Hello,
I'm Brad. I'm 25 years old. I think my daydreaming started around the 2nd grade. To be honest, it could have possibly been before that. I use to run up into my room and put myself in a number of imaginative scenarios. These would mostly be triggered by music, movies, television, clothes, or any other visual stimuli.
I'm gay and I was ostracized because of my sexuality beginning at a very young age. The isolation and lack of support I felt as a child is probably what led me to use maladaptive daydreaming as a coping mechanism. In this imaginary world I wouldn't have to face the taunts of school children, be maligned for my femininity, or worry about grades. I could become anyone I wanted to be and be praised for it. And these dramatizations would be so powerful and in precise detail. It was better than watching tv or playing video games. It's like i had my own virtual reality.
The habit continues to this day. I have put off so many things so I can satisfy my need to escape from the world. But I have always been a self-aware person. I knew that my daydreams were not real. I knew that they would not bring me any long-lasting happiness. They were just shots of dopamine I needed in order to shake off anxiety or to temporarily forget about life. I know that this habit will not make me the successful person I often fantasize about being. I just finished a full 4 hours of daydreaming instead of working on an overdue assignment. That's just one example of how bad I have it.
Recently my daydreams have become less about fantastical scenarios that have nothing to do with my real life and more about revisioning events that happened in the past and enticing a bunch of what if scenarios about my life. Like what if I actually stood up for myself. What if i made different decisions in my career. what if I hung out with my friends more in high school. Or what if I applied myself and got into my dream college. I think what's triggering this is the fact that I'm in a quarter-life crisis and don't know where my life is heading from this point. And it's these types of scenarios that trigger the strongest emotional response in me. Because it's like "damn, I know this was not real, but it could have been real."
I know that in hindsight this all sounds very depressing.
But that is why i'm here. If I can't stop this from happening to me I want to at least figure out if there is a way to use it to my advantage. People have always told me that i am a creative person. And I always wanted to pursue a career in filmmaking, music, or design. My hope is that maybe I can turn all of these vivid scenarios I go through into a story or maybe even screenplay. It's a gift and a curse that has afflicted me deeply and personally. I'm not ashamed of it. I don't expect anyone to understand it. All I know is that right now it's not helping me. So, i'm glad people are beginning to recognize it and I hope that in the future we will have more scientific studies that get to the bottom of why we daydream.