Why is it so hard for some of us MDers to tell people our daydreams?

[Elaine Steele]

For years, I've been working on writing my daydream down, in the hopes that getting it out onto the page would eventually help me tell it to my therapist. Last year, I gave him a written outline of my heroine's life. Recently, I've talked to him about less cringeworthy parts of the daydream. And now, after several sessions of just talking about what it feels like to think about telling him the whole thing--and weeks of practice just uttering difficult sentences aloud--I finally took the plunge today. 

At first, I was excited. I felt like my heroine, who finds it therapeutic to jump off high diving boards. Without anyone there to watch her, she waits at the end of the diving board for a very long time, and won't jump "until the instinct to recoil gives its self-sacrificial assent." When it does, and she jumps, she is overcome with gratitude to that instinct. That's how she learns to be brave.

In previous sessions, I've felt like that too. I once told my therapist this very part of the daydream. I got stuck on the words "until the instinct to recoil gives its self-sacrificial assent," but I did just as my heroine does: I didn't jump, I didn't say those words, until my whole body told me it was ready, in spite of feeling afraid. I garbled the words, but that didn't matter at all. I said them, and after that session, as soon as I was out of the therapist's office, I found myself crying for joy.

This time around, though, as I read the first chapter of the daydream aloud, it wasn't the cathartic experience I was hoping for. It just felt awkward. After the first chapter, I couldn't go on. My therapist wondered if maybe there's some reason for this feeling, that hasn't become clear to us yet.

I've talked to him about how I feel like once I tell him the daydream, it won't be mine anymore. I won't be able to hide inside it from its cringeworthiness. (I know my daydream is cringeworthy, but I forget that when I'm absorbed in it, you know?) So I've told him I want to be a little bit more humble and care less about what he thinks. 

I've also talked to him about how much more personal the daydream is than my real life. It comes straight from my heart, whereas my real life seems to consist mostly of random contingencies that say nothing about me. 

If you also have the experience of finding it hard to tell people your daydreams, do you think it's for the same reasons? Or do you have other reasons?