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Post by fellowmder on Nov 14, 2021 13:26:44 GMT
Has maladaptive daydreaming led you to drown in embarrassment that makes you want to quit staying in that area and start afresh someplace else?
For reference, I am a 20 year old, 3rd year college student who is probably gonna fail another semester because of daydreaming impulsively and being irresponsible with work. For context, till high school first year, everyone thought I was this serious and responsible student with acing grades while in the background, daydreaming had already started nibbling off my head. as to being really good at academics all my life, my parents already cannot digest the fact that i have already failed a semester and gonna fail this one too. i cannot tell them about this daydreaming situation cause i am scared they'll just ask me to preach more to god (I come from an Indian family) and always ask me to just simply not daydream (not saying trash about my parents or anything, they have always supported me and dearly loved me. i think it is very common to feel this way cause the word "daydream" itself is just too common to be believed as an actual big problem, if I tell them I am depressed, they will mostly try to get me treated by a psychologist, which they did try in high school but i just wasted money speaking nothing cause my mom was siting in the same room and I had just found out that I had been excessively daydreaming for two years, and ya that sounded and still sounds like an excuse to not work hard).
back to a thought i have been having for over a month now. Packing up all the leftover courage you have and starting afresh in some other place, or some other university, do you feel is possible and can actually help in dealing with daydreaming. Cause for me the bigger trigger in my life has been meeting back my past, lets say I do go back to uni after this semester, I cannot assure that I won't abstain from daydreaming cause just talking to people from previous classes on campus itself triggers me to daydream and act impulsively- I would suddenly just fast walk back to pg, overspend on some crappy food from an expensive place, run on stairs and start swallowing food as if I was hungry for days, watch anything stupid and daydream for at least 5 hours. This has been happening since last two months now. So.......
Do you think one should start afresh or look at this entire situation from a different angle?
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Post by alvi on Nov 16, 2021 13:37:09 GMT
I think it would be really difficult to leave your life behind and start again. Leaving wouldn't get rid of your MD and the problems would just start up again somewhere else. I think learning some new coping mechanisms would be the way forward. Are there any study groups you could attend rather than trying to work alone and getting distracted by your MD?
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Post by escapist on Nov 21, 2021 16:06:43 GMT
If you feel embarrassed because you are daydreaming, it would be easier for you to stop it. You should keep a daydream journal or just write your daydreams on a paper and then tear it up. It may help you to stop losing yourself in daydreams. Because they will lose their power over you. Also, you should count how many times you daydream in a day to see your progress.
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Post by kickedthehabit on Nov 25, 2021 16:45:15 GMT
I know exactly how you feel. I’ve been through it and kicked the habit. I’m of Indian ancestry also. I may not be able to articulate due to the fact MD pretty much trashed my growing years. Looking back I feel cheated out of a wonderful experience. I’ve seen my peers plan their lives and follow through with great precision and success. Here’s how I fixed it. 1. Changing your mind. 2. Changing your body. 1. Mind Part A: If you haven’t reached your bottom, that is, your lowest point when you say enough is enough, it may be difficult to do a cold turkey, an abrupt end. So till you get there, try gently pushing yourself in that direction. If your dreams are based on a super perfect character that tries to solve ‘world problems’ (either yourself or someone else) then try telling yourself I am not that person. In your mind you can talk to the character face to face say “Thank you for the great experience. I have to say  for now. I may meet you in the future. For now I have to live my life with all its imperfections.“ 1. Mind Part B: Try to keep you mind silent. This may be hard to do at first but can be done. Try 30 seconds first. The next time try 1 minute. Set a timer and you can go back to what I call noisy mind after that. Eventually you can get to 5 minutes at a time. It will have a dramatic effect on your body. I found that I listened to music to crowd or distract my mind so I can keep my brain activity up just to keep my MD going when I have privacy. Try to quiet your mind. Try sitting in a chair with yoga breaths. 2. Body Part A: I’ve found sugary foods to push my brain to go into this  state to keep MD going. For some people it could be high fat. So try not to drink your calories. I’ve found water to work just fine. On hot days fill your glass with mostly room temperature water and top it off with cold water. You’ll love it in summer. Trying walking after meals. If you want to do high intensity like jogging or bicycling, do it 1 hour after eating. The goal here is to manage your blood sugar levels that keep MD going. Anything to do to starve your mind of that excess sugar that keeps MD going. 2. Body Part B: During the day, when you are done studying, put yourself in the company of people so you are forced to talk or listen to them. It does 2 things: distract you from MD, gives you a reality check. I hope this helps. The most important of all these tips is the sugar. It goes directly to the brain. |
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Post by totallyfiona on Nov 25, 2021 19:31:54 GMT
I found that admitting this ‘dark secret’ of MADD to some of my friends and my therapist made it go away. For awhile at least, it just came back after 6 months. But talking about it makes it feel less like a dark secret or like something is wrong with me. My friends reaction was not as bad as I though it would be. In fact they reacted with listening and understanding. My fear was that they would think I’m weird or that something was really wrong with me. This is how fears control us. Bringing it into the light was a good thing, because it took away the shame attached to it.
