Why we are proud of daydreaming ?...

[maro]

I mean I see people on the site somehow proud of MDD ..Is it something to be proud of ...a disorder really ??

Daydream has always kept us in an empty circle ..always daydreaming ...wasted our times

We all started DD as a coping mechanism for loneliness maybe just emptiness and feeling bored 

we dreamed of a better life ..Is that what we get ?imaginations 

We wanted to live an amazing life ...We are split between two worlds and we are not living in those too we are distracting ourselves from being real ..instead of living it we wanted the day to end ...what we really wanted is what we are abandoned from it ..To LIVE ...TO HAVE GREAT MOMENTS...

Have we ever calculated the price of sacrifice we are doing for the joyful moments in DD ? Do we know what we really miss ?

How come we value life and moments ??! Can we realize that the way we love for ourself turned out to be our own misery and distraction !! 

Do you know that if our lives was really great we won't even think of daydreaming....it is dependence to feel good and affirmation... 

My wish is that we can be courage enough to handle pain than to daydream ...it is not our answer ...won't lead us to anything 

There is a right and wrong way to seek life ...there is sanity and disorders...

IF we can be free from DD and from the problem that caused it go back we left our true US ..We wont need to daydream because reality has a value than a thousand daydreams ...while daydream root your problem deep reality show it and help you get better ..we will feel inside ourself that we are ENOUGH ..we need NOTHING to make us feel better..Connect to reality TO PEOPLE ...found a safe place ..CHANGE UR MIND from being satisfied about dreams ..U who have always dreamed for a better life deserve a better one really ! 

[MatthewR]

This post captures exactly how i feel. My dd'ing has nothing to do with creativity. It's a neurotic escape into fantasy so i don't have to deal with real life. There's a hidden wish for perfection and a desire to be powerful. But none of it leads anywhere. When i stop dd'ing, i'm no better off. Loneliness, emptiness, boredom...yeah, i feel these things. Sometimes i think daydreaming is better than living this hopeless reality, and that's why i continue doing it. Like Source said, some of us would rather have this pale excuse for a life than the alternative, which is like total destruction or another kind of death. I totally understand how that feels, but i think our estimation of ourselves is so low that we end up abandoning everything that might help to change our situation. To compensate for our shitty self, we imagine these awesome scenarios where we can have everything we want without actually working for it. It's neurotic, because it takes us away from other people and real life. I guess I don't like being myself, and that's why i dd. I regret a lot, but still nothing changes. I like what Maro says. This post means so much to me... Thank you. I'll think more on this. 

[Tatiana Dias]

This post is amazing, it really sums up what I and probably most DDers feel... Thank you for posting this, it really is an inspiration to overcome MDD and keep hope for a better and real life!

I've read some of the comments of the discussion bellow and I get what @darmody is trying to say: I also do try to write in order to pacify my MDD  and try to make an healthy alternative out of it. And I also do understand that maybe people who does this need a proper space to debate their ideas and discuss new ways of creativity brought along with MDD. Maybe even a proper name to call it instead of referring to it, not as a disease but kind of a good "side effect" of it...

But I also get @maro's point... In fact, I can agree when she says that maybe trying to do this is a way of non acceptance of MDD... In the bigging I was do it myself and believe me... It was bring me more pain than joy, even when I was DDing or writing about something good and happy... Cus then I stop and think "this is not real life... I'm not really living it, experiencing it... I want to but what am I doing in order to achieve it??"And my answer to that is NOTHING! I'm stuck in my mind, at home, imagining the perfect life, the great person I would be instead of going out and do something that really contributes to my future, that might bring my dreams to life. To real life! Even right now, right this second, all of as are set down on our computers or cellphones reading and debating this, worrying about DDing instead of going out and do something... But I get it, just like me (probably) most of us feel the need to talk this through so we dont loose the control and feel that we're not the only ones... Maybe keep it real...

[Eretaia]

"Your analogies about fish and sex are off-base, because there are about a million  websites where you can talk about enjoying food or sex, and you can talk about them in  the real world. But I went over 30 years without being able to talk about my daydreams, until I found out about MDD. Because no one but people on this site and sites like it ever talk about the ability Of refer to as intensive daydreaming, even if they mostly  talk about it as a pathology."

