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Post by Sam on Dec 13, 2018 19:43:46 GMT
I've mentioned it before, but I have been very isolated the past 5 years because of my anxiety and the way that I allow it to control me. Long story short, my anxiety and panic attacks got so bad that I left public school halfway through eighth grade. I also had a hard time even hanging out with friends, so my interactions with them moved to the internet instead of in person. I went to an online high school. We had to meet with our teachers every two weeks, and it was supposed to be as a group (multiple students plus the teacher), but after a few meetings like that I begged my teacher to do one-on-one meetings with me. That prevented me from making any new friendships in high school. I was fine with meeting like that for a few years, but by my senior year I had to stop meeting with him completely. He was fine with it because I was an exemplary student and if I ever had questions I was always good about sending him an email. Which was perhaps the best for my mental health (I spent most of my senior year in crisis), but it made it so that my parents are really the only people I see on a regular basis, further isolating me.
Daydreaming became a coping skill to deal with that loneliness. But it also prevented me from taking any steps to combat that loneliness in real life. After all, why bother putting yourself through emotionally exhausting therapy so that you can hang out with people when you have all the people you could possibly want right at your fingertips? Or mind-tips??? You get the point. But like with the emotions that I use daydreaming to feel, those interactions with other people that I only get in my daydreams aren't really real. They aren't a proper substitute for the emotional and physical connections that I so desire to have with other people. And I need to stop using them as a substitute. Because in the long run, its just harming me more than its helping me.
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Post by alvi on Dec 16, 2018 15:53:59 GMT
I live a very isolated life and I've always used my dd's to escape from it. When my depression became really bad to the point I could barely care for myself I lived completely in my head. It helped me escape from the problems but it didn't help me to work on them and take the time and effort to try and change my real life.
I now set smallish goals to try and make me work on my RL. It hasn't made massive changes but with talking to people here and having a few things I could add into my day I haven't been able to dwell so much on my negative thoughts. I mean they are still there but I want to make some changes in my life before its to late. Easier said then done though.
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trippingnarwhal
New Daydreamer
Can you not see the same monster that I see? Of course you can't, because it lives inside of me.
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Post by trippingnarwhal on Dec 19, 2018 2:17:24 GMT
I tend to push aside how lonely I'm feeling. I pretend that I'm fine. I smile and crack jokes too. I love my family. I love them so much. But sometimes I get so tired of saying, "My only friends are my family." It's almost suffocating. I haven't had any friends ever since I moved 2 years ago. It's been horrible and I can't imagine how you've coped with it for that long. Always feel free to pm me.
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Post by ruby on Dec 21, 2018 18:34:17 GMT
I enjoy my being alone with my artificially created world. There I feel like I'm the king and I do everything I want. I feel like I'm a great actor.i love it but it wastes a lot of time. I don't get enough time for my studies. Whenever I study, starts to focus on one thing, my fantasies take over the time. It's an addiction I know but I love it.I love talking when there's no real people I can speak whatever I want I can express my true feelings, I can fight, I can dance, I can sing I win an award, I make my people jealous.I have super power. A dramatic story of me with my beloved.but in the process I'm happy that I no longer irritate my friends at least I know everyone out there got rid of me as I have always tried not to push them to make time for me. Now I'm doing everything alone. That's encouraging but in this process I'm aware that I'm running away from my real destination my aim. I need to get back but to my true self without being attached to others again.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2019 14:45:29 GMT
Same things happened to me. I enjoy solitude but in same time it hurts to see there's not much friends that I can hangout in real life. The daydreaming start become not helpful to cope the loneliness, and been a sucker that my negative thoughts telling me I'm not fitting anywhere for my sucking personality.
In same time I know some old friend told me to "just tell us what you want and we will try to help you" , but I still scared because past traumas related to that. So for now I try to at least contacting real life friends via text, having small chit-chat, to know that I'm not dumped just like what my negative side told me.
