Introducing myself and my daydreaming

[Alexander Deprez]

I always knew that i daydreamed to much, but today I googled it for the first time. What a surprise to see that so many people have the same problem. And even the symptoms are the same. I want to start my blog with an introduction. I want to tell you my story in several parts

part 1 - who am I

part 2- daydreaming as a child

part 3 - what I daydream about now

part 4 - connection with other addictions

So here it goes

part 1 - who am I

I'm Alexander. A 23 year old student from Belgium. I have a bachelor degree in Applied Psychology and i'm currently following a bridge year at the University at Leuven so next year I can start with my Master in Psychology. I'm pretty normal. I have many friends, a smaller circle of realy good friends, I have had several good relationships, most of the times in the past I had good grades. I have 2 great sisters, loving parents (30 years married this year). I was in a youthmovement for 12 years. I have a steady well payed student job. And I am happy with my life in general. I do have some addictions (see part 4). So for the outside world, I am a very normal person. Some might even say my life is above average good.

part 2 - daydreaming as a child

I don't remember much about my daydreaming as a child. I only know that I did it. I would walk around in a part of the garden where my parents couldn't see me and just fantasize stories. I don't know wich stories but I know that I wasn't always the center of attention. Most of the time I wasn't in it. I also remeber daydreaming for two years about owing a computer. Because I had this rich friend who had a computer on his room. In those days, only 1 on 10 families owned a computer. It's not that I didn't have friends, but my parents often said no if I asked if a friend could come over and play. And I lived close to a big street, so I couln't just go in my neighbourhood to fiend friends. When I was like 11 or 12 years old, when friends came over, we only watched tv because all I was used to when being alone was daydreaming outside. Do I have traumas in my youth? well not that bad. I was bullied by some people for being the fat kid. But not that extreme. I had this strange relation with some boys. They where like friends, they would let me play with them, they would invite me to their birthdayparties, but at the sime time they could be quite rude and called me fatty. I honestly can't say that my youth was traumatising. I just had a very creative and active mind, and while other children played with toys, I just walked around imagining.

part 3 - what I daydream about now

My daydreams can take 4 forms:

• I imagine a biography of a great person. I'm that person and I imagine myself at my peak. So if music is the theme, I will be this great musician who had very musical parents, great training,.... If powerlifting is the theme, I will be the strongest man in the world, with a father who is a ex champion powerlifting, and i will imagine a perfect youth that would support this carreer. The fantasy i almost always composed of background (parents, genes, livingplace), a perfect youth (starting developing a talent very young, being a champion as a kid, going pro of becoming famous at age 18), then a series of events that demonstrate that i am the best who has ever lived. And I stop at the moment where everything that is possible for that carreer has been achieved. In a later post i will write out my powerlifting fantasy.
  These dreams are often triggerd by reading or watching documentaries about real great people.
• I imagine a storie where I am the main character. Looks like a movie. This is more random and often triggerd by playing videogames or watching a movie. My list fantasy like this was me being an owner of a car tuning garage. But my garage is out dated, I have no money because I have to pay of a debt to the government for causing an accident in a streetrace. I have a bad knee because of that accident. One thay this son of an oil baron from the arabian emirates comes to mee. He has hered I'm the best car tuner in the world and he wants me to create him the perfect car for a race. This race is just between other rich people and is more a show off money. Then I use all my knowledge about cars (combined with elements from movies I have seen) to make that car in my head. When the prince finds out that I used to be a great racer, they offer to pay for expensive sugery to repair my knee so I can race for them. These stories never have a decent ending.
• I imagine myself in a perfect future. Like I would like to be a sport psychologist (honest, not a fantasy) but then I will imagine being the best in the world. Like football teams would hire me and they would become the best team in the world. (i'm talking about soccer, but in belgium we call if football). Or I would work with this 18 year old average bodybuilder to proof how good I am, and a few years later he becomes Mr. Olympia. I have many other perfect futures. They all start with how I am know, but then the fantasy is often very exagerated.
• I imagine a situation in the past or in the future that I wished/wish would (have) happen(ned) Mostly if is about the past, it is regret. I should have worked out more, I should have reached that and that goal. If it is about the futre, then I imagine how that situation will go. Sometimes this is not bad, but to often I fantasy about a situation in the near future that when i'm honest about it will probably not happen.

part 4 - connection with other addictions

There are 2 moments when my addiction skyrockets: when I eat, and when I smoke alone. And this works in two directions. When I eat (normal meals) I will fantasize. When I feel like smoking, I will fantasize. But often I snack or just eat a whole bag of chips mindlessly so I can fantasize. Or I will have a sigaret so I can fantasize. I actually find it really hard to fantasize without those other addictions. While working on those addictions, I have found out that my addiction to daydreaming is actualy also the biggest trigger for my other addictions. 20% of my sigarets are smoked when going out with people, 70% is when i feel the need to fantasize and only 10% is like pure nicotine addiction. When I eat, i prefer eating alone so I can daydream, because I know otherwise, people will talk to me. Also I will buy a bag of chips in the supermarket just for the purpose of fantasizing. Its like my other addictions justy daydreaming, because walking around doing nothing looks weird, but with a sigaret of with food its normal.

I also have a total other form of fantasizing. But this is more in connection with my pornography addiction. (that i'm trying to solve also). I bought my first computer at age 12. When you are a 12 year old, with a computer in your room, a fast internet connection and a friend who has 4 older brothers, then it doesn't take long to find porn. At first it looked inoscent (altough I now realize it wasn't healty for the young version of me to see that) but now it has become an addiction. Often fantasies will trigger watching porn.

