A creative person's life with MD.

[Blair]

This is the sort of post I've written a number of times - in my head and verbally to myself. It's the nature of this problem that what we can do in our imaginations is equal to what we can do in the real world. I wonder how many posts and articles have gone unwritten in reality because they were so beautifully crafted in the mind and left there lest they be tainted by public contact. 

I found out about MD when I was looking for information on muttering and self directed speech. My wife often catches me whispering to myself. She has no issue with it, but when I told her about the term Maladaptive Daydreaming, she just said 'Nah, I think you're just bored'. She's a doctor by the way - but no psychologist. She's always sceptical of anyone who thinks they can self diagnose their condition from a bit of web surfing. She gets it from some patients and it infuriates her. But in psychology, the subject is more aware of what is going on in their mind than they are of what is happening in their body. I've never thought of what I do as a definable condition but MD describes it so well. 

While I don't think of MD as 'life threatening', it is 'quality of life threatening'. I wouldn't expect a cure to come along for something like this, but rather it be a behavioural issue; removing the triggers and being consciously aware of times when you do it. Easier said than done, but I don't see a better way. 

***

One of the problems I encountered with MD is its connection to creative ambition and real life artistic pursuits. For creative people with MD, there's a difference between inspiration and distraction, but it's hard to keep them separate. I am a musician and an author and it's so easy to imagine success in either field without doing anything real to further the deeply felt ambitions. I'm in my 40s and I've been a musician since my teens. But I have been on stage less than ten times in my life. 

I still had this approach when I moved overseas to supposedly pursue my musical ambitions. All I ever did was go from one subsistence office job to the next while hoping to get into some sort of creative project. The MD became a way to escape the tedium of a life spent doing the opposite of what I travelled to the other side of the world for. It became a cycle, the imagining became both the cause of and the cure for the lack of success. 

Life for me became like the movie The Commitments. The main character is narrating the story of the band he is managing as if he is on a high profile British talk show, as if their success has already been achieved. If you haven't seen the film I suggest you at least find some clips on YouTube that show what I'm referring to. Even when the band is crumbling and when everyone is going their separate ways, he is still talking to himself like he were that successful guest on that talk show. I did this all the time. The concerts I have played, the celebrities I have met and talked with, argued with and won; the TV shows I have appeared on, the tours I have been on and the hotel rooms I have slept in, the fans I have met and the scandals I have had to play down. Nowadays, I'll see a TV show and connect with a celebrity and I will use my creative ambition as a way to insert myself into a scenario where I could interact with that person. After all, I'm a successful musician-slash-author, didn't you know? 

MD also affects the way I play music on my own. I have people listening and judging it in my mind. Depending on my mood or my current confidence level, I can proxy the greatest musicians in the world, former university colleagues and tutors, or hyper-critical high school rivals. Maybe I'm playing on stage with old school friends as they look on encouragingly, seeing how far I have come since the days of just messing around in bedrooms - precisely what I am doing. Maybe I'm auditioning for a high profile band. Whatever the scenario, it isn't me playing music just to please me. I'm playing a fantasy, I'm playing along with my favourite songs so I can be the musician I always wanted to be - a successful and well known one. But it's just me in a room with a guitar plugged into a computer. 

One of the motivating factors behind me writing my first novel was the success I could imagine for myself. While I still enjoy writing and keep up a decent writing schedule, I have since found it harder to maintain momentum in subsequent books knowing that I am now one of the million others self publishing their books on Amazon. If I knew I had an audience for my writing, I would have finished at least two more novels by now. But when you know the reality that awaits, it's hard not to lose confidence and slip into the familiar coping mechanisms. I found it easier to write my first book when I could confidently dream of success. I still have confidence in my abilities as a writer, I just don't have the killer instinct I did when I could see myself at book signings and on TV. 

Looking back, I felt MD become a life habit when I 'discovered' new age mental visualisation techniques in the early to mid 90s. I now regard them as complete nonsense, but at the time it felt like a license to distract myself with visualisation and daydreamng thinking that it was serving a higher purpose, that it was ultimately constructive. This was not a good habit to develop. 

Compounding the issue is my living situation. I live in a foreign country and do not speak the language. I'm fine in social situations if I feel the playing field is level. I've spoken in public before and I have no problem with it. But put me in a foreign language environment, where I'm the odd one out fumbling over the most basic words and I totally tighten up. The feeling I get when I feel I have to speak in the language feels the same as you do when you're about to cry, your mouth gets heavy and you just can't produce a sound. People often write me off as being lazy, a typically culturally arrogant native english speaker that won't budge on the language. 

I have seen a psychologist about my struggle with the language and it turns out I have Social Anxiety Disorder. My wife works and earns the money, leaving me to pretty much bounce around the walls all day. This is fertile ground for MD. 

While I don't feel I have MD as much as others, I felt that I would put my story out there because of the need for imagination in the creative arts. The best artists are often the misfits. 

[Iris]

Thank you for sharing, it is good to hear about the lives of others with the same problems. As I am struggling with MD myself, I don't have a solution for it.  I'm almost 50 now and still daydreaming.