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Post by Sam on Jan 16, 2019 21:29:32 GMT
Same things happened to me. I enjoy solitude but in same time it hurts to see there's not much friends that I can hangout in real life. The daydreaming start become not helpful to cope the loneliness, and been a sucker that my negative thoughts telling me I'm not fitting anywhere for my sucking personality. In same time I know some old friend told me to "just tell us what you want and we will try to help you" , but I still scared because past traumas related to that. So for now I try to at least contacting real life friends via text, having small chit-chat, to know that I'm not dumped just like what my negative side told me. Small interactions with other people to build up your confidence about being able to have and keep friends is definitely a good idea. |
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Post by Wynn on Jun 7, 2019 19:04:47 GMT
I have always had social anxiety and I've made an effort to reach out and make some connections but I always come home mortified at how I interacted. I'm feel like I'm so cringy!! Then I ruminate over all the mistakes I made and retreat all over again. It does help to get out and get some of the interactions right and I know I just need practice.. the practice is just painful!
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Post by charlixcxfan on Jun 22, 2019 14:24:34 GMT
I definitely use it as a method of coping with crippling loneliness. I have day dreamed my whole life and i have never had real connections with anyone like i think at this point i dont know how to connect with others or be present in reality like im more watching than actually being there and like tbh i have friends i just dont see them often but when i do i feel like i dont engage in a present sense and in new situations i dont know how to just interact with people like at work or like roller derby i m just like so awkward. at the end of the day im just like soooo lonely if i stopped dreaming i would have to cope with the devastating loneliness that is my life and that s too much but like day dreaming is in the way of me making connections with others!!!
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Post by charlixcxfan on Jun 22, 2019 14:54:16 GMT
I definitely use it as a method of coping with crippling loneliness. I have day dreamed my whole life and i have never had real connections with anyone like i think at this point i dont know how to connect with others or be present in reality like im more watching than actually being there and like tbh i have friends i just dont see them often but when i do i feel like i dont engage in a present sense and in new situations i dont know how to just interact with people like at work or like roller derby i m just like so awkward. at the end of the day im just like soooo lonely if i stopped dreaming i would have to cope with the devastating loneliness that is my life and that s too much but like day dreaming is in the way of me making connections with others!!! Like mitski s song nobody really gets it the crippling lonliness!!! (its like not her best her most popular definitely but she has so many gr8 songs) like the desperate desire to connect with others idk i just really like talking abt mitski and i just listened to nobody at like 12am driving alone in my car  abt how lonely and crazy i am. |
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Post by dreamghoul on Jun 23, 2019 19:16:14 GMT
I was doing really good with not day dreaming constantly when I was in a relationship, but now that I'm out of it and basically alone it's taking over again.
I'm new here, but I feel a connection to you guys because I never once thought in my life before that other people were dealing with this too until I found out about this site and the official "Maladaptive Daydreaming" title for what's going on in my head.
You guys can dm me if you wanna talk.
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Post by katie on Jun 23, 2019 19:46:00 GMT
I use to make excuses for not wanting to go out with my friends and daydream instead it wasn't worth all the anxiety and stress meeting up with some people that I didn't get along with which made my anxiety worse. Now I am finding my social part of my life getting better and I am out and about more it get easier to talk about more things which calm my anxiety I was anxious because I had notting to talk about because of my MDD and I was overthinking what I said to people. I find now to laugh it off I went off with my two best friends last night and I was so silly and making plenty of mistakes and they where slagging me which would send my anxiety though the roof but I laugh with them and one of my sayings is what other way would you have me which when I say it means this is me get use to it. They are only becoming my best friends lately as I opened up a good bit more about some of my problems and I am there for them when they need me.
Now when I am going out I always make sure I know who is going out so my anxiety doesn't go to bad and only for my therapy I don't know what I would have done it was a good help and will always have my therapist to go too she started building me up and making sure I was socially able for a few people at a time still not able for big groups of people.
My point is with the right help that is for you and building on you social goals it will help you get out there and have more to talk to people about when you are out and about. Find my mental health much better feel like myself again since I got sick two year ago lost a part of my personality.
