Tag: daydream

Daydreaming Away Reality

People tell you that when you get older you need to live in the “Real World”. You need to live in REALITY. What if you cannot cope in the real world? what then? Many of us turn to daydreaming and away from living in the harsh light of the NOW because we need an escape. For a moment or some moments, we can envision everything we lack in the reality that is our lives. We can say what we always wanted to say to the people who seem too large and too terrifying in our lives. In the reality of our dreams, we can vanquish our enemies, solve our problems, conquering fears too frightening to give voice to. We can be clean when we have become corrupted by mistakes, ill-advised actions or wayward thoughts. It is a comforting place. Until you are dragged back to everything you vanquished in your mind. you have to, you need to, you must. Anxiety-inducing thoughts that seem to follow you until you lock it out with the door of your imagination.

But those menacing enemies, worries and fears linger in the woods of reality waiting to pounce when you emerge from your castle of dreams. So you find yourself staying more often in your castle refusing to be confronted by these monsters in the woods. Then, you are not satisfied with leaving and returning but feel the need to stay and build the castle wall higher and higher until reality does not exist only your dreams…Is real life worth coming back to?

There are many articles on how maladaptive daydreaming is dangerous yet many still and will part take. The thing is, many people will daydream but not everyone will be negatively affected by the act of daydreaming. Immersive daydreaming has been recognised as harmless once it does not interfere with our day-to-day lives. We all need a little escape from our present circumstances from time to time, but do we want to live more in the real world or be enchanted by our dreams? Where are you right now in 2025? Has your daydreaming gone over the edge to maladaptive or are you able to pull back leave your castle face those monsters and win?

A Prisoner in Your Head: Maladaptive Daydreaming a Blessing or Curse?

My story is my story not mal not adaptive and certainly not daydreaming! 2024 has been a hard year. It has threatened to drown me. I could not swim. I had no life jacket – only the dreams in my head. I would sit for hours reflecting on my failings and then reject my reality for my daydream. In this world, I create I can be anybody – and everybody. I never fail or make a mistake. I could edit my stories until they satisfied me. I felt free. For a few hours, I was free.

I was the best in my world. I felt no pain. No one hurt me or did me wrong. In my world I was strong. I did not need anybody else. I could build my island and eject or admit whoever I please. But it was mine, in a world where I had no space. I went into my head. I stayed there for an hour to find the grace to come back into my hell for a time. But I knew anywhere any time I could go back and be safe.

“You are falling behind.” “You better pay attention.” No. I can stay for however long I want and the world will stop to let me be. Who could say what hour or the time of day, but me, I made it so. But things got slow in the real world and so my fake world became real and the real became fake and then I got confused. I became locked in my world and lost the key longer and longer each time. I stayed there a willing prisoner and hoped no one would notice or at least would not burst the bubble.

But while they label my world, a “compulsive fantasy” and try to attach blame I remain committed to my prison. There is nothing more important than saving my world, I can allow those childish dreams to die because they were never real. Those wish upon a star dreams never came true and left with what to do I crafted a new world and planted seeds that would take root. While I must physically stay in the world I now hate more and more, I crave the world no one sees but me. I crave it more than food, more than the air I breath