Hello. Only recently discovered MD was a thing.
Jun 21, 2019 20:17:28 GMT
Dimmer, alvi, and 5 more like this
Post by annoyeddragon on Jun 21, 2019 20:17:28 GMT
So, in a rather irritated moment I put “daydreaming all day” into Google, expecting maybe a few other people complaining about it on forums. To my surprise, a dedicated result on “maladaptive daydreaming” was at the top of the page; containing a link to this forum.
Didn’t realise this was actually a thing, so thought I’d take a look and say hello. I tend to ramble about things, so if this post becomes unnecessarily long I apologise. It’s normal for me to invest too much time in things like this.
I’m a 33 year old introvert living with family in England, diagnosed as having asperger’s syndrome when I was ten and my brain does not shut up. It’s a scenario engine that keeps me up late at night, distracts me when I should be working and turns my short term memory into a sieve. When I wake up in the morning, the earworms start up before I do and then the mental imagery follows.
Not listening to the imagination fuel that is music doesn’t help; when you have a built in music player.
What sparked my irritation and resulting web search is that I received feedback at work for getting something wrong, again, which I know was the result of me being on autopilot. I had tried, fruitlessly, to get my brain to shut up while I was supposed to be working. So instead I compromised on allowing it to run with whatever scenarios it wants to; while by body is put on automatic to process through whatever pile of work is in front of me.
I don’t really think of myself as a coherent being. There is me, my body and of course brain. Now ‘I’ understand I have work to do if I want to keep my job and keep getting paid, but ‘brain’ wants to run off into lah lah land. So ‘body’ is tasked with going through the motions of completing work, with me supervising to ensure I’m actually doing it properly, so brain gets to play with the scenario of the moment.
Since brain does what it wants regardless of my input, having it frolic through imagination doesn’t require much input on my part. It will do it on its own, in the background, I can focus on other things.
It works surprisingly well, to a point. As said, the occasional error manages to get through; the exceptions to the model I’m continuously tweaking so brain can be left alone. There is also the odd chance I get distracted by brain’s activities and I make an error I should have already covered through my autopilot… It’s like working in a room with the TV on.
Needless to say my employment right now isn’t too involved; for me to be able to get away with this. It’s temp agency work which makes me anxious, I’d like the emotional security of being permanent but that’s a rarer and rarer option these days.
On most days I can essentially spend it daydreaming and still manage a day’s work with only the occasional momentary distraction. I struggle to remember the names and faces of colleagues I work with every day because they are background noise, I’m not really present. When someone talks to me, it’s like shaking me awake and I’m semi-there, groggy voice and everything.
I’m not exactly proud of this. I should be focusing on working, not daydreaming. My performance would be much higher if my energies weren’t so split. But again, brain doesn’t shut up, regardless of any given task. This is more management on my part of something that cannot be controlled. If I give myself a mental slap to silence one day dream, a different one just takes its place. I can change the channel, not turn off the TV.
I’m mostly a shut in outside of work. I’ll occasionally venture out but find it very difficult to emotionally connect with the world around me. People laugh and are expressive to each other, but it’s like I’m reclined in a chair watching it on TV, I see it happening but no connection. I’m monotone inside. I’ve learned to fake reactions to seem like I’m engaged and not being anti-social, but it’s skin deep.
I’ve made attempts to venture out. Walks around the town centre. Trips to the zoo, museum, art gallery. I’m there, I’m doing things, but it all feels so numb. Almost like I’m not actually there, just watching a video.
I’ve had friends, but they were more acquaintances out of convenience really, people I interacted with out of routine of needing to go to places. Once that routine has ended, such as leaving education, I have no compulsion to actively go meet them. If it wasn’t for the occasional Facebook communication, I wouldn’t speak to them at all. Austistic people are creatures of habit and meeting them was part of that routine, routines which were broken.
Some of them I’ve known for many years, but I only met them because my parents essentially made me attend special needs youth clubs in earlier years, to get me out and interacting with people. But then I aged out of those activities.
I wonder if this makes me a bad person, because ‘proper’ friends should seek each others company. I did enjoy their company at the time, when I was younger and more emotionally responsive, but I’m now comfortable staying at home playing with the worlds in my head and have no urge to include others.
In my youth multimedia fed that world, I played lots of games and watched movies; each introducing new materials to construct with while daydreaming. But about a decade ago games suddenly lost appeal, I stopped having that positive feedback from exploring those worlds, I started wanting to project my own world into them and found them wanting without it. I kept searching for that intrigue that wasn’t there and eventually gave up, turning inward for entertainment.
