This website contains a series of posts centered on understanding and breaking down Maladaptive Daydreaming. Guided by my own experience, I wrote these articles hoping it could help people understand the mechanisms driving fantasy addiction and then break them down one by one. Hopefully, you can pick up little tips and insights to work your way out of this addiction.
Part II: [Things you are and things you are not]
Part V: [Was it all just a lie?]
[Life without MD and what it is not]
[Addiction, cravings: what they are and where they come from]
Articles are also available in Portuguese thanks to Bela who kindly offered to translate and help spread the information.
Guide to Maladaptive Daydreaming 
Thank you for posing an appropriately sceptical opinion to this matter. It’s about time someone did, after all; there is a reason that this proposed diagnosis haven’t been accepted in the high circuits of drug dealer in your great state.
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I thought I was alone.
This article helped me more than you can ever know. Thank you.
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I don’t have enough words to express my gratitude. Thank you so much for posting this.
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Hey, help please. As long as I deal with fantasies in which I have at least a dozen personalities, gesticulating in them and so on, at least 99% of my thoughts during the day are occupied by imagining myself telling someone about something, about literally everything, about what happened just now, and I’m not talking here about some unusual event, I can’t think about anything with my thoughts, but automatically, uncontrollably, they have it. format like I’m telling someone something, I don’t know if anyone understands what I’m talking about but I really hope so. I don’t know what I’m asking for, I want you to tell me if it’s also not rare with this disorder and I’m certainly not an exception (I beg that it be so I don’t want to feel alone in it) but if it’s not how fucked up I am and what should I do about it? (I really don’t know if anyone understands what I mean, for example, if I see something interesting in the store I won’t think it’s interesting because something out there, (I don’t even know how such personal thoughts look because I haven’t had them for a few years), only I’ll talk about it in my head eg my cousin or a friend, totally does not control it and it happens 24h/7 with literally everything and yet somehow I can not give better and more examples, about or for example Sometimes I don’t know if I thought of something like me or like most of the time. And I think that even if I happen to think of something on my own, in the back of my head, anyway, that thought took that format again.
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Some how I found your articles through Pinterest. At 2am in the morning Im crying in my living room after I read the first two. I’ve never really understood why I got into MD some how I knew it wasn’t healthy but after a while I stopped caring Cause it made me happy but I see now I was trying to get a fix, a high to carry me through my days. but now ii realize I’ve got some work to do, a soul to heal if you will. Thank you for sharing.
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Hello love. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your blog posts and I have to admit they have helped quite a bit. I’ve especially/unfortunately noticed that everytime I force myself to open my eyes while I’m pacing around (in an alternate universe) and try to identify the emotion that I’m allowing my character (alternative self) to feel, I find that I am encompassed with pangs of overwhelming depression. They seem to come and go in waves.
How long did it take for you to really see a difference in your behaviour. I mean, I read online that it takes at least 6-8 week to break a habit and even when I try to stop and identify all the emotions that my “characters” are feeling, I find that I keep running back to them. It’s like I don’t have any sense of control of what goes on inside my head. My thoughts go in one direction and I kind of follow absentmindedly. So I guess my next question is how did you establish this control? Is it just time?
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Hey. Thanks a lot, I’m glad it’s helpful!
Technically, it’s easy to break a habit but MD isn’t your normal type of habit and should be given some extra thought. For example, unlike smoking where you are just getting your fix or dulling your anxiety, the prime purpose of daydreaming is to help you access emotions you otherwise can’t. This is where it gets difficult. You can’t simply break a habit and ignore MD because if you do, you’re also ignoring those parts of you that can only be accessed while daydreaming. As long as those parts are ignored, you’ll continue to have cravings. To answer your question, it took me maybe three months without daydreaming to accept distressing emotions and stop running away from them. At first, depression is pretty invading but the more you accept negative feelings, the more you become familiar with the pain and eventually you’ll stop running away from it (and therefore stop using MD as an escape method). However, the cravings will still persist. Even when there’s no pain to censor, the numbness (or rather, dormant, dissociated parts of you) will still trigger MD. I described how I tried to bring these dissociated parts to surface somewhere in the comment section of 4th article.
As for you not being able to control your thoughts, it takes both time and some mental exercise. It’s almost as if your brain is a muscle and some parts of it are completely atrophied (especially those concerning focus and attention direction). It takes straining your brain to relearn how to focus. However, keep in mind that as long as your dissociation is strong, as long as there’s a part of you missing, your brain is programmed to search for it in daydreaming, which then causes problems with directing your thoughts. All your mental energy is focused on finding that detached part of you and until you’ve quenched this thirst, your cravings won’t stop and your thoughts won’t go in other directions.
Hope this answers your questions.
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hey, i am going through a severe MD. My mind never stops , i dream for 14 hours.. Never stops.. i jus wanna kill myself.. i am having this situation from 1 year
I was affected from my chidlhood.. domestic violence at home(parents fighting), financial difficulties,no proper love from parents, my mom only likes money. thts y i hate my parents.. i have these issues which u hv already mentioned above.. idealized self, success, power, intelligence and need for attention,need for love.. i understood all this about myself and further .. a person to be with low self esteem & respect,lonely, ashamed of my self,anxious..
I have acknowledged every emotion that i have mentioned here(also that i am not passionate about anything and run away from people because i am afraid they will judge me) and tried to accept myself.. but my mind has still not stopped.. yeah.. i am trying to acknowledge these emotions from past 6 months.( i read this book ” the power of now”.) my mind still wanders.. when i try to accept myself .. my daydreaming increases.. coz it brings me back to reality.. if theres any process in between that i shoud forgive(Or sumtin els) myself after acknowledgin all my feelings… how should i do that..? or els .. what is it that i shud do ..? also , i dont even know how happiness feels, i mean it literally(in reality)… bt oly in my daydreams is where i feel powerful,intelligent, a loved person and that makes me happy.
