What Happens When Daydreams Become a Detour

[Jessica Ballantyne]

When I was 18, I had this giddy optimism, youthful exuberance, had starry-eyed idealism towards my future, but I went too far with my MD on it. For instance, when I was working my way through college, I was daydreaming big about what I self-assuredly will be seeing up the way—or so I thought. But I noticed people around me made comments about how distant and gone I looked, also how extremely quiet and socially awkward I was. I had goals and aspirations on what I wanted to do in my 20's and 30's, but couldn't help but notice, a significant number of people were quite critical on me for various reasons, and I wonder if they had a problem. They didn't seem to like my person...or wondered what all the dancing, pacing, flapping, and weird faces were all about. 

Normally people exelerate themselves growth-wise, taking the correct steps to get where they want to be, but he here at the same time—and they understand the real world around them. Regardless, I didn't go by that rule book—and just wanted to be who I was, daydreaming my head off about an amazing and awe-inspiring life I anticipated to come. 

When I finished up college, I should've been gearing up with planning out my career, and considered travelling, but I had no idea about "adulting" because I had a soft and easy upbringing without any responsibilities, and I was sort of disabled, but also, I had a problem with controlling the daydreams. 
I was still upbeat about starting life, but my head was jumbled up with excitable music, imagery, and sensations that was clouding up my attention span. 

I tried to do a jump start at my career by taking on roles in print shops, freelance, in-house, and remote contracts, but wasn't very successful, and considered furthering my education. Eventually, a family member found out about my maladaptive daydreaming, when I failed to communicate with her one day, and she was enraged—got into a snub with me. Our conversation thwarted the prospect that I'll ever get out and be very successful at anything—and suddenly everything was just a cloud.

As a result—in my 20's and 30's—I lived in a rut. I didn't go anywhere, and wasn't successful an many paths. And honestly wasn't perceptive of the outside world. As a matter of fact, I was very reclusive and spent so much time on my computer, instead of out there. When I look back at my youth, I feel very glum, feeling that I threw away years of opportunities I could've had if it weren't for my stupid mental health. 

Shortly after, it turns out I had a neuro-developmental condition, where I had a gifted artistic mindset, which caused me to daydream excessively more than usual. I take regard to ordinary people, this made them think I was acting rather curiously—also a socially inept individual who didn't know how to behave correctly in public without causing a stir. 

I understand that no everybody is going to like me, but I'm not a monster either. I'm just misunderstood and much of the time, people wonder if I'm Ok in there—maybe I just think in a different pattern...

[Sergio Silveira]

Please check out my book on my own personal experience with Maladaptive Daydreaming, which afflicted my life for many years and the central thing that impelled me to continually go back to it. I describe in it the method of construction and the richly detailed “reality” of daydreams, the circumstances that often triggered them, how daydreaming actually lessened my feelings for other people, and the reason for my daydreams’ “unparalleled” thrill, and why it does not last, leading to my creation of brand-new daydreams. I felt it fitting to carefully describe my own personal experience with Maladaptive Daydreaming in the form of a novel with aspects of fantasy, since it was fantasy what I spent so much of my life immersed in, and through the experience of a fictional character, who is in so many ways different from me, but shares my own experience and journey out of Maladaptive Daydreaming.

It is available on Amazon! A Breathtaking Life Lived in Daydreams: A Novel About Daydreaming

Amazon.com: A Breathtaking Life Lived in Daydreams: A Novel About D...