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Comment by Molly on March 14, 2024 at 10:03pm

I'm nearly 40 years old and after around 15 therapists and shrinks I've learned that there's a connection to sleep and my daydreaming. I'm sure many other people on this forum are insomniacs like I am, kept up from the MD. I'm always rotating my sleep aids, attempting to avoid caffeine in the afternoon, all the sleep hygiene things. If I am able to get 8 hours, my MD much less a problem. The less I sleep, the more my brain is wired and I just spin off into MD so much worse. That's really the only thing I've found really works. Everything else I'll MD right thru, but at least good sleep keeps it a little in check.

Comment by Prav Surayu on December 18, 2017 at 12:37pm

Now comes the hardest part... to "shoot the arrow of longing beyond yourself" and integrate the powers of your imagination with the world.  I've only managed to do this a few times and found that it's something you have to keep working towards.  Here's the best techniques I've found so far:

(1) Build an imaginary map of the world

Start building imaginary worlds that are versions of the real world.  This will be different for anyone based on what your work/life is oriented about.  But build a mental model for all the worlds you interact with, that allows you to explore possibilities in that world.  This will become a powerful tool in action.

(2) Read about Stoicism

The real world will feel odd and distant.  You will get jostled around.  Read about Stoicism.  It's the old Roman philosophy and the core, it is about how to see reality clearly and not get jostled around by life's ups and downs.  One very useful exercise is to imagine yourself losing everything and everyone you love and care about in exquisite detail.  Sounds horrific, but once you do it, you will never take those people and things for granted and you will be better placed to appreciate them.  Also, when you do lose them, you will be able to face it with grace.

(3) Make your rumination an asset

Ruminate in the 3rd person.  When you do, you'll imagine yourself more objectively.  Orient your rumination around what you should do.  Guide your rumination to present options.  Start imagining different courses of action and what others will do in response.  Your imagination will become a tool for foresight rather than a prison.

(4) When you interact with others, focus it on them

Most people won't understand your internal world.  Don't expect them to.  The purpose of interaction should be to learn about others' internal worlds.  You'll find that many people have beautiful worlds inside of them, that will enrich your own.  Focus your strategies on getting past the initial level of interactions and on rather exploring those depths together.  You will find it is far more rewarding than talking about your own worlds, which people mostly won't understand.

(5) Ask why things are the way they are.

When the world seems horrific, understand that things are the way they are for a reason.  Keep asking why.  Realize that most people aren't really conscious about their motivations.  Strangely, the imagination you possess allows you to have tools that allow you to see more dimensions of reality, allowing you to see past yourself if harnessed.  But the world will never be the one you imagined.  By understanding why it is the way it is, you can focus on those causes and try to slowly bend the world in a direction that is towards where you want it to be.

(6) Shape the world in line with your vision

Comment by Prav Surayu on December 18, 2017 at 12:20pm

Okay, so now you've mapped your mind.  It's time to start shaping it.  And then to tie it to the world.

Let's talk about willpower.  Willpower is interesting.  It's limited and it gets cut down during the day as we make decisions and 'force' ourselves to do things.  There are only four ways to expand it: (1) working out, (2) better diet, (3) meditation, & (4) posture.

It takes 3 weeks to create a new habit.  As much as possible, you want to try to start with the above things.  If in the morning you invest in a (gradual) expansion of willpower, you will begin to have more of a capacity to make more decisions.

Now, for each of your mental loops or daemons, imagine a better one that your ideal self has.  Imagine what sort of stimulus feeds them, what habits, what outcomes.  Start creating mental worlds where you imagine yourself responding to feedback loops differently.  Through that imagination, you can slowly retrain feedback loops.