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Post by kickedthehabit on Dec 4, 2021 15:15:47 GMT
To answer your questions about should I go or should I stay? I can tell you my experience. My MD started in middle school and continued till my second job. That includes 6 different environments and 3 different countries. MD just morphed into different stories. After my second job, I said to myself something must change. I didn’t have a website like this so I had to deal with it on my own. My vote is to stay where you are and work on changing your mind and body. In college to keep my grades up, I would do my homework in between classes at the library in front of other students or people. It forced me to focus on my work because I knew when I was on my own, my mind would wander. In class, I sat in the first row so I was forced to listen to the lecturer. I also made it a habit to listen to key phrases the teacher used and the way he/she spoke because that was a clue if was important to be on the test. I made notes with short phrases so I could study it later. To keep my mind engaged in class, the day before I would just gloss over the next day’s chapter by looking at book pictures, reading titles, bolded phrases, maybe a few sentences. That has a certain effect on your mind where your mind starts to question what the chapter is about. When you hear it a second time in class, your mind starts to connect the dots from yesterday’s review. When you do your homework that day, your mind has seen/heard it a 3rd time. Later, when you review for the test it would be a 4th time. These small habits helped me keep my grades up. The key here was the more often I visited a topic the more likely it stuck in my mind. It’s like meeting people, the more you spend time with them, the better you get to know them. I got some of the tips from a book I read in a library: How go get straight A’s? I didn’t need to use it after college. I don’t know if it is still in print today. All these little habits help. It’s these little things that move your mind in a direction where you can manage MD and be in control of it. I found that working on your expectations also goes a long way. Don’t expect everything to change overnight, my MD was active for many years so I sort of expected to take some time to bring it down. All these little habits I developed over time, forced MD to subside. This reply is long so I’ll continue another time.
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Post by fellowmder on Dec 8, 2021 4:42:39 GMT
If you feel embarrassed because you are daydreaming, it would be easier for you to stop it. You should keep a daydream journal or just write your daydreams on a paper and then tear it up. It may help you to stop losing yourself in daydreams. Because they will lose their power over you. Also, you should count how many times you daydream in a day to see your progress. I do always start journaling every single day, what I do, when I daydream, the triggering factors- almost everything I feel every one or two hours. Its just that by end of the day I feel like not writing out of the embarrassment of daydreaming throughout the day. I personally think I hate my present self to such an extent that whenever I pass by the unfinished to-do list and all those entries about daydreaming, my willpower to journal the next day vanishes. What I have preferred to do is try what scout posted yesterday about ways to deal with daydreaming- daydreaming just for 15 min for three days a week. I want to change my mindset from one full month of that to just one day of following this routine (all the other times when I do feel the urge, I am going to become more mindful of that urge, meditate or write it down; writing my daydreams down has proven to me very difficult and power consuming so that would probably make me go back to my work pretty immediately) Thanks for the suggestion! |
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Post by fellowmder on Dec 8, 2021 4:48:04 GMT
I know exactly how you feel. I’ve been through it and kicked the habit. I’m of Indian ancestry also. I may not be able to articulate due to the fact MD pretty much trashed my growing years. Looking back I feel cheated out of a wonderful experience. I’ve seen my peers plan their lives and follow through with great precision and success. Here’s how I fixed it. 1. Changing your mind. 2. Changing your body. 1. Mind Part A: If you haven’t reached your bottom, that is, your lowest point when you say enough is enough, it may be difficult to do a cold turkey, an abrupt end. So till you get there, try gently pushing yourself in that direction. If your dreams are based on a super perfect character that tries to solve ‘world problems’ (either yourself or someone else) then try telling yourself I am not that person. In your mind you can talk to the character face to face say “Thank you for the great experience. I have to say for now. I may meet you in the future. For now I have to live my life with all its imperfections.“ 1. Mind Part B: Try to keep you mind silent. This may be hard to do at first but can be done. Try 30 seconds first. The next time try 1 minute. Set a timer and you can go back to what I call noisy mind after that. Eventually you can get to 5 minutes at a time. It will have a dramatic effect on your body. I found that I listened to music to crowd or distract my mind so I can keep my brain activity up just to keep my MD going when I have privacy. Try to quiet your mind. Try sitting in a chair with yoga breaths. 2. Body Part A: I’ve found sugary foods to push my brain to go into this state to keep MD going. For some people it could be high fat. So try not to drink your calories. I’ve found water to work just fine. On hot days fill your glass with mostly room temperature water and top it off with cold water. You’ll love it in summer. Trying walking after meals. If you want to do high intensity like jogging or bicycling, do it 1 hour after eating. The goal here is to manage your blood sugar levels that keep MD going. Anything to do to starve your mind of that excess sugar that keeps MD going. 