I do not think new games don’t have anything to offer me, I’m sure there are many wondrous worlds to take samples from, but I’m just not getting that positive emotional response I used to. If you are emotionally monotone while playing a game, what’s the point? Playing it has become work, something you are making yourself do because “you’re supposed to be having fun”...
It’s not just games however. I’ve found, at least in the past five years or so, I’ve also started losing interest in films. There are so many big name films and series I’ve had the opportunity to sit down and watch with the family, but for whatever reason preferred seclusion. Spending time by myself, playing with my thoughts.
I sometimes get this odd feeling that I am protecting the existing models of ideas in my head, by not exposing myself to their re-imagining? I’m sure it’s just a quality of getting older, of preferring the films you grew up with to their modern counterparts.
It’s not like the scenarios I play out in my mind are even based on other content. Sure, if I’ve seen something recently those worlds will play out in different ways in my head, but most of my time spent daydreaming are self generated storylines and worlds, composed of bits and pieces picked up elsewhere. Some of them simply too bizarre for others to relate to, being too deeply rooted in my own weird model of ideas.
I can very easily keep rambling but I think I’ve done enough of a mind dump for the time being. Save some for other potential topics. I’ll quickly summarise some other points about my experience.
-My thoughts tend to trend towards the negative, imagined scenarios are often unpleasant and I have to use positive music to hard boot myself back into positive thoughts.
-My mood is swayed much more by fictitious scenarios than external stimuli. I can often make myself more depressed or angry from things happening in my head than real world outcomes.
-I associate negativity with realism, frequently robbing myself of pleasant scenarios for being “unrealistic” because they are not negative.
-I’m an anxious person and find daydreaming to distract that anxiousty, allowing me to focus on real world tasks. Sometimes forceful focus can negatively affect my work performance, because that anxiousty is brought to the front of my mind. I end up over analysing everything through fear of making errors, were as daydreaming quietens that fear and lets me get on with it; at the cost of losing that finer attention to detail.
-I’m rarely human while daydreaming. Ever since a very young age, I’ve had an inexplicable fascination with other forms of being. Humanity seemed to be the vanilla option amongst the vast diversity of forms in nature and restricting myself to that always seemed arbitrary. I learned there were other people like that when home internet came along.
I don’t want to stop daydreaming, assuming that was even an option, I think I'd be exposed without it distracting me from the various anxieties of life. But I also understand and can see myself gradually turning inward and closing myself off from the real world.
Didn’t realise this was actually a thing, so thought I’d take a look and say hello. I tend to ramble about things, so if this post becomes unnecessarily long I apologise. It’s normal for me to invest too much time in things like this.
I’m a 33 year old introvert living with family in England, diagnosed as having asperger’s syndrome when I was ten and my brain does not shut up. It’s a scenario engine that keeps me up late at night, distracts me when I should be working and turns my short term memory into a sieve. When I wake up in the morning, the earworms start up before I do and then the mental imagery follows.
Not listening to the imagination fuel that is music doesn’t help; when you have a built in music player.
What sparked my irritation and resulting web search is that I received feedback at work for getting something wrong, again, which I know was the result of me being on autopilot. I had tried, fruitlessly, to get my brain to shut up while I was supposed to be working. So instead I compromised on allowing it to run with whatever scenarios it wants to; while by body is put on automatic to process through whatever pile of work is in front of me.
I don’t really think of myself as a coherent being. There is me, my body and of course brain. Now ‘I’ understand I have work to do if I want to keep my job and keep getting paid, but ‘brain’ wants to run off into lah lah land. So ‘body’ is tasked with going through the motions of completing work, with me supervising to ensure I’m actually doing it properly, so brain gets to play with the scenario of the moment.
Since brain does what it wants regardless of my input, having it frolic through imagination doesn’t require much input on my part. It will do it on its own, in the background, I can focus on other things.
It works surprisingly well, to a point. As said, the occasional error manages to get through; the exceptions to the model I’m continuously tweaking so brain can be left alone. There is also the odd chance I get distracted by brain’s activities and I make an error I should have already covered through my autopilot… It’s like working in a room with the TV on.
Needless to say my employment right now isn’t too involved; for me to be able to get away with this. It’s temp agency work which makes me anxious, I’d like the emotional security of being permanent but that’s a rarer and rarer option these days.
On most days I can essentially spend it daydreaming and still manage a day’s work with only the occasional momentary distraction. I struggle to remember the names and faces of colleagues I work with every day because they are background noise, I’m not really present. When someone talks to me, it’s like shaking me awake and I’m semi-there, groggy voice and everything.
I’m not exactly proud of this. I should be focusing on working, not daydreaming. My performance would be much higher if my energies weren’t so split. But again, brain doesn’t shut up, regardless of any given task. This is more management on my part of something that cannot be controlled. If I give myself a mental slap to silence one day dream, a different one just takes its place. I can change the channel, not turn off the TV.
