Does Your Maladaptive Daydreaming Distract You?

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I am 18 with Aspergers and I believe I have Maladaptive daydreaming since it discribes me well. Often I have this and it distracts me from my tasks. I can do the work but my own thoughts are going through my head. Its worse when I am working with people because I am always yelled "Focus" when I am working with someone. Especially when I am reciving instructions from people half of the time I am daydreaming of something so I don't understand the work most of the time. Who here has this problem?

I'm going to answer this question and how it relates to my life. My life is turbulent, kind-of like waterfalls. You know how the water at the bottom is warmer because of the kinetic to thermal energy transfer like one famous physicist demonstrated—well what about the thermal energy lost to the water that gets churned to vapor? How do you calculate that mass? It re-condenses on surrounding rocks so fast that it must not have too much latent energy like steam, which reminds me: I left the kettle to boil an hour ago for tea. What kind of tea do you like? I like Earl Grey. I wonder if there ever was an Earl named Grey? Was he some kind of caffeine junkie or a hyperactive schizophrenic? How eccentric a character do you have to be to get a tea named after you anyway? If Chuck Norris is so great, why doesn't he have a tea named after him? Chuck Norris rides a motorcycle in one of those movies where . . . . . . .

Hm - is that "maladaptive"? I'd say it is just 'me'. I don't think it is a 'faulty adaptation' by definition of maladaptive. I daydream less when I need to focus than when I am alone, so maybe I have made some adaptations in that regard. I work, however successfully or unsuccessfully, at 'functioning' in the 'real world'. I don't see my daydreaming itself as maladaptive, just that because it is so much an intrinsic part of me I miss things at times. In many contexts I don't care about what I may have missed, but where I need to then I adapt to the fact I am off in my own thoughts and not that that propensity in itself is maladaptive. Does that make sense? I think (daydream), therefore I am - as surely as I breathe. I don't think that anything so innate to my being is an adaptation to anything, rather that I find some ways to adapt to what is required of me, as best I can, given that this is part of me. I hope that came out the way I intended. I say: embrace the daydreamer and work with her/him in that capacity. Knowing this about myself, I find strategies to adapt to it, and it is not itself maladaptive.

One of my favorite quotes by Poe: Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only by night.

That Poe quote is one I particularly enjoy!

While I probably fit the definition, I'm a little offended by the name. I don't consider it to be maladaptive. I enjoy my daydreaming and prefer being in my own head than focused on the outside world, and if other people don't like that, they should go away and interact with somebody else.

That said, every single one of my school reports as a child said "daydreams too much, doesn't pay attention" and I constantly drop things, bump into things, forget things and burn my food in the oven because I'm away with the fairies somewhere, to use a figure of speech. So yes, daydreaming too much certainly causes me some difficulties sometimes.

My maladaptive daydreaming distracts me a lot; it has ever since I've been in school. I'd get bored really easily during elementary school (especially when I was transferred to a school for kids with learning difficulties) and even now, I find myself afflicted with it during a couple of my college classes....for some reason, it's mostly during my Spanish and Abnormal Psychology classes. In my Spanish class, we have to break up into groups/partners a lot, and I guess my maladaptive daydreaming kicks in then as some kind of defense mechanism (having to work with people makes me nervous), and my Abnormal Psych class is mostly a lecture class, so I find myself daydreaming there, too.

I don't really do MDD (OK if I use an acronym for maladaptive daydreaming from here on in?) in my other classes, an Animation class and a Creative Writing class. I think its because Animation has always been one of my special interests, and in my Creative Writing class, we do a lot of commenting and critiquing on each other's work in a friendly way, so there's no reason for me to be bored or nervous in either class.

My MDD sounds like ADD. Let's leave it at that.

...what? You mean that's not how everyone's thoughts work. Maybe that's why I am looking deeper into AS when I should be debugging software! Also why it takes me hours to get to sleep - torrent of these kind of thoughts which just intensifies when I close my eyes.

I definitely have that problem sometimes. Sometime I'll waste an entire day thinking of one thing, and not go to bed until 3 A.M.

^this. Only sometimes I have to unrelated thoughts interspersed with each other but no interfering. Like 2 tabs on a browser.

BTW it wasn't a movie I think it was a tv show. You know Law and Order. Isnt that what Chuck Norris named his right and left legs?