember what it feels like. I try to work with it, rather than against it, but it's still getting worse. Anyway, I'm living with it & doing the best I can. I don't always reply to these things, but that doesn't mean I don't experience them right along with you. A lot of times the questions you now are posing are ones that have been asked and answered in my head. I don't wonder why. I kinda get why. I'm just trying to learn to live with it. Anyway, please don't feel like you're alone. There are very few things that have been mentioned on this site that I haven't gone through myself.

[Oxalis Wood]

Yes - it does seem to make sense that intense daydreaming could wear us out. I know what you mean about losing powers of concentration too. May be our minds are just tired, or may be it is because our brains are so often split between what we're trying to do and a daydream going on in the background (or foreground).

I also think that there could be some other factor causing all of this - poor sleep, poor concentration, daydreaming - they all seem to be anxiety related. And surely we daydream because we are not happy with our reality? Ironically making our reality worse by lessening the abilities of our minds......

[Patra Sealey]

Daydreaming makes me so tired! Literally
Sometimes I just feel like falling asleep...Well..I actually don't want to fall asleep. I just want to lay down and start daydreaming. And thats what I usually do.
Usually in the mornings, I find it so hard to get up and start my day. So I can be up at like 7am but I won't actually get out of bed until like 11am cause I just want to daydream and so I always feel very tired no matter how many hours of sleep that I get >./body>

[Alex]

I know exactly what you are talking about. I thought i was alone here. After a day of work i feel mentally fatigued. I cannot concentrate on any task even if my life depended on it. While I'm driving home i zone out so much its scary. I'm always daydreaming about something especially when the radio is on which triggers it. I have a lot of problems doing simple math in my head as well. Like adding, subtracting, and multiplying etc.  Like i can't even play black jack with people because I'm afraid I'm going to look retarded. There is something very wrong here.  And the reason why you have bad short term memory is because you have a short attention span. You cannot remember if you do not pay attention. In order to remember you have to pay attention.

[Lois Miller]

I've been tired and stupid recently but that had nothing to do with daydreams, the problem was my thyroid gland, I am now on medication for life, yay:(  But I have definetely noticed memory problems, like I always have to go back and check if I actually locked my locker, door, etc. Just today I forgot my OPUS card (a card for using the buss/metro in Montreal) on the bus, the reason? I forgot to put it back in pocket, headdesk.

I don't know if daydreaming is the cause, but it could be a type of side effect, not every case of maladaptive daydreaming is exactly the same after all.

 

As for math, I went to summer school for two years in highschool, then in grade 10 and 11 (there is no grade 12 in Quebec) I started averaging in the 90's, I have no idea how.   

[Heinriech Heisner]

I take back what I said earlier. Looking back in hindsight, some of the daydreams that I use to have would cause an intense rush of adrenaline and wear me out as if what was happening in my daydream was happening physically in real life. I have been pretty successful in overcoming my daydreaming, but I still transcend back there once in a while and it's bad. I get trapped with intense emotion and it feels like my real life is caving in on me and I feel exhausted. The hardest part of overcoming daydreaming is that they've been my comfort zones for so long and I just want to stay there even though I know that it is bad for me. On the flip side, it's absolutely amazing having control over daydreaming and my practice of not doing it is making it easier each day.

[Alvi]

I know this is a really old post but thought I'd add to it as it is something I have been looking into a lot recently and I have a bit of a theory as to why MD often have a sort of comedown after periods of DD. 

I really struggle with concentration, tiredness, cognitive function etc and think its because of the increased levels of Theta brainwaves daydreamers have. Theta brainwaves occur most often in sleep but are also dominant in the deep meditation, creativity and daydreaming. 

"If you want to be focused on any task, though, you don’t want your brain in theta.  Theta is NOT the ideal state for concentrated, focused mental activity. If you have ve ever been bored out of your mind in school and you drifted off to imagination-land, you know how impossible it felt to concentrate on your work. You had to shift back to the normal waking beta state in order to be able to focus Most people have no trouble shifting from theta (daydreaming) to alpha or beta (focused) when they need to concentrate; but people with impaired attention have trouble making the shift. An inability to shift from the daydreaming to a focused state can cause problems in learning and in work situations."

I think for a lot of people that daydream its a bit like walking around on autopilot as we're increasing the brainwaves we usually have during sleep.