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Is there any possibility that you can get psychotherapy? You’re dealing with severe depression here and if there’s any psychologist, psychiatrist or therapist, I’d urge you to open up to them. It’s hard to deal with these things alone because there’s just too much built up tension inside you and ideally, you would need someone to guide you through all this. You know what your core issues are and the only thing left now is dealing with them which is apparently very painful and before things can get better, they are probably going to get much worse because it’ll take time for your mind to detox from all and it’d be great, if not even necessary, to have a psychotherapist or a psychologist to guide you through it. Even if you theoretically could do all of that alone, what you need now most is human contact. You have years of isolation behind you and pent up issues and I don’t think any book or self-help technique could replace help coming from another person.
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Need to share something important …!? Can I get your e-mail id.
?!
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“Can you remember the time when you didn’t have MD? Can you remember your sense of identity when you were a child free of MD?”
When i wasn’t used to have MD was before the death of my father and you know how you said you have to let the negative thoughts get to you i honestly have no other negative thoughts other then the death of my father and i think i am over him
Also since i have stopped daydreaming i have felt this feeling of nothingness even when i go back to my dream world . is that normal ?
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Hi Eretaia
I have just found your blog after I plucked up the courage, at 22 years old, to find out what the fuck is actually wrong with me. I use MD as an escape but the part where you said :”Can you remember the time when you didn’t have MD? Can you remember your sense of identity when you were a child free of MD?”
Is what actually hit me hard and, honestly, scared the shit out of me as I cannot remember a time where I never had MD.
You see as child I grew up in a house, with 5 older siblings, where my father ruled with an iron fist he however did not beat me, he would rather use mental torture and fear to keep us in line
Thankfully we, my mother, brother and sisters, are not with him and have moved on to build our lives separate from him. I am quite narcissistic in my daydreams and fined I’m beginning to lose myself to it.
I suppose the main reason I’m telling you this is that you have really given me alot to think about and showed me a better way and a form of self understanding I did not know existed so in this regard thank you.
Also I am quite curious about you as a person because your understanding of MD is quite extraordinary and hope you can help alot of people.
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Thank you very much.
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Thank you very much!
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I have a few questions, I’m twelve years old and I have this for as long as I can remember.
When I was like 5 it probably started when began imagining I was some cat with powers. So I don’t know how to think like a normal person when bored.
Whenever I’m bored or have free time I instantly start daydreaming. So that thing u were saying about taking myself back to a time where I wasn’t daydreaming kind of scares me because it makes me think I have no way out of whatever this is since I can’t remember.
Also I seriously don’t know what sparked this. Many people are saying trauma and abuse or something terrible happening in their life, but my life is not that bad actually. Maybe it was not having much things to do when I was younger because I do remember being awfully bored when I was little, or my parents fighting but that doesn’t affect me much. But what if my parents fighting not affecting me because of my daydreaming.
Also, I randomly start daydreaming if that’s normal. I’ve gone to the point where I don’t even know I’m daydreaming I’m just so used to it at this point.
AND, I write my daydreams in a locked app I have on my phone. Whenever people question it I tell them it’s my diary or a place where I store my passwords. So I don’t just daydream in my brain is write them down while thinking. Does anyone else do that?
Is this blog still active though? Thanks for helping me understand what I have, it’s good to know that I’m not the only one.
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It doesn’t matter if you can’t remember the time when things were right. Don’t be discouraged by it, it means nothing. You’re still so young, and you’re at that point where things can be fixed much more easily because you’re still developing emotionally and you’re entering a period of life where everyone feels confused and lost. Can you talk to someone about MD? You shouldn’t deal with this alone at that age.
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Thank you for what you are writing. I have this MD, I always knew that there was something off, but I didn’t know there were other people like me, I’m so happy I’m not alone. I cried so much when I was reading your posts and the pain I felt is beyond words. Even now while writing I can’t stop cry and trembling, nobody knows about my MD and I never wrote about my feelings over it, this is the first time I write how I feel. This pain, this loneliness, this void, it’s like suffocating. But I will not give up, now I know I’m not strange, I’m not the only one and I’ll do everything is in my power to overcome this. While I write about what I think for people to read that I don’t even know for the first time (yes because I never talked about what I feel to anyone), I feel a little more strong. It’s painful but I’ll do my best and one step a time I’ll embrace and accept myself again. I’m still young (I’m 18) and I have MD since I was maybe 10?12? I will take courage and I’ll talk about this with someone in flesh and blood (and luckily I know the perfect person). For now I’ve just finished to write my heart out here, I’ve stopped crying and trembling and I feel much, much better, so thank you.
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First of all, congrats for the courage and willingness to open up. That takes some serious guts. 😉 And it’s the number one technique that can help you overcome this. Your inner world and the outside world are not communicating so you have to break those walls separating them, and I can’t see a better way for that than spilling your heart out. All the inner feelings we keep bottled up eventually have to be exposed to the real world. Each time they are exposed, the real world either negates them or blows them out of proportion, so it sort of takes time for a balance to be made. The passion you have inside you may appear ten times weaker when you first expose it to another person, and it takes constantly opening up for your inner world and outer world to line up but the more you do it, the better it gets.
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Hello,
I have found this page in hopes of overcoming MD. I must say, after much research, I am so glad to have stumbled upon this page. It truly is the only article that allows us to better understand our situation. I was able to really connect to everything mentioned in each part. Although terrifying at first, I’m glad I was able to recognize (and accept) that I have anxiety, and that I will eventually overcome it and my idealized self will come back to life. That is truly all I want.
I am unsure whether or not you will see this comment however I believe it is important you know how helpful and refreshing this has been. I don’t usually comment on these types of things, but I really had to this time simply because I’ve been struggling for as long as I can remember, and now I see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Thank you for everything! I will ensure to come back here if I am ever doubting myself.
Again, thank you so much.
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Thank you! Good luck!
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I feel the same way, so refreshing from all the other MD articles.
