Gaining control and learning to function

[Andie S.]

One of the biggest things I see when people discuss their MD is the idea of being unable to control it; they talk about losing friends and being unable to focus and essentially losing all direction in life because of their DD needs.

I went through a period like this, too: for the majority of my high school years my MD (pushed on by my severe depression, no doubt) became uncontrollable, to the point where I had F's in all of my classes, literally had no friends, and probably only talked out loud a few times a week. I was absolutely absorbed in my daydreaming and had given up on reality as a whole.

Flash forward a few years, and I'm doing just fine. I have a number of friends, a loving boyfriend, I'm in college, and I can bring myself to focus enough to get work done and take care of myself. I still have MD, but for the most part I'm able to push my urges aside until I have free time. I have bad days where I slip up, but these days I save my daydreaming for down time---car rides, walking, while I'm showering, at night when I'm in bed, etc. 

Most of my day is still spent either daydreaming or thinking about my DD world, but I have enough control to manage to slip it into times where there won't be dire consequences if I'm not paying attention to reality.

I know that I won't ever be "cured"---nor do I ever want to be. But finding this delicate balance has been a major help for me.

Is there anyone else who has a decent amount of stability in their life with MD? How did you find your balance/how do you fit your daydreaming into your daily life?

[Roel]

I'm still working towards it :/

However it's cool to hear someone say things are going well. I feel like the people who "solve" their MDD just leave, and no one ever hears about them again on this site. Haha I'm happy for you and I'm curious to see what stories other people have :)

[abdosh]

         I have been going through this period for sometime now even though i had mdd long time ago but it just seems to have gotten worse ,  but every now and then i get the sense that i am gonna get better and thanks to people like you who share their experiences i know that i am going to get better :)

[Sophie]

Nice to hear someone with a positive story. What changes did you make to be where you are today? Please don't spare me the details.

My MD is so bad that I can't control my sounds or movements anymore and is laughingstock in the entire town. My neighbours are bullying me every day - their kids as well. I have resorted to wearing ear plugs, but I fear that the otherworldly feeling loss of hearing creates just makes my MD worse. The bullies is also at the same school as me - an entire group of guys is imitating me every time I walk past them, which is fairly often. I also have social phobia - the more I am bullied, the worse the MD becomes. And so on. Moving around doesn't help much - 6 months in and I am a joke to people all over again.

Before you start conjuring up an image of someone with some serious developmental disorder, I just want to tell you that I have been 'normal looking' once. Granted, I never was free of MD, but I at least was never bullied for it either. People just assumed I was very 'deep' and mysterious etc.

Now I can't control it at all and my life has turned into a literal horror movie. I live in almost constant terror and seeking help does absolutely nothing, as the psychologists have been unbelievably unhelpful - it is either OCD, or asperger's syndrome or just plain tourette's syndrome. Absolutely none of those diagnoses fits perfectly, and they are all like 'Sorry, my mistake!' after a while. Rinse, repeat - same mistake over and over again.

I have mentioned MD to them, even got one of them to check out this site. But these professionals won't treat me for something that's not in their books.

So if anyone's got a solution to minimize MD I would be ever so grateful. I figured maybe you've got some sound advice?

[Andie S.]

I can't say that there has been anything specific that served as a "solution", because my daydreaming still randomly worsens and gets better without my control. But a few things that have helped me cope through the years:

 

1) Creating. Taking the content of my daydreams and turning them into writing/drawings/etc helped me a lot in the beginning, and offered a way to daydream less without actually getting rid of my fantasies. Even if you aren't a master artist, it helps to have a private journal or something to just doodle and write without the fear of anyone else ever seeing. Drawing the characters, making maps, writing recent daydreams as stories, writing out descriptions and histories of different characters---anything that can make your MD seem a bit more "productive".

 

2) Other distractions. I have social anxiety, and my fear of other people/being in public is still a major trigger for my MD, but I've found that simple games can sometimes be immersive enough to distract me without needing to daydream. I don't know if you have a smartphone or not, but I always keep a few "addictive" arcade games downloaded and ready to get lost in---my senior of high school was filled with Tetris and one of those "tap the tiles" games lol

3) Immersion. This was a dangerous one for me personally, because I do also suffer from psychotic episodes/delusions, but sometimes the only way to get me to focus on reality was to ignore reality itself. Some of my best MD days were the days in which I assumed my daydreaming persona and acted as if my reality was just another day in my daydream world. I started going by my nickname (the one I use in my daydreams), wore different clothes, and did as much as I could to "live" my daydreams. 

I specifically remember downloading an app in which you could schedule fake texts to yourself; I used this to make my daydream characters "text" me, and I spent hours going back and forth setting up the conversations. It wasn't very healthy, but something thinking you're addicted to texting was much better than being teased for zoning out/staring at the wall for hours.

Like I said, I don't really recommend this one, but it did help me daydream less and spend more time in reality, because it felt like I was in my daydreams. I numbed myself from reality to the point where I didn't care if I was being bullied/judged.