2. Body Part B: During the day, when you are done studying, put yourself in the company of people so you are forced to talk or listen to them. It does 2 things: distract you from MD, gives you a reality check. I hope this helps. The most important of all these tips is the sugar. It goes directly to the brain. I think I have felt this, this feeling of not at all keeping my head silent, the silence feels so wicked and alarming, makes me so anxious that I fill it up with more music, excessive eating, which leads to more daydreaming. I am trying to stick to meditating for minimum a min everyday to start practicing silence. I think that will decrease my urge to daydream whenever I am alone |
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Post by fellowmder on Dec 8, 2021 4:57:23 GMT
To answer your questions about should I go or should I stay? I can tell you my experience. My MD started in middle school and continued till my second job. That includes 6 different environments and 3 different countries. MD just morphed into different stories. After my second job, I said to myself something must change. I didn’t have a website like this so I had to deal with it on my own. My vote is to stay where you are and work on changing your mind and body. In college to keep my grades up, I would do my homework in between classes at the library in front of other students or people. It forced me to focus on my work because I knew when I was on my own, my mind would wander. In class, I sat in the first row so I was forced to listen to the lecturer. I also made it a habit to listen to key phrases the teacher used and the way he/she spoke because that was a clue if was important to be on the test. I made notes with short phrases so I could study it later. To keep my mind engaged in class, the day before I would just gloss over the next day’s chapter by looking at book pictures, reading titles, bolded phrases, maybe a few sentences. That has a certain effect on your mind where your mind starts to question what the chapter is about. When you hear it a second time in class, your mind starts to connect the dots from yesterday’s review. When you do your homework that day, your mind has seen/heard it a 3rd time. Later, when you review for the test it would be a 4th time. These small habits helped me keep my grades up. The key here was the more often I visited a topic the more likely it stuck in my mind. It’s like meeting people, the more you spend time with them, the better you get to know them. I got some of the tips from a book I read in a library: How go get straight A’s? I didn’t need to use it after college. I don’t know if it is still in print today. All these little habits help. It’s these little things that move your mind in a direction where you can manage MD and be in control of it. I found that working on your expectations also goes a long way. Don’t expect everything to change overnight, my MD was active for many years so I sort of expected to take some time to bring it down. All these little habits I developed over time, forced MD to subside. This reply is long so I’ll continue another time. I used to do this back when I was in school, people did think I was just doing it to show off being a hard worker/sincere or something, but in reality it was a defense I used cause I knew back home I wouldn't do anything. So, back then I even tried studying on my one hour commute cause naturally I would never daydream in front of a large crowd. Now I am in a design college, we don't have much of any reading materials but more of just sketching our design problems on large sheets of paper. The bigger dilemma is my uni will probably only allow certain students to enter campus classrooms on 3 days or so due to the pandemic. So, four days being cooped up all alone in my pg room kinda changes the whole situation. Right now atleast I am at home with parents so I am still a little restrained from daydreaming, but what about later on? What did you used to do during times when you were alone and had to work? |
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for now. I may meet you in the future. For now I have to live my life with all its imperfections.“ 1. Mind Part B: Try to keep you mind silent. This may be hard to do at first but can be done. Try 30 seconds first. The next time try 1 minute. Set a timer and you can go back to what I call noisy mind after that. Eventually you can get to 5 minutes at a time. It will have a dramatic effect on your body. I found that I listened to music to crowd or distract my mind so I can keep my brain activity up just to keep my MD going when I have privacy. Try to quiet your mind. Try sitting in a chair with yoga breaths. 2. Body Part A: I’ve found sugary foods to push my brain to go into this 
state to keep MD going. For some people it could be high fat. So try not to drink your calories. I’ve found water to work just fine. On hot days fill your glass with mostly room temperature water and top it off with cold water. You’ll love it in summer. Trying walking after meals. If you want to do high intensity like jogging or bicycling, do it 1 hour after eating. The goal here is to manage your blood sugar levels that keep MD going. Anything to do to starve your mind of that excess sugar that keeps MD going. 2. Body Part B: During the day, when you are done studying, put yourself in the company of people so you are forced to talk or listen to them. It does 2 things: distract you from MD, gives you a reality check. I hope this helps. The most important of all these tips is the sugar. It goes directly to the brain.