Hello. I'm new. I function in life the way everyone expects me to, being mum, wife etc, but when I'm alone (not just home alone, so alone in whatever room of the house) I do this. I am someone else, different husband etc. On the one hand I believe I'm mentally ill and on the other hand I think it's the only thing keeping me sane.
It started as young as five. I grew up in a very violent and abusive home. The only emotion I remember having as a child is pure and utter fear. This was how I coped. I am an only child so in the privacy of my bedroom, or during the many times I was home alone(they would go out and tell me to lock the door and don't let anyone in, even when I was 5) I became someone else. Prettier, smarter, more talented and very much loved by my pretend parents.
I have never grown out of it. I'm in my forties now. There have been times when it has been alot less prevalent but it's increasing again. I have a decent husband and a lovely daughter. Very few friends and no other family about. My dh parents are very elderly and he has no living siblings so there are no bil or sil or cousins for my daughter.
And I have several chronic illnesses which make it impossible to hold down a job. I feel maybe 60% ok about 2 or 3 days a week and that's the best it has been for 8 years. Problem is I never know which days will be ok ish and which ones I'll be flat in bed barely able to move about. And since employers need people who can be at work in a schedule I can't work.
All of this leads me to my escapism and I prefer that 1 million times more than my life.
Anyway just wanted to vent and see if anyone else has same. Do you try to get mental help for it? I wouldn't even know how to start vocalising this face to face with anyone.
Hello tshark73
I can relate to much of what you say.
In the middle of another sleepless night. Sometimes I think I have the insomnia under control and then, nights like this, it is like I have effectively no control over my mind at all - it won't shut down and so it is impossible to go through the steps I have to take to put myself down to sleep.
I am a Vietnam veteran, ex-marine, have had the privilege of being sent by the U.S. Veterans Administration to some pretty good therapists with my diagnosis of Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder. One of them I tried to tell about my daydreaming and she listened. But she could not accept that it was a mental problem interfering with my life. We both thought that if I could get a life, have things start to work for me, then I would get over the need to DD. So we worked on trying to make me functional again.
Since I found this DDiB site I have discovered a whole lot more on DD on YouTube and a lot of theories about it.
I have seen short YouTube movies where people go through an embarrassing scene, like bumping into someone in a hall, and re-play and it push the other person violently against a wall; get a failing grade on a test in school and then go back in imagination and cuss out the teacher violently. This is what I do pretty much all the time. In MaDD.
A young girl discussing triggers said breathing is one. I think that is the level I am at. Anything is a trigger. When I try to meditate or do reiki on myself I can go out. Going over typos and spelling mistakes in the emails that I type as a journal - that starts me into fantasizing that I am teaching a Vietnamese or Thai friend how to write and say a word correctly in English and then I see another guy jumping in to put me down for pretending to be a teacher... and then I am stimming, acting out slamming him to the ground and choking him while I tell him off and he has to listen and not interrupt because he can't breathe. In my real life I rarely react to insults and disrespect but in my fantasy life I make shit happen.
I think I checked out when I was a child, during one of the episodes of my parents fighting, my father drunk out of his head, stumbling around the house yelling and not being able to find my mother . And sometimes I think I never really came back.
When I am idle or bored I DD, when I am anxious or stressed, when I feel depressed and hopeless and think my life should not have gone this way... then I find I am aware that I have been gone in fantasies and then I feel ashamed and hope no one has heard me talking or seen me stimming.
Looking back I think that the times i have not been in MaDD were when I was working hard, or in a lot of pain or suffering or scared, or doing something interesting or in love - and then I was in an altered state, anyway,
that I was living in a dream.
But most of the time I have been in a more interesting and entertaining space of my own creation.
And now when I am present or when I come back from space, I am often in a state of Depersonalization, or at least extreme self-consciousness and i have to do everything mechanically and not naturally, like I am afraid I will screw up or fall or make a fool out of myself.
Then when I am alone again I surely will be drawn to go back to the scene I was in in real life and re-play it so I do the right thing and act cool and competent and get approval from people.
Eli Somer said in one of his talks that two common characteristics of many DDers were family life and status. Bad family situation and low status.
That seems so discouraging because I cannot do anything much about either one.
The times in my past when I have had it going on, was making it, I had some status - people in my life thought I was O.K., a g/f thought I was special, a boss was pleased at what I accomplished on the job..... But most of my young life I remember being ridiculed and put down and all I could think of doing about it was to survive it by escaping into MaDD and doing time until I would get big and do what I wanted in the world.
Right now, just as I read over what I have typed, I have gone out I don't know how many times - to times I should have kicked someone in the groin and then hit him with a knee to the chest and hammer blow to the back, pushed someone into the canal, twisted someone's leg to rip apart the joint....
So I can understand that you prefer your dream world to the real world.
I wish I had something to offer of comfort or a cure.
But I appreciate that you vented and shared and it encouraged me to do the same.
There has been no one really to talk to about this all my life and now - these couple months since I found DDiB, and MaDD on YouTube - I can at least express it.
So far no one has rejected me or advised me to commit suicide.