Dream Life vs. Real Life

[Amari]

I'm 15 and I've been daydreaming for about two years I think.  I remember the first time I really got submerged in a daydream how awesome it felt.  I didn't have many friends at the time so I made up my own and for once I felt accepted, even if it was only in my dream world.  I actually had multiple different daydream realms that I made..I think I had up to four at one point.  But I think that got kind of overwhelming for me so now I only have one really intricate daydream.

Thankfully, I only dream when I'm by myself.  But I'm very introverted, so I spend more time alone than a lot of other people I know.  As a result, I dream a whole lot more than I want to.  Recently I've found myself getting very attached to the characters in my head.  I feel like since my dream life is my "ideal" life, I spend way more time there instead of reality.   For the past week or so, it's been affecting my productivity since I have end of quarter exams at school right now.  

My dream life also kind of makes me lose a sense of motivation to accomplish things in real life.  I figure that since I'm successful at all my ambitions in my dream world, I've already accomplished them in some sort of way so I don't try things in real life.  I know that I just have to push myself to do stuff but it's been really hard lately.  I already have always had little ambition but I feel like I've hit rock bottom internally.  Everything is a battle between my dream life and my real life.  I can easily distinguish the two but I haven't been able to stop comparing them.  Even though I guess that's kind of dumb to do since I designed my dream world to be everything I want in real life.

I am really grateful that I found out about MD and found this site to read about other people's stories and see that I'm not alone, my dreams have always kind of concerned me.  They're always very dark and violent and I even used to cry about the situations a lot.  Yet I constantly find myself wanting to be there and have trouble not being there. 

[mirrorgirl]

You sound like me when I was 15. Now I am 39 getting ready for 40. I wish I knew at your age what I know now about MDD. Consider yourself blessed with this knowledge so early in your life. Blessings to you!

[Stephi Boad]

Hi, I'm 16
Reading what you've put is like reading something I myself would write. Everything you mentioned I have too. I've had points where I've had more than one different dream 'realm', revisiting the different worlds depending on different moods I was in. But now I just have the one but it changes or stops and a new ones created occasionally. I too am an introvert, I'm shy and I don't go out to socialise very much besides school. I don't think you should worry too much about preferring your dream world to reality because ultimately it's just an outlet for your creativity, imagination and emotions and all artists prefer their own work to the world because it's personal :) I see having MD as actually a bit of a skill in some ways :)

I understand your problem of the dreams affecting school too. Generally I see my problem as not being able to get to sleep early enough and being able to concentrate. For the sleep, I try to go to bed a little earlier than I need to so that I can daydream and sometimes I have a character who tells me to go to sleep or puts me to sleep so that I fall asleep whilst in the dream. If you're struggling with focusing on work, I tend to combine my dream world with my reality, I imagine one of my characters with me helping me to do my work which is for a reason which is more exciting than just avoiding a detention and generally that helps me to get motivated :)

Sometimes I have very violent dreams but I'm always the victim, maybe this is some psychological problem I have I don't know but I wonder if you can relate XD I think my characters get aggressive when I need to experience drama to let out some of my more negative emotions and it also makes the parts where my characters are nice, nicer in comparison :)

I hope I've helped in anyway, keep in touch :)