I understand the problem

[Felicity]

I understand the problem. I don't speak English, I use a translator, so please forgive me if any of the sentences are disjointed. I found the group this week and although I feel used to my obsessive imagination, I feel that it is harming my daily life. If I let it go, I won't interact with anyone anymore, because I find it all very frustrating and uncontrollable. In my imagination, I am always the protagonist: vibrant, admired, loved, sexy. I always get the best jobs, relationships and friendships. I shine! When I return to my real life, I fall from a great height. Nothing is the way I want it to be and I have no prospect of achieving it since I am not even close to the woman in my imagination.

I believe that this started in childhood with the feeling of worthlessness for being a fat and rejected child. As a teenager, I interacted a lot with other girls, but since I didn't feel normal (I was still overweight), I lived everything inside my head based on their stories, but without experiencing anything at all. Of course, at 40, I still look like I'm 16, because no one matures without first-hand experiences. And that's very sad and frustrating.

I never realized that I could improve myself and become someone who actually lives their dreams. I never thought I could be like other girls, that is, prettier, more interesting, with great achievements or attractive. Before, I fantasized about people from my everyday life, and as time went by, I felt better fantasizing about characters from movies/TV series, but within the plot I created. Music and love stories are my biggest triggers. When I come back to reality, nothing gives me the will to live.

Everything seems impossible to achieve because the proportion of what I want is too high. In fantasy, people even hurt me, but it's easy to turn things around and come out as a heroine. In real life, there are few flaws that I can fix and nothing bad disappears with a magic wand. Before, I dreamed of an idealized me who was completely different from me in terms of body, hair, clothes, family, and acquaintances. Today I like to imagine myself, but in an improved version. I no longer feel desire or pleasure in the real world. I hope that this can change.

There are social groups that are more vulnerable to any addictive disorder due to the invalidation they suffer in society.

[Felicity]

I found your considerations very important. I was very grateful and happy to read them. I never thought about keeping a diary for my daydreams. I think I need to start urgently. And I never thought that a trauma could take me so deep inside. Thank you.

[Yukia]

Hi Felicity. I have read your post, but I am replying to a quote from your comment to Jessica. Sorry to cut in like that.

> Am I not that creative? Which leads me to question: what would I like to be better about myself? How would I like people to see me based on the way I really am? What practices can help me be healthier physically, more beautiful, sexier, more interesting as a whole? Can't I use all this creativity to earn money and give life to this pile of things that I have nowhere to put?

All of these questions refer to a different area of life that you need to manage.

First, you are very creative. If you were not creative, you would not be coping with your trauma by making up stories in your head. If you were not creative, you would choose a completely different stimulation to keep you going.

Only you know what you can make you feel better about yourself (I believe that is what you mean?). It is about self-exploration and mindfulness. You are the only person who knows the answer to that question, even if you think you do not.

The same goes for how other people perceive you. Only you know. However, it should be the least of your concerns. Don't rely on the opinions of others. It will be biased and will be a fleeting impression of you most of the time. Other people are unreliable because they don't know what you are going through, just like you don't know what they are dealing with. It is a lose-lose situation.

The best practice to change your relationship with daydreaming is journalling. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. You grab a very thick, cheapest notebook you can find in a supermarket and clock in every daydreaming episode. Describe what happened there, then reflect on what triggered it, and how you felt before the episode and after. Maybe you aren't comfortable with handwriting, in that case just type it on a keyboard. The device doesn't matter as long as you write about it.

Whether to use this creativity or not is entirely up to you. If you don't want to profit from it, that's okay. But you need to record somewhere to start progressing.

Hope some of it helps.

[Felicity]

I was very happy to have had a response. I never thought that there would be other people who would also go through the same thing. Today I don't fight too much not to think, not to fantasize, I let it happen, but I know that returning to reality will be painful and frustrating. So I need to return to the real world where I urgently need to make things happen. I can't continue to be paralyzed by the world. I can even dream too big at bedtime (even if it takes away my sleep and my strength), but I need to get out of bed and take care of myself. I need to create a story where the character is me (exactly as I am). Am I not that creative? Which leads me to question: what would I like to be better about myself? How would I like people to see me based on the way I really am? What practices can help me be healthier physically, more beautiful, sexier, more interesting as a whole? Can't I use all this creativity to earn money and give life to this pile of things that I have nowhere to put? After all, who am I going to talk about these things with? I need to find a more productive and honorable way out. And I am grateful that you exist. I wish the same self-recovery to all of you. Time passes and it is cruel, because it is only in my imagination that it can go back to any point it wants, erase things, reformulate relationships, speeches... in real life, not so much. I have to accept time, people as they are, circumstances, that is, the big question. The thing is, in the real world there are no guarantees that they will like me, that I will not be judged, that they will not do me any harm… there are no guarantees. And I believe that no one went to the world of imagination because their life was good. Maybe they went because living in their own skin, in their family, in their neighborhood, at school, at work, was too hard. Shouldn't I forgive myself for that? May God help me to like myself and the life that surrounds me. May I have the strength and luck to seek a life with more meaning.

[Jessica Ballantyne]

I believed so much in my imagination, though knew deeply that it will never match up to reality. I've always faced the same problems of being socially awkward, very quiet, kind of shy, and unable to develop long-term meaningful relationships. Being 38, I feel that life just passed me by, and didn't ever get to experience the things I wanted to experience, because I was always daydreaming and didn't commit to resolving my socially challenged ways. I never had a big circle of friends or any BF's, and I was closer to my imagination, even if it wasn't REAL. 

I'm awake now, but I have so much work to do. I have to seriously improve every aspect of myself, something that I should've done eons ago. Meanwhile time is ticking, and I'm not seeing the life experiences I should've seen, if it weren't for the fact I've been so downright weird and taking trip to Europa. I've even noticed that everybody else is much happier than me for reasons like, they knew exactly what they were doing, and of course, they lived on earth. Point is I started doing MD, because like you, I wanted to be somebody else. And in my imagination, I was a much better and idealistic kind of woman. I was a hero in fictional life.