How I benefit from daydreaming

[Emily Taylor]

Daydreaming has always been a huge problem for me. It makes my grades drop stupendously, it's turned me into a compulsive liar, and has just generally made a mess of my life.

But one thing I have learned from it, is that it can be useful. My form of daydreaming involves fantasizing about being famous, having magic powers, freerunning, etc. Basically a lot of the time I move my body physically when I move in my daydreams.

You know when you're listening to music, it triggers the dreaming and every now and then your body jerks because you've pictured yourself moving? I use that to my benefit.

I'm an actor. Well, an aspiring one. I use the dreaming to help me remember my lines. My method uses my way of daydreaming by sequencing movements and picturing myself on stage/set performing and saying my lines. By doing this, I can remember a whole 30 minute long script in about an hour.

So, my question to you all is, while we're trying to stop the daydreaming make a state of our lives, are there any other ways we can turn it on it's head and use it to an advantage?

[Melinda]

I think it helps to deal with stress.  We can retreat and be in our world for alittle bit to cope.

[Gin]

I think it's really useful when you are learning a language, I always practiced my english in my daydreams (My mother tongue is spanish) I improved a lot by doing this :) now I'm learning german and I'm trying to do the same!

[Emma]

I'm curious about the compulsive liar part of your message.  How can daydreaming make you a compulsive liar?  My daydreams are completely separate from my own life.  I do not daydream that I am something grand.  I'm not even a character in my daydreams.  It's a different world.  I don't see how anyone could say the daydreams make them a liar unless you mean that you daydream things about yourself and then tell that version of yourself to other people.  Do you daydream that you've experienced something and then lie to someone and say that you really did?  If so, that sounds like a completely different problem than the one I've read about and experienced.

As for it causing you problems in school or work, I remember from Dr. Schupak's work that there is no correlation between MD and success/failure in endeavors.  I daydream more when I'm stressed and want to avoid a situation, and that sometimes has a negative effect on my life because I don't use my time wisely.  Otherwise, I don't see how it could make you a bad student unless you just mean that you don't study like you should because of daydreaming.  

As for the  memory thing... that is interesting.  I do have an excellent memory, however, and I can memorize things for school or work very quickly.  I don't know if it has anythign to do with my MD, but that's interesting to consider.

[Emily Taylor]

Emma said:

I'm curious about the compulsive liar part of your message.  How can daydreaming make you a compulsive liar?  My daydreams are completely separate from my own life.  I do not daydream that I am something grand.  I'm not even a character in my daydreams.  It's a different world.  I don't see how anyone could say the daydreams make them a liar unless you mean that you daydream things about yourself and then tell that version of yourself to other people.  Do you daydream that you've experienced something and then lie to someone and say that you really did?  If so, that sounds like a completely different problem than the one I've read about and experienced.

As for it causing you problems in school or work, I remember from Dr. Schupak's work that there is no correlation between MD and success/failure in endeavors.  I daydream more when I'm stressed and want to avoid a situation, and that sometimes has a negative effect on my life because I don't use my time wisely.  Otherwise, I don't see how it could make you a bad student unless you just mean that you don't study like you should because of daydreaming.  

As for the spatial awareness / memory thing... that is interesting.  I do rather poorly on spatial awareness type quizzes and puzzles.  I get lost easily.  I do have an excellent memory, however, and I can memorize things for school or work very quickly.  I don't know if it has anythign to do with my MD, but that's interesting to consider.

I started daydreaming when I was about ten. For me, the dreams served as a form of escapism, but when life got bad, I started wanting to believe the fantasies, so that's what I made my friends believe. So yes, you're right on that. I never actually believed the dreams were real, but I wanted to, so I told my friends they were real. Ten year old me figured that if enough people thought I had magic powers, that I knew everything, or later that I was a secret agent or something ridiculous, then it might come true. That later developed into an attention-based compulsive lying problem, and I can rarely go a week without going through a quick moment of loneliness and creating a wild story that comes out of my mouth.

When I'm in class and I start having a panic attack, I picture one of my favourite characters running through the door, grabbing my hand, and running off with me. It calms me down, and then I can never seem to drift out of the dream, because it's so enthralling I have to perfect every little detail, every possibility, before I can get back to working. This has happened in several of my GCSEs, and I've essentially dug my own grave, if you catch my drift.

