My MD is allllmost gone... Some tips!

[Mevve]

Me:  female, early 20s, not American/English, fantasizing since I was 8 years old, for hours and hours a day, about celebrities, made up people, myself.

Usual content: love, feeling secure, sexuality, getting allll the attention, being the greatest, the best.

Spinning around in my room to music.

 

My solutions:

 

1.  Therapy. I found out I have/had social phobia, depression, PTSS (sexual abuse in my childhood) and the symptoms of avoidant personality disorder (never got the diagnosis).

In my therapy I learned to cope with my anxiety and depression by FEELING bad emotions (sadness, anger, hate, loneliness, etc). Instead of avoiding those feelings, I had to FEEL it and acknowledge I had them. Lots of tears; writing letters, confronting people, etc.; SCARY as heck, but worth it. Go see a counselor and tell them everything!

 

2. I took a mindfulness course. If you don't know what it is: learning to live in the now. Please look it up!! More so than therapy this course was awesome! I would recommend it to EVVVVVERYONE with MD. I truly believe it's *the* solution for MD. You are 'forced' to live right here, right now. There is no room for any fantasies anymore. It's awesome.

A mindfulness course can be spiritual, but I didn't want that. Be sure that when you look for mindfulness courses, you find a down to earth approach to it. (I’m a Christian, so I didn’t want to do the spiritual approach).

 

3. Reducing fantasizing one by one: first getting rid of fantasies which had NOTHING to do with my own life. All the made up stories were gone: this was surprisingly easy (once I had truly made up my mind that I wanted to quit). I continued for a couple weeks to strictly fantasize about an improved me (the way I hoped to be in 10-20 years). Next step was to get rid of those fantasies (about me in 10-20 years), because they were just as fake as the fantasies about me being different people.

Now I only allow myself to fantasize about pretty much exactly the way I am today. This last type of fantasy I consider to be normal: I fantasize about future events that will actually happen, or conversations I have with people I actually know. This type of fantasizing can be very useful I believe: because you force yourself to think about what you actually believe & helps you to practice for the real thing. After talking to friends about this, I found out lots of ‘normal’ people fantasize about themselves, so I don't think I want to change this last part.

The first few weeks after deciding not to fantasize about celebrities / made up people /myself in 10-20 years, was more than anything: strange. Not nessecarily depressing. I felt just weird. Now (about 5 months later) it has become normal. I no longer have the urge to fantasize about anyone other than myself.

DON'T try to end all of your fantasies all at once. I have tried that twice before and it didn't last longer than a week. Fantasizing can be very useful, because it helps you THINK about life, which is normal.

 

4. Meeting new people and DO stuff in my real life. Once you get rid of the fantasies, you will realize how empty your life really is: you need to FEEL this and acknowledge this feeling. This feeling sucks, but hopefully it will motivate you to do stuff. Lately I've been meeting a lot of people (I am currently searching for a new church. So I’m meeting a lot of people in different churches). If you're not religious, you could start doing sports, or just do something you like where you will meet new people on a regular basis. You need to fill the time you spent fantasizing on REAL things.

 

5. Prayer: Yes, I am a Christian and I believe God played a big role in all of this. However, if you are not a believer, I truly believe you can make great changes by doing the first 4 things.

I am still not 100% cured, because I do still spin around while fantasizing about myself. This is gonna be the next step. Not sure yet how I'm gonna do that, but I'm up for the challenge :-)

 

Oh and btw: I used NO medications!

 

I hope this will help people.

Let me know if you have questions.

[writerspeak]

Hi Mevve- I cant believe its been this long. Ive since begun therapy- well, JUST started..- I ve been to two sessions and so far feel wishy washy  as to whether I will stay with this one. I am currently trying to convince myself to stay and give it a go for atleast  two months. Did you have an immediate connection with your therapist? Did you feel like leaving/stopping at times or was it a good match from the start? Im curious if Im the only one that hops from therapist to therpist in hopes of finding a good match/better match.

I have however stopped (controlled is a better word) my DD. I feel I am on top of it but every now and then it comes up when triggered by stress, social anxiety or even just music. Meditation has also helped some.

Mevve said:

How is everyone doing? I believe some of you were saying you were going into therapy etc... I'm curious, any good results so far? :-) 

[Mevve]

Good to hear you're in therapy now! It obviously takes a bit of time to find a connection with a therapist, but if you are not comfortable around this person, it may be wise to switch. But as long as you feel comfortable to tell your personal story then it;s fine. If you find yourself not telling them stuff because it doesn';t feel right, then switch. I didn't have  the greatest connection  in the beginning either,  but I just trusted that they knew what they were doing. After a while you start to get more familiar with each other. It was fine, for me.

Well good to hear things are slowly but surely getting better for you, awesome :-)

[Mevve]

I think it's the other way around, personally... Because you are socially awkward you don't want to be in the real world, and therefore you create a fantasy world  in which you are not socially awkward. Makes more sense to me,. at least. What do you think?

writerspeak said:

Agreed! I can atleast atest to that!

Satchi R said:

I think MD makes one very socially awkward and weird socially.Is that true?

[Mina]

i really would love to learn from t your experience if that possible

[Jessica Ballantyne]

Just when I think my MD is gone, it returns. I still catch myself laughing at the wrong moments. When I watch a movie, I'll laugh at a private thought, and suddenly someone asks, "What's so funny, is that funny to you?" The situation is actually more than cringe-worthy. I'm sometimes suggested to see a psychiatrist. 

[Schatten]

This post is 10 years old, I would love to know if Mevve made it.