Do you want to defeat this?

[Corinne West]

Do you? If you could wake up tomorrow with this gone would you want to?
In all honesty, I don't want to live without it. I don't think life would be worth living without it.
I'll give up everything else, my social isolation, eating disorder a thousand times before I give this up. I thought I may have been ready to recently, but I never had to imagine living without it, so no I don't want to give it up. *Sigh*

[Katrina]

Cordellia Amethyste Rose said:

I can daydream less for awhile if I'm busy & distracted, but it always comes back full force after awhile. I'm almost 30 & desperate to make something of my life, and I know I'll never be able to achieve what I want to as long I do this. Whatever % of my life that's spent in my fantasy world is a % less than I'll achieve in this one. I'm too competitive & desperate to be successful for this to be ok for me. I need to feel smart. I need to feel better than people. I need to be the best at everything I'm interested in. Having my fantasy world has made me think in more ways than I ever imagined. It's expanded my mind, but it's made me desperate for outside approval. That's what I get there after all. To not have that in my outside world is just unbearable. It makes me want to achieve more in general because I hate even more how people see me. I hate being seen as a quiet, lonely loser by people I'm sure are inferior. I wanna scream "How dare these morons see me that way?".

OMG Cordellia you are sooo not crazy. That's me as well, to the T. I just feel like i can achieve some of the things I dream about, and they're just out of my reach because I devote myself more to my inner world than I do to actually trying to make those things happen. But I can't bear to live without the comfort of it.. sometimes i slip into it without even realizing i've done it! it's a viscious cycle. So the woman in NY says you shoudn't try to quit completely? how can you have both?

[April West]

Hey Katrina... I don't know if it was bullying as such, but a lot of people made fun of me right through to high school (second hand clothes/uniforms, glasses and braces, really really bad at sports, making a mess of presentations...) so during those years my daydreams were about being ultra cool and fitting in, how every one else was jealous of me....

[Katrina]

Yeah same here.  It was bad for me..  I got beaten up once and narrowly escaped fights on other occasions for not fitting the mold.  Even teachers and administrators turned cheek because im a non christian gay girl of color who was in a town of rednecks!  I still fantasize about being renowned for some kind of activist work for discrimination against Others.

EludeMyFantasies said:

Oh yeah same here. I was made fun of in school. I am always the cooliest, funniest and prettiest in my DD's.

April West said:

Hey Katrina... I don't know if it was bullying as such, but a lot of people made fun of me right through to high school (second hand clothes/uniforms, glasses and braces, really really bad at sports, making a mess of presentations...) so during those years my daydreams were about being ultra cool and fitting in, how every one else was jealous of me....

[rebecka]

I want to defeat this more than anything. I mean, I would still like to have the ability to daydream - but I would just want to be able to control it. I've daydreamt my whole life, for as long as I can remember, but it hasn't been maladaptive the entire time... I could control it and only daydream when I wanted to until I was like 10 or something. I don't know why it changed then but I would like to go back to that state. Now I have absolutely no control and I'm so used to daydreaming that I sometimes don't even realize I'm doing it until I've wasted hours in a row, so into it.... and it scares me. I wanna be myself and have my own life. Instead I'm just stuck in my fantasy world with all these made up, non-existant people in my brain who take up most of my free time and won't go away. I'm not even 16 yet but I already worry myself sick about never being able to have a normal life, never being able to get a job or have a relationship. I can add that I have social phobia too and only like 2 "real life" friends, but I could never talk to them about this.

[latrice]

the truth is i would want to stop.  even though you make up this world in your head you still have to live in the real world.  when i come out of the world  i  make up in my head i cant function. sometime i dont leave my house for days. i find i dont have any firends and my life is pass me by.  

[Creator]

Yes I really do know what you mean! The more I am on this website, the less I do it. But I do agree, I don't want to stop either.

