Tag: maladaptive daydreaming

Be

Well, you can imitate everyone you know

I like you
you seem strong
have it together
know your plans
have a focus.
So I will take your voice
put it in my pot
The way you move
walk
and smile.
I will fix my face to look like yours
you belief in this?
I will too!
I can fix me
forget my fringe
they look frazzled
because I cannot find my center.
Keep talking
so I can know you
understand you
step into you.

But now - 
there are,
so many yous,
years of collection
they are heavy...
so confused
don't know who to be
who to be 
today I am - 
tomorrow I will be - 
no!
Can I take these off?

can I still be?

Reality

Oh I was high
I wwas on fire...

Reality why are ou so cruel?
Why do you make me cry into the night
Too few spots of delight
Why
Are
You 
So
Cruel!
Reality
Get up off my neck - 
send help!
I cry
Mo' life
Even as I die.
Reality
You have cracked the mirror
Fed me venom filled fruits
I feel so used and abused.
Reality!
Reality!
Come and answer to your crimes
against humanity.

Breaking Up With Maladaptive Daydreaming…

I spent so much time with you, and now I have to walk away—just like that, just today. The unicorns were great, and as I look back, my heart flips and screams a silent scream, ” I do not want to become a pillar of salt”. I regret looking back; I see the Milky Way and the rainbow – brilliant and true – beckon to me. Suddenly, a hommack emerges to welcome me back to Unreal. Fear claws with delay talons, vicious and true. “What is there to look forward to?”

I am numb, struck dumb by the reality that beckons menacingly. Now, I want to remain. I could stay forever and walk the yellow brick road. Maybe then I could find Freedom, which has been running from me. I never caught it, but it would just be out of reach, encouraging me to chase it and capture it with my net of great expectations. I never did catch it; most times, I could not see it, only hear the roaring of rushing waters, melodious and true floating through the air.

I have avoided those shadowy figures that lure me back into the trap of daily living. My bones grow cold when I feel them growing too close. “Does it make sense to go back? To sit and watch as my fate is reflected in hopeless eyes and zombies of broken dreams. But I want to walk through the path with real flowers, sunshine daffodils, a real path with dirt that fills my lungs before I give it life once more. I want to experience the newness of changes that signal I am still alive and more is just around the corner. “Not all those who wander are lost,” not forever.

As I step away from those dreams, they become cold and hostile, beating at my back. Without looking back, I know they are fading away into mediocrity and into obscurity. A tear hurries down my face, trying to seal the scream building up, ready to overflowing. Those shadows become solid. They become too real. I see the merging of monsters into faces I know and those yet to come…

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to” 

Can I make it in the real?

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

The Struggle of Overcoming Maladaptive Daydreaming

Individuals with maladaptive daydreaming exhibit more symptoms of depression, general anxiety, social anxiety, and dissociation. They are also more likely to have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) View Source , and depression

Whew and Wow, there are so many labels to contend with in this world. It seems we have become a people of labels. Maladaptive daydreaming is no joke and here I was thinking that fantasising about my best life would be the highlight of my life. Instead the more I delve into this topic the more I realise how dangerous this practice has been to my sense of reality and overall mental health. How to get out of the images and pleasures to be found in your head? Ever been so engrossed in your thoughts that it felt like you were the main feature in your own movie, whether it was a love story or revenge trope? And did you ever end up in the corner of your room or somewhere random crying your eyes out because your thoughts, imaginations and mental conjurings led you there? Well, that is when you know it’s not just daydreaming but a vicious cycle you try to divorce but because life is life you always return to it, for comfort. Wouldn’t life be really grand if you could spend hours escaping? Or are you being trapped? Tangled deeper into a world where no harm can touch you but, you cannot live a real authentic existence. This does not sound great long term and really each time you emerge from one of those long therapeutic escapades you are stuck with the grime of reality. How terrible! Yes, life can be terrible at times but not always and so if you give in to maladaptive daydreaming tendencies you never can fully explore all facets of life. You remain trapped, bound by a need to escape perceived or real dangers that never go away but can be restrained behind the bars of maladaptive daydreaming.

So, we are lost? No. we are not. It is hard. A daily struggle. However, if we really want to free ourselves from the paralysis of Maladaptive daydreaming then it really will take a lot of courage, determination and a village of supporters. It is not easy will never be easy and we will slip up but if we really want to be free of it we need to be disciplined and seek the right support for us whether personal, professional or both. Whatever it takes. So join me as I read a recommendation from a reader of this blog in reading, Quit Daydreaming: How to Wake up and Break free, by J Johnson. In the meantime, I will read and let you know.

Maladaptive Daydreaming and Sleep

So much trouble in the world
So much trouble in the world

Bless my eyes this morning
Jah sun is on the rise once again
The way earthly things are going
Anything can happen

Bob Marley and the Wailer, Survival Album, 1979

Yes, there is so much trouble in the world right now and it seems forever that escapism seems to be a drug more and more of us feel compelled to take. Some forms of escapism include physical activities (yes that is correct), working, overeating (guilty), alcohol abuse, drug abuse, substance abuse, pornography, gambling, daydreaming and the list goes on. Escapism is a fancy way of saying we tap out for a while because we cannot or refuse to deal with some aspect of life or life in totality. We do not want to be reminded of things or baggage we keep dragging around so we seek solace in one thing or another. While we think we are escaping we are killing ourselves. Escapism, which includes suppressing our emotions, has been linked to a 35% increase in death and a 70% increase in death from cancer. Now, other side effects of escapism do not paint a very glowing picture of what many believe to be a balm from reality. This is because escapism has been linked to addiction, withdrawal, mental health challenges, loss of job, decreased productivity, physical health challenges and relationship challenges.

Now Maladaptive daydreaming can be viewed as meeting at an intersection with escapism:

For those that are more introverted and potentially have a more creative disposition, the way in which they dissociate from themselves is not by getting absorbed in the exterior world, but rather by entering further into a more abstract interior world via daydreaming.

https://maladaptivedaydreaming.org/blogs/md/the-intersection-between-maladaptive-daydreaming-and-escapism

The danger of maladaptive daydreaming is that we become so enticed by the escape internally that over time many spend more time there and develop a wrapped sense of reality and may even come to despise their lives because it does not match where our internal world takes us. It leads to an imbalance. It leads to disease. This disease can manifest from daydreaming to insomnia and daydreaming, a cycle that can adversely affect the quality of our lives. We escape from reality and may want to stay in our controlled crafted world which leads to less and less sleep, affecting how we engage with the world which should be our waking hours. Why? When the dream is more real than your reality you want to stay there for as long as possible and when you lose sleep you go into the world, tired, unable to think straight and with a lacklustre attitude your best friend. So imagine the very thing that seems to keep you going causing more trouble, more disruptions in your world.