Hi, I'm new here

[ImpishMisconception]

Hi, since as young as I can remember I've always been able to fully immerse myself in different worlds of my own with little to no effort at all.

Within the blink of an eye I can make up whole stories from the top of my head with plots and characters and places, the whole nine yards. I've always been able to do that, I don't remember ever having to struggle to imagine anything.

I'm Autistic and as a kid growing up in a world I didn't understand I enjoyed creating worlds in my head that I did understand. I would imagine myself doing things that in real life I couldn't do.

As I grew older I would daydream more often for longer periods of time but no one said that there was anything wrong with it, no one ever warned me about maladaptive daydreaming.

My life was very sheltered growing up and I lived in a very strict household where I was never good enough. I created worlds for myself where I was good enough and I was the hero to save the day. I would be forced to stand in the corner for hours on end with nothing to do so I daydreamed. I was often put to bed early when I wasn't sleepy so I daydreamed. I also had no friends at all growing up so I created my own imaginary friends. I was often forced to go to my room and sit on my bed and do nothing so I daydreamed.

My parents divorced when I was 16 so that brought a lot of chaos and stress into my life so I escaped by daydreaming. My Mom then later married my step-dad who is verbally, emotionally, and mentally abusive, an alcoholic, and he literally seriously believes he is perfect and right all the time about everything. I had to walk eggshells around him for years until I could move away and so to escape the stress of him I daydreamed.

Now I'm three thousand miles away from the abuse and 33 years old. Yet, I'm addicted to daydreaming, I can't stop it. I feel this compulsion that I must daydream, like a moth to a flame. I want to help it, I want to stop it, I feel like I no longer have a choice in whether I daydream or not. I daydream even when I don't want to, it just happens on it's own. It takes next to nothing to trigger a daydream it could be a piece of music, a picture, a conversation, a smell, or even nothing at all. I've already had to several daydreams while typing this. It doesn't matter where I am or what I'm doing, I daydream and I can't seem to get it to stop.

I daydream when people are talking to me and then I dunno what they said because I was in my own world so I have to ask them to repeat themselves and sometimes have to have them repeat themselves several times over because my brain keeps going elsewhere. I daydream while I'm reading and I've had to read sentences or whole paragraphs over again because my brain decided imaginary world was better. I daydream when I go for walks but sometimes because of the daydreaming I forget where I am or where I'm going which causes panic attacks because being lost is a phobia of mine. Sometimes people will tell me they have said certain things to me or have done certain things with me before but I'll have no recollection of it happening because while it was happening I was daydreaming. Sometimes while watching a show or movie I'll be daydreaming and then I miss things and I won't know what's going on in the show or movie because I was daydreaming. While listening to music I will daydream and I will keep my playlist going and I will actually have no idea what songs I'm listening to because I was daydreaming.

I also struggle with intrusive thoughts and sometimes my intrusive thoughts (it also takes next to nothing to trigger my intrusive thoughts) and maladaptive daydreaming overlap each other and just because I heard or saw a certain thing, now I'm unwillingly daydreaming it and it doesn't end there. I also struggle with night terrors which for me means when I wake up from the nightmare I still can see and hear perfectly the horrifying thing I dreamed right in front of me and it looks and sounds real even though it isn't. This can go on for weeks or months or even years on end without any break or peace and no where to escape and I can't control it. So an intrusive thought can easily lead to a maladaptive daydream to night terrors for who knows how long.

I sometimes feel like I'm a prisoner of my own imagination.

So, that's my story and so here I am.

[Valeria Franco]

Your past is a heavy baggage you bring around. Maladaptive daydreaming is a sort of medical drug we decide to take at  certain point of our life to cope with reality and in the end we like it so much that we become addicted, and we can't do without it.

Thanks for sharing your story!