My MD

[David Brain]

So I'm not really sure why I should write out anything regarding my daydreaming, sometimes it feels like I'm in control, but I am constantly feeling regret for the time I waste deep in my mind versus doing something productive. Gone are the days of daydreaming 6+ hours of my day away, mostly from sheer necessity as I have graduated with a BS degree and hold a job. I supposed my intention and ideal goal for this entry is to express my struggle with daydreaming in a hope that it will help me further along on my way to completely stopping. So with this in mind, I'll start at the beginning.

 

It began innocently enough although looking back I could and quite often do, blame my parents for not realizing what I was doing and pushing me to do things in reality versus my mind. My daydreaming started from a lack of activities and social interactions.  When I was a child my parents were members of a very strict religious group that had wildly ridiculous rules regarding allowable activities, this caused my parents to homeschool me until the 5th, - 8th grade and then my freshman year of highschool. Needless to say this caused a whole mess of issues I've struggled to overcome and I would say I've done a damn good job adjusting. This all contributed to my need for enhancing my world with daydreams. I also did not mention that some of the other things besides going to school that I was not allowed to do were; play organized sports, go the the movies, own/watch TV (we didn't actually have a TV until 9.11), play with toys that had gun themes. These rules were enforced with spanking, and combined created a fear of new things, people etc, as nearly everything was "bad". This lack of exposure to life, people, and experiences in general forced me to create a world in which I could do all of the things I wasn't allowed to. I began spending my time in the world I wanted to live in, in my brain. I did however push my parents toward allowing me to do things, over the years I succeeded in bringing in TV, Movies, and other activities into the things I was allowed to do, and further pushed the boundaries once I went away to boarding school my sophomore year of high-school. Also a positive thing that happened in my daydreaming is that my daydreams were largely based on reality and things that I have since gone out and done. However I still day dream about things my life isn't and what I would like it to be. I do see a silver lining in that I tend to work towards my day dream life and have actually made progress in areas, this is more in the past that what I currently deal with. While I continue to day dream I find that the older I get it tends to distract me from going for things I want in my life such as women and a really good job based in the actual field which of which I have a degree. I believe growing up where my parents made such strong decisions as to what I could and could not do I find myself waiting and dreaming about things happening to me rather than going out there and making them happen.

In the past three years I have finally acknowledged this daydreaming as a problem that actually has effects on my life rather than simply something I do when I'm bored. I've talked to two professionals, neither had any idea what the hell I was talking about when I tell them about my day dreaming and had no idea what a suitable treatment would be. Recently I read an article where they mentioned the medication Luvox as being helpful to control the day dreams, I am reluctant to turn to medication however. Also the article mentioned that even the ability to day dream as intensely as we do, seems to be related to early childhood trauma of some kind, which given my childhood makes perfect sense. 

In the recent (5 month) past I have begun to really attempt to begin living a fuller life in order to detract from my day dreaming, I've joined a gym I go to nearly daily as well as play sports with my roommates. I have 4 roommates, we all live in a house together, I find that having people around me helps keep me present and out of my head. Of course there are the times spent in my room with the music pounding simply lost in my mind, however I try to limit this to spans of 20 min or less.

As you can probably tell I've spent considerable time dissecting this habit and trying to find reasons for it, for now I will wrap this post up now even though I have yet to explain my parents motivations for the way they were when I was young given their childhood and parents, but I will save that for later. In conclusion I believe that;

A: My daydreaming is a learned copping mechanism from my childhood.

B: I am addicted to this mechanism.

C: I have to conclude that it is an addiction that can be broken and put to rest, I have quite smoking after 7 years so I'm confident I can quite this one although I have say nearly 20 years with this one.

Not sure what all this will do but there are a grand total of 2 people that I've told about this obsession of mine so I figure it can't hurt to vent a little :) maybe someone else can use my experience to help understand their own daydreaming.

 

Thanks for reading

 

DB