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Thank you for making me understand MD and not feeling that I am over thinking this because when I was young it didn’t make sense to me.
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Hi how’s it’s going, I was wondering if can you help me with a problem I have. I’ve been MDing since I was in the 5th grade. I’ve been pretty good at keeping away from daydreaming during the day, but at night before I sleep, I usually daydream until I fall asleep. So it’s been kind of difficult to get to sleep without daydreaming. Oh and also I usually listen to music in the car it’s kind of a habit. I used to create a sort of daydream story around the songs I listen to and now I also find it hard to listen to music in headphones without getting the urge to daydream. Do you have any tips, please? Thank you for your time.
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Hey, so I’m also trying to fight MDD, and maybe my current experiment’s findings could be of help to you, too.
Before sleep:
Do sports and make sure to be really tired before you even try going to bed.
Write down in a journal what keeps circling in your thoughts- it calms you, because you don’t have to fear forgetting anything important during sleep.
If daydreams creep up in your head: Tell yourself why they are not helping you, and why they’re not important.
After that, when the lights are out, just concentrate on your body, on what you can sense in the present moment, it’s called awareness or something. It’s a buddhist thing, but it gets really boring and exhausting after a while (or really comfortable, because the bed’s so warm and cozy and you finally notice), so sleep will take over quickly.
Also, thinking about tomorrow helps- only if the next day doesn’t include uncomfortable events: if that’s the case, just make sure to prepare everything that can be prepared long before going to sleep, write down your worries (really helps!) and distract yourself with your hobby or a conversation with other people.
Music:
Concentrate on singing along, humming along, dancing along (such a pleasure!). Pay attention to the street, nature, shops, the people, think of what you’re going to do after the drive. Recognize your dreams creeping up, but let them go by telling them “You’re NOT helping, NOT needed, NOT welcome.” As I’ve now experienced myself, anger acutally really distracts from it.
Sources/ Credits: I’ve read so many blogs about this topic by now, I really lost track of where those tips come from, so I’ll just say they’re from all of the different blogs, and I’ve tried them all with much success.
All of you, keep going, we need you here in the real world and there’s so much to gain 😉
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Thank you so much. Honestly, I can’t thank you enough 🙂 I wish you the best
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My situation is EXACTLY the same. Word to word. EVERY SINGLE THING.
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Oh I also do the music thing.Music acts like as a theme to my daydream.So what I do is that when I catch myself daydream due to music.I try to listen very closely to the music, and ask myself ,”is this song really good or my daydream is making me like it?”and most of the times I realize that the song is really trash all i like is the feeling of daydreaming during my song.Mostly I listened to some particular songs again and again to daydream the same thing again and again.Music acts like a fuel which keeps my daydream directed (according to the lyrics).
But if I really like the song irrespective of my daydream.I try to listen to the instruments more than the lyrics.
I even try to identify them which keeps me in the moment rather than drifting away to the daydream
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I feel the same about music. I’ve tried paying attention to the lyrics and often they’re terrible. It’s the beat that keeps me going. I also tend to listen to the same songs many times in a row.
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Hey Eretaia, thank you so much for these articles, they’re really helpful.
I’ve managed to go 4 days without daydreaming but I still run into the a few problems. The thing is, I feel guilty about the content of the daydreams I used to have (and still have cravings for). They were pretty self-indulgent and narcissistic. They were shallow and had no substance to them… which makes me hate myself and want to isolate from people. I think that, because I have these cravings, that must mean I’m also that shallow in real-life… which is something I can’t bare. I don’t want to hurt anyone. 😦
The good thing about going cold turkey though is understanding where it all comes from. I think it all stems from not accepting myself as I am/ not being able to show weakness or vulnerabilty with others, just like you wrote in the second article.
I think that my insecurities fuel my anxiety and my way of coping with being a failure at 24/feeling empty/feeling inadequate in social situations are these daydreams. The problem is that I’m afraid it’s too late to change. I hope not. 😦
I hope this made sense. I just don’t know what to think anymore. 😦
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Why would you feel guilty or shallow? No need. MD is driven by feelings or traits that remain unexpressed in real life. If all you daydream about is of narcissistic content, then it’s pointing to self-esteem issues. The content of daydreams doesn’t equal shallowness in real life. The richer the *maladaptive* daydream content is, the more unexpressed feelings or traits there are. That’s the only connection. You don’t daydream maladaptively about something you don’t have difficulty expressing.
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Hey Eretaia, do you have an email where I could contact you…if you don’t want to post it, you can just send me one at rucha101@gmail.com Would love to talk about some stuff.
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hey 🙂
I stopped with my daydreaming 2 months ago.
I cant believe what came out after 2 weeks. Opsessive toughts, fear, sadness, anger, panic.. horrible..
And now i feel so weird.. Everything is so weird.. I feel like i am losing my mind. Like i am not me, like this is not my body. Is so hard.
I feel like this is the end of the world.. Is this normal?
I am so scared that i will lose my mind.
All i have is emptiness, confusion, suffer..
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Hey Kiki,
I hope you are better today. I just want to let you know, that you are not alone. I have this mess of emotions myself too and I just know how you feel. We will get better, I promise you.
Good Luck
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Hello! It’s Divyanshi Garg. I am a post graduate student of clinical psychology. And I have been suffering from MD for almost 12 years now. And I must say, this is by far the best guide I have found on maladaptive daydreaming that not only expresses the phenomenon accurately into words but also goes to root cause of it and how to channel it correctly. Turn your weakness into your strength.
Than you so much for this blog! And I hope we can be in touch.
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Thank you! 🙂
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This is a great guide. Didn’t know there was a name for this condition and that there are others out there with it. Thanks for sharing, this is extremely useful.
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This is probably the most authentic and accurate account of MD I’ve read so far; so much more enlightening than the BS the few psychologists that are addressing this issue are stating.
