Feeling completive...

[Robin]

Hey, everyone,

         So, I’m gonna go on a monologue here. Read if you want!

         I feel like I’m at a critical point in my life. It’s so weird that I have these problems that almost no one could understand or accept. Other people worry about friends and school, or about their family or medical problems, real problems. I have to worry about my own mind.

         I have made so much progress since I started trying to stop my daydreaming in October. I used to be a constant daydreamer, using my fantasies to avoid thinking about my mom’s psychotic behavior and my own depression. I didn’t have friends because I wasn’t in the real world enough to keep them. All the enjoyment I got from life I got making stories and living made up people’s lives in my own head. Miraculously, I still managed to get good grades in school, probably because science and astronomy are one of the few things that interested me in the real world. When I came to college, I thought being away from the stress of my family could help me quit my daydreams, throw them away like an undersized pair of pants or something so that I could start living as someone who I could be happy  to be. I didn’t realize how addicted I was to the daydreaming, how much I relied on it until I tried to stop.

         Upon finding that stopping fantasizing wasn’t just a matter of telling myself to stop, I got desperate. When I wasn’t daydreaming, I was frustrated with myself for not being able to control this thing, and I got very depressed again. I searched online how to get rid of obsessive fantasies. I found this website and was so happy to find that there are other people like me, when I’d felt so along for so long. I was also really scared, though, finding that I really did have a mental disorder, if we can call MD that. I started going to therapy. Of course, my therapist had no idea what maladaptive daydreaming is, but he helped me with my depression and social anxiety, and he told me about mindfulness meditation and said it might help me.

         With a combination of mindfulness, a good therapist, my mom getting her act together and apologizing for years of verbal abuse, and two really good friends I met in college, I got over most of my depression and got control over my daydreaming. It was really hard, and while I struggled with controlling my own mind (which took MONTHS) I experienced severe episodes of depression and depersonalization. But I did it. Now, I can control when I daydream, for the most part, and I am working on stopping myself from automatically sinking into my fantasies whenever I am bored or upset, or excited.

         But my fight isn’t over. I though I was on the brink of getting better, but today I realized that I still have a choice to make. I’m very attached to the characters in my fantasy world. They got me through the worst part of my life, and I haven’t been able to totally let them go. This past week, I daydreamed only a little, except for yesterday. I decided to take a break and went back to my triggers for the day, as a sort of reward for getting through finals. I became extremely absorbed in the book I was reading and my daydreams, so much so that I ignored my friends and everything else. Today I woke up so disoriented, in that familiar cloud you get from daydreaming too much and not being able to find yourself again. Spending a day back in my own worlds was nice while I was there, but now I feel like I have robbed myself of spending the day as me. I want to be someone who I like, not just other people, and what does that tell about me that I would rather be someone else than my own normal self? The biggest problem that I have with my life now is that I’m bored. I’m a pretty intelligent person (if I do say so myself J) and I get bored very easily. I’m so used to exciting action, adventure, and romance in my daydreams and my triggers that when I come back to real life, it just looks so gray and boring.

         I’ve realized that I can’t just keep my fantasies and my real life, because they are both all-consuming. I have to pick one. Starting today, I’m going to have to double up my efforts to avoid triggers. I won’t give myself time to DD at night, and even when I’m bored and lonely, I’ll make myself stay present, in the real world. I don’t know if I can really do it, but I’m going to give it my all.

[taffle]

What I do is turn my fantasies into a novel. Almost everyday, I set aside some time to write my novel. This way, I don't have to spend all day daydreaming, plus if I forget some parts of my daydreams, they're there in my novel. You might want to give this a try.