I feel like I'm struggling with reality?

[Nina]

Hello! About two years ago i found out about MD and had one hell of a realisation when i read the symptoms - because i had them all. I never felt really 'bothered' by it, because i rather enjoyed it and didn't put too much thought in too it. I've been suffering from severe depression and anxiety for the last couple years and the last half a year was really bad. My depression, as well as my anxiety, got worse and worse and so did the whole daydreaming thing. Whenever i'm really anxious i can't daydream, i'm too shaken up, but when i'm a bit more calm it works perfectly. Daydreaming makes me feel happy and at ease because i'm 'living' the life i want to live - but can't. I'm trying to escape from reality. It was never much of a problem for me but the last couple months it got really bad. The daydreams get longer and longer, i sometimes pace my room or rock back and forth in my bed for 4 hours or longer without even realising it. I sometimes sit on the couch and watch TV, see some interesting movie or show, and automatically start daydreaming and, again, zone out for an hour or two. I also started daydreaming while doing the dishes, or doing homework, and again completely zone out and get nothing done. The other day i nearly ran in front of a car because i wasn't paying attention. When I'm done daydreaming, which almost always takes hours, and go downstairs and talk to my mom for example i'm often hit with the realisation that 'whoa, this is real', everything often looks really foggy to me. After being so engulfed in daydreaming reality feels really strange and it really scares me to no end. Reality feels depressing to me. In my dreams i have friends, a great life, people who love me and accept me. In real life i feel lonely, i have my mom and my best friend, and i'm grateful for that, but neverless i'm feeling so lonely it hurts and my anxiety makes it often impossible to even leave the house. My MD got really extreme and that scares me. 

Does anyone have some advice for me? I tried to stop daydreaming, avoiding triggers and just pushing it away whenever i wanted to start. But on the other side daydreaming is such a relieve, it makes me happy because i'm desperatly trying to escape from reality and often the urge to daydream is just too strong. 

[Juno Jones]

I hope you became friends. I have never had that happen, but I don't want you to be lonely. It is so lonely in the daydream world because no real people understand. 

Thank you Cabbage Patch Kid.

[Rose]

A few years ago I became really really engulfed in my daydreams, mainly out of boredom I think because I wasn't depressed, and I wasn't unhappy with my life, I was just bored and living on my own in a town doing some contract work. At first I loved it, I had a massive house all to myself and could basically live my life out in my daydream (I'm weird in that I have a way of self-hypnotising and pretending that my fake friends are in the room and I am really my alter ego. I talk and chat and act accordingly. I don't hallucinate, but it "feels" real and I can snap out of it at any time, e.g, if I see myself in a mirror). I could have dinner with my fake friends etc, and I loved it. But then I started having these horrible lucid dreams where I'd be in my daydream city but everything was really sad and lonely and my 'friends' were dropouts. It scared me, but I couldn't stop.

So I went overseas shortly after and was basically living side by side with my travel partner, and we often had to share a double bed, share dinner, share a 5 hour drive. I had no time by myself so couldn't daydream because I hadn't learned how to do it internally, e.g. not walking around talking. To start with I actually liked it. After the serious dreaming I was doing a month earlier I felt 'free.' But it didn't last for long and I got what I can only describe as withdrawal symptoms. I rode it out and rode it out...painfully...and after 2 weeks or so, was ok.

Once I got back home it was difficult to get back into dreaming again, then I moved across the country, got a new job, and had a heap of different changes over a year or so. I still dreamed but not as much, and I could control it.

Then I stopped studying, got my first full time job, and well, it wasn't long before the very mild, controllable daydreaming went right back to the way it was, although not as bad as when I was in the big house alone. Basically a whole string of events involving a new job, the only one who understood my MDD (my dad) dying and plunging my family into a state of shock/depression, and buying an apartment and moving in, and well, I only 'physically' daydream whenever I'm back at my childhood home, where my mum lives.

So I've been very minimally daydreaming now (about once a fortnight), for about 4 months, but it is difficult. Some days I'm ok, others I'm not. I don't know whether the mood swings and anxiety I'm feeling is related to my dad dying, or it's something that's always been there that my daydream was covering up. Either way, I'm finding it hard to just be "me" and I'm starting to wonder whether I actually have an underlying condition like bipolar (once I went to a psych about my MDD...more because I had extreme anxiety and felt like I was 'losing my alter ego...' but she told me I probably have bipolar underneath everything. I was so afraid of her taking away my alter ego and daydreaming that I never went back. I was also scared of being on medication)

I have no advice sorry, but you're not alone.

[Mo]

I know the struggle.  Sometimes I wonder if my characters are actually alters because I have protectors, core personality, etc.  I mean, as someone with MDD I would think that I could tell the difference between fantasy and reality, but I find lately that I cannot.  These characters/alters whatever they turn out to be when I do more investigation feel more real to me than some people who actually are real.  It gets highly confusing.