new to this site, just looking for some advice

[Sally Jumper]

I am pretty glad I ran across this site. I never knew maladaptive daydreaming was something that other people experienced, I thought I was just weird. I have always been prone to daydreaming, not just creating my own original stories with characters that I develop like novels in my head, but even books I read or TV shows/movies/video game stories--I stay in the fiction long after the story is over, continuing the plot, developing the characters, sometimes inserting myself into the story and sometimes not. I have done it my whole life, and it has not always interfered with my ability to function. Sometimes I can just rattle around in my head for a while, stop, focus on a task, complete it, then, when I have nothing left to do, go back to daydreaming. Other times, the story takes over my brain and I become attached to the fiction and the fictional characters. These periods always end terribly; after weeks of developing a paracosm and forming a strange emotional affection for the fictional characters, I have to go through the obvious but painful realization that what I have created in my head is not real, nor are the characters or their individual backstories or personalities. It literally feels like losing a friend when I have to mentally banish myself from thinking about the story by talking to people constantly and flinging myself at my work and schoolwork, solving extra fun painful calculus problems, reading the driest textbook-type material I can find...until my brain finally lets my story go. Even after it stops the story, I spend weeks missing the imagined interaction between myself and my characters. The weird part is, I am not particularly isolated or lonely; I have a bunch of friends, I live with my boyfriend, I have a good relationship with most of my family (although no one knows about the daydreaming problem...I have never told anyone about it). While I was a fairly isolated, socially awkward child, I get along well with people now and am not isolated. I hate that the fictional interactions in my daydreams are more compelling than the real interactions in my life. I am tired after years of going through a grieving process every time I have to remind myself that the stories are not real. I am tired of feeling like I have lost a friend when I have to force myself back into reality. I hate that sometimes my affection for the fictional is stronger than my affection for real people. I read that maladaptive daydreaming is a coping mechanism for abuse or trauma. While this did happen to me as a child, it is not happening to me now, yet instead of making the daydreaming less frequent, it has become worse as I got older.

Sorry this got a little long-winded. I am just lost on a island somewhere, part of me wants to be in the world and part of me doesn't. I am tired of the existential dilemma.

I really need to know if other people here have ever experienced the feeling of becoming emotionally attached to a fictional character, and how you dealt with it/got over it/didn't get over it, and especially, stopped it from happening in the future. I try to avoid triggers. I avoid fiction, video games, etc at all costs and when I start creating my own fiction, I block it out by reading a horribly dry history textbook. I would also really, really love to know if anyone has any idea about why it is even possible to become attached to something that doesn't actually exist. I have come to the conclusion in my life that I want to live in reality, because I am just tired of the feeling of loss, and I want to do something useful with myself in the world, since I have to be here anyway. I just don't know how, I can't snap out of it. Any advice would be appreciated.

[Cordellia Amethyste Rose]

I have many characters that I'm emotionally attached to.  At times I feel more drawn to them than others.  The only times I remember feeling like I needed them less were when I had someone in the outside world who I had bonded with.  Daydreaming itself isn't bad, but when it starts to affect your ability to function in the outside world, that's a problem.  Trying to just force yourself to stop will never work.  Instead focus on filling your life with things in the outer world that you enjoy, so you'll need it less.  Good luck.  We're here to support you.  

[Lucy McGillicuddy]

Hey, Sally! I'm new here, too, and I totally get what you're feeling because I have felt it myself so many times. 

The grief of coming to terms with the fact that something isn't real is unlike anything else--and you can't talk about it with others because it sounds so childish, like finding out that Santa Claus doesn't exist. 

When I was a little kid, I got emotionally attached to all of the characters from Roald Dahl's book James and the Giant Peach. Those characters were part of my life--I played with them outside, I imagined myself going on adventures with them, and I even imagined what it would be like to go to school with them. In case you're not familiar with the book, the main characters are a host of human-sized insects and a little boy named James. I was an oddball little kid. 

I am now twenty-five years old, and I still have a small part of me that grieves those characters not being real. And I still daydream to this day, but with other characters, either from literature or movies or just people I've made up in my head. And every time I come back down from the clouds, I have to face the harsh fact that the characters are merely figments. 

What Miss Cordellia says is right--I think as long as it doesn't affect your day-to-day life and doesn't create depression that hinders you in your endeavors, then there's no harm in daydreaming other than the sadness that what we sometimes want to be real isn't.