Torturing myself through MD. How to stop?

[Dreamcatcher]

Hello to you all. I'm glad I found this website and wonder if you can help me out?

I have been a daydreamer as long as I can remember. I went through many different DDs, which were inspired by many sources. Now, my DDs changed to a downright abusive hell. I don't know what is to blame. Perhaps returning to work from 2 weeks long vacation (spent with my head in the clouds - again) and not being able to fall in yet.

My MD consist of many characters of the different backgrounds and their interactions are more genuine to me than the real world I live and work in. I cannot bring myself to take in and express fully and freely love, passion, and many other sensations. I can stay in that god-awfully fake chipper-mode while at work or in public and talk about weather, shopping and other safe topics, but I just can't bring myself to feel strongly about anyone (except for my close family - I care strongly about them, of course; I meant people outside). To take the risk and make that first step to a friendship or even romance. Being a control freak and a perfectionist with the huge intimacy issues doesn't help.

I emphatize with my characters to a fault, especially those who I can relate to the most (females in mid-20's), and that is the main problem. Scenes with six characters (three pairs) breaking up, them and many other characters having flashbacks of their malfunctioning family relations/deaths of their parents or siblings/being victims of the violent crimes as children or teenagers, facing dangerous and life-threatening things in their work etc... I have been recently replaying all these scenes over and over again. My obnoxious all day-every day daydreaming became unbearable. True, these terrible situations are nothing new, I deliberately made them up over time to give my characters more depth and make them more understanding (in their private) and hardened (in their work). I guess they need it, because many of them work in the similar organisations to Justice or Defense departments. :-)

I can accept myself buried in my daydreams to compensate for lack of a - well, everything - in the real world. I have already resigned to the idea I could have at least one thing in real world that I have in dream world. Like a satisfying job (jobs from my dream world don't exist in the real one) or a great friendships and romances (nothing is perfect in the real world, no one is that understanding and wordly). But as long as I remember, I had never wallowed in the worst parts of the character's lives so much and for a long period of time. I have been trying to focus on the more pleasant situations and it works fine at first but soon after I start to DD, I tend to slip back to the unpleasant ones without even noticing at first. It's like a nice dream turning into nightmare - there is not much to do about it. It's almost compulsive now and I'm so tired to deal with that.

It's starting to show up in real world too. I snapped a few times at people in work and at my own relatives. I apologized, of course, and come up with an excuse, but felt really bad about it. After all, it is nobody's fault but mine that my dream world turned into nightmarish place to spend most of my waking hours.

There is no one to discuss my problem with and pathetic as it may sound, I have no friends to talk to. Even if I had, I would be too scared to explain what is going on.

How to lessen the painful situations? Did anybody have similar problem before? What did you do? What shall I do?

I intended to be more brief, excuse the rambling and any possible grammar mistakes, English is not my mother language.

[Dreamcatcher]

Thank you for your support. It's hard to maintain positive thinking.

[Gale Potter]

I have somehow been able to shift my bad daydreams to the morning and my good ones to night. Like make my daydreaming part of my OCD. At night I indulge in only the good dreams ( this took a lot of work at first because almost everything was negative, but I found dreams that stuck finally ). In the mornings I wake up and immediately the negative dreams start. I sometimes don't even realize it's happening for 20 minutes to a couple of hours. As soon as I realize it, I get up and start my daily routine. In the day, I've managed to make my daydreams about 50/50 positive to negative and that took a lot of work too. It's almost like lucid dreaming. Once I become lucid of the fact I am dreaming negatively, I start a new positive dream consciously. If I'm able, I'll see a negative character and just shake my head and scream GO AWAY !

[LJ]

I can relate.  No advice yet, just stick to this website for support.  Lashing out is common.  Especially when someone interrupts your dd or you are in the middle of a angry dd episode. 

I won't tell ANYONE but you all here on this website about my dding.  Just too painful to think of the rejection if other people decide it's too weird.

Most of my dd's are pleasant and rule in my favor.

[greyartist]

I don't have any advice. But I do understand. I too seem to be stuck in Daydream nightmares. No matter how hard I try to steer them to a happy story it always falls apart, or will just end and another start. I don't know why we have to punish ourselves like this.

[taffle]

I can relate. I make my characters go through pain and suffering but there's always a happy ending. I try to turn a negative daydream into a positive one.

[northern gal]

I'm no therapist, that's for sure...and this site has been great as it has allowed me and many others, as it seems, to find out that we are not alone.  What is missing, however, is the "why do we do it", "is it OK, or how much is too much", "what do we do about it, if anything", and many other types of topics of discussion.  So, just based on my personal experience with daydreaming, it seems that I, and no doubt you also, have the ability to change my dreams.  It seems for me, when life was going rough, was for me to daydream the worst case scenerio, like when I planning to leave my abusive husband...and when life is halfway decent, to have fun life-fulfilling dreams to make life even more enjoyable.  I use a lot of my daydreaming to work  out what is going on with my real life...if nothing else, to have a "perfect side"  to live in addition to my real life.    When you are having a good dream and it starts to turn ugly, have you tried to just stop for a while, then restarting later once you can let your brain "deboot"?   If you haven't, that might help...kind of like a recovering alcoholic taking it one day at a time.  Just a thought....