Life is all about what makes you happy in your own skin and what you have everything else doesn't matter.
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Post by Sam on Jun 28, 2019 1:35:29 GMT
I originally made this post way back in December and the more I analyze my daydreams the more I've begun to understand that the maladaptive portion of my daydreaming, the part that interferes with my life, is almost 100% my way of dealing with my isolation. I've been more connected with people the last 6 months that I have been in years, due largely in part to my being here on the forum and the other therapy that I've been doing. Even with that, I'm still incredibly lonely because of my lack of face to face connection with others. I'm communicating more, but its still mostly through text. I haven't even been getting enough of the skin to skin touch that humans generally require from my family recently because of my increased fear of germs. Most of the time I flinch away whenever someone tries to touch me, so now they don't try nearly as often, even when I actually want them to, because I'm not very good at asking for it. Even years ago, back when I had real life friends and much less of a fear of germs, I was never good with causal intimacy. People would try to hug me and I would just stand there as stiff as a board until they stopped (though that was partially my mothers fault--a story for a different time). The same thing happened the one time I tried to share a bed with one of my friends. I sort of just lay there, not moving at all, until my friend decided that sleeping on the floor would be more comfortable. While my family wasn't cold to me or anything, I never experienced the casual intimacy that you get with close friendships so when I encounter it, I have no idea how to respond.
I don't know what my point was. I just... my daydreams supplanted the lack of connection to people in my real life and now, even when I'm trying to form better connections in real life, it still doesn't feel as good as what I get from my daydreams. I mentioned in a post a few minutes ago that while my daydreams include visual, they're mostly focused on the feelings and emotions rather than what I'm seeing. Which is an interesting discovery, since trying to manage my bipolar disorder without medication means that I kind of have to keep a very tight leash on my emotions so that I can recognize when they're tipping too far in one direction or the other. But for me, daydreams are pure feeling. Pure emotion. Sure, there's visual and definitely dialogue that creates those feelings and emotions, but they're secondary to the feelings and emotions themselves. And in my daydreams, I always have the kinds of emotional bonds to others that I don't think I've ever had in real life. And that I certainly don't have currently. So its very difficult for me to let go of my daydreams. Not only because they are perhaps the only place where I allow myself to truly feel everything, but also because of the connection to others. I have about a billion reasons for why those bonds are near impossible for me to form in real life, none of which I really feel like talking about right now. Its hard for me to come back to the real world, knowing that I don't have those bonds with anyone, knowing that the only person I really see myself having those bonds with lives thousands of miles away, knowing that I have not experienced emotions so fiercely and fully in years, and likely won't be able to, if I want to stay on my current course of not taking medication to temper my swings, knowing that the minute I come back and acknowledge that what I was experiencing isn't real, I will feel such a powerful sense of longing inside of me that it seems to be crushing me.
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Post by Herro on Jun 28, 2019 13:45:32 GMT
I'm really touched by your second paragraph, Sam. My daydreams, too, are mainly focused on feelings. I'm emotionaly attached to my characters in a way that I never experienced in real life, perhaps except for a period of time when I was a little kid.
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Post by Sam on Feb 1, 2020 3:48:58 GMT
I'm back at this thread, even though I absolutely do not have the time for lengthy analyses right now, because I've really been feeling this a lot recently. My daydreams have been very centered around physical and emotional connection with people.
I still use daydreaming as a coping method for stress, but if I wanted I could fairly easily find and use other, healthier coping methods. But the loneliness and isolation isn't something I see myself easily overcoming in real life. I have too much repressed anger toward my parents to really get the benefit of physical contact from them (not the least of which being that I partially blame them, my mom in particular, for how touch averse I am and always have been). None of my friends live near me anymore and the likelihood that I'll make new ones, let alone trust new ones enough to let them touch me, is not high.
So I'm honestly not sure what I should do. I want to stop daydreaming maladaptively, I really do. But whenever I go without daydreaming about being physically and emotionally close with other people, I get this gaping hole in my chest, and the only way to fix it is by daydreaming because I can't fulfill that need for closeness in real life. Despite the rest of my life being objectively better than usual, I just feel so stuck.
