Maladaptive Daydreaming

There's a strong urge to daydream and annoyance when it's is interrupted.

In our misguided and manipulated creation of humanity, we have been misinformed that happiness is a derivative of success. To be happy, we first must find success. Success however, can only be measured through your own individual perceptiveness.

If you love what you are doing, no matter what it may be, you will be successful. You must merge and soften the division lines between work, joy and play, only then will happiness be around you.

As we are conditioned to mourn the moment and stay absorbed with what we are told,  I listen carefully and am struck with a curious confusion. When did what is achieved become more important than what we have enjoyed?

Finding your calling is much more than a job or profession. Finding your calling is the true way of living your life with what you are meant to be and to do. It’s about enjoying what you do, being filled with a passion to the point where you forget all negative things that are around you. Finding your calling defines being part of the greatest purpose. This calling will continue until it’s heard. You just have to listen when you are called.

With the feeling of the blue each morning, I wander off into thought while lacking the ability to clearly and effectively express each thought. I feel the longing want and appetite for something with an immeasurable satisfaction of enjoyment. There seems to be no escaping this poetic melancholy somber of silence.

Perhaps this blue is the refractive echo of all that is within me. Being a person that has found comfort in nonconforming and living as a vagabond artist, everything is within, the mud of the rainbow, the pain after the laughter and the distant feeling of youth with an apprehension of death.

Now, today as I step out of the blue saying yes to all and being alive with living, why is there suspicion and acceptance that it will again return tomorrow?

I am the first to confess that I am a dreamer, many of us are, but I have chosen to follow these dreams that are not the ones found deep within the hours of sleep. I chase the dreams that overflow within the hours of being awake.

The experts that must label what is, to better understand so they can analyze and describe call this, maladaptive daydreaming. They don’t concede this a condition, but admit that this behavior can overlap with other conditions. Maladaptive daydreaming is more than just a habit; it is a strong compulsion like that of an addiction.

Maladaptive daydreaming is an issue that causes a person to lose themselves in complex daydreams. These daydreams can be a coping mechanism, but I see them as an adventure into the new, the unknown and what’s wanted to be known.

Maladaptive daydreamers' fantasy worlds are vivid and rewarding and the need to continue can be addictive.  With maladaptive daydreaming, there's a strong urge to daydream and annoyance when it's not possible or is interrupted.

The term, maladaptive daydreaming, is relatively new. Eli Somer, PhD, a clinical psychology professor in Israel, coined the term in 2002. There’s limited research available on how common maladaptive daydreaming is. That’s partly because this isn’t an officially recognized condition yet.

A short and vague study estimated that maladaptive daydreaming affects about 20% of adults with Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, (ADHD.) That would mean it affects at least 2.2 million adults in the United States and that number doesn’t account for people who have it but don’t have ADHD.

Age can also be a factor in maladaptive daydreaming. Research suggests it’s more common in younger people, especially young adults and teenagers, and that it can also happen to children. However, more research is necessary to determine how common it is in people, depending on their age.

Maladaptive daydreaming is an issue that affects your mind. Your mind is the unique combination of memories, experiences, thoughts, beliefs, emotions and more that only you have. Your mind and brain are not the same thing. Your brain is the physical part of your body that generates all the above elements that make up your mind.

Experts also suspect that maladaptive daydreaming might involve differences in your brain that other people don’t have and it also may involve the size of certain parts of your brain. Those areas are usually ones that control executive functions like decision-making, planning and self-motivation. They also experience problems with managing their own emotions.

The kind of daydreams that happen with maladaptive daydreaming often involve daydreams that are extremely vivid and detailed, much more so than a standard daydream. These daydreams often have elaborate plots, and many people have characters they imagine repeatedly, much like characters in a television program. People who daydream this way can do so for long periods of time.

People with maladaptive daydreaming often can start daydreaming intentionally and can daydream so strongly that they disconnect from the world around them. This is similar to dissociation, a defense or coping mechanism for people with severe anxiety, depression, or are victims of what is happening in our world today.

People who experience maladaptive daydreaming frequently struggle with being around negative feelings and the effects from being in this situation. People who can master maladaptive daydreaming often choose to daydream rather than spend time with these people.

As for myself, this is what’s needed for today as a coping situation for the confusion that is constantly boiling over the cast iron rim. Each of us needs an extensive fantasy activity that is yours and yours alone. Something that replaces and interferes with the interpersonal and vocational training we are receiving daily to unknowingly comply with what is being forced upon us to digest without flavor or thought. 

As you look without knowing and see what you don’t understand or perhaps feel uneasy with what it is that you see, this is all right. I will not judge or compare and I don’t really mind what you see as something existing to an extreme degree of being. What I do with all that I do is pour my completeness into what’s being done. I live with all of my being, as I cannot just merely exist. - dbA

You can find more of the unfiltered insight and the Art of Dan Abernathy at www.contributechaos.com.