Hi, in my daydreams I envision a totally different life, and I feel that I am no longer satisfied with who I am. Anyone else feel this way or something similar?

[Vitoria]

Hi, in my daydreams I envision a totally different life, and I feel that I am no longer satisfied with who I am. Anyone else feel this way or something similar?

[Jessica Ballantyne]

My MD can be so thick, and come alive. It shows on my face and body language, then someone shouts for me to wake up. Reason I do MD is I'm dissatisfied with life. I want things to get better and they just don't. I'm in a low place, and I use MD to relieve me of being afraid and feeling behind and a failure. Regardless, somebody is always there to shake me, and makes sure I can see what's really going on around me. Mostly it's been my family, since the pandemic broke out, I stopped being all that social. 

[Mils]

oh my god yes, it's horrible. Every time I try to be happy with who I am, the MD gets worse and I just feel like there's so much more I can be, but it'll never happen. If that makes any sense haha

[Jessica Ballantyne]

Yeah. I was a genuine person in high school who got low grades. People used to snatch my report card to take a look, without my permission, and thought I was such a stupid person. I was in daydream land, that's why. And I didn't tell my parents a squat about how I did in class. I didn't go to a very good college. I used to live in worlds, but not sports. They were about having relationships with people. 

[Stephan42]

I was so happy when i first read about MD. Honestly I thought that everybody would do that but apparently there are only „a few“ of us :) I have three worlds i created. One: I am a soccer player and I created my whole career and the career of other „players“ and „coaches“. It is like a fantasy soccer game. I have every year, every World Cup etc in my mind. The other world is me as a basketball player. Same like the world before and the last world is me as a actor. I started at the age of 15 I guess. I wrote the whole soccer career in a book. I wrote down all games with the scores. When I was 18 I burned this book because I felt so guilty. Now to my problems in life: I passed my school. I passed another education level, i passed my bachelor and I worked a lot and was active in social work and sports. BUT in school I was always the one with bad grades. I was always a nice person but I had problems to learn. People thought I am stupid. I am lazy etc. But I wasn’t. I was just sitting/moving in my room and „playing my world“. I notice that i spend much time in my worlds when I do something I don’t want to do. Like now. I am in my master degree and I have to learn but it is happening again. People see my learning but in my mind I am completely somewhere else. It is not only those worlds i am, also i dream doing different subjects and dream what I could do with it. My problem is that I don’t know a lot. Everything i learned in my life is forgotten. That is my problem. I feel like that my mind is completely full with my daydreams. In order to finish Tests or presentations I always have to learn everything word by word. I cannot understand and talk about the topics. I always have to force me to memorize it. I cannot talk free about the stuff I learn on university. It is really hard to „forget“ my worlds. I hope one day that i am able to forget all of this but when I think about it, this data base is so huge, it will be hard to forget all of this. Somewhere I read that somebody said it is like a drug. Yes. It is a f****** drug. I get so hyped when I wake up, home alone and know I can go and play the World Cup or Champions league of one created player. Adrenalin and joy. After a while i get tired and lie down on the couch. Sometimes it is crazy. I am so happy to read about your things. My parents separated when I was 6. That was the most horrible thing for me. I can remember the exact moment (place/weather/voice) when my father told me that they separate. My parents had money so i had a very good life but there we’re continuously problems between my parents and new life partners through my puberty. That is the only „trauma“ i have. I hope i can stop that dreaming one day. Maybe I am in the wrong track at all. Maybe didn’t learn the right thing in my life. I wish all of you the best :)

[Jessica Ballantyne]

Ever since I moved to town 30 years back—I made assumptions about things I know nothing about. I had fantasies about getting it on with random people from around. I believed that I would do interesting things out there with others. Go on adventures and experience life. I was very naive and quite "thick." I didn't understand the phrase "real life" when I was so young. Most kids absorb what goes on in the world around them as they grow up. I grew living in a dream cloud. I did expect to have a relatively good lifestyle and make lots of friends. Shorty thereafter, I was wrong. I didn't realize not everybody going to like me—and there was a significance to this. I started going to schools in my hometown, where the kids found me very strange, a million miles away, and socially awkward—rather too quiet—so they assumed I was very stupid. I got bullied and manipulated a lot, but my fantasies never ceased. I hoped to grow up and be someone someday. Possibly a very interesting way of life. However, when I got to being a high school student, I wasn't paying attention in class, because most times, I was living in other worlds. I got socially withdrawn and bullied for smiling, laughing and talking to air. My grades suffered do to my daydreaming, but I was able to attend an art and design college. Earned a degree in graphic arts and decided to freelance for a living. The pandemic came along and changed everything. I found it very hard to find new work and dealt with family strife. I blame it on being a maladaptive daydreamer. Nothing out of my daydream life ever came true—this is "real life"—it just doesn't look like our fantasies. I can't tell you how many horrible experiences I've faced dealing with people who don't like the looks of me. 

Even though life can suck, and times are hard, and I have embarrassed myself in from of everybody...I still believe that I will come across the career and lifestyle I've always dreamed of since I was kid. What's the sense of having dreams, when they don't ever come true? 

[Jessica Ballantyne]

That's the trouble, I think the real me "sucks." Our dream versions are look much better than us. They are an idealism of who we're just not. 

[F J]

I am introverted too and not the most sociable. I am planning on doing more though, maybe start volunteering again

[Jessica Ballantyne]

Apparently, my life is somewhat dull in the present. I sit in a room and do company research and applications for hours. I listen to soft coffee jazz music. I will concentrate on my work, but feel that I prefer to be in more interesting situations. I will go out and socialize with family and friends. It does help, but I happen to be introvert. I'm not exactly the most expressive person ever. 

[F J]

Oh that's interesting. From my research this is all related to having an idealised version of ourselves or something totally different to real life so we can 'escape' in some way.

Do you have any methods to pour into your real self to try and be present enough in the real world and daydream less?

[Jessica Ballantyne]

When I smile and make faces, I make people uncomfortable. I make them ill, and they're like what's so funny. I think it's because it looks strange.