Integrating MD into real life

[Han Leonard]

Hello everyone, as a 20-year MD'er, I just joined this community, and I'd like to share a few things that I believe might be helpful to the others.

We don’t necessarily need to stop doing MD entirely.

Some research shows that the brain activity of people who do MD is similar to the brain activity of people addicted to different things. So yes, we are indeed addicts.

I asked myself this question: How can I benefit from this?

For a while now, I’ve been using MD as a reward for myself, and this has genuinely helped me bring more structure to my life.

Normally, I’m the kind of person who could get lost in the fantasies I create in my own world at any given moment. Even if you locked me in an empty room for days, I’d never get bored.

But there’s a real world outside, and we need to adapt MD to this real world.

Now, I only allow myself to do MD when I’m doing things that I have to do. Yes, I give my brain permission for this. For example, going to the gym can be quite challenging for me on some days, but I tell myself, "I can do MD while working out." This way, I haven’t missed a single workout day. Another example: when a long drive seems daunting, I tell myself, "You can do MD throughout the journey." Or when I need to clean my apartment, I say, "Hey, you can do MD while cleaning." Other than that, for tasks that require focus, like learning Spanish, I always try to control myself during lessons and tell myself, “You can do MD after the lesson.”

From what I’ve seen in the forum, there are people who continue to do MD even though they aren’t alone. This truly surprises me. As a 30-year-old who’s been living in my imaginary world since around the age of 10, I don’t recall doing MD when I had girlfriends or when I was living with them.

Loneliness is a major trigger.

Perhaps we’re focusing on the wrong thing by trying to quit MD. I believe that MD isn’t a cause but a result.

Many of us are unhappy with our lives, we’re discontent and maybe, through MD, we’re able to prevent the traumas this dissatisfaction might cause. I believe we need to create moments of happiness outside of MD. This isn’t easy, of course, but we need to make a greater effort. Every hour and every day we spend uncontrollably immersed in MD distances us even more from the happiness we could achieve in real life.

Life rarely goes the way we want or in the direction we choose. This is a fundamental rule of life. You fall in love but can’t be together, you look for a job but can’t find one; you want to be happy, but often, you can’t. These examples could go on and on. Perhaps we turn to MD because we struggle to accept things like this. Because that world belongs to us, and we are the masters of it. In that world, we choose whether to be happy or sad.

Sometimes, I feel the urge to be sad, so I let myself drift into fantasies where I’m in heartbreaking situations; I even cry real tears, and my body reacts as if it’s genuinely experiencing that sadness.

In light of everything I've said, none of us are truly alone. We exist and will continue to exist. It is up to us to improve our real lives and attain genuine happiness.

[Jessica Ballantyne]

There is a brutal truth to my life which caused me to maladaptive daydream in the first place. This truth is still with me today as an adult. People don't realize that I exist, because I hide out in one place everyday. No good thing ever happened to me, and I lived in shame for years, due to being lost in my fantasies all the time. I actually am beginning to regret ever doing MD, because it really sucked the happiness out of my life, which in turn broke my heart. To this day, nobody knows who I am, where I am, and what I've been through. I take this as my fault for not opening up to people. 

As of now, I'm struggling financially, and out of work. I'm not in a relationship, nor have friends, which isn't OK. It's like I didn't pay attention to real life, so I got what was coming to me. Embarrassingly enough, I was warned years in advance about this, and it came true. I actually wonder if anything will get better again, which I doubt.