I know I should be, but I’m not exactly comforted by the fact that other people suffer with this as well. I feel like this pathetic freak who wasted way too much of her time from early childhood on useless daydreams when I could have been more productive and given myself a foundation. My whole life, I’ve been called a freak by my peers, siblings, and even by my own mother. I feel really stupid. All this time I thought I was simply introverted and shy when I was really just a bomb itching to explode, a little girl banging desperately on the closet door (quite literally, I might add).
Since I was wee little, whenever I tried to enter the actual world, I always ended up being this pathetic idiot was (and still is) constantly getting yelled at by her mother and laughed at by her friends and peers for being such a clumsy, absent-minded, clueless jester. To this day, it’s degrading to tears, hence the retreat to pathetic daydreams. I’m so glad to know that whoever that pathetic person is, that is not me.
Despite everything, I am incredibly thankful that MD is coming to light on the internet while I’m still pretty young (about to enter final year of HS). Your right. Avoiding triggers and simply not daydreaming doesn’t cut it. I’m one of those “narcissists”, as you described. I guess I’ve never been as innately “introverted” as I thought I was and was just insecure my whole life, but instead of taking it out on other people or intro-prospecting, I turned it inwards, which, I realized, was even more destructive. Stupid move.
I’ve always craved attention, yet I was labeled the “shy kid” growing up. After reading what you just wrote, it doesn’t take a genius to put those twos together. Like you said, instead of healthily expressing myself, I just assumed I was more introverted than I was and turned to MD. I’ve always loved writing, but I guess it’s just another side affect, especially if my stories don’t even make sense to other people. Lovely. More time wasted.
I still don’t understand why I have always constantly daydreamed about impressing certain people from real-life and fictional stories. It’s so weird now that I think about that phenomenon. I dunno, I still have lots to figure out.
I’m thinking about trying out some “finding-yourself” shit, like meditation or speaking out more. I’ve never commented on anything before in my life, so I guess this post could be my first step. So yeah, I have no idea who the hell I am. I’m not comfortable revealing this to anyone, I’m just gonna figure myself out by myself. Sorry this post was so long. I’m really eager to get a lot off my chest to someone who understands my situation firsthand and with an amount of respectable, sagely intelligence to them. Thanks for writing this article. My luck to you in the long run.
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You can do it.
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me！！！can you see me！！pleaaaaas！
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Hi Eretaia,
Reading your blog helped me so much to gain some understanding of my MD. I have a question that maybe you can help me with? In my daydreams I usually refer to myself in third person because while i now that the person in my dreams is me, it is a more idealized version of me. I’ve noticed recently that I also refer to myself in third person when I’m thinking about mundane stuff. For example instead of thinking “Wow, I need to do laundry so I have clothes for tomorrow.” I think instead “Wow, he needs to do laundry so he has clothes for tomorrow.” Is this something that occurred with your MD? Is this common amongst other MDers? I don’t have anyone who I can really talk to this about.
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Hi Raven,
well I don´t know if this covers what you do but in my head, there is a voice that always talks to me like this: ” Do you actually know what you are talking about?” ” You need to get this done”…this voice mostly puts me down and pressures me. It blames me for how far I let this happen. Also sometimes, I explain things to myself although I actually know the content already. It can be anything from ” This person works at the coffee shop” to ” ” the train is delayed because there are constructions”. I don´t know if that is similar to what you do but I guess there are different forms of MD and how they are expressed by us. I hope this a little bit helpful for you.
wishing you all the best.
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Dear Eretaia,
first of all, I would like to thank you for your honest articles. Up until now, I thought there was no help or guide for my MD. I thought I had gone mad and nobody would understand me If I had considered telling them, what exactly was going on in my mind. Actually it is still very hard for me to process everything you have written, in a sense that your article a 100% covers all of the “symptoms” ( If I can call them symptoms) I have. I have to say that, MD has been with me for longer than I want to admit, already since my early teenage years. It started out as innocent daydreams of me being more popular and prettier and more confident, not only in school but also at home. Unfortunately, my life or say my personality has not turned out the way I wanted it to be, better to say as I idealised it to be. I have to add, that I have had a tough couple of years, particulary a tough couple of months quite recently. My mother is mentally ill, my parents are divorcing and we are forced to leave our home. I don´t want to get too detailed here, especially since I am very protective of my privacy, but because I am living in a terrible situation at home, the fantasies have reached their most horrible peak. I now also, from time to time, suffer from obsessive and violent thoughts, which scare the hell out of me. I feel like I am loosing my mind especially since my mother´s illness still stresses me out. I don´t know whether you are still currently online and how many other people with MD write on this blog but I was hoping to seek more information and to get to hear from others how they cope with it on a daily basis, if they still deal with it. In one of the articles you mentioned that it is not my fault that I “have” MD, but I actually think otherwise. I thought, that it is my own fault, since I started the daydreaming and kept pushing it, I mean I could have stopped this early on, right? I don´t know if I have to see myself as mentally ill. Also there is not much research on MD. Again, I would just like to thank you for writing this. I feel a little less alone now.
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Hi Eretaia,
I’m a Chinese suffered from MD and I really liked your articles. Could I translate them into Chinese so that Chinese MDers who don’t speak English could read it ？
Best wishes
Newt
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P.S. and of course I’ll give you full credit with a link to this website attached to the beginning of the translations.
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Hey, I dont know any MDer besides me.Would you like to include me in your chatroom?
I am 18 year old girl and I live in a small town in India
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Of course! This website doesn’t get almost any traffic from China, so I’d be more than happy if the info becomes accessible to more people. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions when translating! Thank you 🙂
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Wow huge thanks to you.
FYI Google don’t offer its services in China so we cannot access http://www.google.com freely, and most people in my country don’t know MD even exists. And there are other factors, still I have 2 MDers in my chat group so far. Wish me luck!
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I am a Chinese who has maladaptive，can i join the group?
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Hello everyone.
