Has Mdd helped or hurt you more?

[Cole]

When I was younger, daydreaming gave me an escape from an inescapable situation. But it also stunted the future in a lot of ways. Most importantly, it took away drive. As Thomas Edison once said "Show me a thoroughly satisfied man — and I will show you a failure".

Which begs the question "Has Mdd helped or hurt you more?"

If it helped, how?

[Filly]

I think for my friend its hurt him.
He is habitual so ended up driving a truck long haul. He drives and dreams but now has given up golf and guitar.
He likes crossfit and west coast swing dance.
I worry that if he isnt the best at these things he gives up which is unrealistic.
He says he cant make the voices stop.

[Cole]

Dimmer said:

If it helps you more doesn't that then make it not MD?

Not everything maladaptive starts out that way. Consider the wooly mammoth. It's hair started out as an excellent adaptation. However as the climate warmed it's adaptation got worse, until it became maladaptive. For me, MD is the same! It started out great, but now has drained the color from my real life. I assume this is similar to other peoples experiences. The question is whether or not the total good outweighs the current bad.

[Kristen Fay]

I'm torn. I'm a writer so daydreams sometimes feed what I write. On the other hand I've recently realized that several friends who are younger than me but further along in their careers got there because they are probably not hampered by this problem. Time spent daydreaming about being a bestselling author kept me from doing the hard work it takes to actually be one. I came to this realization literally just this week.

[Silver Swan]

MDD didn't help me at all. It only hurt my future. I have no idea who I really am today. My interests in the arts is fading and all I want to do is sit around and stare at nothing, thinking about impossible things. I've always wanted romance in my life, but I swear it never comes because I chose to day dream on an ongoing basis.

[Briona]

It's done both. When I was a child it helped me to feel good in my shitty painful childhood, as an adult it has not helped me. I'm no longer in the same situation as I was as a child, but it has hindered me so much because it lies about who I am, but it's just the fantasy me, not the real me. So because I believed it, I ignored so much of the things I needed to pay attention to in real life, and now I feel like it stole so much time from me. Also, I used to write and let me DD inform my writing, it worked so synchronically, I could write and write and write, except now that I'm fighting MDD, I've given up writing because it's too closely linked to my DD. I miss it in a way, but I know better.

[Silver Swan]

It's the same with my art. I'm not sure what happened, but I think MDD may have slowed down my productivity, or perhaps my DD was so strongly linked to art, but when I began quitting MDD, then it totally effected how I dive into expressing it on a pad of paper or canvas.

When people tell me to "quit dreaming," it's like their telling me to quit my essence.

[Ivy White]

It probably saved me from the situation of my childhood and early teens, but now it's become a problem. I've lost hours to it.

The biggest issue has been romantically. Nobody can come close to what I experience and feel in a daydream so I tend to turn a lot of people down or to become very antsy while it starts becoming concrete. I have had sex once in the last three years despite daydreaming about it pretty much daily. 

[Silver Swan]

I'm a virgin today, don't ask. I used to dream about sex every night, but now, I'm so much more concerned about my future. Just surviving in a career and struggling to bond with people, how hurtful the circumstances of MDD has put on me, it's really set me off the thought of sex for a while. Good thing.

[Chifago]

When was young, it help me. but now hurt very much, because  i can't make the things i like.

[Silver Swan]

Young was teens and 20's. Yeah, I was disturbed visiting the gym today. I couldn't concentrate and urge myself to pump up. I just preferred to think on and on. I just went on every machine for a good 5 minutes, and then left uninterested.

[Naomi Akene]

when I was younger it was fun but then as I got older my daydreams got darker and I started to realize how much I hated reality. MD is also the reason for many of my mental illnesses so yeah I’d say it’s more harmful to me

[Rastogi]

Having read some articles about MD I realized that It's not really healthy but as for now it has become a great part of me and by great part means that I am able to cope with anxiety by being in my own world and it helps me calm down and focus on something more fun instead of repeatedly thinking about something stressfull.