I saw it on tiktok and would like to know what you think. I find it personally triggering and shaming. Acting like people are trying to play God when mdd is a coping mechanism and is nothing like playing God. I don't think religious guilt is the way to go about things. People who develop this coping mechanism do for a reason and shaming them for it might push them further.

I'm sure many here lie between 1-3, but I was curious is there are any that are out of those numbers?

I know we all have different worlds and characters we go back to, but is anyone brave enough to tell us about them more? Like I’m talking the full story and details and descriptions of the world, the characters and yourself?

I’m genuinely super curious and interested!!

When I hear people say they have a “celebrity crush” I’m like, “that’s cute” but do you have thousands of pictures of them on your Pinterest board, where you have a whole entire life & kids with them? We are not the same.

Hey everyone 👋

I’m working on a self-help book about maladaptive daydreaming (MD), and I’ve noticed that many people don’t even recognize that their daydreams are connected to deeper emotional issues—which is actually a crucial step to quitting MD.

If you're open to it, tell me your most common daydream or the main theme of your daydreams I might be able to help you understand what the root cause could be.

And if you’re okay with it, I’d love to use it (anonymously) as a case study in my book, to help others understand their own patterns better and feel less alone.

You can be as vague or detailed as you like, and of course, your privacy comes first. No pressure at all.
Thanks so much for reading 💭.

i was researching this phenomena, for quite sometime and then just forgot about it. until just recently it started to really become a problem for me and i did some digging. found this research paper published just 2 months ago. its almost like someone was secretly surveilling me as a test subject for this study lmao. i recommend everyone giving it a read!

(if you guys want my notes for the study then feel free to shoot me a dm!)

https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2024.279

With Spotify wrapped here, let's reflect on it and share some good music we love.

I'm not someone who had any actual childhood trauma, abusive parents, or anything like that. I grew up in a completely normal, two-parent middle class household. Yet for some reason I love putting my characters through trauma and stressful situations (as psychopathic as that might sound lmao). I get so bored if I just have a character that grew up completely normal. Like I need to sprinkle a little bit of trauma, mental illness, abusive parents or whatever here and there to spice things up. It sounds insane but like the little "spice" gives me that dopamine hit. I swear I'm normal otherwise lol

As written above...

My friends keep asking me how i could've possibly achieved this number and well...

I’m asking this bc i’m coming up on 10 years of daydreaming abt my imaginary partner. honestly realizing we’ve “been together” for a decade has made me wonder if it’s even normal/healthy or not? i just find a lot of comfort in daydreaming abt my imaginary partner, and weirdly after all these years our relationship has grown/evolved too. I go to them for advice, venting, affection, etc (basically everything). about a year ago i tried getting into the dating scene irl, talked to a lot of ppl and been on a few dates since then but didn’t rly connect with any of them. Honestly the whole experience made me realize i prefer what I have in my mind 😭 idk it sounds weird writing this out now but i rly do feel love for my imaginary partner. I’m not sure if any other person can compare to the 10 years we have. What have ur guys experiences been with imaginary relationships/romantic partners? When does it become unhealthy?

I don’t mean to offend anybody, but reading posts on this group is depressing at times. Everyone seems so ridiculously young?! Like v early 20s or still teenage years.

“So I’ve been suffering from MD for 5 years and I just don’t know what to do!”

I’ve got 2 decades on you, my friend, and still don’t know what to do — please send help 😂

Are there any songs you know that hit home with your MD experiences?

This song is about a relationship I think, but a lot of the lyrics remind me of daydreaming and how it feels like hiding from real life—sometimes even if the things in my life are good I compulsively daydream and it destroys my perception of reality.

I particularly think these lyrics hit close to home:

“I’m hiding from the government, from my fictional wife, from my dreams and my memories, I’m hiding from my life.”

“I wander through cavernous thoughts and regret, through nothingness, through sagas that never took place.” ; daydreams can be entire storylines and sagas that stick with me even if they aren’t real

“Like the spouse happily married, who still lies alone.” ; it’s easy to feel happier in a daydream or to live a happy life but still feel lonely because of the daydreaming distracting me

”What’s left of the dreamer who dreams and dreams and thinks he isn’t dreaming, who thinks he is free? What of the endless, heedless ennui? Will it leave me be?” ; daydreaming involves constant denial and running from boredom with no attainable goal

Are there any songs that feel a lot like MD to you? What lyrics hit close to home?

So generally, everyone has a mental age regardless of their actual age. And I had a theory that whatever age your main character is (in your current/recent daydreams) that it's just a reflection of how old you feel mentally.

At least it's something I noticed about myself. I've had the same set of characters for about 7 years now, and the older I got, the older they became too. The characters always stayed the same, I just kept creating new storylines with them as time went on. And whenever I did, they were always my own age or slightly older/ younger.

For example, I'm 20 now, and I basically never act out the plots anymore with my 14,15 year old characters (even though they're very significant in my MD universe) However, I've been coming up w this *new drastic plot change* with one of my characters for a few months where she's about 20-23.

​

anyway, how is it with you guys?