Start reshaping your imaginary world and the selves within you.  If you have self-destructive feedback loops, don't quit cold turkey.  Rather, try to replace them with ones that are somewhat less destructive.  If you get sad and start eating ice cream, make sure there's no ice cream at the house but make sure there's something else to munch, just something that's less caloric.  Also, start changing your stimulus.  If the news stresses you out, try reading a book on world events instead.  If you spend time on Facebook, change your password to something complicated and Log Out.  When you have that urge, instead read a site that inspires you.  You'll slowly find that you're changing as you change your stimulus and response.  You'll still feel like you have a long way to go and that you're trapped inside yourself, but you're laying the foundation for change.

Next, start externalizing your mind.  Writing or music are a great way.  Don't be focused on writing something amazing, just write, even if it's blabber.  The point is to build a link between your imagination and something in the world.  Judgment is the enemy here.  Don't show it to others.  Just keep slowly building.  

I've found coding to be incredible.  You can build entire digital worlds.  The thing is, you have to be patient with errors.  Errors are how you learn.  And with time, your imagination will be made manifest external to you, in writing, music, art, code, or whatever other medium you decide.

You will slowly feel more and more actively creative and empowered.

Comment by Prav Surayu on December 18, 2017 at 11:55am

I believe the trick is not to 'control' MDD but to harness it.

We each have this evolutionarily developed capacity for great abstraction, visualization, and imagination.  With this capacity comes decreased awareness of the 'real' world, but, if we can integrate our imagination with that real world, we can shape it to create things others cannot imagine.

So where to start?

I think the first thing is to be patient with where you are now.  Guilt and self-castigation tends to result in a spiral that is self-destructive.  You are different and that difference is not a good or bad thing in and of itself.  It is a gift that can be harnessed.

Then, you have to acknowledge that there is a part of you that wants to be better.  That idealized version of yourself, that version of who you could be, is there.  Your life will be the process of becoming that person, of breathing them to life within you and within the world.  If there is a huge gap between you now and that person, don't despair.  There will always be.  And life will always be a process of becoming to be that person.  But write it out -- who is that person, what defines them, what motivates them, what do they believe about themselves and how do they approach the world...

So be at peace with where you are.  But know there is a part that wants to be more.  Know that your life, lived will, will be the gradual relentless but gentle process of becoming that person.

The next step is to build a part of your mind that is a map of your mind.  Take your capacity for imagination and point it inwards.  This was the original purpose of meditation.  Watch your mind work.  See what triggers thoughts.  See what associations you make.  

What you realize is that you aren't one person, but rather multiple habits within you.  Each of those habits feeds off of some stimulation: internal or external.  These loops have subconsciously defined the person you are.  One loop might make it that, when you face a small setback, you assume everything is going wrong and as a result start catastrophizing.  Another might be that, when people are cruel to others, you shut down because you believe the world is cruel and you engage in comfort-seeking behavior to dull your senses.  Just map your responses.  Trigger --> Habit --> Response.  You'll see that you are a series of patterns.  This takes a lot of time and a lot of self-honesty.  You need to not identify with the habits.  Don't justify them or attack them.  Just note them and map them in a part of your brain and write them down.  Understand why they emerged in a non-judgmental way.  If people attack them or justify them, ignore that.

Okay, mapping your mind can take a while, and it is a continuous process.  The purpose is to make it so that, instead of just being along for the ride, you can see the ride of your thoughts, emotions, triggers, and actions and how they are shaping you.

When mapping my mind, I use my imagination to depersonalize habits.  I take complexes of habits and call them 'Daemons' after the little Greek helper spirits and the computer programming agents that function in the background.  I determine their core motivations and what feeds them.  One of mine simply wants to explore the beauty of higher mathematical and artistic truths.  One wants to justify myself by blaming everyone around me for when things go bad.  One wants to just play with the mad zany potentials in life.  All of these urges are neither good nor bad, they are just core drivers.  In the end, the higher self we want to be has all these same core daemons.  They're just structured differently...

Comment by Tia Joseph on February 17, 2015 at 7:54am

I suppose this is odd, but sometimes (like today) when I am feeling particularly frustrated with my daydreaming and don't know how to stop I just come to this page or read about maladaptive daydreaming. That brings me back to reality pretty fast I think.