I think you're taking it a bit too literally. If you want to talk about NASA in MD community or MD in NASA community, I don't care. That's beyond my point. My one and only statement is that positive aspects of daydreaming should not be taken into consideration as a part of MD or exalted in context of MD, just like positive aspects of sex on physical health should not be relevant to someone addicted to porn. The fact that one overcame porn addiction has zero influence on whether sex is healthy or not. Porn addict being proud of his addiction because sex is healthy is ridiculous. Point ended.

"Your question was loaded, because my point has always been not about a vivid inner life as such, but about a particular kind of daydreaming, which I call intensive or vivid daydreaming. 

By no means would all creative types need to discuss their inner lives exclusively in the context of MD. Because, as I said, vivid inner lives are not a new subject. I have at hand libraries full of books from which to draw if I want to talk about it. MD is not a fruitful topic for inner lives in general."

I'm not talking about artistic creativity or artistic inner life. I'm talking about the use of intense fantasy here just like you are. If you think your daydreaming skills are not maladaptive and want to discuss the phenomenon of intense and vivid daydreaming without having involve yourself with psychopathology of addiction, there is tons of material and terminology in Jungian psychology which is far more complex than anything you will find here. Once again, I don't care if you discuss your hyperfocus trance daydreams here - it's all fine by me - but if someone is glorifying MD - i.e. a psychological addiction - because of the positive aspects of daydreaming as a phenomenon, I'll be the first to argue against them. 

"You may be allowing your personal experience to overwhelm your perception."

It's not my personal opinion that psychological addictions and the addictive activities as activities per se are not connected. Most of the models of addiction go with this definition. 

[darmody]

@Eretaia..."As long as people mistake maladaptive daydreaming for creativity"

You may be allowing your personal experience to overwhelm your perception. Because you're right, some people do that. Some think that if they stop daydreaming excessively they won't create at all, and only think passively, or something. I don't know. But you sound like a proselytizer for a cause. That cause being MDD Awareness, or whatever. That's not my interest. 

I keep trying to get across two things: 1). there's the ability, which I call intensive daydreaming, which is closely associated though not cotermimous with MD; 2). there isn't anywhere else I've found to talk about intensive daydreaming, nor any other widely accepted terms with which to describe it, and this is the best place for that. Also, that I'm not alone, and when some people talk proudly about MD on this site that's where they're coming from. 

Which might be bad for the March of Progress against the disease, or whatever it is you're talking about. But not everyone is talking about that. I didn't think this site was so narrow as to preclude the others. 

[darmody]

@Eretaia..."Imagine if all famous writers or artists or thinkers discussed their vivid inner life in context of MD."

There has been enough written about artistic creativity across the generations that they have a dictionary of terms at hand to describe what they do. So they don't have to fall back on pathological terminology to get across what they want to say. Nevertheless, psychological jargon plagues such discussion, for obvious reasons. 

Surely the creative process is more complex and mysterious than is possible to explain to people who don't experience it directly. And since the processes in question are mental, psychology is going to overlap heavily with the subject. Though there wouldn't be any reason to restrict yourself to talking about MD in particular, there is good cause for relying heavily on psychology and even psychopathology. Not for nothing are artists popularly associated with madness.

Your question was loaded, because my point has always been not about a vivid inner life as such, but about a particular kind of daydreaming, which I call intensive or vivid daydreaming. If an artist happens to have vivid daydreams, he may find it impossible to get across exactly what it is he does. Because the general public isn't aware that such a thing exists, and there's a dearth of words one can use to tell them about it. Now, it just so happens that one area where knowledge of intensive daydreaming is increasing and spreading beyond those with first-hand experience is related to a mental disorder. Unsurprisingly, people who want to talk discuss the creative process as it relates to daydreaming might find its terminology useful.

By no means would all creative types need to discuss their inner lives exclusively in the context of MD. Because, as I said, vivid inner lives are not a new subject. I have at hand libraries full of books from which to draw if I want to talk about it. MD is not a fruitful topic for inner lives in general. 

For intensive daydreaming in particular, that's another story. 

However, on the specific subject of intensive daydreaming, I believe it is. More fruitful than anything I've ever come across. 

[darmody]

@Eretaia...Your analogies about fish and sex are off-base, because there are about a million websites where you can talk about enjoying food or sex, and you can talk about them in the real world. But I went over 30 years without being able to talk about my daydreams, until I found out about MDD. Because no one but people on this site and sites like it ever talk about the ability Of refer to as intensive daydreaming, even if they mostly talk about it as a pathology. 