Lily said:

Honestly, I do not want to defeat this. I like talking about it in forums like this because because I don't feel as crazy but I have no real desire to stop. I think it does interfere with my life but not to the extremes like it does with other people. If I quit I would probably be more social and put more effort into relationships with people but I really don't want to stop. I also agree with Cordellia that there is no way I ever could stop completely. I've literally been doing it my whole life and my fantasy characters are a part of me and I could never give it up. I have found that I do it less when I'm on these forums discussing it. Does anyone else find that? The more it is on my mind that it probably is an actually disorder, the less I seem to do it. Again I am SO thankful for Cordellia creating this website!! I can't believe I actually have a place to openly talk about this with people who know exactly what I'm talking about.

[Creator]

I know, it's like daydreaming sucks the productivity out of our real lives. I always picture myself being old and still doing this... not a pleasant thought.

April West said:

I keep telling myself "I want this to end/I want to change" but deep down I don't!!! I would love to stay in my daydream world and not have to worry about the "real world." I can do anything in my world, and it doesn't take any effort... Sometimes I feel that if I quit I will be losing a part of myself...?

But as another year ends, I look back and see that I have done nothing, absolutely nothing... I don't want to get to 40 and still be doing this....

[Drake]

 I don't want to stop daydreaming, ever.

I know it's weird but daydreaming has been with me all my life, it's been like a parent and friend to me. Whenever I'm sad and lonely daydreaming's always there to make me feel better. Whenever I need a problem worked out, I daydream the solution out.

I'm sorry but if I stop daydreaming I feel like I'd lose a huge part of myself

[Cordellia Amethyste Rose]

I don't think you have to necessarily.  Mine has carried me for 30 years.  I'm just planning on working to build up my outer life, so I can live a more fulfilling life.  If it fades, so be it.  If not, fine.  This conditions has may pros and cons.  If we can just learn to manage it then perhaps we can have the best of both worlds.  

Drake said:

 I don't want to stop daydreaming, ever.

I know it's weird but daydreaming has been with me all my life, it's been like a parent and friend to me. Whenever I'm sad and lonely daydreaming's always there to make me feel better. Whenever I need a problem worked out, I daydream the solution out.

I'm sorry but if I stop daydreaming I feel like I'd lose a huge part of myself

[shelley katherine hutchings]

I have been this way all my life, even as a baby. It is the way I am, and no, I don't want to give it up. There are positive and negative sides to this, and I'm learning to deal with its shadow. Have nearly been splat by cars, fallen over, bump into things. I laughed about what my ex partner had to say about it. He informed me that all I did was pace around laughing, reading books & not putting them on shelves where a book is meant to be, writing things on bits of paper...and watching sesame street.

 

I'm 50 now, and truly getting to grips with the shadow, and learning to effectively channel the positives...and oh its been so helpful in dealing with some very difficult life situations.

 

I am also FPP

 

Is it okay to discuss this on this forum?

 

Shelley

[Cordellia Amethyste Rose]

That depends.  What's FPP?  

shelley katherine hutchings said:

I have been this way all my life, even as a baby. It is the way I am, and no, I don't want to give it up. There are positive and negative sides to this, and I'm learning to deal with its shadow. Have nearly been splat by cars, fallen over, bump into things. I laughed about what my ex partner had to say about it. He informed me that all I did was pace around laughing, reading books & not putting them on shelves where a book is meant to be, writing things on bits of paper...and watching sesame street.

 

I'm 50 now, and truly getting to grips with the shadow, and learning to effectively channel the positives...and oh its been so helpful in dealing with some very difficult life situations.

 

I am also FPP

 

Is it okay to discuss this on this forum?

 

Shelley

[Lois Miller]

No way, I love my daydreams, I only want to be able to control when I have them, for example the fact that I'm completely incapable of paying attention to anything in class(I'm in college and on probation because of it) but otherwise I've never really wanted to "enter the real world" because in my opinion the real world kind of sucks. Besides I love writing and my daydreams are an awesome way of developing stories. I'm probably slightly unusual in the fact that I never tell people about my daydreams but I intend to write them down and make a profit out of them. lol.

 

I realise that I am to dependant on them, if I don't get to regularly run back and forth listening to music I get really stressed out. But since I plan to attempt to make a carreer out of my daydreams (I realize the chances of making it as an author are about one in a million) and the pacing is the only exercise I get, I have no real desire in stopping them (even though my pacing has worn down the soles of my feet to the point where there's no fat at all)