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Post by Dimmer on Mar 2, 2019 20:12:48 GMT
linkIrish photographer Vanessa Ifediora began experimenting with photography while living in Japan. Initially, she used photography as a tool to help her recover from a condition known as Maladaptive Daydreaming. The condition causes intense daydreaming that is highly addictive and almost solely consists of completely imaginary scenarios. It’s frequently triggered by music and normally develops in childhood - often as a combination of ADHD and trauma. "For 20 years I lived my life unable to shake myself back to reality. My constructed fantasy world was the ultimate safe space. I chose my name, my talents and skills, my career, my partners, my friends, my finances." The daydreaming was often triggered by music and for years she found it difficult to "zone in" to reality. "Anxiety would grip me and I’d make excuses to cancel plans and stay indoors the entire weekend acting out a life that was not my own, prisoner to my own mind. I would try to stop the zoning out, most often triggered by music, but it was impossible." At the start of 2018, Ifediora began to get treatment and support for depression which also alleviated the Maladaptive Daydreaming. "Suddenly I was listening to music without being held down by it." After a short time on the prescription drug Lexapro, Ifediora's acute daydreaming ceased altogether. The fantasy world she had inhabited was suddenly gone and Ifediora spent the following months trying to adjust to and come to terms with having no escape from reality. To document her experience, Ifediora created a book entitled Off White Sheets which contains a series of portraits, short stories, familial anecdotes and poems relating to her experience overcoming Maladaptive Daydreaming.
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Post by Raven on Mar 2, 2019 20:25:33 GMT
It's a good thing if people start to speak up about it, it will bring more awareness to the condition and maybe one day we'll be taken seriously.
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Post by piphirho on Mar 3, 2019 10:08:37 GMT
Interesting. I also took Lexapro for a while. It was for depression and not for Maladaptive Daydreaming, and while it helped very much with the depression it did not stop my daydreaming. It is true that I daydream a lot less than I used to, but I never connected that to the Lexapro.
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Post by Layla Farrell on Mar 4, 2019 18:09:08 GMT
Interesting. I also took Lexapro for a while. It was for depression and not for Maladaptive Daydreaming, and while it helped very much with the depression it did not stop my daydreaming. It is true that I daydream a lot less than I used to, but I never connected that to the Lexapro. If we just talk about diminishing MDD symptoms, Vanessa (one of my DD names lol) Ifediora's story sounds way more plausible. Not that I want to speak ill on a person that I don't know, but it's difficult for me to believe that an entire DD world would be erased by a mere drug... And if it was true, it would be scary.
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