First post - about me

[Mary]

I am blown away to find this community and other sites on MD.  I never thought that anyone else would share this most secret of things.

 

A little about me. I am in my early 40's.  I first started daydreaming as a small child - I remember being at nursery and being as happy to play by myself in my own little world as I was to play with other children in shared imaginative worlds. I don't think that was particularly maladaptive - I am an introvert so it was probably normal and healthy.  As a child I used to run round and round in circles imagining things in my head.  But when I became a teenager, I didn't put away these childish things. I was a lonely child and teenager who was shy, found it hard to make friends and got bullied, so when I was alone, I retreated into an imaginary world, and I literally created a whole world, with different characters who grew up with me. I still sometimes visit that world. I drew pictures of the characters and maps of their worlds. Eventually I learnt to keep it in my head so I've never paced as an adult.

 

In my late teens and early twenties I had more friends and a better social life, and daydreamed less although it never left me. I learnt coping strategies, like setting the alarm an hour before I got up so I could daydream for an hour. However in my late teens and early to mid thirties, I became severely depressed and the daydreaming got worse until eventually I had a year where I lived in a daydream pretty much 24/7. Everything had gone wrong with life, I had no job, I'd split up with my partner and I escaped into my daydream world.  Even when I did something normal like watch TV,  in my head I was in my daydream world, the TV programme was something my characters were watching. I couldn't talk about it to anyone - I wondered if I was disassociating - I just did not feel on the planet at all and the real world was strange and frightening. I was only safe in my daydream.

 

Things did improve from that hellish year although in subsequent years, I still escaped into a daydream world a lot of the time and developed an internet addiction too looking for things to fuel the daydream. When I went back to work a few years later that really helped. Changing my diet helped, taking up exercise helped, giving up alcohol, which I was also addicted to, helped but because I never acknowledged the daydreaming was a problem, I have never tackled it head on and I still have a problem with it and that's why I'm here.

 

I'm sick of watching my life go by as I live in a fantasy world.  I've wasted so much time and lost so much. I am sure I would have done better in my exams as I was a bright kid if I had actually revised instead of daydreaming.  

 

I have always wanted to write a novel, but I haven't done much creative writing apart from a few mediocre short stories . I have never taken the time away from daydreaming or had the discipline to learn the craft of writing. Sure I have daydreamed 100 novels and somehow I thought they would spill out of my head on to the page easily, but every time I came to write it down, I could never write as clearly or as vividly as what was in my head. So rather than persisting, because my writing wasn't perfect, I retreated back into my head and daydreamed another novel instead.  

 

It's great to see so many young people on this site, hopefully you'll be able to tackle this monster at an earlier age than I did.  It's also a relief to find out I am not alone and also that this is the problem. Thanks for being here. I hope that now I've acknowledged this is a problem, I can start to take steps to beat it. I'm an addictive person and I've beaten a few addictions so far in my life so I'm sure there must be hope.

 

 

[Paige]

Hi Mary, welcome!

 

I find this community to be so great.  The people here are aceepting and understanding.  I turned 40 five months ago and I was hoping to have my MDing under control by now, but it has seemed to really worsen the last two years.  Has yours gotten worse as you aged?

 

I'm also relieved to read from you and others that you have difficulty completely writting tasks.  I want to be a writer so badly.  I have a million ideas in my head but when it comes to actually writting a story, or article, or anything, it becomes very difficult.  Any pointers on getting past this? 

 

Well again, welcome and hope you find friendship and answers here.

[Mary]

Thanks for your comments Placidia and Starfoot :)

I feel like I've made a lot of progress in the last few years with various things, but since finding out about MD I've been monitoring how often I daydream and it's so hard to stay in reality. But they say awareness and acceptance is the first step to beating this addiction. That's a good idea about cutting the hour down to 45 mins. I sometimes have success with putting the alarm clock somewhere where I have to get up to turn it off.... but sometimes I go back to bed and daydream anyway! 

[Placidia]

Hi and welcome! 

 

I'm glad at least that things have improved for you since your particularly bad year.  I think that plus wanting to come to terms with this does indicate progress. 

 

I have a pretty similar thing when it comes to writing: I come up with a lot of ideas, but it's difficult for me to write them down.  If I were actually going to write a book, I would want it to be of good quality --- but it's so much easier just to retreat into the world of my daydreams instead.  (And my daydreams are, distinctly, not of good quality, no matter what small things I do to try to improve them.) 

[starfoot01]

hi there, welcome to the site,

 i too have only recently found this website i was also surprised by how many people there are on here, my daydream also started by being bullied so i made up my own little world to get away from it all and so i felt like i belonged somewhere. thats a good idea setting an alarm an hour before you have to get up you could then try cutting the hour down to 45 mins and so on, i dont know if that will work you could  try it.

 i know what you mean when you say you cant write a novel even tho you know how it goes iv tryed it myself but i failed i useually draw pictures from my DD although they arn't the best. good luck with trying to stop DDing.