Post by Sam on Aug 11, 2019 19:21:10 GMT
As promised, I'm going to write out this post. My apologies if it sounds kind of weird, I have a headache so my brain isn't working very well.
I came across another thing last night that I think I've been unconsciously aware of for a while, but that I don't remember really acknowledging consciously before. For a little bit of context, my daydreams have recently been centering around friendships and connection with others and last night my parents were out of the house, so as usual I used the time to daydream without interruption.
While I was daydreaming, a real life friend of mine snapchatted me about her new haircut and we talked a bit about her plans for the evening--normal stuff like that. At one point, she said that she was hanging out with some friends after work, and I told her to have fun. And it was as I was typing out "have fun!!!" that I realized that I wasn't really... feeling anything. I mean, there were some undercurrents of emotion--happiness that she was with friends, a little jealously that I wasn't there and that I couldn't hang with her like that (she lives across the country right now), etc. But the level of emotion that I experienced when interacting with her paled in comparison to the level of emotion that I was experiencing when daydreaming just a few minutes before.
And that really bothered me. I mean, I care about her a great deal. But for some reason my interactions with her felt like nothing in comparison with my interactions with people in my daydreams, even though my interactions with her are real and my daydream interactions are not.
It got me thinking about what I've done over the past 6 or so years in terms of my friendships and interactions with others [JSYK, that's a) about the amount of time I've been isolated and b) about the amount of time that my daydreaming has been maladaptive]. I don't think I've talked about it recently, but if you're read my early posts here, you know that my severe anxiety and agoraphobia has been essentially controlling my life for years and that I really don't get a lot of in person interaction. And one of the main things that has suffered because of the anxiety is my friendships and interactions with others.
Probably about 98% of my non-family interactions with others is over the internet--through text usually. And as much as these interactions have been able to keep me from being completely isolated from the outside world, because I'm not talking to my friends face to face, I'm missing out on the emotional connection with others that I need. But because I've allowed myself to be controlled by my anxiety and all of its very unpleasant symptoms for so long, it feels near impossible for me to actually interact with others in a face to face situation (even like over skype or something) without severely damaging my health.
Daydreaming about interacting with people, whether they were people that I knew in real life or people from books or tv, was the easy solution to my lack of interaction. Its not a good solution. It's actually making it harder for me to get out and connect with others because even if I do that, I'm missing the one component of my daydreams that makes them so much more appealing than real life--control.
Most people are hardwired to crave human interaction (unless you're one of those rare people like my dad, who doesn't apparently need friends). When you deprive yourself of that interaction that your brain needs so much, it suffers. But since, for me, actual real life interactions are scary and sometimes hurt my health, my brain replaced those needed interactions with the only thing that it could--daydreams.
Like I said before, interacting with people over the internet is the safest real life option for me. But I crave an emotional connection with others so much and no matter how hard I try, interactions through texts and such don't give me that connection. Daydreaming does. I mean, its fake. Its not real. But when I daydream about being hugged by someone I care about, it feels like my brain releases the same endorphins that it would if I were being hugged in real life. And that's what makes replacing my real life interactions with daydream interactions so fulfilling and at the same time so unhealthy and addictive. They aren't real. But for that millisecond of time, they feel real. And then I come back to reality and I'm alone. So I run back to my daydreams because daydreaming about friends that don't exist feels better than facing the fact that I cut myself off from almost all in person interactions and I have no idea how to get back to how everything should be.
Sorry this is so long.
(A side note: I am trying to get so that I can sykpe with the friend that I was talking about earlier, but I've been dealing with another bout of my daily chronic headaches since like February and its kind of difficult to talk to people when you're incredibly sensitive to sound and motion and all of those things that are a part of non-text interactions.)
I came across another thing last night that I think I've been unconsciously aware of for a while, but that I don't remember really acknowledging consciously before. For a little bit of context, my daydreams have recently been centering around friendships and connection with others and last night my parents were out of the house, so as usual I used the time to daydream without interruption.
While I was daydreaming, a real life friend of mine snapchatted me about her new haircut and we talked a bit about her plans for the evening--normal stuff like that. At one point, she said that she was hanging out with some friends after work, and I told her to have fun. And it was as I was typing out "have fun!!!" that I realized that I wasn't really... feeling anything. I mean, there were some undercurrents of emotion--happiness that she was with friends, a little jealously that I wasn't there and that I couldn't hang with her like that (she lives across the country right now), etc. But the level of emotion that I experienced when interacting with her paled in comparison to the level of emotion that I was experiencing when daydreaming just a few minutes before.
And that really bothered me. I mean, I care about her a great deal. But for some reason my interactions with her felt like nothing in comparison with my interactions with people in my daydreams, even though my interactions with her are real and my daydream interactions are not.
It got me thinking about what I've done over the past 6 or so years in terms of my friendships and interactions with others [JSYK, that's a) about the amount of time I've been isolated and b) about the amount of time that my daydreaming has been maladaptive]. I don't think I've talked about it recently, but if you're read my early posts here, you know that my severe anxiety and agoraphobia has been essentially controlling my life for years and that I really don't get a lot of in person interaction. And one of the main things that has suffered because of the anxiety is my friendships and interactions with others.
Probably about 98% of my non-family interactions with others is over the internet--through text usually. And as much as these interactions have been able to keep me from being completely isolated from the outside world, because I'm not talking to my friends face to face, I'm missing out on the emotional connection with others that I need. But because I've allowed myself to be controlled by my anxiety and all of its very unpleasant symptoms for so long, it feels near impossible for me to actually interact with others in a face to face situation (even like over skype or something) without severely damaging my health.
Daydreaming about interacting with people, whether they were people that I knew in real life or people from books or tv, was the easy solution to my lack of interaction. Its not a good solution. It's actually making it harder for me to get out and connect with others because even if I do that, I'm missing the one component of my daydreams that makes them so much more appealing than real life--control.
Most people are hardwired to crave human interaction (unless you're one of those rare people like my dad, who doesn't apparently need friends). When you deprive yourself of that interaction that your brain needs so much, it suffers. But since, for me, actual real life interactions are scary and sometimes hurt my health, my brain replaced those needed interactions with the only thing that it could--daydreams.
Like I said before, interacting with people over the internet is the safest real life option for me. But I crave an emotional connection with others so much and no matter how hard I try, interactions through texts and such don't give me that connection. Daydreaming does. I mean, its fake. Its not real. But when I daydream about being hugged by someone I care about, it feels like my brain releases the same endorphins that it would if I were being hugged in real life. And that's what makes replacing my real life interactions with daydream interactions so fulfilling and at the same time so unhealthy and addictive. They aren't real. But for that millisecond of time, they feel real. And then I come back to reality and I'm alone. So I run back to my daydreams because daydreaming about friends that don't exist feels better than facing the fact that I cut myself off from almost all in person interactions and I have no idea how to get back to how everything should be.
Sorry this is so long.
(A side note: I am trying to get so that I can sykpe with the friend that I was talking about earlier, but I've been dealing with another bout of my daily chronic headaches since like February and its kind of difficult to talk to people when you're incredibly sensitive to sound and motion and all of those things that are a part of non-text interactions.)
