What genre does your daydreaming world typically reside in? Mine is the last thing others would expect.

[Sidefire]

I've noticed that many people have different types of worlds they go into. Many of them are fantasy-based, but there are also action-adventure, mystery, drama, and love-driven ones I'm sure. 

So I'm typically a shy, polite girl. I'm scared of everything, especially hurting others' feelings. Others see me as kind, caring, and sweet. As an empath who just wants to make others happy, people are always shocked to hear about the terribly gory, violent horror "stories" I create. Yes, even when I first began writing my daydreams down in 5th grade (my daydreaming started when I was around 5 years old), they were still a bit disturbing for an 11 or 12-year old. 

Now I'm not an angry or violent person in the slightest. (When I get upset, I take it out on myself. You'd have to do something just awful to make me angry at you.) I've thought in the past that my daydreaming could be like this because I have a pretty boring and mundane life with little control, and the anxiety/depression I've experienced may have also influenced it. Either way, my daydreaming world is the safest place for me to go. In the past I've managed to stop myself from cutting myself in the last second by immersing myself so deeply in the other world. (For you who have self-harmed, you understand how hard it is to stop yourself, all by yourself.) 

Anyway, the character I possess is always the protagonist. Always a heroic and incredibly brave figure, always the one who is tortured or hurt the most. Always the one who has people who care about him as if he's changed every single one of their lives. Always the one who endures the most pain, usually physically but often mentally so as well. There are often times where I even shift the character I possess in scenes where someone different would fit that description at the time. 

I've explored all kinds of horrific situations, and have even been murdered a couple times (only to come back one way or another). In my other world, I've endured death, intense beatings, stab/gun wounds, exorcisms, waterboarding (along with a long list of other methods specifically for torture and interrogation such as rat torture or white torture), kidnapping cases, lots of comas, drowning, illness, fire burns/smoke inhalation, the physical and mental pain of slowly becoming a monster, surgery (one of my phobias), dissection, lots and lots of needles/syringes, chloroform, blindness/deafness, starvation, poison, being eaten alive by beasts, soul being eaten alive by entities and demons, being possessed by a demon, choking/strangulation, struck by lightning, amnesia, hypothermia, carbon monoxide poisoning, being drugged and falling into insanity, suicide, child abuse, vampires (yes I had that phase, and ever since it was incorporated into my daydreams it's held a special place in my heart <3), hypovolemic shock, paralysis, disarthria, seizures, sudden cardiac arrest, sodium thiopental, and oh my land the list just goes on and on. I think I've made my point here. I used to always joke to myself that every single character I've ever possessed has incurable PTSD. 

Sorry you had to read all that. The strange thing is, although I've explored so many different types of violence [so much that I can recite the rate in which oxygen levels drop in an air-tight room depending on the volume and the amount of people in it, recount endless facts about comas and sleep, give an abnormally long list of torture/interrogation methods along with the details of what they do, how it works, what it feels like, and the psychological affects it has on the person,] it has never crossed the line between my daydreams and the real world. I'm just another author; Stephen King was never a murderer or violent person, and neither am I. I just find so much excitement and adrenaline when I'm in those positions, fighting for an idea or to protect a person or even just myself, and I always have that support system I never had in my waking life. 

Sorry, I went on much longer than I thought I would. Just some interesting things (again don't worry I'm not some serial murderer) 

I'd love to hear about the genres you guys have explored, too! If you feel comfortable, share why you think you lean towards that genre and feel free to give examples since I've spoken so much here~ 

[Filly]

Wow that is so descriptive. My friend day dreams but I don't know how to get him to talk to me about it.
He is very generic in his responses. Very private and is probably afraid I would analyze him.
He has some attention deficit and I can tell the few times I've noticed depression.
He is one cool dude and I wish he didn't keep so much inside.
When I next see him maybe I could show him this site.

[Suki97]

I guess mine are just the most common type - an ultra successful version of me who's never awkward, knows all the right things to says, never afraid of anything etc. At the peak of an ultra successful career and living in high society. Oh and it's probably worth adding that every single guy that sees me falls hopelessly in love with me ..... naturally.

But I've created characters and stuff and I spend an abnormal amount of time - like every spare minute doing it which is really frustrating because my concentration is absolutely awful and I really struggle in college. I can stay up to the early hours of the morning doing it, put off assignments and lectures (I miss a lot of school!) because I've just fallen so far behind and I get huge anxiety about that. I always manage to scrape through but its getting harder and harder. Don't have many friends because I push everyone away to have more time to daydream.

I guess you could my daydreams are the antithesis of the current me.

[Sam]

I’m glad I stumbled over this post because this sounds a lot like me. Although I am not a person who is scared easily, I often imagine my worlds as extremely gruesome and full of gore, torture, and death. Just a lot of pain in general. Sometimes it’s me in pain, and sometimes it’s other people/characters. Either way, almost all of the torture and stuff you described was what I have conjured up as well, and it’s helped with self harm. Despite these claims, I am not a murderer and don’t plan on becoming one lol

[Sidefire]

Ahhh someone relates!! ^-^ Glad we're all on the same "murder is bad" page haha

Yeah with me, like I said I'm a really anxious person but I just find so much excitement. Maybe it could be the intimacy? I've grown up having a harder and harder time forming sincere relationships with others that don't feel empty or numb. I grew up without any physical touch; like I see other siblings and families hug or even high five and I cringe a little because even though I still live at home, I honestly don't remember the last time I've so much as touched one of my siblings. I'm absolutely not a touchy-feely person, yet there's so much cuddling and hugging and carrying that takes place in my daydreams that I know deep down, I'm a really cuddly person

[Meg Sheath]

Oh my that's me. I've been a bit scared to admit my daydreams are brutal, since, like you said, that's kinda weird. But what you posted I can totally relate too.

