Wild Minds network

Maladaptive Daydreaming: where wild minds come to rest

Hello!

I'm so glad I found this forum. My name is Nicole, I'm 21 years old, and I've been daydreaming like nuts for as long as I can remember. I never knew this existed until today while googling different disorders. I always thought something was mentally wrong with me because I felt like I was the only one who paced around her room fantasizing different things or daydreaming conversations with people I knew. But now that I've found this place I can feel comfortable telling people about myself. When I did a little more research earlier, it's said that MD is brought on by a traumatic experience; for me, that traumatic experience was being bullied in school since childhood. I also have ADD, which I've seen some users on here say there may be a possible link between ADD and MD.

My daydreams have a lot of different triggers:

Music
Pictures
TV/Videos/Movies
Flashbacks of past bullying experiences
Memories of fun events
Objects I want
Stress
School
Loneliness

My daydreaming is mostly involved around the following:

Past bullying experiences
Reliving past bullying experiences with an opposite effect (i.e. having a lot of friends at school and not being made fun of)
Talking to a group of people about my bullied past
Being "normal" to others
Being rich
Friendships
Other people talking about me
Being in a relationship with a celebrity crush (or a normal crush)
A sexual encounter with a celebrity crush (or again, a normal crush)
My future
How other people would react if I died
The death of someone close

I know this is a mouthful for a first time post but I'm just so glad that I've found a place where I could actually speak about my MD experiences on a daily basis. So tell me about yourselves too so I can get to know more people with MD.

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Permalink Reply by Cordellia Amethyste Rose on March 28, 2011 at 12:34pm

Welcome! You can definitely speak freely here without judgment. FYI, MD isn't just brought about by trauma. Dr. Eli Somer, the guy who coined the term, thought so, but he had only 6 study participants. We've since found out that a lot of people are just creative & never go through trauma. Anyway, what you describe sounds perfectly normal. There are many benefits along with the struggles. Perhaps you can learn to harness the power of your imagination and use it for good. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not sick or weird. You just have a really strong imagination, and that can be a wonderful strength.