So here you have it. My story. I hope to continue this blog for myself and for others. To analyze my behaviour. And hopefully I can cure myself. At the same time I will try to quit smoking, quit watching porn (and all behaviour related to this) and quit eating besides the normal meals.

[greyartist]

welcome

[Eretaia]

A hundred years ago they only had one diagnose: you are crazy.

Roflmao. Ahahah.

But still, they have labels for stuff like trichotillomania but no one ever  figured out daydreaming. It's probably due to the fact that it's so personal and not many people share it.

[Alexander Deprez]

That is psychology. Its a fairly new science. A hundred years ago they only had one diagnose: you are crazy, and year after year things got split up. I mean, recently the DSM-V has been released. Just look at autism. It used to be just autism. Now they make a difference between asperger's syndrome, rett syndrome, childhood disintegrative disorder, autism spectrum and pervasive development disorder not otherwise specified.
So I think it is just a matter of time. The evolutoion of the DSM is often based on seeing that a symptome is actualy a independent disorder. They see a significant amount of people that have like 3 out of 5 criteria to be classified. Because this group is significant, they seperate it. I believe one day they will do the same, they will see that there are many people who daydream but don't have other criteria, and they will make a seperate class for it. Or at least I hope that one day this will happen.

[Eretaia]

It surely does. MD is probably a coping mechanism which accompanies other disorders or certain emotional problems. I don't think of it a stand-alone condition. It's actually quite present in people with Asperger's syndrome, social anxiety, avoidant personality disorder, and I've even seen instances of schizoid and schizotypal persons claiming to have it. It's far more different from normal daydreaming process even when it comes to content. I almost find it ridiculously hilarious that there hasn't been any research on it before.

[Alta Morden]

Interesting the mutual relationship between smoking and eating.  I don't smoke, and the DDs just run along regardless of other activities including eating.  Thanks for posting this, for me it is a new angle.

[Alexander Deprez]

MD needs to be researched that is my final conclusion. Because MD has similarities with OCD, with addiction, but is also one of the DSM-IV criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, its one of the primary defense mechanismes of Avoidant Personality Disorder and its one of the criteria for ADD. MD could be a disorder on itself, or could be a symtome of something else. I personaly would start with the questions: how much, since when, what do you daydream about,...  For myself i'm also very curious to what other smokers do when they smoke alone outside. what is their mind occupiedwith? Memories, planning the future, thinking about problems or daydreaming? Maybe people with MD have a neurol connection with their subconcious that "normal" people don't have. I mean, i don't always chose to daydream. The moment I don't have an exact action to do, or when i can do an action on autopilot, my mind starts daydreaming right away. I mean, so many people dream (in sleep) about things they saw in the day before, maybe we get a glimpse of what our brain does while we are awake. This stuff is so interesting. So interesting in fact that , altough I try to stop myself, that i even daydream about the idea of researching MD as a psychologist.

[Eretaia]

It's kind of amusing that your MD triggers smoking. If it really functions like an addiction, it'd be sort of like this: when you begin daydreaming, there's an increasing surge in dopamine causing over-stimulation of the reward system which produces positive emotions and thus prompts you to repeat the action over and over again. Then your smoking addiction activates because your brain also associates cigarettes with release of dopamine and it's trying to make you produce more of it by engaging in yet another addictive behavior. So, yeah, if MD is like an addiction, quitting one will rule out another as well because your brain isn't addicted to neither daydreaming or smoking or eating - but to dopamine itself.

But what if MD isn't a typical addiction? What if it's more similar to OCD where you'd daydream to reduce anxiety and not just induce positive feelings?

Ohh, do a survey if possible! ;) I bet MD is much more common than we think. 

[Alexander Deprez]

To bad my major in Psychology is Work and Organisational Psychology. If I followed Clinical Psychology, or Research and Experimental Psychology I could actually do my Master Paper on this subject. And as students we have to participate in a few experiments and questionaires, so I could actually make a survey and use it on around 800 students to see how many have MD. I do plan to mail to a few professors to ask if they know something on the subject of MD. Maybe if they find it interesting enough, they might add it to the Master Paper suggestion list, and so another student can do his/here paper about it.

[taffle]

Interesting, MD and other addictions go hand in hand. Sometimes, I can be addicted to music and it triggers my MD. Many times when I eat dinner, MD comes along but I try to stop that.

[Alexander Deprez]

Well they never botherd me. But I start to realize that quit smoking is hard because of my MD. I have noticed that MD triggers smoking and lesser the other way around. Also MD triggers mindless eating. So by learning to control my MD, i hope to make quit smoking and mindless eating easyer. Also, I believe my MD is responsible for not being botherd with MD. My MD keeps me happy because the way I see it, it is a coping mechanism. While fantasizing, I don't have to deal with the real world. But now that I labeled it as MD and take a honest look, I see how much time I lose. So I only started bothering me the last few days. As a student psychology, I look at this from many angles. Due to my addiction to porn (I don't watch it daily, not even weekly, but i call it an addiction because I can't seem to not watch for longer then 3 weeks, even when in a relationship with sex) i have learned allot about the dopamine system. And watching porn results in lesser interest in finding a real woman, is decreases motivation to be a better person for a potential mate (like taking care of yourself, working out, eating healthy) and it reduces the interest in going out, because your brain has already rewared you for following the insinct to reproduce (altough it was fake, your brain doesnt know that), i believe MD is similar. Your brain rewards you for things you haven't done, and as a result you are less likely to act in real life to realy achieve those goals. (i think i will make a blog entry with this, because it is getting lengthy :p )

on the last question, only sexual fantasies trigger watching porn.