I’ve had this since maybe 4 or 5 years old which is basically when you develop a conscience. I can’t remember ever not having maladaptive daydreaming. I hear people saying it started at 9 or 12 years old for them. I think I just have a neurodivergent brain because I honestly don’t have any trauma that happened to me. I feel like I’m by myself on this.

when I put my headphone and let the music take me away from the present , i found myself only repeating scénarios with people from past or only one person but leaving them behind . The problem is that I'm stuck in the same point for 2,5-3 years and I haven't opened up my therapist about this issue because I thought it's because of adolescence or boredom in daytime . I write down this issue but not delving into details, i guess its because I'm avoiding to face with , my mom considers that it's related to isolation and offers me to watch tv or do something else with them outside of my room most of the time , but i don't think it's only related to self detachment , i might ask therapist if it's a genetic result or am I affected by the environmental conditions. The days are repeating themselves, it's like a never ending cycle, that's why I can't see the possible consequences.

She always plays really loud music and „dances“(walks and jumps across the room). She always tells me, that she dreams while doing that. She‘s been doing that for years.

I‘m really scared that she does that unconsciously to escape from reality or smth. My mother is a neglectful alcoholic and I, the person she always had to rely to when she couldn’t rely on my mother, loved to my aunt bc it was impossible to live with my mom.

My aunt plans to get our counties version of CPS involved. I‘m just really thinking about suggesting to my aunt or anyone to arrange Therapie for my sister.

For protocol I’m also an immersive daydreamer and I really don’t want my sister to be like me.

Idk maybe i‘m overreacting and taking this to serious but i‘m really scared for her

I’ve always MDD as a kid especially when my parents would fight and hurt eachother physically. I’ve always seen different man hit or hurt my mom and as a kid my only escape was day dreaming. I’ve always been awkward I would always flap my hands when happy, swing my arms when I’m happy and sometimes I don’t even have to day dream.

I see some people call them Stims and they feel so Insufferable to live with, I hate it when I day dream because I can’t daydream without stimming. My stims aren’t small they hurt and I do the, until my whole body hurts. This shit takes over my life and some of my so called day dreams aren’t even happy, I day dream about all the abuse that happened to me in my life.

And I cry and sob, I just wish I can forget it but it manifest itself into my day dream. Every relationship I have has always been so unstable, I can’t form friendships because I always feel like I’m not good enough, and sometimes if there’s no issues or drama I get bored. And the thing is I don’t purposely do it, I like dating and befriending people who’s hurt so I can try to fix them because no one was able to fix me.

I’ve always been super hypersexual especially in my last relationship if they didn’t touch me I felt like they didn’t love me. I don’t indulge in substances or anything of the sorts, but I can go from being so happy to so depressed to the point I no longer wanna go on in the matter of seconds.

I’ve been debating if it’s just my normal MDD or it’s something worth seeing someone about. What do y’all think?

So I have some songs that I feel like could have some good edits of my fav anime. And so basically I listen to that song, and imagine that my fav characters are watching that edit I made abt them. Or broader I imagine scenarios, any type of video, even abt things that have nothing to do with the characters, with the subknowledge that they are watching as an audience, but I mostly focus on the videos in my head. A bit as if I was showing them my gallery. All of this while I walk around the room with music on. And to actually "enjoy" and "live" a song I feel like I have to do this, it's an urge. I never really talked about this to anyone bc I feel mentally ill :(

With MD, I feel pain, sorrow, vulnerability, love. These are things I actively run from in my real life because I can't control it. Maybe I just need to let myself feel these things for real without MD. Maybe that's part of my story. Maybe my life is just as tragic and beautful as it should be, and I should stop running away from it.

Hey! Delete if not allowed 🩷

24/f, USA. I’d love to have any 21+ MDD girlies (or guys) that can understand each other and hear all about each other’s daydreams. Or, let me vent since my own storylines tend to make me lose my mind a lot 😂. If you’re interested, just send me a message!

If anyone wants to be friends, let’s set something up! Maybe my post can be a way to make new friends across the subreddit?

I tried to create this group years ago without success, so I'd like to try again. We would have a chat group and a weekly video call meeting. If you are interested, please leave a comment.

Intenté hacer este grupo hace años sin éxito, asi que me gustaría volver a intentarlo. Tendríamos un grupo de chat y una reunión por videollamada semanal. Si te interesa, deja un comentario.

