I shall be eighty this year. Somehow I doubt if anyone else on this forum can say that ;-). I've been a compulsive daydreamer all my life but I'm not so sure about the "maladaptive" label. Yes, for many people it has been, and I'm not challenging or dismissing the experience of anyone else here. But for me the balance has been positive on the whole.

I was a weird child (probably on the autistic spectrum though I never had a formal diagnosis) so of course the other children picked on…