 

4) Talking. I know this isn't an option for most people, but I was lucky enough to have people I trusted (both a friend and a therapist) and told them about my MD. I told them every detail and embarrassed myself completely, but this made me so ashamed and conscious of my MD that it made me try to daydream less. Whenever I caught myself zoning out, I'd get so ashamed that I made myself do something else and distract myself for as long as I could.

5) Pets. This one also probably isn't an option for everyone, but I found that keeping pets served as a great distraction from daydreaming. I started out with a betta fish who I used to talk to instead of daydreaming, and later got pet rats. The rats were a great distraction because they're pretty much always running around and ready to play, and when I let them out of their cage they don't give me any chance to get lost in my mind.

6) Daydreaming. This is by far the weirdest thing that has worked for me, but it's also been the one that has helped me the most. Like I mentioned in the original post, I give myself set times to daydream. It makes it a bit easier to focus on my work when I can say "well in 20 minutes I get a 2 hour block to do nothing but daydream, so I'll work on this until then".

The hardest part of this is finding time in your schedule to set extended chunks of daydreaming time, and of course you'll slip up at times, but taking a few uninterrupted  "daydreaming sessions" a day has really helped me lessen that craving to daydream that builds up during the day.

Being at uni has been a lot easier than high school, because I have 1-2 hour breaks in between each of my classes; these are my daydreaming breaks, and I give myself an added hour or so at the end of the day, too.

Sophie said:

Nice to hear someone with a positive story. What changes did you make to be where you are today? Please don't spare me the details.

My MD is so bad that I can't control my sounds or movements anymore and is laughingstock in the entire town. My neighbours are bullying me every day - their kids as well. I have resorted to wearing ear plugs, but I fear that the otherworldly feeling loss of hearing creates just makes my MD worse. The bullies is also at the same school as me - an entire group of guys is imitating me every time I walk past them, which is fairly often. I also have social phobia - the more I am bullied, the worse the MD becomes. And so on. Moving around doesn't help much - 6 months in and I am a joke to people all over again.

Before you start conjuring up an image of someone with some serious developmental disorder, I just want to tell you that I have been 'normal looking' once. Granted, I never was free of MD, but I at least was never bullied for it either. People just assumed I was very 'deep' and mysterious etc.

Now I can't control it at all and my life has turned into a literal horror movie. I live in almost constant terror and seeking help does absolutely nothing, as the psychologists have been unbelievably unhelpful - it is either OCD, or asperger's syndrome or just plain tourette's syndrome. Absolutely none of those diagnoses fits perfectly, and they are all like 'Sorry, my mistake!' after a while. Rinse, repeat - same mistake over and over again.

I have mentioned MD to them, even got one of them to check out this site. But these professionals won't treat me for something that's not in their books.

So if anyone's got a solution to minimize MD I would be ever so grateful. I figured maybe you've got some sound advice?

[Sophie]

With such a crazy comment, I didn't expect much response. Thank you very much!

I think it is interesting that it gets better or worsens, seemingly at random(and a little disconcerting). Do you think growing up had something to do with it? That your daydreaming lessened, that is. English is not my native language.

My mother had it, too, but she says it disappeared when she grew up. She is still severely dissociated like me, though.

Creating, distraction - I never had the motivation to do these consistently but I probably should, since these are the tips from almost anyone(who has been succesful about somewhat stopping their MD). I agree that pets are important, at least it has been for me.

I especially agree about the talking. I've found that a few hours of talking will have a major influence, not only on my MD, but on how great I am socially for days afterwards. This may just be because I'm so isolated - who knows what would happen if I wasn't?

The third one was very interesting. I actually am not sure this is such a bad idea, though I wouldn't pretend there'd be other people from my daydreams as well. What I mean is, maybe the reason a lot of people lose control with MD, is because there are things they wouldn't dare to live out in real life. Did you ever reap such benefits from this? Did it make it easier to be yourself outside of daydreaming, or did it just make it easier to not MD completely?

[Andie S.]

I'm sure growing up had something to do with it; my life is drastically different than it used to be, and I've changed a lot as well, so it'd make sense for my daydreaming to be affected by that. Mostly it's that I'm too exhausted and stressed to daydream as much as I used to.

 

The reason daydreaming gets so addicting with MD is because it's wish fulfillment. Everyone's living these amazing, fun lives in their heads, and it makes their real lives seem so dull and miserable in comparison.

But bringing my daydreams into my real life has been super helpful. I'm more confident, I'm learning to deal with my social anxiety (it's still a problem, but it's gotten way better than it used to be), and I feel less of a need to daydream. I still have the urge to daydream, but at this point it's more because  it's a habit/I miss my daydream world, and not because I feel like I have to escape reality anymore.

[Sophie]

Despite your warning not to do so, I think I'm gonna try merging my daydreams with my real life anyway. It sounds like it did help you after all, and my situation is not gonna get any worse. (dangerous sentence to utter - my paranoia just spiked)

I don't dream about dragons, anime characters or anything fantastical. It's just me or my latest crush. Shouldn't be that hard to emulate, or draw inspiration from! Maybe it'll improve my appearance, maybe it will end up spawning a few hobbies. Who knows?

I'm really intrigued by the idea. It's very creative.