Hi I'm new

[James Chadwick]

G'day all thank you for letting me be part of your community! :)

So my story... 

I’ve been a maladaptive daydreamer since my early teens, I’m 32 now so it’s been almost 20 years. My symptoms were moderate in the beginning but they eventually became severe in my late teens. I’ve been a housebound agoraphobic since early 2019 after being mugged and since then my daydreaming has become my full time job and with COVID-19 rearing its ugly head and it being a huge stressor, it’s exacerbated my symptoms even more; my maladaptive daydreaming is now at its most severe. My time awake is spent entirely daydreaming, even when doing things around the house like cleaning, cooking, washing, gardening ect... I tune out and vividly daydream and don’t even remember doing the household chores. Daydreaming while listening to music has always been a big one for me ever since it started, I have always listened to music very loudly and daydreamed very vividly for long periods of an idealised version of myself… a person of importance who is highly respected and has achieved major accomplishments or did something daring/brave and impressed lots of people. I also watch clips of movie and TV scenes that I like very loudly with headphones on and vividly daydream those scenes are about me or that’s me in them and I watch them over and over again. I pace around and jump up and down whilst daydreaming to music and movie and TV scenes. I also vividly daydream that I’m talking to someone or a group of people and talk out loud e.g. I daydream in my head that someone has asked me a question and I respond to it out loud, sometimes the conversation is of a serious nature, other times it’s a light-hearted conversation, either way I daydream that I present myself as an intelligent or funny person to a group of people or to a large audience. Since my 20s I haven’t been able to hold down a job because I would often daydream at work and I couldn’t be very productive. Because I spend the most amount of time daydreaming while listening to music very loudly for hours on end I’ve lost some hearing in both ears and I also suffer from chronic tinnitus in both ears, the audiologist said I could lose a significant amount of hearing and worsening of my tinnitus before I’m 40 if I continue this way but it’s impossible for me to stop. I also write up autobiographies on the computer of me as a different person and I go into great detail, I type thousands of words typing up these autobiographies and spend hours working on them going into great detail. I also can’t watch a movie or TV show for more than 10 minutes because I start vividly daydreaming and it’s usually a scene in the movie or TV show that triggers the daydreaming. I never had this issues as a kid as I had a happy childhood for the most part… I enjoyed primary (elementary) school. It was when I went to high school (junior/senior high school) I started to get bullied very badly and I ended up despising myself in every way possible and that’s when the maladaptive daydreaming started. I still to this day have a very low opinion of myself.

Anyway, it’s great to come across a community of maladaptive daydreamers … it’s nice to meet you all and I hope you're all doing well! :) Take care!