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Maladaptive Daydreaming: where wild minds come to rest

Does Anyone Else Do This?

My aunt has MD, but her daydreams don't exactly hinder her social interactions as much as most people would think. Her daydreams seem to focus more on helping her cope with her reality. For instance, when she was younger she was particularly sensitive to racism. She'd grown up being made fun of for her darker tone. So much in fact that she possessed an unhealthy fear of the outside world and how it would judge her for her skin. She created a character in her head, a personification of racism that she blatantly called the Racist Bastard. She herself took the name of Afro Girl, and fought battles against the Racist Bastard whenever she felt she couldn't conquer the racism in her reality. Eventually she created other characters to represent ideologies of the world, like War, World Peace, Religion, Apocalypse, each with their own individual personalities and quirks that would represent real life. For instance, Religion would often have his words twisted, World Peace was given a softer, meeker voice after years of being abruptly halted by Racism and War. My aunt used these characters to make sense of her world.

I don't think she does it too much anymore, but I still catch her daydreaming from time to time.

Does anyone else have characters in their head specifically for making sense of the world?

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Permalink Reply by Rose on August 31, 2015 at 5:18am

Yeah, my characters all represent themes. I definitely create villains to represent things I hate in the world. At best, my imaginary world helps with this sort of thing. At worst, it takes over.