So I Am New, Too

[Lynx]

Hello Fellows.

I'm putting my intro in a blog rather than spam the boards with it.

So.

I'm mostly a girl, 23 years old.

Mild Trigger warning- mentions of abuse and self-destruction

I remember daydreaming since I was very little.  I remember lying in bed and pretending I was a power ranger (:P) who was hurt and required the nurturing of the others.  Many of my more involved daydreams still have this theme (though more sophisticated now).  I suspect because of negligence/emotional intolerance/mild abuse growing up.  I'm not proud of this weird childish need that I have to be accepted unconditionally, but I'm also not proud that the only time I experienced it was in a daydream.  It's rather sad when I think about it for too long, really. 

As I got older my daydreams were things that happened simultaneously with my real life, constantly playing in the background as an alternative explanation for the life I was experiencing.  I pretended that I was a doll and that huge people were playing with me the same way I played with mine, at the same time.  Whenever I was just walking around, living my life at home, I would pretend we all lived underwater and I would "swim" through the house.  In middle school I created a character who was like me, but not me.  She was only 13 but she had been emancipated already and she was confident and responsible and happy.  I drew and wrote about her and her tiny studio apt and her pet in a composition book I had just for her.   After I got tired of her, me and a friend drew up our school schedules so that it was a Hogwarts schedule (science was potions, math was arithmancy, etc.) and pretended we were at Hogwarts.

Around age 12-14 was when it really changed.  This was also the age I really developed symptoms of either social anxiety or avoidance personality disorder (I suspect the latter). Up to this point I was quirky and eccentric and weird and I loved it.  I loved having an over-active imagination.  After this however was when it really became maladaptive. This was when I felt the need to do it, and when I started doing it with music and repetitive movement (I read that this is essentially a form of self-hypnosis, which can cause addictive chemicals to produce in the brain). I would run or jump on the trampoline, when we had one, while listening to songs. To this day, I still rate songs depending on how well I could daydream to them.  I started dedicated 30 minutes-several hours to it when I could, and I had to.  This held true all through high school.  After high school it took over completely.  Any moment when I was not actively engaged I was daydreaming,  and then I would start to choose daydreams over anything else, eventually wasting days if I could without people getting suspicious. 

I also have a severe inferiority complex, complete absence of confidence, and some OCD symptoms.  All of these things combined with depression and sometimes self-harm and suicidal ideation forced me to give up college (which doesn't make me feel any better about myself).

Briefly I was dating a man (who was completely not good for  me, but I thought even less of myself then than I do now) and during that time I didn't really daydream.  Perhaps it was being socially engaged again (and relatively happy about it) that did it.  During this time was also when I had a severe panic attack when he kissed me after I said no.  After this, two sort-of weird things happened that fit the description of implicit, or non-declarative flashbacks. I don't want to think about them.  When he and I broke up I started fantasizing again and haven't had any more  panic attacks or "flashbacks", if that's what they were.

I'm hesitant to actually label them as such because, being an intrinsically fantasy prone, open-to-experience person, it's very possible I made these things up and "forced" them to happen, as they are of a similar nature to some of my more horrible fantasies. I'm most embarrassed about this thought and probably will never explain that to a therapist.

I wasn't really going to originally address this, but I saw it talked about in the forum so I thought I would.  I have been having random moments of dissociation for as long as I can remember.  I have entertained the notion that perhaps my obsessive fantasizing is a tool I'm facilitating to help repress memories.  If these flashback really were that, then it's interesting that they, and the panic attack only happened when I was not daydreaming as obsessively.  Though the panic attack can be attributed to my social anxiety.  I have a new guy friend who, when he wanted to kiss me, I felt the same terror.  He respected my "no".

Anyway, that's all of my thoughts on this for now.  Very sorry this is so long; it wan't supposed to be. I probably won't be frequenting the forums very much as I feel reading about it too much will trigger me to fantasize and I'm trying very hard to cut down and be in control of my life.  It seems the only thing that works for me is being actively engaged and feeling fulfilled, so that's what I'm trying to do.  I recently read a quote what was something like "I don't want to just live the complete length of my life, but the total width of it too."  So that's what I shall attempt.

And that's all she wrote, for now.

 

[taffle]

Hi and welcome to wild minds! I also have SA, AVPD, and a fantasy prone mind. When I was a child I used to be obsessed with power rangers too.

I'm not proud of this weird childish need that I have to be accepted unconditionally, but I'm also not proud that the only time I experienced it was in a daydream.

I didn't fit in in real life, been through bullying and low self esteem, so I also find acceptance through my characters in my daydreams. I don't daydream about myself, rarely if ever, but rather daydream in third person.