I’m mostly a shut in outside of work. I’ll occasionally venture out but find it very difficult to emotionally connect with the world around me. People laugh and are expressive to each other, but it’s like I’m reclined in a chair watching it on TV, I see it happening but no connection. I’m monotone inside. I’ve learned to fake reactions to seem like I’m engaged and not being anti-social, but it’s skin deep.
I’ve made attempts to venture out. Walks around the town centre. Trips to the zoo, museum, art gallery. I’m there, I’m doing things, but it all feels so numb. Almost like I’m not actually there, just watching a video.
I’ve had friends, but they were more acquaintances out of convenience really, people I interacted with out of routine of needing to go to places. Once that routine has ended, such as leaving education, I have no compulsion to actively go meet them. If it wasn’t for the occasional Facebook communication, I wouldn’t speak to them at all. Austistic people are creatures of habit and meeting them was part of that routine, routines which were broken.
Some of them I’ve known for many years, but I only met them because my parents essentially made me attend special needs youth clubs in earlier years, to get me out and interacting with people. But then I aged out of those activities.
I wonder if this makes me a bad person, because ‘proper’ friends should seek each others company. I did enjoy their company at the time, when I was younger and more emotionally responsive, but I’m now comfortable staying at home playing with the worlds in my head and have no urge to include others.
In my youth multimedia fed that world, I played lots of games and watched movies; each introducing new materials to construct with while daydreaming. But about a decade ago games suddenly lost appeal, I stopped having that positive feedback from exploring those worlds, I started wanting to project my own world into them and found them wanting without it. I kept searching for that intrigue that wasn’t there and eventually gave up, turning inward for entertainment.
I do not think new games don’t have anything to offer me, I’m sure there are many wondrous worlds to take samples from, but I’m just not getting that positive emotional response I used to. If you are emotionally monotone while playing a game, what’s the point? Playing it has become work, something you are making yourself do because “you’re supposed to be having fun”...
It’s not just games however. I’ve found, at least in the past five years or so, I’ve also started losing interest in films. There are so many big name films and series I’ve had the opportunity to sit down and watch with the family, but for whatever reason preferred seclusion. Spending time by myself, playing with my thoughts.
I sometimes get this odd feeling that I am protecting the existing models of ideas in my head, by not exposing myself to their re-imagining? I’m sure it’s just a quality of getting older, of preferring the films you grew up with to their modern counterparts.
It’s not like the scenarios I play out in my mind are even based on other content. Sure, if I’ve seen something recently those worlds will play out in different ways in my head, but most of my time spent daydreaming are self generated storylines and worlds, composed of bits and pieces picked up elsewhere. Some of them simply too bizarre for others to relate to, being too deeply rooted in my own weird model of ideas.
I can very easily keep rambling but I think I’ve done enough of a mind dump for the time being. Save some for other potential topics. I’ll quickly summarise some other points about my experience.
-My thoughts tend to trend towards the negative, imagined scenarios are often unpleasant and I have to use positive music to hard boot myself back into positive thoughts.
-My mood is swayed much more by fictitious scenarios than external stimuli. I can often make myself more depressed or angry from things happening in my head than real world outcomes.
-I associate negativity with realism, frequently robbing myself of pleasant scenarios for being “unrealistic” because they are not negative.
-I’m an anxious person and find daydreaming to distract that anxiousty, allowing me to focus on real world tasks. Sometimes forceful focus can negatively affect my work performance, because that anxiousty is brought to the front of my mind. I end up over analysing everything through fear of making errors, were as daydreaming quietens that fear and lets me get on with it; at the cost of losing that finer attention to detail.
-I’m rarely human while daydreaming. Ever since a very young age, I’ve had an inexplicable fascination with other forms of being. Humanity seemed to be the vanilla option amongst the vast diversity of forms in nature and restricting myself to that always seemed arbitrary. I learned there were other people like that when home internet came along.
I have very mixed feelings about my day dreaming. It’s my entertainment, my comfort, my escapism into realms of preference. But at the same time it’s something were the more I try to sheath it; the more unwieldy it becomes. I cannot turn it off, so I’m trying to incorporate it productively. Though it does concern me that it puts a ceiling on what I can achieve in terms of real life, with such limited focus.
how one becomes addicted to negative thoughts, you'd think there would be some natural rejection of bad fictional scenarios playing out one after the other; dragging your mood down. But I guess you paint with the colours at your disposal. The world is unfair and indiscriminately cruel, that's reality. I guess I just want my fiction to be more "real". 
.