I am from France. I recently realized that the amount of time I am spending daydreaming is not “normal” and its keeping me from being proactive in my own life. It felt secret but I was often wondering if that was “normal” .I am going to turn 29 this year, and I ve been having this habit (/addiction) for over 20 years now. I am tired, I feel like I am wasting so much energy daydreaming rather than focus on my real life. I travel a lot and worked in different countries, with a life full of passion, yet, leading other life in my imaginary world, makes me always feel like im chasing things that will never happens. The gap between what I would like to achieve and what I am dreaming in achieving, compared to what I really live and deal with, is hurting my feelings. Indeed how can I ever be satisfied of my reality if I am constantly having those fantasies ?
The more I read comments and testimony, the less I feel alone. And it feels like a lots of us are just trying to find peace and unity. Which I deeply wish for the all of you trapped into your/our very own mind.
If anyone has concrete experience of giving up on MDD for many months of years, I d be more than happy to hear and read about how it feels to be MDD free. I honestly wonder how it feels after a significant amount of time, being able, as much as possible, to control the desire to go back into our own fake world.
Thanks to all contributors.
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I cant thankyou enough.I have been suffering from MD from past 5 years.I cant get much help due to the place where I am from.But this article is the best article on MD ever.I know now , because of you, what I need to do to help myself.I will always pray for the person who wrote it.And I hope and pray that all of us who are suffering will overcome it and live our lives happily.
Thankyou.
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I cant thankyou enough.I have been suffering from MD from past 5 years.I cant get much help due to the place where I am from.I live in a small town in India.But this article is the best article on MD ever.I know now , because of you, what I need to do to help myself.I will always pray for the person who wrote it.And I hope and pray that all of us who are suffering will overcome it and live our lives happily.
Thankyou.
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Hello Aadya, I’m a 22-year-old boy from India, from a small town.
I also don’t know any people beside me dealing with MD, if you’d like to connect (or anyone else reading this) send me an email on, bizmailsam@gmail.com
I will be grateful to get in touch.
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Thanks a lot and good luck!
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hi Eretaia,
Thanks so much for you great articles about MD. It has inspired me to write an article about mij personal quest to leave MD behind me. You can find in on: https://wildminds.ning.com/profiles/blogs/curing-md-personal-notes-from-a-fellow-traveler-1
curious what your findings about it are, any feedback is welcome, thanks!
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Thank you Eretaia.
You have opened my eyes. So many insights, so much learned from reading these articles.
I feel like I am yet to live. I was sheltered growing up and never really had a childhood. I will break free from this.
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Hello! Thank you so much for writing the guide. Sometimes not knowing if you’re going in the right direction messes up the whole plan, I hope I will be able to make progress this time.
I was wondering if you would be okay with me translating some of your articles to Russian? Unfortunately, there is practically no information about MD in this language. Please contact me at kate.mak.one@gmail.com if you’re interested. Hope to hear from you soon!
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Hey Eretaia!
Over the past few years, before I discovered your articles, I’ve been progressively recovering from my anxiety, trauma and depression. I was addressing these things as seperate from my daydreaming habit which, oddly, never kept me from being aware I had depression, although I would daydream as constantly as we all would. I’ve changed so, so significantly. On a personal level and in my lifestyle.p. Around the time I was sixteen and no longer consistently unhappy, I noticed that my daydreams had changed completely from what they were. This prompted me to research daydreaming, as I was realising I was addicted to it and this was making new priorities in my life much harder, like school and friends. I found your articles. They brought me to tears as I read them. Resonating deeply, filling gaps in my understanding, and prompting me to reflect on my recovery. I’ll take the time right now to say that I’m so grateful and so thankful to you for writing them. You really are a warrior and a saviour, and you’ve helped so many people, I hope you know. Thank you, sincerely. As I read and reflected, I noticed correlations between my dissolved daydreams and insecurities I’d fought past, and upon analysing my left over daydreams, I noticed they were one feeling. One emotion they all shared with repeated, similar scenarios. Where before they were so varied. The last one was frustrating and confusing to get through. More so than before. But yesterday, I did it. I hesitate to say that in case the urge to daydream pops up again, but… it hasn’t. My triggers bring the ideas of the daydreams to my mind, but it’s like physiologically – even if I try – I’m no longer interested or engaged. Those visceral cravings aren’t there anymore, the pleasure no longer available to me. I wanted to ask if it’s normal to feel an odd sense of loss once you’ve dissolved that last daydream? I wouldn’t bring it back… but a part of me misses it. Misses that pleasure spike. I feel a mix of awkward and empowered about what to do with myself in my spare time, aha. I think perhaps I just need to adjust to it and build my lifestyle around all the time I have now, but I just want to ask if this experience is in any way familiar. I keep almost instinctually starting to daydream in my spare time, then finding I feel no pleasure. Only a drive coming about out of habit that just gets blocked. I feel less fiercely emotional, in general. Not super happy or super sad. Neutral. I’m used to sliding between amazing pleasure and searing pain, so it’s so strange. But yeah, any thoughts or advice to share on this?
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Hey Aisha. Thanks for your kind comment. I’m in the process of writing a new article and it covers precisely what you’re asking. I’ll publish it in ten days or so as soon as I’m done with some personal work and have more free time, so you might want to check it out. I’ll just type the short answer here. Think of MD as a misdirected energy. Fantasies are animated by the same mental energy or impulse that would otherwise animate your conscious functions if it weren’t for some kind of a mental block that prevents it from reaching your conscious in the first place. From this perspective, the idea of recovery is to allow this energy to flow from your daydreams into the conscious self. However, it often happens that by analyzing a certain daydream, you deplate the energy from the daydream BUT you don’t transfer it to your conscious functions to activate them instead. So, this energy is kind of lost midway. It activates neither daydreams nor conscious functions, and as a result of this, a sense of void or hopelessness or a lack of meaning is produced. James Hillman, a depth psychologist, describes this process beautifully: “Because symptoms lead to soul, the cure of symptoms may also cure away soul…” You deactivated a daydream, but you didn’t properly transfer its animating energy to your conscious, so by losing the daydream, you also lost that energy that fed meaning into it – and that theoretically could also feed your consious function, at which point you’d call it an actual recovery. This happens often (happened to me all the time), and I’d say it’s an unavoidable step when you meddle with the unconscious, but at the same time, it’s definitely not the end goal. That’s not to say you’re doing something wrong, just that you’re still stuck on the way. You’re feeling less emotional now because your conscious functions, that is, your conscious self still doesn’t have the capacity to welcome that energy that used to feed and activate your daydreams. Why is this so, and what can you do to improve it? Is there a part of you missing which is what prevents you from welcoming those emotions? The end goal for you would be to make your conscious functions healthy and strong enough to be able to house that stray energy. My personal approach (which isn’t really smart for some cases and could be counterproductive) is that when the sea gets too calm like in your case now, provoke a storm. Push yourself out of your comfort zone, express things you don’t usually express, open up to someone about the things you hide. These acts usually puncture a hole in you through which that lost energy can flow into the conscious properly.