[Emma]

I don't know how school works in the UK, but in the States, there is almost always time to recover and get back on track, even if it will put you off a little bit.  Also the high school qualification doesn't matter nearly as much as teenagers think it does.  It's what you do afterwards- how you perform in college or vocational training- that matters.  So don't think of yourself as having dug your own grave.  That's just going to make that anxiety-daydream cycle swell.  Go talk honestly to a counselor you trust and see what you can do to pull it off in the end.  I know that is easier said since the daydreams are still there, and it's not like you can just stop it and attend to your studies or else you'd have done that already.

As for the lying...  I work with teens and was one myself, and I can tell you that lying about achievements or other things in order to cover up anxieties and inadequacies is pretty common.  Usually the lies are not outlandish though.  Rather kids lie about what they do on the weekends or who they dated or other experiences like that.  No one is going to believe big lies, and usually they don't believe the smaller ones either but most people don't want to make you lose face by pointing it out.  This is probably a bigger problem than the MD as it can come back to bite you.  Maintaining lies like that must be exhausting.  For what it's worth, it's important to know that most people don't judge others by what they've done or what experiences they've had.  This is something that is really important to understand.  People lie to impress others or else brag about true things to impress others.  In either case, people usually don't care.  They might be temporarily impressed, but that's not what makes people likable.  People care about how you treat them in the moment you are with them.  How well you listen, ask questions and do things with them that are meaningful or fun.  That's it.  You could be that "most interesting man in the world" guy from the beer commercials, and all those interesting things are not going to make you a likable person.  That's not what makes people like people.  Meanwhile, you could be a homebody who has never been anywhere or done anything, and if you are a good listener, considerate and fun to be around, people will like you.  This is something a lot of people who brag and lie do not realize.  They sense that they don't have friends and they try to make friends by talking about all the cool things they have done.  

I don't know if that helps you or not, and I'm sorry if I'm lecturing you.  It's just something I didn't realize until I was in my early 20s, and when I realized it, it really helped me relax and make friends more easily and to be more honest with myself.  Before I realized this, I was always pretending to be doing more than I was.  I mean, I didn't lie compulsively, but I made my dates sound more exciting than they really were and I gossiped a bit and made my work sound more impressive than it was.  Then I realized that these things were completely irrelevant to how others saw me and that people with far less interesting lifes were better liked than I am because they were more genuine.  They were better at listening and at being immersed in the moment.  Once I realized that, it changed my life, and I wish teenagers could understand this as it would save them a lot of energy spent on posturing and anxiety.  Good luck.

As for MD- yeah I hear you.  I slip into my fantasies to avoid anxiety too, and I've got no old advice about that AT ALL.  

Emily Taylor said:

I started daydreaming when I was about ten. For me, the dreams served as a form of escapism, but when life got bad, I started wanting to believe the fantasies, so that's what I made my friends believe. So yes, you're right on that. I never actually believed the dreams were real, but I wanted to, so I told my friends they were real. Ten year old me figured that if enough people thought I had magic powers, that I knew everything, or later that I was a secret agent or something ridiculous, then it might come true. That later developed into an attention-based compulsive lying problem, and I can rarely go a week without going through a quick moment of loneliness and creating a wild story that comes out of my mouth.

When I'm in class and I start having a panic attack, I picture one of my favourite characters running through the door, grabbing my hand, and running off with me. It calms me down, and then I can never seem to drift out of the dream, because it's so enthralling I have to perfect every little detail, every possibility, before I can get back to working. This has happened in several of my GCSEs, and I've essentially dug my own grave, if you catch my drift.

[Emily Taylor]

This actually made me feel a lot better, so thank you Emma ^^

[Professional Daydreamer]

MGinny said:

I think it's really useful when you are learning a language, I always practiced my english in my daydreams (My mother tongue is spanish) I improved a lot by doing this :) now I'm learning german and I'm trying to do the same!

yepp doing the same with Arabic helps alot!

[Ruwani]

I do this too. I speak to the characters in my head in english.