My story and some techniques

[Alta Morden]

When I first started on the internet, in around 2000, I did several searches on daydreaming, and variations using other words.  I never found anything helpful, and after sporadically trying for a few years, I had given up.  For some reason three days ago I tried again and was startled to discover this site and to read the paper by Jayne Bigelsen and Cynthia Schupak (Compulsive fantasy: Proposed evidence of an under-reported syndrome through a systematic study of 90 self-identified non-normative fantasizers) and was stunned by both the posts on this site and the paper’s contents.  It was interesting to see that a tentative name had also been created “Maladaptive Daydreaming”.

 

I see that the site encourages blog posts for members to give their own stories and add anything they had found helpful.  So, I offer this in the hope that a few of you may find something of interest or help.

 

My story, briefly:

I am now 63 years old, retired and living alone.  I started daydreaming at a very young age, though I can’t recall exactly.  In other words, I cannot remember a time when I didn’t daydream.  My mother has told me that I had imaginary friends even in the period before coherent memories start.  Doing a meditation 5 or 6 years ago, I was inspired to draw a picture of myself, sitting in front of the house with pain wiggles coming from my rear end (a spanking I assume) looking up and creating images.  In the meditation it seemed as if that was the start.  But to be fair, while I grew up in a time when corporal punishment was considered appropriate for children, my parents were in general kind and my family life was warm and positive.

 

My initial daydreams were of course simple reflecting my limited understanding of the world but reading and increased knowledge made them more and more complex.  I can even now recall a story line from my early teens which was fairly complex.  I have always favoured science fiction themes, even when fairly young.  Of course I created both kinds of fantasies mentioned in the paper: those where I was perfect and amazing and everyone was overwhelmed with admiration at my sheer awesomeness, and the other kind where I was the narrator of long and elaborate stories with multiple characters and embedded story lines.

 

Despite this I managed to get an education, find a job which I kept for 35 years, and get married and eventually after 24 years get divorced.  No kids but that was my husband’s idea. But, and this is a huge overwhelming BUT and why I am writing this, the daydreams were always there.  Very little stopped them and even then only briefly and afterwards I would pick up where I had left off.  For years, decades, I didn’t even try to stop them.  They seemed normal because after all they had always been there.  But I was pretty sure that no one else in the whole world did this.  And even from the start they were a source of shame, like a secret vice.  And of course, as many of you mention and is in the paper, an intense source of pleasure, amusement, diversion, distraction.

 

I was probably in my forties when I realized how much trouble they were causing in my life.

-          They drained the colour out of real life, making it seem flat and boring and depriving me of being engaged in life

-          They drained away any genuine engagement with other people.  With the stories running always in the background, I could never fully get involved with other people; I was keeping everyone at a distance.

-          I have no idea whether the daydreams caused or were caused by my social anxiety.  Clearly it is not crippling because I do interact with the world, but it is always there.

-          They often made it hard to sleep, refusing to turn off when I wanted to sleep.

-          When I did it too intensely I got terrible stomach aches and headaches.

-          They would not stop when I wanted them to stop.  I couldn’t control them. Sometimes I would try and stop for even 1 minute, one tiny minute, and I couldn’t do it.

 

So, I started my intermittently successful campaign to get them out of my life.   And it is intermittent, as I write this I pulled out of the last bout less than two weeks ago.

 

I am going to write some of the methods, tricks and paradigm shifts that I use, but comment these came to me gradually, in bits and pieces, worked at and modified over time.

First, I decided to see the daydreams as ‘other’, or ‘not-me’.  This is what I understand to be called a paradigm shift, or a different way of seeing something.  This helps because then I can regard them as ‘the enemy’ and not see acting against them as attacking myself.  Sometimes I visualize them as demons, sometimes as malevolent beings who want to steal my energy.  I switch it around a bit.

 

Several years ago, during meditation, I asked ‘who’ the daydreams are and wrote down (I occasionally channel) this somewhat daunting reply: 

“I am blind but can see in the dark.

I am the dark, what is occult.

Hidden mysteries.

I neither hate nor love nor fear.

I play you like an instrument.

I come in through your third eye which is wide open, without protection.

You are sweet and juicy to me, full of life. I will suck out the juice and leave a husk.

You are not important to me as a person or an individual soul.

Old, I am very old”

 

I also wrote down:  “It is the face of the deeps, it is as old as time, it takes what it needs to survive”.

The daydreams are a mimicry of true love.

I asked what can help me and I wrote down: “You feel God and do not despair.  You know that there is light as well as dark and feel reality.  Not cut off. Attracted to the outer world through the divine mystery of faith and understanding.  Light shoots up through you and you feel reassured”.

 

By the way, I am not religious.  I don’t think it meant conventional faith.

 

So, once you can see the daydreams as ‘other’, ‘thought-forms’ or whatever, they can be more easily faced.  How, after all, can we face down ourselves?

And if you thought the above was New-Agey,  I guess it gets more so. You need a way to hold yourself together.  Now I discovered and refined what the New Agers call centering and grounding.  You absolutely have to do this.  I used the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (if interested, just Google it), even though I am none of pagan, witch or wiccan. Twice a day, morning and bed time though the morning one is much stronger.  You can use any centering and grounding routine, just be consistent.  There are lots online, do a search and you can find one that matches your belief set.  Belief in God is not required.

Be vigilant.  I cannot stress that enough.  Once they are inside you, they are horrifyingly hard to get out.  Once out (after a week of what feels like a painful and anxiety-wracked drug detox), they are somewhat more easily kept out.  You are particularly vulnerable when ill or stressed; though I am sure you all know that.

 

Lastly, this is going to sound silly, but try it.  Bells.  Little bells, larger bells.  Ring bells around yourself, particularly your head, when you feel under attack.

 

Alta Morden

 

[Dee-ei]

wow..though are age are very much apart, your experiences and troubles met are very much alike... wow..you write well and clearly. I learned something new again... :) 

[Alta Morden]

Thank you for the comments and understanding view Gina.

To me "centering' is needed because in a sense the DD's pull us out of ourselves.  "Centering' would be almost an extreme form of 'being in the moment'.  Because being intensely aware (if only for a minute) of the very physical nature of yourself and the real world nearby.  That should include sounds and smells.  It pulls you out the DD and into reality.  Sadly it doesn't always last, but it can be very helpful.

Again, I am so appreciative of your comments.

Alta

[Gina Black]

I don't think it's silly, I always found the sound of bells to be calming for some reason (the sound of metal in general). It gives me an "internal rhythm", if that makes sense. That's probably why some religions used them against the dark spirits!

What is centering? I've used shielding and grounding, against the social phobia I had, and it worked wonders! I do reccomend it too. No pentagrams or rituals needed, just sheer imagination. The whole point is, your brain has to believe it works. An easy feat for a DDer, right? ;) It's all about will-power.

"The DDs are a mimicry of true love" I like the way you describe it.

It doesn't have to be religious, I think it's a nice metaphor of how things inside us may work. Everyone is charmed by the darkness inside at some point, one way or another-I've seen quite a few people describing a dark imaginary friend, or something of the sort. I've had a lot of fights with mine, until I could get the upper hand. It can be diffrent for everyone, though. Spirituality has a long history of trying  to cope with peoples' light and dark side so, although it's filled with semi-religious munbo-jumbo,  it can work.