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Hey Eretaia! Thanks so much for the response! I guess I’ll have to wait for your article to get more detail but I think I’ll still respond for good measure. I didn’t expect there to be more left in the process, especially now that my cravings are gone and getting things done is so much easier. I can actually choose to do other things I enjoy. I got so used to giving up on trying to do anything else in my spare time, because I just knew I would end up daydreaming. Normal waking consciousness isn’t always engaging and fun, so isn’t it normal to feel neutral and not terribly happy or sad? What you’re saying makes sense, except I’m trying to understand what you mean by developing healthy and strong conscious functions. The insecurity that was behind my last daydream, is gone. Wasn’t this toxic self-belief exactly what was blocking me from embodying the feelings? If this is what I was escaping from – and it’s healed now – shouldn’t my conscious now be healed, and able to host the emotions? Maybe you’ll answer these questions in your new article but I feel the need to get these off my chest, especially because now that my cravings are gone, I feel freed and honestly very positive. Resilient, too. Then again, moments of null are replaced by daydreams now, which I can still do. It’s not addictive, I can stop when I choose to now, and if I’m doing something else I don’t need to suppress any cravings. This probably means there’s still a problem, but it’s still a so much better place than addiction so lately, I’ve honestly felt very good. “Why is this so, and what can you do to improve it? Is there a part of you missing which is what prevents you from welcoming those emotions?” I don’t know what could possibly be missing. I don’t feel any self-esteem issues, depression or discontentment with who I am anymore. But the null is there, nonetheless. Maybe I just need to practice having emotion being evoked by my environment, and not daydreams. Who knows but we’ll see how I feel in the weeks to come and I’ll take a look at your new article when it comes out 😊 Again, thank you.
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Aisha, how did you do it? Recover, I mean. Any advice would help.
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Hey 🙂 sorry it took me so long. I’m very busy with school and was indecisive on how to respond to this. The way I did it before discovering these articles basically boiled down to lots of therapy, and constantly pushing myself outside my comfort zone. Seeking situations which pull me out of daydreams, even for just a little while. The more of these I indulged myself in, the more constantly, the more I was able to feel outside of my daydreams, and the more I learned about exactly what negative self-perceptions were driving me to daydream. I then challenged these perceptions in as many ways as I could think of. Not with thoughts, but with activities. I joined a production team for a stageshow and took initiative in making the set pieces. Something that I would usually sit passively and allow someone else to do, because I was scared of the responsibility, and the possibility of failure. But I made myself do it and it paid off big time. I made myself start spending time with people, even though I was scared. I made myself throw a party at my house for the friends I’d been slowly making, which also terrified and challenged me. You have to DO things, not be passive and inactive anymore. Taking on a responsibilty like set designer, or setting a rule to say yes to social events your would normally refuse, they ground you and force you to stay engaged and active. I feel it’s always better to use social spheres and objective responsibilities, because you’re then forced to engage with something external. And your activity wont rely on your ability to supress cravings. Make sure to pace yourself, though. You want to be challenged, but not destroyed and re-convinced of the very insecurities you’re trying to dismantle. If a situation like throwing a party is too challenging, then start smaller. I started by simply sitting with a group of people and choosing to make conversation rather than daydream or read. I felt nothing at first, but I kept making myself do it alongside therapy, and I started to feel more and more. I had to slowly introduce new challenges once I’d gotten past the last one. It took me months to grow the confidence to throw that party, and I had an anxiety attack an hour before the guests arrived. But I did it and I’ve thrown three more without fear. I never anticipated I would grow that much. Social anxiety might not be the problem for you, however. But it was my problem, so once you’ve analysed your feelings and daydreams in therapy and discovered what your problems are, you can begin doing things to challenge and confront them. It’s trial and error and sometimes you’ll think your problem was one thing when it was actually another, but this is okay. You learn more and more and you don’t stop growiing. You’ll get there.
Hope this helps somewhat. I’m of course not as eloquent and educated on this as Eretaia – her advice is obviously an amazing resource for recovery – but nonetheless I hope you can get something from this.
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Additionally – make sure you have a therapist who is genuinely helpful and allowing you to learn about yourself. My family and teachers were my impromptu therapists for most of my process, because my first therapist made things worse and put me off formal therapy. I’ve since learned it can take time to find a therapist you connect with, who you feel understood by. So don’t be scared to switch therapists, or confront your therapist with concerns you have about their approach. Either way, you need some kind of outlet to externalise your feelings and discoveries, to bounce ideas off of until you slowly figure it out. Talking about what you’re feeling is so shockingly effective. This is equally important a step as challenging yourself.
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Aisha your advice is amazing! Thank you so so so much for sharing. It really gives me hope.
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Hey, Aisha,
Thanks for explaining what you did to beat MD. It really helped me.
