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Post by katie on Dec 12, 2018 19:13:14 GMT
Growing up I didn't know I had a heart condition until I was about 21. This meant that over doing anything like playing with my friends example catch made me sick so I kept quiet and most spent time on my own playing with toys so I isolated myself away from the friends. I was also bullied though out school until I was about 19 which cause my social anxiety. I think loneliness and social anxiety caused mine.
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Post by Dimmer on Dec 12, 2018 19:32:38 GMT
Growing up I didn't know I had a heart condition until I was about 21. I didn't know I had a kidney disease until 23. I was daydreaming like this years before the symptoms kicked in, so it didn't cause that... but I do think it helped contribute to conditions which eventually turned my daydreaming towards maladaptive territory.
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Post by kipper on Dec 13, 2018 3:56:59 GMT
I feel like a lot of people seem to know why they have MD, but I’m in the group of people who don’t. I guess analyzing the contents of your dreams could lead you to the root of your own personal relationship with MD, but once again I feel like that leads me to a dead end. I had a lot of emotional issues that seemed to come along with MD when it started, so for now my best guess would be that it’s simply genetic. I found out a few years ago my grandmother has MD, along with a cousin of mine. (I was only told they excessively pace and listen to music and in my head I was like holy crap I know what they’re doing!!)
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Post by lavieenrose on Dec 13, 2018 16:16:44 GMT
For me, it was a combination of having a shy personality that wasn't socialized early enough. We were living pretty remotely and my parents worked from home. I started kindergarten at 6 because I am born in January, and until that point I had basically spent my whole life at home. I had a few friends that lived pretty far away and that I didn't see very often. So, starting school was difficult since I didn't have the skills to make friends. I had never learned. Then, when I was 8, we emigrated to Canada (I'm originally from Switzerland). Again, we moved to a isolated rural place where they had never seen an immigrant in their lives. I was put into school, but didn't speak the language, and the teachers were ill equipped to help me. I didn't speak a single word in school the entire first year after we emigrated. I also, at the age of 8, gained 40 pounds. I clearly had childhood depression, and the weight gain (basically going from a normal size kid to an obese kid) didn't help. I had difficulties adjusting, and was bullied in school all through elementary school and the first two years of high school. I finally convinced my parents to put me in a private catholic all girl high school when I was 14, and that's when things finally started improving.
So, pretty lonely miserable childhood = escaping into dreamland!
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Post by piphirho on Dec 14, 2018 19:54:09 GMT
I don't really know why I had MD. I don't even know for a fact that I had MD but my experience matches the description pretty well. I was also bullied in school but I can't claim that as the cause because I was daydreaming before I started school. Maybe it didn't become actual MD until the bullying and I used daydreaming as an escape from it. I am pretty sure I was using the "stimming" motions during pre-school daydreaming. I don't know. It was all so long ago it is hard to remember everything that happened then.
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Post by june on Dec 14, 2018 22:48:59 GMT
Emotional violence triggers my daydreaming. But I don't know if it was always like that. I do remember som very high stress moments as a child where daydreaming became my escape from pain though.
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Post by pabloff on Dec 17, 2018 15:02:12 GMT
En caso de que siempre hayas tenido una gran imaginación. Y al mismo tiempo, me apasiona la historia y la cultura. Sin embargo, creo que se trata de la protección de mi madre. Me hizo tímido y huir de la gente. A eso el bullyng lo agregó por ser muy activo en las clases en mi escuela. Ese fue el comienzo, lo gracioso es que me dio un gran estímulo intelectual pero me debilitó social y emocionalmente.
Pero si debo sintetizarlo, creo que estos son los puntos :
Fear of death
_ Fear to emotional independence
_Fear of the future
_ Fear of social change
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Post by Sam on Jan 13, 2019 4:02:13 GMT
I definitely think that my loneliness and anxiety and eventual isolation were the building blocks for my maladaptive daydreaming. I was never very popular as a child as I never fit in with my peers. I wasn't socialized a lot before I entered school and because of that, when I did enter school I didn't really understand how to socialize with my peers. And then I started developing anxiety at a very early age, with my panic attacks starting when I was about 7/8. They eventually developed into a panic disorder and by the time I entered my teens I was severely agoraphobic. I began daydreaming maladaptively around that time because it was the only way for me to socialize with others the way I wanted to. In the past 5 years, it became my way of avoiding making actual changes in my real life that would lead me to be the person that I so desire to be.
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ali
New Daydreamer
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Post by ali on Feb 21, 2019 16:12:55 GMT
As far as I can remember, I’ve always had MD even as a young child without even realizing it. Growing up, I didn’t have many friends which caused me to feel extremely lonely and have a lot of time on my hands. So I’d just lie in bed, put some headphones in, and go wild with daydreaming and twitching and HOURS would pass. I missed many opportunities in life because it got so bad, which only worsened my depression and made the daydreaming worse.
On top of that, I found out at kind of a young age that my parents were divorcing and not only that, but I was struggling in school between not being able to keep up with the work and dealing with two abusive best friends and an anxiety disorder, and so I just coped with everything by isolating myself and always listening to music, always daydreaming. It’s always been and probably always will continue to be a habit of mine that nobody really knows about. Maybe one day it’ll become less of a strain on my life if my situations get better, but yeah, that’s what I believe caused it.