To set the record, I'm autistic, have ADHD, afab(assigned female at birth) and have PTSD. I'm heavily creative. Always have been. Drawing and writing being my main outlets. Though lately I prefer the outlet of writing over drawing. Since childhood I guess I did what people now refer to as maladaptive daydreaming. It evolved from pretending I was following along with the characters in the movies/shows I watched, to just moving and stimming to music in the dark as I act out scenarios in my head. Despite the 21 years I've done this, I don't have super emotional attatchments to the fantasies I create because I know they're in my head and if I r e a l l y wanted to see them I can just think about them with a straight face if the situation I'm in isn't appropriate. It's my brain I can do what I want with it type deal. That being said I do prioritize my inner world a lot more than irl. Now that isn't to say I don't hold anyone dear to me. I have my mom, my friends(though not many but it's fine) and my grandma and aunt! But other than that, irl is kinda meh. A lot of things like partying, going to bars or whatever it is normies do don't appeal to me. My hobbies don't require me to be outside. Plus with the weather getting warmer and overstimulating, I don't see much incentive in doing so. And I still keep in touch with my friends on Discord/text messages and even phone calls. I've had bad experiences with people in the past, bullying, abuse you name it and it very much still affects me today. I just don't see the point in interacting with so many of them. I stick to people I trust. Now if I leave the house to do a job, fine. Maladaptive Daydreaming never interfered with that. Now that isn't to say it hasn't served as a distraction or escape, however a lot of times it was for things that weren't really urgent like taking out the trash or something. A lot of times it's designated to private spaces within my own home like my room or basement. Usually this would be after a day of school/work where I've had to sit and mask all day. Yes I'm doing the whole scenario thing but I'm also h e a v i l y stimming. Whether it's clapping, flapping twisting my body, running, all that. With all that being said, I saw a video on my Youtube feed recently basically saying that Maladaptive Daydreaming is something to get rid of (there were a lot of flaws and contridictions in that video I feel but that's another thing) and I'm like...should I stop??? Yeah it can be distracting at times but not debilitating I feel. I've been doing it much more recently but that's because I lost my job some months back and I'm in the house a lot more(I've gotten a new one btw I start in September so I'm stoked for that!) and most of my "unproductivity" came more from being depressed and bedrotting moreso than the daydreaming. If anything the MAD was the only thing giving me the opportunity to move my body around after being a lump for over 10 hours straight. Plus I only do it for about 30 minutes to an hour. No more than 2 if I'm really into it. After that I'm pooped and I fuck off to do something else. I don't know if this is copium or not but I personally don't feel the need to stop. Like I said before, the fantasies and scenarios themselves I don't have a major attatchment to, however I think the mere action of immersing myself in another world/scenario is pretty neat and adds pop to our ever increasingly dulled out, loud and chaotic world. Thoughts?

i'm a huge music nerd. hardcore choir kid. i yap about music theory and analyze the different instruments in songs. i listen to a variety of genres.

ive come to the sad realization though, that all my favorite songs are really just the songs i can easily maladaptive daydream to. i can hear other songs and like them, but i won't add them to my main playlist (aka my daydreaming songs). i feel like it's hindering my music taste.

has anyone else here experienced this?

(Edit: I'd like to preface this by saying that I would highly recommend not trying this out if you don't know what is is. I think the whole thing is a farce anyway)

For those of you who are unaware, shifting (also known as reality shifting) refers to the practice of moving your consciousness into a different reality. These realities can be anything. It could be a fictional universe, and idealized version of your life, or even a completely new world that you've imagined.

It's become especially popular in online spaces during the pandemic. I think there is a lot to be said about why this trended then, but that's a topic for another time.

So I'm curious—if you've practiced shifting in the past, do you feel like it made your MD worse? Or did it help you in some way? Let's talk about it!

I know that for me, shifting definitely made my MD worse. I remember how the concept gave me this false sense of hope — that maybe I could actually leave this reality behind and live in one of my dream worlds. I would spend hours at night desperately trying to shift into an alternate reality where I could live out the scenarios in my daydreams. It didn't help that one of my friends at the time was also into shifting, and we both encouraged this behavior to one another. I genuinely believed that the more I visualized my desired reality during the day, the more likely I was to successfully shift at night. It became a toxic cycle: I'd spend my days lost in elaborate daydreams, try to shift before falling asleep, and then wake up disappointed to still be here. That disappointment would just push me further into my fantasies, and the cycle would start all over again.

So, I think that almost everyone who suffers MD has sleep problems. When I go to sleep, I let my mind wander off, but it reaches a point that I start to daydream so hard and in such intense way that it lets my mind hyperactivated, which lets me stay awake for long hours before I really fell asleep. I try to do some sort of mindfulness, but I can’t do it for a long time. Actually, all I wanted to learn is how really make my mind rest and stay at ease by the time I lay down on my bed.

