What did you call it?

[Larry]

Just thought'd it be interesting to see what everybody called their behaviors and experiences before Dr. Somer coined the term "Maladaptive Daydreaming".

As for me, I call it "speeding".

It seems to me that the daydreams start as slowly revolving images in my mind, and that after adding stimulants to super charge my mind and body, the pictures begin spinning until they congeal into motion pictures that I have total control over.

Of course my pacing is pacing, but the objects I toss in the air are called "flibberdeejibbetts" regardless of what they are. My favorite of these are a 3/4 inch socket wrenches. It's got the perfect feel and weight. Though in a pinch, I can make a cigarette lighter work.

During my teen years at the Northstar house, I would whack a tennis ball with a racquet up against the garage door for hours and days on end.
In the sweltering heat and the freezing cold. I routinely shared that space with a number of gnarly big wolf spiders and the occasional mouse. I never had any interest in the actual game.

I called this "flibberdeejibbett-ing".

The one self-named habit I had, which has been the most influential, has been what I would learn was called "ruminating". 

My "other" brother(long story) and I, in our mid teens to early twenties, would go up into the foothills, either just us or with small group of other guys, and build a small bonfire, and proceed to pickle our livers.

Man....when that beer hit my ruminating mind it was "on like donkey kong".

I'd get all philosophical and feeling intellectual and stand up around the fire and start blurting out sermons to the other drunkards on subjects like history, philosophy, and politics.... like I was some kind of wobbly  preacher on a stump pulpit.
The guys thought me quite the entertaining fool and encouraged it.

I can't remember if one of them coined the term or if I did, but "Beer Can  Poet" stuck.
I use it as a nickname in everything I do on the Internet (except here, ironically)
My ruminations are"beer can poetry".

Even now, I still prefer to be known as a "beer can poet"  than a "Maladaptive Daydreamer".

Obviously, you don't have to be as bloody long winded as me, but I think it'd be interesting seeing how else it was being described.

[Megan Lynn]

I just thought I was a crazy freak that had lost my mind all together.

[Soul Dreamer]

I had a very creative name for it, lol. It was 'That Thing That I Do"  :)

[Water Lily]

"staring at the wall"

[Lisa Hancock]

I think I called it my crazy stuff....I had NO idea that anyone else in this world did what I was doing. It's still unbelievable that there are so many of us. Wonder what it would be like to have 100 of us in the room at the same time, and someone said, "do what you do and start now"....... I could just see it now, a normal person would walk by and would think we had lost our minds, or never had one to start with. LOL

Sometimes I still will be driving down the road having a good ole conversation with myself (actually with my adult imaginary friends) and will look at other people in their cars to see if they are noticing me......how embarrassing.....he he he

[Asaeva]

I called it "my stories addiction":-)! 

[debbie downer]

"the story in my head"

[LaSerena]

Before I knew about Dr Somer's name for it, I used to call it 'Living Dreams'   Before that, it was just 'my world'.  Of the two, I prefered living dreams.

[Lily Morrison]

I thought of it as living vicariously through characters and using fantasy as a coping mechanism, but I've only tried to classify it within the last 5 years.

[Jennifer]

I used to call my strange behaviors 'going upstairs.' Whenever I would want to go drift into my fantasy world, I would tell my parents, "I'm gonna go upstairs." Or, "I am finished, can I go upstairs?"

[SwanInTheWater]

Ha! Beer can poet. I love that.

I didn't really call it anything. I thought I was a freak who was way too old to have imaginary friends. I still thought I had imaginary friends until I found out about MD recently because I hadn't noticed that I could only daydream if I was moving  (in a car, or pacing). It's much more elaborate than daydreaming, and really isn't the same as imaginary friends. 

[tb85]

I called it "acting out" because I always felt like I was acting in front of an audience of one--myself.

[Beth W]

I considered it "keeping a promise" (to never stop being imaginative), but then as I grew older it became "wtf is goining on am I schizo or not 8(" ...something like that.