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Post by lina on Mar 4, 2020 19:12:09 GMT
WARNING!!! THE AUTOR CANT SPEAK ENGLISH WELL, YOU MIGHT FIND MANY MISTAKES, ALL FUTHER ACTIONS YOU TAKE ON YOU OWN RISK!!! Hello! I am a maladaptive daydreamer around 5 years, even though I remember doing it earlier, 5 years ago I started to do it every day for many hours. Right now I am trying to cure it and i think this time (it is at least 100 try) I am actually able to stop. I dont have any friend or a boyfriend, lonliness is a big part of my life. But after reading several articles (e.g maladaptivedaydreamingguide.wordpress.com/) I think I found the way to stop and accept my life circumstances. Right now I wasnt daydreaming for 4 days at all, doesnt sound as a big achievement, but for me it is a thing to be proud of (and most importent i dont want to daydream) So before I describe how I deal with MD right now, I want to tell exact topics of my dreams. In dreams I was always in the company of people. My figur was smart, beautiful and just PERFECT, much better than me. At least I thought so. I had friends or I would start friendships. RareI would pretend I have anxiety in my dreams only to become attention from my characters. I was seeking it, I wanted to be loved ans admired. Day after day I was feeling mentally down because of this addiction, I had no power, no happiness, no hobbys, During day I was searching for songs or reading book, watching searies only to find insperation, I cant say that I suddenly realised that I was just running from myself, but finally few days ago I could also FEEL it. Real Me and persona in my dreams has actually nothing in common. It is just another person, which I want to be similiar with, but not me. Hier comes a little bit of the philosophy which I belive in. So I would say everyone consists two persona. The first is the one which cant be changed, you can be born as an intovert or extravert. The second one can be changed. It is a compilation of habits and reactions. For example I had a traumatic experience and now I am afraid to ride a car. Does it mean that I was born with this anxiety? No, after the trauma every time I sit in the car I feel pain and want to run away (in order to feel safety). It is a sort of "habit" to react this way. How does it connected with MD? (It is about "imagenary me") Does it make sense to daydream if I cant change a trait? No, I was born this way, daydream cant affect it. Does it make sense to daydream if I can change a trait? No. because through daydreamin it wont go away. In the opposite, with the time it becomes more and more diffecult to influence. So who is this person I was pretending to be in my daydrems? Definitely not me. It was either a) a person without any anxiety/lonliness at all or b) a person who had it but could get rid of it. You can say: That is exactly like me! I also have the same experience! Well, at least in my case it was not. In the most cases I would stick to a). But even in the case b) the way I was going thought the "cure" must have been perfect, cool and heroic so the other characters could say " THT IS AMAZING!!". So all the time I was actually dreaming about the person who I could never be, who had no connection to real me, it was just like an anime character, but the real me was believing that the MD- experince, emotions and the protoganist represanting me were at least a little bit real. No, they werent, This realisation hit me. If you daydream about an alien (you know, the movie version) who works as a collector of the cats with 6 ears in order to pet them all, this alien is same as my "perfect self". But in the second case I was belieing it was me. Every time I feel like daydreaming, I realise, I dont have the "main character". The earlier imaginary me is not like real me at all, why should I daydream about a stranger? (alien example : P). And lonliness? I feel it sometimes, it is painfull, but I accept it. It is much better to feel pain in real world than happiness in imagenary. And right now I dant even belive in person who ist better than me. Dont missunderstand, I sont meand that I am perfect, I belive in opposite, but I believe that I am able to overcome my weaknisses, I am just the way it is, The things which I cant change cant be better or worse, they are just this way. If I can change my behaviour, than I must always know why. Not to appear for other coole, no, because it makes sense and I can improve my life. This is the end! You survived it!!! I hope I could help, if not, than I am still glad I can share my experice. If you have any questions you can ask them! (or if you want me to explain something again) Good Luck and have a nice day! |
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abt how lonely and crazy i am.
