Hello, I'm new here and wanted to tell a little about myself.

[Anne]

I have been an avid daydreamer all my life, since the age of 4. As a kid I had more than imaginary friends, I had entire worlds. I am an only child and my parents never paid much attention to me, so i spent a lot of time in my room. I never outgrew my imaginary worlds, I still have them. When I was a kid I had imaginary parents and brothers and sisters. And I was loved. Never felt that way in my real life. As I grew older, I developed an interest in SciFi, I loved Quantum Leap, Star Trek, and a few others. These characters started to become the basis for my imaginary worlds. I have one character that I have lived as for at least 22 years. She is a scifi character that started out being an officer on the Enterprise and evolved. I created an entire world and culture for her and she has moved on to other places of being. I like her and like being her. I find that as an adult, the characters in my head are always looking for a father figure. Guess because I don't have that relationship.

I am married, have been for almost 13 years. I have 2 young children. I am a stay at home mom. It was when my kids were born that I left my daydream world for a little while. But I have returned. I think I had to with my oldest, she is a very demanding child.

I can be driving and be thinking about my daydream world, sometimes I can't sleep because I want to stay there. I find that I daydream more when life is stressful, kinda like when I was a kid, I went to my own world to escape my parents.

No one knows how much I daydream. Its definitely my secret. I function pretty well at keeping it seperate from real life. But when I want to go there and can't, I get very moody. I also have bouts of depression or just seem sad sometimes. My husband will ask me why. Well thats kinda hard to explain, how can you be depressed about something that happens to people who don't exist?

I am very much the creative type. I love to draw, make things, and at one time was pretty good at writing. I also love to read, but I can never just read the book, I live the book. That book is my world and life while I'm reading it. All my teachers in high school thought I would be a writer. I've tried writing a few times. But those stories are mine and belong in my head. They feel to personel to give up.

I've always kinda wonder if my daydreaming was normal. I always felt it was something I should be ashamed of, I'm 33, I shouldn't have imaginary friends or worlds. I'm glad to learn that there is a name for it. Not sure I would want treatment to get rid of it. I very much like my little worlds. I used to have many I visited, but now I tend to only visit one. I also have fantasy conversations with real life people. I think I do this when I feel lonely, not sure on that. Maybe they are practice for future encounters with that person. I am a little socially aukward. I have a hearing impairment, so real life conversations can be difficult. I have very few people I would call friends. I tend to keep people at a distance, even my husband to an extent. I'm afraid of closeness. My parents are very critical and verbally abusive people, the whole family on my parents sides are. It wasn't until I married that I saw what parents should be.My husband's family is so kind and loving. I feel like I don't belong when I'm with them, but it feels good to be there.

Well there ya go, a little about me in a nut shell.

[Anne]

Hi Debbie, it is good to know there are others. I'm sure mine is a coping mechanism. I like living in the real world, but sometimes just have to get away. We have a lot of stress in our family right now, finances, sick relative, and I just don't want to face sometimes. But sometimes, I feel I can't turn it off. It just happens. Thats a little scary I guess. But hasn't caused me any harm so far, other than keeping people at a distance. I recently found out that my real father died when I was very young. I am the product of an affair. My "dad" stayed with my mom to keep the affair a secret so his mother would not be hurt. Guess that explains the unwanted feeling I have from my parents.

[DebbieP.]

Hi Anne,

It's uncanny how much our stories are alike in some ways.  But my mother abandoned me when I was 2, my father became an alcoholic (and also became verbally and physically abusive) and my grandmother raised me.  I started DDing when I was about 6 or 7 to escape my reality and create a world where I was safe and loved.  All of my DDs have a strong male presence, probably to compensate for the lack of one in my early life.

I also have a great StarTrek DD that I've nurtured for many years.  I used to go back to that one often, especially when my youngest child had colic and I was trapped (figuratively speaking) in my home with her.

I'm also very creative and when I'm making something in photoshop on my computer, I'm so absorbed that I never DD.  Although as the years progressed, I've found that I DD much less.  I'm really trying to stand in the real world.  I've known that on some level  this was initially a coping mechanism for me and later became an addiction.  I tried to stop many times when I realized that I should try to make my reality better instead of living in my head.  There are so many opportunities that I passed up because I didn't care what the world was offering, I was stranded in my DD.  That's a part of my life that I really regret.  These DD's seem as though I've wasted my life away.

I also have conversations in my head with people, especially when I'm angry and I want to tell them off.  It's usually a public figure and I know that I"ll never meet them in person, lol. 

I've researched this off an on for years hoping to find a 'cure'.  A few days ago was the first time I found something conclusive.  What a relief to know that there's others like me :)