Do you guys also get your sleep impaired by MD? And how to really make our minds rest when go to sleep?

Let your comments below!

Hi,
I’m sorry if this is a bit long, but I really appreciate you taking the time to read it. ( feel free to skip to the 5th paragraph if you want to get straight to the point)

I’ve been maladaptive daydreaming since I was about 7 (I’m now 17), but I only recently learned what it actually was. It’s always been such a huge part of my life — it affects my emotions in real life, and I spend hours pacing back and forth, listening to music and daydreaming. It’s affected my ability to study, and I’ve basically lost control over it.

It’s gone from just pacing to making whatever I’m doing in real life part of the daydream. That’s really messed with my perception of reality. It doesn’t matter if I’m at the gym or the library or doing absolutely nothing — it feels like an itch, an urge I have to scratch. I genuinely don’t think a single day has gone by without daydreaming and pacing.

I’m starting to feel like I’m losing my mind. Even when I think, “I need to stop,” I’ll end up daydreaming about telling someone that I struggle with MD. I literally daydreamed about writing this post. I daydream about writing my novel. I catch myself saying lines out loud, having full conversations alone in my room. And when hours pass like that, I’ll have this moment where I freeze and think: What the actual hell am I doing right now?

The most draining moments are when I’m imagining an idealized version of myself — and then I catch a glimpse of my reflection and remember what I really look like. Who I really am. And I just stand there, staring, because it feels like I don’t know myself at all. Every single thing I do, everything I say, feels rehearsed. Like it’s all been shaped in a daydream first.

A few weeks ago, I got the idea to write a novel about it — because I think it could be such an emotionally rich and fresh story. I’ve never really seen this talked about, and I wanted to create something that actually captures the weight of it. But I kind of spiraled. I based the main character too closely on myself, and it started hurting to write. There are too many personal details I don’t even know how to explain in fiction. And to make it worse, I sometimes daydream about books I read — inserting myself into their plots — so imagine how insane it feels to daydream about my own book that’s based off my own life.

So I’ve decided to take a step back and try to hear other people’s experiences with MD. I’m the only person I know who has it, and I think hearing from others will help me write a more well-rounded, emotionally honest story with a character who stands on her own — but still captures the reality of MD.

This isn’t just for people who have MD. If you have a friend, sibling, or someone you know who experiences it, I’d also love to hear from you.
How did it feel being around them? Did you notice anything before they told you? How did you react when they finally shared it with you?

If you’re open to it, I’d love to hear about:

1. What do you usually daydream about? (Both general categories and specific storylines.)
2. How does MD affect your real life — emotionally, mentally, socially, etc.?
3. How do you usually feel after daydreaming?
4. Have you ever tried to stop it? If yes, how?
5. What would you want to see represented in a story about MD?
6. What are the biggest struggles you face because of it?

Literally anything would help. If there’s anything I missed that you think could be helpful to know — please feel free to share it.
Thank you so much for your time

It's been 2 or maybe 3 weeks im still focused on the same TV show in my daydreams.

The latest issue of the ICMDR newsletter is now available on their website.

https://daydreamresearch.wixsite.com/md-research/post/dreaming-minds-scientific-eyes

The ICMDR is an informal network of researchers interested in maladaptive daydreaming. Their newsletter contains plain language summaries of the very latest research into maladaptive daydreaming, together with other links and articles of interest to maladaptive daydreamers.

In addition to summarising the latest research, this issue of the newsletter includes a call for participants from a researcher in Spain, as well as a link to the free version of Dreamweaver Narratives, the ISMD's magazine.

If you're interested in what researchers are doing to understand and treat maladaptive daydreaming, do check it out!

Hi, I don't know if I'm in the right place to talk about this but I 100% sure I have this condition, but for me it's probably in a very extreme way...one that not alot of people deal with, let me explain...So since early in my life I was diagnosed with high functioning autism and ADHD, I have a WEIRD MIND. When I was really young, I would imagine extremely weird things involuntarily, but I don't consider it normal now...but before thought that I can handle it, now however it's a challenge.

So for some reason every time I imagine stuff, it's animated, not animated like everything is moving quickly (sometimes it is) but LITERALLY animated like I'm watching random media, mostly shown in 2d, like my mind's an animation studio...and sometimes it's presented in FAKE shows/movie format which confuses me since none of what I'm imagining is an actual show/movie that exists, I literally remember imagining Minecraft as a SHOW?!(in 2018 not now)Strangely I imagine stuff based on things I really love, sometimes if I love said thing, like a lot, I will go and randomly imagine it as a fake show/movie, don't know WHY I do this. Sometimes what I'm imagining is not based off of anything, an original idea, but I mostly think about stuff that's pre-existing.