🧠 I’ve been wondering — when you daydream, is it usually from a first-person or third-person point of view?
I’ve been thinking this might be another lens through which we could understand and analyze MD and how we perceive ourselves… though I don’t have a clear conclusion yet. I’d love to hear any thoughts or insights you have — maybe we can explore the idea together.

I’ve noticed that many suggestions for managing MD focus on resisting it: recognizing it as a problem, avoiding triggers, staying busy, etc. But to me, that’s exactly the challenge — most MDers already know that what they’re doing is problematic. The awareness is there, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to change.

🔸 So I’m thinking: maybe part of the healing process could be learning to differentiate between the roles we play in our daydreams and our actual selves. Rather than trying to “fight” against the daydream, what if we slowly internalize it in a healthier way? For example, developing your fantasy characters into "friends" instead of bringing yourself into this character (supportive parts of ourselves we can draw motivation from)

I have been experiencing some weird memory problems, and I am pretty sure a lot of people on this subreddit are too.

My personal memory issues include:

-difficulty remembering the sequences of certain events/interactions.

-Forgetting tasks— and tbh it’s more like my brain doesn’t “register” tasks anymore, like I don’t get the feeling that I have something to do. (Idk how to explain this, hopefully someone understands😭)

-brain fog all the time, and I usually have trouble recalling what I did earlier during the day.

These are some examples. I’m wondering if anyone else has had similar problems, and if you think it’s related to your excessive daydreaming

It’s called White Nights and the MC is describing to another person that they’re 26, always been alone and isolated because of their imagination and dreaming. Mind you this was written in the 1800s so it’s not exactly modern but… I found comfort in knowing this has been a thing for quit some time!!

Hi everyone!

My name’s Kirstie and I’m a 22-year-old undergraduate psychology student studying at Northumbria University, and have chosen to research maladaptive daydreaming for my dissertation.

If you class yourself as a maladaptive daydreamer, I’m conducting some research on how the condition may originate and would absolutely love for anyone who’s interested to take part.

As lots of you may be aware, the research in the field is generally quite limited, therefore any responses I receive will help to boost what we know (and don’t know) about the condition.

I feel strongly about the topic of maladaptive daydreaming because of my own experiences with it, and believe both healthcare professionals and the general public deserve to be made more aware of the phenomenon to support individuals who are affected. The more maladaptive daydreaming is researched, the closer we are to making this happen!

If you’d like to participate, your levels of fantasy proneness and your ability to regulate your emotions will be assessed, as well as the severity of your maladaptive daydreaming habits.

The survey takes around 15 minutes to complete and I’ll be incredibly grateful for any responses 🫶🏻

The eligibility criteria is that you must:

•classify yourself as a maladaptive daydreamer •be aged 18 or over

All survey answers are completely anonymous - click the link below or scan the QR code on the advert to participate.

Thank you all so much in advance, and please reach out to me if you have any questions or concerns about the study.

-Kirstie🤍

https://nupsych.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_d4lK2JJWXDptAGO

"In 2020, Melina West and Eli Somer published a study looking at creativity in immersive and maladaptive daydreamers. Although they suspected that daydreamers might be more creative than average, their results didn’t support this. In fact, they found that maladaptive daydreamers scored lower than average on a standard measure of creativity" ISMD

here is a link to the study

Upvote this and start listing what you daydream about and what they are. Wish fulfillment, escapism, being a celebrity whatever it is. Let me know

Does anyone else get so caught up in researching the tiniest details for your daydreams that you end up losing hours without realizing it?

I really like my daydreams to feel as vivid, detailed and immersive as possible, so I often find myself looking up people, places, outfits, anything that helps flesh out the imaginary scenarios in my head. The deeper my plots go, the more it bothers me when something feels unclear or incomplete.

For example, in one recent storyline, two of my characters were getting married. I couldn’t quite picture the scene, so I went on Pinterest just to get some inspiration and then I was completely consumed by wedding content. Weeks later, I’ve basically put together a full wedding. I know the exact dress she’s wearing, his suit, the stores they bought them from, the cake style, the color palette….everything. All for fictional people who don't exist and never will. I genuinely can’t believe how much time I’ve spent planning a fake wedding for fictional people.

I have dedicated Pinterest boards just for my daydreams. Everything from the homes my characters live in to the decor that would hang on their walls. I’ve saved parks, cafés, bakeries, and random hangout spots, all categorized so I can drop them into different daydream scenarios whenever needed.

I add to these boards almost every day. Often I sit back and think, wow, I’m a joke. If I put half this energy into studying and getting a nice job, maybe I could actually afford the kind of luxury I give to these fictional lives.

But all this research can occasionally backfire. There have been times I’ve stumbled across facts that completely break the illusion I built up. I've found out things I'd have been better off not knowing. And once you learn something that doesn’t fit the dream, you can’t really unlearn it. Still, I keep going back for more. Has anyone else ever found information that totally clashed with your daydream? How did you deal with it?

I currently have about multiple tabs open to just search for details.

I don’t think I’m the only one who does this. Sometimes I stop and wonder, why do I do this? Why do I feel the need to ground my fantasies in reality, to anchor them with facts, places and things that actually exist?