Until I saw your comment, I was pretty set on just dealing with my insecurities by wallowing in my thoughts and feelings. Now I know I eventually have to (literally) get off my ass and confront them head-on lol. I’m not even 100% sure what they are, so I guess I need to get out into the world to finish the puzzle. Analyzing my daydreams and feelings has only gotten me so far, but I digress.
Anyway, I hope you’re still doing well. I hope your daydreaming situation is over. I just wanted to thank you for writing that 🙂
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I appreciate your writing this and getting it out into the open. I have had MDD since childhood. It has destroyed my life. I feel that there is really no way out. I don’t daydream as much but I am completely overwhelmed with pain. I can’t get back the wasted time. I’m ill equipped to deal with the world. My mother is elderly, sick, and dying. I can’t get back the time I lost and now I am faced with an unbearable reality. Yes, I’m feeling again, but the feelings are overwhelming. I’ve seen a lot of therapists but no one knows how to help. I wish there was more work being done on MDD. This is a hell that no one should have to live through.
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Dear Eretaia,
During the past weeks, I made an effort to translate your articles into greek so that people from my country can understand your message as well. Would you be interested in adding a Greek section next to the Portuguese one?
Additionally, I am asking your permission to turn your articles into an audio recording and narrate it on Youtube, so that it can reach as many people as possible and guide them. I will make sure to mention you as the original source and add a link that leads directly to your blog. Let me know what you think.
Best wishes
Alexandros Kefalas
kefalas.al@gmail.com
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Hi Alexandros! Just wrote you an email. 🙂
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Hi! Eretaia , your advice has helped me too. Would it be possible to do a meetup for this or some way we can talk about this ? Others can join as well.
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This is a really good page and I’m going to book mark it in case I ever start to relapse, and because I know a lot of people who would find this helpful.
I had a few weeks of trouble with mild MD this summer, due to being stuck at home too long due to quarantine and due to a lot of emotional things happening in the spring that I wasn’t able to process. but for the most part I don’t have MD anymore. If the circumstances of this summer had happened with MD as bad as I had it in highschool, I probably would have had MD so strong I would have worried I was loosing my mind.
I remember being maybe four years old and openly sharing my imagination and then my mother being critical of it and implying the things I said were stupid, which caused me to hide my imagination leading to me developing a inner world that I was incredibly secretive about. I mostly had no friends, and at recess at school I would play in an imaginary world all by myself. When I learned to read chapter books in elementary school, I would obsess over them and think of alternate plots to the point of headaches.
I have had one good friend but in middle school when she was around our other “friends” she would join them in laughing at me and and treating me like a total joke. I didn’t know how to deal with that, so I took on the role of “the stupid weird one” since if I didn’t, it felt like their behavior towards me was worse. I’ve noticed a lot of small self sabotaging behaviors I have in social situations because somewhere deep inside I assume if I am too good at something, or too confident, then I am inviting attack. I also have in the past strongly felt like if I share my thoughts I will probably be seen as stupid, but I’ve been really great at speaking up lately. The only thing I feel suppressed in speaking up about is on political issues, because I think I’ll get yelled at by my peers for having certain opinions. That’s probably a big issue for tons of people these days though, some people are acting unhinged and crazy about their political beliefs lately which can be pretty intimidating.
I just recently realized that my mother’s parents always called her stupid, and my mom currently has much worse MD than I ever did. I actually didn’t think about her having MD, until a few days ago when I was purposefully daydreaming I thought about a story that had an “evil queen” who was a telepath trying to save her realm by holding in telepathic shadow monsters and using her powers to bind them to herself so that they wouldn’t harm her realm, something she was failing at. The main character is a telepath and she meets this strange person in a telepathic trance and has no idea who she is and they become emotionally close, even though she keeps getting pushed away. There are no other known telepaths in that world, and the main character struggles to not go insane under the weight of this power.
Analyzing this is becomes pretty clear the “evil queen” mostly represents my mom (but she represents some other things too, including older female family members who I wish I was closer to), she’s even the long lost grandmother of the main character. It gave me the sudden realization that my mom can’t let go of MD because she thinks her negative emotions will hurt us, and it made me rethink so many conversations with my mom that make that very clear. The main character struggling not to go insane is typical daydream hyperbole, but it is about how I feel like I’m the only one who sees what’s going on around me a lot of the time, and how I try not to feel anxious about it. The main character having an angsty break down over her telepath powers, tells me that I clearly feel anxious about it. It’s not true that I’m the only one who sees what’s going on though, I am very lucky to be close to mentally healthy and insightful people, but a part of me is still used to feeling alone and feeling like I have to fix things myself which I think can can blind me to that fact.
In the past, I used to have a lot more daydreams about subverting expectations, dramatic reveals, and impressing people. I still enjoy dramatic reveals quite a bit and every story I think up usually has a few, but I don’t feel compelled to think about them.
This is also the first daydream in a while that has had a female main character. For a while ever since late high school I have had male main characters despite being female. I think it’s because I felt pressure to “get a boyfriend” and “attend prom and look pretty” and a few people even started talking about me like I was going to have kids one day, which made me feel insecure in ways I didn’t really notice. I think the appearance of a female main character means I’m finally at peace with some of those insecurities, especially because I have less dread about the future because I actually quit caring if I got a boyfriend or not because my life has been filled with so many other cool things that I don’t feel like a lot is missing anymore, and no longer feel any dread of expectations in that way. Just mild annoyance, but no dread lol.
I didn’t realize in MD how much I did not enjoy daydreaming. It’s nice at this point in my life I can genuinely enjoy and appreciate my daydreams. The plots would be circular, rehashed, and tiresome. I was never resolving the issues in my subconscious mind, so there would rarely be fresh content. I would be trying to squeeze any drop of emotion from playing a scene just “one more time”. Now my daydreams are an activity I usually engage in on purpose when I have some quiet and free time, and they are so much more entertaining. Side characters are more well rounded and free to explore new ideas because they aren’t crushed under the weight of my issues and obsessive emotion seeking, and analyzing the main characters tells me so much about how my life is actually going, and it keeps surprising me to find out what I actually care about because a lot of the time it’s not what I expect.