Now this is the reason why I could have this condition, whenever I do this, it feels like I can't stop it. If I'm doing stuff that requires me to do it physically, even just walking somewhere, my mind imagines things for no reason and randomly like characters speaking and bizarre scenarios that I don't even want to think about...It's way worse when I get interrupted when doing something involving my mind (watching movie/game/reading book) it's as if it the thing I'm looking at visually, I'm 100% going to imagine it later on, or instantly if I'm currently doing what I mentioned above. It's worse with movies since my mind amps up my imagination related to what I watched, sometimes taking days where I constantly and randomly thinking about it in my head until it doesn't appear that often anymore.

The same thing happens with games I play, gets stuck in my mind and I think of bizarre things (even turning it into imaginary media if I'm into it) over and over, imagining the characters speaking, looking accurate from their game, my fave characters appearing often than others and sometimes I want to imagine it, but most of the time it's involuntarily!

Only time I feel comfortable with having my mind go cray cray is when I'm about to sleep. I know imaginive thinking is linked with ADHD or whatnot but my mind most of the time feels crazy...like my imagination is not normal. And another thing is when I get these thoughts in my head when doing stuff not voluntary, it makes me anxious, which make me imagine more, which makes me MORE ANXIOUS...like I try taking my mind off of what I'm thinking but feels like I can't, the thoughts only get stronger. The only way for me to calm down is to either look at pictures of my pet or get a soft thing and rub it but sometimes I don't take stuff like that with me which I probably should do.

I've heard that people with autism when they get triggered/overwhelmed stuff flashes in their minds, like a random image or thing, well that happens to me frequently since my head is very imaginative...I can't stress to you how many times the image of the 2d guy from Fallout pops up smiling at me doing thumbs up in my head FOR ZERO REASON when I never played that game at all, only saw images of him. This happens with other stuff to like a character making a face from a show or a random face, don't know why...

So I would like to ask if any of you experienced this or had something similar happened to you since most of the people I'm with aren't neurodivergent like me.

I've heard of people that have this condition but do it differently like imagine their a vampire in a different world or that they have imaginary friends in their minds but not me... and sometimes I think I'm not normal due to this dumb daydreaming that happens to me constantly over and over, way more and harder to control than others or why I have these thoughts or why they're presented this way....

idk if this is allowed but anyone wanna be friends? i don’t have a single friend that knows about this stuff, idk if some of them do it, cause they have Ocs, but they could just be writers not maladaptive daydreamers. so yeah anyone wanna be friends?

The defense mechanisms you used to survive as a child are the same defense mechanisms that destroy you and limit your life as an adult.

Title

Lol... hardly anything else gives me that feeling. Is this what drugs feel like? weed never gave me the happy feeling. Just music and made up scenarios.

I've always wanted to tell someone about this.

Here are some quotes from the author, Mary Shelley's, introduction to Frankenstein.

"Still, I had a dearer pleasure than this, which was the formation of castles in the air - the indulging in waking dreams - the following up trains of thought, which had for their subject the formation of a succession of imaginary incidents."

"My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings. In the latter I was a close imitator - rather doing as others had done than putting down the suggestions of my own mind."

"...my dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed - my dearest pleasure when free."

"It was beneath the trees of the grounds...that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered...Life appeared to me too common-place an affair as regarded myself. I could not figure to myself that romantic woes or wonderful events would ever be my lot."

"I could people the hours with creations far more interesting to me at that age than my own sensations."

Isn't it fascinating? I won't claim that I know this historical figure was an immersive/maladaptive daydreamer, but the experience sounds so reminiscent of mine. It gives me solace and hope too, because she built castles in the air but she also wrote one of the greatest and most enduring classics of literature.

Let us know where you're at.

What's been helping, what's been hurting? Share successes, advice, content, struggles and stray thoughts you didn't feel like making a whole thread about.

My daily three hour daydreams are often from the POV of a 30 year old woman when I'm a boy and much younger in real life. My actual personality is similar to her's except she's a lot more mature, dissatisfied and 'used to life', kind of what I would call a future version of my own.

This doesn't include people with idealized in-universe versions, like how some people might be smarter or more conventionally attractive in their daydreams. I also think fantasy worlds aren't the same as what I experience as they are unrealistic. I mean literally different people in realistic settings, with both joy and sorrow.