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Post by Lucy on Mar 1, 2019 19:42:42 GMT
I think the reason I daydream is because I'm very sensitive and sometimes feel really insecure and socially anxious, particularly at school. So daydreaming is a way for me to be this confident and outgoing person that I wish I was in real life. I'm yet how the themes of my daydreams relate to why I daydream though. I'm still trying to work that out.
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yasmine
Active Daydreamer
i see mdd as a gift but i want to reduce it cause it starts looking like a curse
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Post by yasmine on Mar 7, 2019 18:08:12 GMT
A few things - happening right from being born, basically. I was an unwanted pregnancy, but my parents had me anyway. They only wanted one child, and already had my brother a few years earlier. When I came along, I seemed to be in the way and a nuisance to my dad. And barely tolerable to my older brother. Both of them were dismissive and patronizing toward me. I felt like my grandparents too, favoured the boy in the family, and from an early age I just felt left out and never good enough. As a kid, I became frustrated and vocal about it, but expressing myself all wrong as all children do. My cries and sensitivity just seemed to be chalked up to girl-behaviour. What I really wanted was to be understood and treated just the same as my brother, but what ended up happening is my outbursts created more problems and to this day my parents joke that I 'never shut up'. And so it goes... I went to school and was on the verge of being bullied. Luckily, a few other kids who were seen as being weaker than me were better targets, and I just squeaked by elementary school without too much damage of being bullied. I think all of this feeling of inadequacy, especially starting at home, is what started my need to escape to a dream world where things went my way and I did get what I wanted. In my dreams, it wasn't so much having things - it was having love and being adored. I am making it sound like I was mistreated at home, and I really wasn't. My parents did spoil me with gifts at Christmas and my birthday, spent money to try and make me happy, allowed me to do things as a kid without over-protecting me. I had a normal childhood. I just feel, and still do feel, that I was the one member of the family that didn't fit in with the other three (mom, dad, brother). I felt like they were a team and I was on my own when it came to practically everything. Where we wanted to go for dinner, what to watch on TV, you name it. Nothing I wanted was taken seriously or considered. I am sure my MD started to make me feel better when I wasn't being heard or understood, and was unable to communicate what I wanted because I was too little to know how to do that. .
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Post by maeziemae on Mar 8, 2019 6:42:06 GMT
Hi. I would like to think of myself as a happy daydreamer from the time I started (like 5 years old) till about 17 years old. I daydreamed all the time but never viewed it as a negative thing. What turned my constant daydreaming into more maladaptive behavior was when I began to use it as a coping mechanism. I’ve recently discovered I have a hard time with rejection and internalize it. I use my daydreaming to visualize myself (a slighter better version of myself) as someone who is deeply loved and accepted. My rejection came mostly from a romantic aspect so my daydream themes now tend to revolve around a romantic relationship. When I was younger it was more about adventures with friends or simply because I wanted to create cool stories and scenarios in my mind (which also helped give me the confidence to try new things growing up). My quest is to take the coping mechanism out of my daydreaming so I can be a happy day dreamer again. I don’t think it’s realistic for me to not day dream a lot but I do think it’s realistic to adjust the expectations or the reasons for daydreaming. I think the key to that is conquering my fear of rejection that is obviously crippling me irl. Using it as a coping mechanism in the actual moment of rejection or breakup helped a lot but I’m having to come to terms and realize it’s not serving me now. These are just my thoughts though. 🤷🏼♀️
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2019 5:11:16 GMT
Mostly are from bullying and backstabber friends at school (I don't know if this was a good term. because now I kept thinking if I do deserve being stabbed for my oddball personality). While my family... is complicated. Not broken home, but being the last daughter means bringing heavier expectation and burdens that caused by older siblings.
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Post by splott on Mar 25, 2019 16:17:08 GMT
"I daydreamed all the time but never viewed it as a negative thing. What turned my constant daydreaming into more maladaptive behavior was when I began to use it as a coping mechanism. I’ve recently discovered I have a hard time with rejection and internalize it."
Yes. these apply to me too. my daydreaming went really off the rails when I fell in love with someone who was...well, he's intermittent-reinforcement-guy (intermittent reinforcement is the most powerful type). He loved me, he didn't, he cared, he didn't, he was there for me, he wasn't, he FELT really good, but then he withheld touch (because he's also fucked up, not because he's an asshole). And I started daydreaming ..and it got worse and worse. because we were SO CLOSE to something amazing..and i just kept (keep!) daydreaming about how if some sort of butterfly effect had tipped the balance. What if, what if, what if. :(
I was on a med that made it better, but it also stole ALL my motivation so I was a total homebody and couldn't even manage to care about eating well or exercise or seeing friends.
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Sasha
Junior Daydreamer
School is life
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Post by Sasha on Mar 26, 2019 23:11:36 GMT
Emotional violence triggers my daydreaming. But I don't know if it was always like that. I do remember som very high stress moments as a child where daydreaming became my escape from pain though. I understand how you feel. I'm very sorry for what you went through. Mine started the same way.
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