Wild Minds network
Maladaptive Daydreaming: where wild minds come to rest
OMG! I'm not the only one!
I'm 52 and have been lining in my head for almost my whole life. To me it seemed completely normal and a great way to deal with an extremely difficult childhood (I won't get into it now but lets just say that between when I turned 7 and when I turned 9 I went through more major events in my life than many people do in their entire lives).
I'm wondering if this may be somewhat genetic. My Mom mentioned to me when I was young and asked her about my "stories" that she always had at least one story running through her head. Always had. And that her mother was the same way. They actually would talk to each other about them as a way to work out the hard parts of "real" life. After I found this place I asked my son about it and he says he does the same thing. Probably more than I do actually.
When I hit my late 20's and into my 30's my commitment to my fantasy life became so intense that I actively started doing meditation and guided imagery as a way of controlling it. I learned how to pull myself back to reality so that I could function and I also learned to direct my stories more so that they didn't interfere as much. It helped but never stopped it. It was also about this time that I realized that not everyone thinks and speaks "picture". It took me a while to understand that most people have a voice in their heads that they use to think with, not pictures that I use.
It was also around this time I realized that it's not normal to dream in color (and smell and touch). I have always been able to controle my dreams and thought it normal. Just an extension of my fantasies. When asked by someone if I liked to act out my "fantasies" (in a sexual way) I had to admit that I preferred them in my head because they could only be perfect there and real life spoiled them. But trying to explain this to someone who doesn't think like this just made me sound insane.
Anyway, it's good to know there are others like me out there. Thanks for having this place to come to!
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Krissy on
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I'm sure everyone does this to some extent, how far you let IT control YOU is another thing. It needs to be for our enjoyment, but we also must consider why we are daydreaming. As a child, it was my escape. Now as an adult, it is for my pleasure. I will not let my inability to translate these great story lines to paper stop me from enjoying my own "novels".
Lately I have been getting frustrated because I do read a lot and have been coming across stories that I had been thinking about !" I could of easily written this! 'I will think to myself. It depresses me that I could be a published author! So, of course, that has lent itself to a new story... the main character is a newbie writer, experiencing some of her new found fame. *sighs* :)
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Permalink Reply by Annie Huang on
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I remember asking my friends about the whole "speaking picture" thing, and they tried to relate to it, but couldn't, really. Do you find yourself trying to convey an idea, but then get frustrated because you want to /show/ it to them? I mean, it's not really an issue of being conversationally proficient, but rather that you feel like words are deficient to get the whole idea?
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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Campbell on
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Yes. That's exactly how it feels. I've gotten better at it over the years and I'm noted for being able to write and convey instructions on how to do things oin a clear and easy to understand way. I think that's because I'n describing what I see as I work through the process in my mind. But there have been so many times when I've tried to descirbe something and even tried to show someone by doing something or making it and it's just not exactly right. This used to frustrate me a great deal when I was younger but as I've gotten older I just accept that I can never really hand a person a perfect vision of what's in my head.
I also find that my mind can jump from subject to subject too quickly for me to keep up with verbally. It almost comes across as ADD or ADHD because it SOUNDS like my attention span is really short but it's not. It's just I have to keep up with the pictures. If I can slow them down it's easier and if asked I can always go back and explain the transition from one topic to the next but only my son can keep up with me really and I often leave him behind because HIS brain is off on a different set of pictures that he's trying to keep up with. It's really cool when we're going along with the same "wave length" though.
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Permalink Reply by Shadow Cat Sam on
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dream in color (and smell and touch). I have always been able to controle my dreams and thought it normal.
I am like that and then some.
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Permalink Reply by Maya on
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You have great experience about MD so I want to ask you that if any of your fantasies came to be true in your real life because whatever I imagine is yet to come part of my life and I see it as definite future and for this reason even I try to make it more realistic like adding real world known people into it .
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Permalink Reply by greyartist on
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welcome
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Well....not really. I hesitate to bring this up because it sounds really off the deep end but it's part of the whole thing so here goes.......
When I was in my early 20's there was a point where my parents disowned me for a brief period due to my choice of partner (ultra-religious family, early '80's and he was black). This was a very difficult time in my life and I had escaped almost completely into my fantasy world. I moved from job to job very frequently because of my in-ability to concentrate on what I was doing. I dropped out of college for the same reasons. I'd forget to eat because it took me into the real world. I finally became frightened enough to know I had to do something to get me moving again.
What I did (and this is the part that scares me to say) is I took the real world and re-created it as a fantasy world where I could control it. It was horrible and hard to do but it made it possible for me to make changes in the fantasy and run through the consiquenses of them prior to doing them in real life, thus avoiding SOME of the mistakes I could have made. My dream-self was much stronger than my real self and could stand up to things i was afraid to stand up to. I'd play out scenerios in my head and then act out the ones with the best outcomes in real life.
Needless to say it didn't always go the way it did in my head. There is no way you can control the reactions other people will have in real life like you can in your head. It took years to straighten things out and I did have other fantasy lines going at the same time that allowed me to escape when I needed but in the end doing this allowed me to climb back into the real worls, function properly and repair some of the relationships that had fallen apart.
This was an action of despairation on my part and I've used it again now and then when my dream world has started to take over too much of my real life. I'm not sure how UI came up with the idea to do it but in a certain way the answer to your question is yes, things in my daydreams have come true in my real life but only because I allowed my real life into my dream life. Not something that I suggest for the faint of heart though. It's actually very painful to do, or at least was for me.
Sakshi said:You have great experience about MD so I want to ask you that if any of your fantasies came to be true in your real life because whatever I imagine is yet to come part of my life and I see it as definite future and for this reason even I try to make it more realistic like adding real world known people into it .
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