MD and Sensory Processing Sensitivity

[Elaine Steele]

Do any other maladaptive daydreamers out there identify as having sensory processing sensitivity/being a "highly sensitive person"? If so, do you feel that your sensitivity contributes to your daydreaming issue?

I think it's precisely because I'm highly sensitive that I can visualize my daydreams so clearly and feel their emotions so intensely. I also think it's precisely because I'm highly sensitive that I experience this urge to "turn off" all the sensory and emotional intensity of the real world around me by daydreaming.

An update:

Since writing this post, I've been diagnosed with autism. Now I understand my high sensitivity as autism. 

[Kyle C Monroe]

Yes, I'm an HSP also, was what I found first before finding this.  Since I've been MD since as long as I can remember the worlds in my overactive imagination as I called it before this were so real, I wasn't sure which was reality and I pretty much missed out on most my childhood.  It took a long time for me to mostly escape and try to turn this into an advantage, not that it doesn't still have disadvantages.  

[Jessica Ballantyne]

I do have sensitivities and emotional stimulation by my worldly surrounds. Regards, these days, I try not to daydream "that much." I wish that I wasn't a maladaptive daydreamer. It's distracting, illness-inducing and "maladaptive." That being said, I just got over Sunday scaries this afternoon. I do have to be alive in the awake in the world, at the same time, not let the sensitivities get to me. We all have to toughen up and suck it up. We have to survive and get by. Take everything day by day, like adults do. I got a whole life ahead of me and my parents won't be around forever, of course. I got silly when I was a young adult. I daydreamed way too much. When I mean way too much, I mean just about all day long. It changed and effected my life, which I didn't think was going to happen. Stupid me thought MD was Ok to practice. 

My imagination did get overactive, more than I could control. It wasn't exactly something that I can just leave behind. I wasn't caught dead in the situation either. I did miss out on a lot things in life, including my adolescence and adulthood. I didn't grow up properly, because I relied on my parents to house and feed me. Never having learned to pay the bills. And I regrettably didn't stick with school. Meanwhile, I am having a very difficult time finding a job. 

[SA]

I am an HSP. I have been a daydreamer for as long as I can remember. I think it contributes in the sense that being sensitive, HSPs are very expressive and need to be understood. HSPs can't help but let things out in the open. But if you face rejection or don't get understood, it hurts fiercely. This is why MD can be a safe haven as you can express as much as you want to. This has been the case for me. I got socially rejected in school as I was sensitive and expressive. My peers didn't appreciate as I often took things personally and wanted respect. I wasn't that outgoing or fashionable as person. As it was a private school, I got spurned and that's when I decided to become closed off and not pay any attention to people. This is where MD began. 

In your context, I think it's very much possible. HSPs feel emotions deeply. It's hard to build the resilience to cope with emotions in your own shell as they're just too much. Add to that the immense rejection which is common for HSPs. It's reasonable to develop MD as a coping mechanism.

[Elaine Steele]

The pain of rejection is part of what I try to "turn off" by daydreaming, too.