I'm a quiet, shy girl who doesn't talk much and from my opinion, you wouldn't think of me daydreaming about a characters being tortured and haunted by it for years. Basically most things that you said about the torture , I've daydreamed about it. I've always wondered why, exactly, they are so violent, since I hate violence and gore? It's strange. But anyway, my main character (and some others) go through extreme mental and physical torture and develope mental disorders of some kind. (Example: one has PTSD, one is an actual phycopath, one has Multiple Personality Disorder etc.) But some how, they are not just random death and torture. They all keep with the plot and further it. The reasons why a character gets tortured and it's effects are so complicated and thought out it almost scares me. I'm not a violent person (like I said before, I hate gore and violence, but for some reason to develop my daydreams I always have to look and learn about it to further my plot) but here I am in the shoes of a villain scheming how to make someone commit suicide. On genres, my daydream tends to be a mix of fantasy, super hero (is that a genre?), And phycological.

But I'm so happy to find other people share that in common. (This post is so all over sorry I'm so excited to find other people like me lol)

[Sidefire]

I didn't think anyone else did this, so that makes me happy! ^-^

[MatthewR]

Ok. So I'll be honest with you. I do have some violent thoughts. I do not act on said thoughts, however, and I don't really integrate them into any sort of narrative. But I get where you're coming from. For me, I experience it as a negative emotion that flares up and materializes in my imagination as a violent scenario. The underlying problem is anxiety, like you mentioned. I'm very reactive in this way, but it has everything to do with personality and not with any prior trauma. 

I will say this, tho, because you mentioned personality in your most recent post. What you are describing fits the behavioral pattern of a particular personality alignment. You're right to bring up Steven King because he also wrote about things that terrified him. Several sites have typed King as a Type 5 on the Enneagram, but if you really think about what he writes and the facts of his life, I'd make the case he's an INFP 6w5. You may lean in this direction as well.

You also describe two different emotions: affection ("touchy-feely"), which is derived from the self-preservation instinct, and intimacy, which is closer to the sexual instinct. The sexual instinct is what produces that sense of excitement and intensity. Like an electrical plug seeking an outlet, the sexual instinct wants to be "turned on." Based on what you describe--and absent any other information--it sounds like you have an "inverted" self-preservation instinct in the secondary position. Being that this is your secondary instinct, you're going to spend much more time thinking about it, contemplating it freely and expressing it in more obvious ways than your primary instinct.

The reason that it's considered "inverted" is because it manifests in your personality in the exact opposite way that self-preservation normally works. A preoccupation with violence, threats to safety, and an avoidance of physical touch. In fact, you may be oblivious to real world dangers, and people just look at you, like, why did you do that, what were you thinking? People who lack expression of the self-preservation instinct are not put off by pain or gruesome imagery--it's more like morbid fascination for them. Also, there's a tendency to neglect your safety, like I said, that also includes either not eating enough or overeating. Regulating your diet is difficult with this instinct, and it also causes individuals to become packrats and hoard useless things, stockpile, etc. You can always tell a person with inverted self-preservation by the sheer volume of stuff they keep in their rooms.

If any of this sounds like you, then you probably do have this instinct in your personality. I'm sorry for being so forward, but it matches your daydreams and potentially helps to explain why you feel the way you do.    

 

 

[MatthewR]

Oh, one more thing. There's another famous "bloody author." You may have heard of him. George R. R. Martin of Game of Thrones fame. I also think Martin has an inverted self-preservation instinct.

I would type George R. R. Martin as INFP 9w1 So/(Sp)/Sx. He's very generous with violence and death to his own characters. Being that he is INFP, he can be quite inventive in this fashion. 

[Sidefire]

No, that's very interesting! I'd agree with most of what you described, except for the hoarder/lots of stuff part. I'm typically very organized with my stuff and routinely bring a garbage bag in my room for donation to fill with things I don't need or use. My least favorite thing is clutter, it makes me feel claustrophobic and messy.
This behavior can be rooted from my family life, however. My grandparents and older brother are extreme hoarders, and my mom has some hoarding tendencies. I used to collect small things and what one would consider trash when I was really little, but as I've grown up I do whatever I can to keep my room and area as clutter-free as possible.

Again though, this can very much be an acquired behavior driven by other natural ones.

[Sidefire]

Also, I posted a long reply on the other discussion, but I don't think it uploaded.. I don't want to retype it all, but basically I just explained how interesting personalities are

[darmody]

My daydream stories I don't think always feature myself as the main character, as many others appear to do. I usually have "ensemble casts," clusters of characters who play off of eachother. I could be some of them or all of them, or just parts of them. I don't know. Though I definitely recognize some of their traits and experiences as being from my life. 

Very often the stories are action-oriented. There's violence, war, and all that, but not generally gory or focused on pain, suffering, or torture. However, I can linger on such things on occasion. 

I like strategy, sort of in the Godfather sense. Individuals and alliances fighting for position against opponents, sometimes killing eachother, sometimes not. These can be gangsters or politicians, businessmen, royalty, whatever. Sometimes it's family drama of that variety, or just groups of (supposed) friends. 

That's not all. I'm also oriented towards physical action that's not about violence, for instance stories about heists or chases or technology in general. I do some sci-fi. I do some travel. 

Ideas also interest me. I do moral struggles and what you might call "philosophical" stories, though not necessarily high-minded ones. Sort of "What would you do in this situation?" stories. 

[Laura]

That's really hard. To me it feels sort of realistic, an equal balance of comedy, drama, horror, etc like real life.  It's based in the real world but there are SOME fantasy elements because some of my characters have super powers. I have never featured myself as any character, I don't exist there. I always wonder if that means something.