I wonder how often MD runs in families.
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welp, I transposed my email and my name lol -_-
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Speaking from personal experience, I’m sure it does run in families to some degree. Both my little sister and older brother have it, although it impedes on their life much less than it does for me. I have it the worst.
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Really,really,thanks.Well, i’m not clearly where i can help the people who create this web,research for this study,who share this web.So i comment here.I was confused by MD almost seven or eight years.You know,my life used to broken again and again,which really made me so pain.Even sometime i can’t realize my MD.However,you know,sometimes,maybe just a few moments,i could realized that i’m a little “special”,this really deeply stroke me,sometimes i even can’t accept this truth.Then, i gradually began to find something about my impractical illusion.I’ve been looking for it off and on for years,but always can’t find some helpful information.Information is really rare and they just talk about it slightly,untill earlier days,i found this link in app accidently.It’s like a dawn，in my difficult forward to give important guidance.Thanks,again.I will try my best to learn to return reality,in other words,maybe true self.If possible,i will try to help others in someway,too.In a word,what u are doing is reallt have extraordinary significance.
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Hi Eretaia,
I’m a psychotherapist and I work with some clients who suffer from MDD. I wondered if I could email you to ask you about using your work in my practice?
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Hello. Thanks for showing interest. Sure, you can email me at eretaia@gmail.com
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Hello, Eretaia and everyone! I have one huge concern. I am an older person who has been disconnected from the internet until recently. I was unaware of Mal Daydreaming. I was diagnosed with a dissociative disorder in 1994, which started in childhood. I also have Schizoid Personality Disorder. Now I would also fit with having MD! My worry is this and I feel it’s very important: Some sufferers may be coping with underlying issues such as very bad environment, it could resemble or be a facet of DID and definitely relates sometimes to Schizoid and/or Avoidant Personality Disorder. Would you please suggest that everyone first make sure that their MD is the actual problem — independent problem — and not just a symptom, part of something more? Because I worry about the terrible, painful results that trying to just stop” could cause. When I look back and think about what would’ve happened to me, if my parents had been told to “stop” me from having my private time and music and were told to watch me to “prevent fantasizing,” I honestly think I’d be long ago dead. Or I would have to come up with another, possibly more severe, coping tactic. Thank you. I am truly concerned.
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Oh, I completely agree that forcefully stopping and dismissing fantasies as purely infantile, regressive or wrong is very dangerous and anti-therapeutic. To me, the key element of successful therapy lies in recognizing that fantasies carry healthy emotions that at the moment cannot otherwise be expressed. These trapped emotions are crucial for one’s emotional well-being, and as such, they must not be denied. However, one must find an outlet for them other than fantasy, a way that lets them flow outwardly and not inwardly. When it comes to stopping MD, I’d only recommend stopping fantasizing abruptly for one to realize what lies underneath. Some can handle it alone, and for some, it may be better to dismantle this mechanism in a therapeutic environment. However, with or without MD active, one should never forget that emotions trapped in fantasies are disconnected parts of oneself that should ultimately not be discarded, just integrated and experienced in another way. I feel that keeping this precise realization in mind is in itself a light at the end of the tunnel.
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Hey, I need help. As long as I deal with fantasies, which is about 4 years, in which I have at least a dozen personalities, I gestures during them and so on, I somehow cope with them. But at least 99% of my thoughts during the day are occupied with imagining that I’m telling someone about something, literally everything, like what just happened, and I’m not talking about some extraordinary event, I’m talking about something everyday. I can’t think of anything with my own thoughts, but it automatically and uncontrollably takes the form of saying it to someone else. I don’t know if anyone understands what I’m talking about, but I hope they do. I don’t know exactly what I’m asking, I want someone to tell me if it’s more common in connection with MD or maybe I’m the exception and how screwed up I am then? And what am I supposed to do about it? I really don’t know if anyone understands what I mean, (I don’t know if this is a good example because nothing surprisingly can come to my mind even though I have such thoughts 24h) but for example, if I see something interesting in the store then I won’t think it’s cool and that’s it (even actually I don’t know what it’s like to think about something normally, because I haven’t had such thoughts for a few years), only automatically in my head I’ll be telling someone about it to whom I’m talking about it. I have absolutely no control over it and it happens 24h/7 with literally everything, and yet somehow I can not give better and more examples. Sometimes I don’t know if I’ve been thinking about something in the normal way or again in the fucked-up way. I will add that it started when I was 12 years old (now I am 16) and I don’t remember anymore, but it seems to me that at that time my fantasies didn’t include these weird, uncontrolled thoughts, and now it’s my (not the only one related to MD) but the main problem.
I think I could write a lot more about it, but that’s enough for now.
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This really helped, thank you.
I realize that my attachment to my characters is actually just the attachment to the feelings, but the thing is that just consciously knowing that doesn’t make the pain go away. A few months ago I really realized how my characters were never and will never be real, and it hurt. Now these days I still daydream about them but this realization randomly hits me at various points of the day and stresses me out to no end. Any advice here? Sometimes I also feel like I want to “become” my character, if that makes any sense.
Also, when I’m studying, I mentally explain things to my characters. Even when I’m doing something else I talk to them. How normal is this, even for a person suffering from MD?
Again, thanks a lot
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head I’ll be telling someone about it to whom I’m talking about it. I have absolutely no control over it and it happens 24h/7 with literally everything, and yet somehow I can not give better and more examples. Sometimes I don’t know if I’ve been thinking about something in the normal way or again in the fucked-up way. I will add that it started when I was 12 years old (now I am 16) and I don’t remember anymore, but it seems to me that at that time my fantasies didn’t include these weird, uncontrolled thoughts, and now it’s my (not the only one related to MD) but the main problem.
I think I could write a lot more about it, but that’s enough for now.
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3 years later and still struggling with MDD. I have no idea where to even go from here
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holy shit. Thank you
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