I may have the disorder, by the way. I do it over an hour a day. But I'm not primarily interested in talking about it as a disorder. I'm interested in the ability itself, and like being able to talk to others who experience it. 

You can list off different online communities that may touch upon it. I don't know how much they do. I've been scouring literature on lucid dreaming for years, because I know it's gotta be closely related to what I'm talking about. I don't know about Jungian philosophy, and maybe I could find fellow Myers-Briggs types, I don't know.

But I can say, unequivocally, finding MDD sites was like a lightning bolt! And it wasn't about the disease as such; it was about the kind of daydreaming these people were doing. I can't tell you what a relief it was to find, and I've not been able to find anything like it anywhere else, period. 

"why do you even need to create an additional label for it?"

Because I experience two distinct types of daydreaming. One is the normal kind, the kind I assume everyone does. The other I only experience when I'm "playing with strings," which is how I put it in my blog post. (Rarely, I can experience something similar listening to music or reading a book, but it's not as sustained.) The two are alike in that they're both forms of daydreaming, but they are worlds apart in my experience.

I've never heard extended discussion of the latter kind except on sites like this.

[Eretaia]

"That may be true (I don't know whether you can say for sure, given it's not at this point a strictly defined or widely recognized disorder), because as I said below MDD is by definition "bad daydreaming.""

I don't have MD anymore and my creativity and imagination are intact. Frankly speaking, I would've paid money if only I'd had someone to tell me years ago that these two are not related and that overcoming MD wouldn't take away my feelings or creativity. I spent six years believing that MD was the source of creativity. And those are lost years.

"This site is geared towards discussion of it as a disease, but there are those of us who come here to talk about the healthy aspects of an unusual ability. We are forced to use the term MDD because what else can we say? And where else is there for us to go?"

But discussing healthy aspects of daydreaming in context of MD is like discussing why fish is tasty and healthy in a binge eating community, or why sex is good for the physical health in a porn addiction community. These two need to be separated. Find any psychological analysis of porn addiction and you'll see it has nothing to do with sex. As long as people mistake maladaptive daydreaming for creativity, a huge misconception is being created about what overcoming MD means.

If you're daydreaming more than usual in a healthy, creative way, why do you even need to create an additional label for it? It's just creative daydreaming. Imagine if all famous writers or artists or thinkers discussed their vivid inner life in context of MD. It would be destructive for everyone.

Want to talk about creative aspects of fantasy? Talk to a Jungian psychologist. Older psychoanalytic schools are endless cauldrons of fantasy and daydreaming studies which your average counselor probably knows nothing about. Visit any INFP/J forums. Visit lucid dreaming communities. You'll find plenty of platforms to talk about inner life that's not maladaptive daydreaming.

[darmody]

@maro..."tell me if you think otherwise"

I do and I don't. I don't think you need a specific reason like writing a novel or making a film to intensively daydream.* Reverie can be good in itself.

But then you use the adverb "severely," and I suppose I agree, severely daydreaming is bad. But I don't know where to draw the line. 

*I'm not even sure how useful intensive daydreams are for those activities. I've done it my whole life, and I've also written short stories and made little movies. But I never used stories I had developed in my daydreams in real life fiction. Maybe a theme or scenario here and there, but never a whole story. I wonder why that is. Maybe because my my daydream thoughts are too developed for my meager skills at writing/filmmaking. Maybe because my daydream thoughts aren't as put-together as I imagine. 

[darmody]

@Eretaia..."Maladaptive daydreaming has nothing to do with positive effects of daydreaming or creativity or even imagination"

That may be true (I don't know whether you can say for sure, given it's not at this point a strictly defined or widely recognized disorder), because as I said below MDD is by definition "bad daydreaming." So if someone says "I think bad daydreaming is good," there's obviously something wrong with that statement. They mean something like, "I think what people normally call 'bad daydreaming' isn't actually bad." That's difficult to get across with current terminology. 

I keep coming back to the fact that we lack a term for more intense than normal daydreaming which isn't pathological. This site is geared towards discussion of it as a disease, but there are those of us who come here to talk about the healthy aspects of an unusual ability. We are forced to use the term MDD because what else can we say? And where else is there for us to go?

[maro]

@Deamcatcher :erateria have a blog about stopping MDD I saw it nw check it

https://maladaptivedaydreamingguide.wordpress.com/guide/