Help with MD through observation

[Alan Puntegard]

Hello, greetings from Texas. I have been suffering from MD for quite a while now. It first started when I was in high school and suffered from anxiety problems. I remember going to the counselor a couple of times and telling her about my anxiety. She later advised me to imagine myself in a scenario where I could be somewhere relaxing, or maybe a scenario where I could be a famous athlete. After taking her advise, I started building a strong bond to these scenarios, which led to my daydreaming becoming a problem. I started off not doing so bad in high school, but later on I noticed that my grades gradually continued to fall after a while. Now that I am in college, I found it to be too great of a distraction to be daydreaming on a routinely basis. I hated myself for it. So just about two weeks ago I devised a plan. I went to the local Wal-Mart and purchased a small camera that I could install in the top corner of my dorm. for 1 week straight, I left that camera on and let it record my actions while in the room. What I had observed after connecting the camera to my computer was astonishing. During the day while being alone doing hw, I would sometimes get up and start pacing out of nowhere, imaging myself being a person of great accomplishment and position. I noticed this happened after completing a hard mathematical problem. I also noticed that every once and a while I would do short bursts of laughter or talk even if there was nobody around. At night, I would try to get some early sleep, because I figured that if I could be well rested for a night, then the next day I would be more in control of my mind and be better able to halt my daydreaming addiction. The problem was that I would not go to sleep right away. I was usually squirming or moving around my bed from 10 to 11 or 11:30. Then I would notice myself eventually falling to sleep. After anaylizing all my flaws and irregular things I did throughout the day, I wrote them down on paper and kept them in my binder as reminders of not to do because some of these things were obviously not normal. I can happily say that I feel a lot better and a lot more in control of myself. I also switched to a high protein diet and cut off unhealthy sugars and excess carbs. the protein helped stabilize my thoughts and make me think sharper. I would higly recommend buying a small camera and installing it to observe yourself. You never know what ridiculous things you do until you see it yourself. Then you can analyze and go from there.