I want to stop daydreaming...

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I daydream quite alot, but I want to be more alert and living in the moment, is it silly to think that if I daydream alot less and become more aware of real things around me that it would turn into motivation and being more on-the-go?

I think it's holding me back and it's probably the reason why my focus is so low and I'm not doing realistic things e.g looking for a job or doing some actitives.

I think I rely on my daydreaming to escape real life to be somewhere where I am respected and getting positive attention.

I'm hoping that by supressing daydreaming it'll make me be abit more of a practical thinker and I could gain my confidence in the real world and use my energy for daydreaming into realistic goals.

Any ideas? Anybody in the same rut?

Yeah I kinda have that problem too, my daydreaming started cause I was a loner and I wanted things that I couldnt get. I still daydream a lot but it helps to keep busy and try to have some social life for me at least. Cant really say much that'll help.

Thanks, it's good to know that someone else is on my level too.

Yeah, thats a tough one. Might want to google up some remedies, I dont have any.

Ive always had elaborate daydreams and thats been going on for decades. Some years are more active than others but keeping busy is the only remedy I now. I tend to daydream more when I have free time, no tasks to complete, no active obsessive topic of interest. It's sort of a filler that keeps my mind running.

If you find the silver bullet, send me an email. heh. Though Ive always thought my vivid daydreams would make a good lab for developing stories, I simply have no interest in that. But if you are inclined to write it might be an attribute to cultivate. See if you can't generate an obsessive interest in creative writing technique for a bit. You could probably learn quite a bit about it in a short time.

You might also look into making lists for yourself. Short ones rather than longs ones. Tell yourself you wont indulge in fantasy until that list is crossed off. I use lists to keep me organized for everything.

I used to daydream constantly until my therapist put me on prozac for my social anxiety. Both the need to daydream and the need to rock went away as soon as the prozac started working.

As a kid I daydreamed a lot. Now, I force myself to pay attention to what is happening in front of me. Like force myself to watch a movie without slipping back into a daydream. The same goes for when someone talks to me. Yes, I lose concentration while having a one on one chat with somebody.
Thing is when I force concentration like that I do stim a lot.

Oh well, I hope I helped a little.

Yeah, it does help alot, what are the side effects of Prozac then if I were to prescribe them?

Do you NEED to daydream? With ME, daydreams tend to happen only if I get involved with something that uses my imagination, and I am not involved with something where I have to be like in this world. If I get really into some audio, or a book, it is like the same thing happens.

If I am driving, for example, and going over what has happened, or may happen, I will still drive fine.

-x-x-ANONYMOUS-x-x-,

Don't think that a lack of daydreaming is going to improve your life that much. I doubt it.

The only side effects I had were positive. I felt much more energetic as my depression waned, and I quit needing to rock and daydream, and my social anxiety pretty much disappeared.

I looked up a site for the potential side effects and they could be bad; I'm glad I didn't have any of them.

https://ssl.search.live.com/health/arti ... de+Effects

I know the feeling. The problem is that the moment is a bunch of crap.

You don't say how old you are. The stuff they make kids do is nonsense, so of course you want to escape. Either it's pointless busy work at school, taught with the most irrational, convoluted methods possible, or it's some stupid, burger-flipping job that does nothing for your ego.

Volunteer. Find your passion. Get involved in something real, so you don't need to escape so much. Find a soup kitchen. Help the old woman down the street who can't drive any more and needs to go shopping...

Take notes. Seriously. I discovered how well it works at meetings when it's considered "normal." Now I just do it to stay focused whenever I can get away with it. Especially when I'm on the phone, I always have a pen. I almost never look at the notes later -- that's not really what they're for. It's just that the act of writing the current topic helps me to remember where we are.

I also need to "spit it out": Sometimes I want to say something that is sort-of related but wouldn't make sense to anyone else, and I can't get it out of my head until I do something about it. Writing a quick half-sentence makes it go away and then I can focus again on the real topic.

My drifting is sometimes so bad that, when I call someone, I need to hold the card or whatever has the phone number so I can remember who I'm calling while it's still ringing.

I used to daydream all the time - remember doing it from a really young age. Most particularly before going to sleep at night. They would allow me to get into a really pleasant state of relaxation, but sometimes could be quite emotionally intense. They have always been quite strange - often focussed upon people that I admire, but often with a strong (non-sexual) sado-masochistic streak running through them (even when I was only 7-8, I remember 'dreaming' about torturing my teachers and then rescuing them - really strange when I look at photos of myself as a cute, happy little girl). As I got older they became more masochistic, and in particular when I was very depressed I would often fantasise about self-destruction. They always had a happy ending though, although I would generally get bored of them before reaching that part. I would often go over and over the same one several times if I thought it was particularly good.

They stopped during the first time I was treated for depression, but came back. They also disappeared the second time I was treated, and still havent come back, even though its almost a year now since coming off medication. I have a feeling it was the antipsychotics that stopped them and not the antidepressants (as for a short while on antidepressants alone I was daydreaming), but I do miss them to a certain extent.

I do still (and have ever since my first depression) daydream long conversations with people - its much less of a fantasy, maybe just a form of therapy. I imagine myself talking about myself - events in my life, my mental states and general abnormality, to someone who I know and who I like to imagine would be interested (although in truth I'm not sure anyone would really find it interesting). I never normally tell anyone these things in reality, so maybe it takes the place of having close friends to confide in, or helps me to accept the problems I have had a bit better.

Yes, I have exactly that, I agree that it feels theraputic, I'm gnna try and keep busy but my daydreaming is intrusive, I do it without noticing so I'll have to try hard.

I'm 16 by the way, 17 on Tuesday (21st April)

there's nothing wrong with daydreaming. when i was in school my teachers used to call me space cadet for some reason i guess because i was out of this world? reguardless get your day dream on, now if you start seeing knomes and fairys and you arent smoking some bomb stuff i'd be a little concernd

I go through the same thing. I'm worse when I read stories or watch movies because then I day dream about how I would handle the situation better. I don't mind day dreaming so much because I have a control with it. What I can't seem to control is ranting in my head. When stuff happens at work (when I worked) or when I get into an argument with my sister, I start to think about the argument and start debating in my head and I have lost hours over it. It was worse right after I got out the military because I had some problems with my shirt, my NCO, and these guys were still polluting the military after I got out. Like I would talk to a friend who was still in on the phone, and they would mention my NCO and something he said that was pretty messed up. So then we get off the phone, and I'm thinking, I'll just have one more cigarette before I start on this type thing, and then I'd light up the cigarette and start thinking about how it was messed up, what I would have said if I were there, it was messed up all the things they did to me, listing things they did to me creating new ones everytime that I never noticed before like stuff i accepted but was still pretty messed up, listing how it influenced my life, what I should have done, what I could still do about it, and then I think like I should write a letter to someone and then start thinking about the letter in my head and end up preaching in my head about the military and even get so side tracked that I would start solving all the problems in the military in my head, and before I know it, 4 hours have passed. Usually I only lose an hour or so of my life in this rant, but there were times when it was like four hours. Now I don't do it often because I have children to shake me out of it, but if they are sleeping, sometimes I go to bed really late and lose a lot of sleep thinking about something that ticked me off that day. My husband says I dwell, but i think it's a little more psychotic than that on my part.

Anyway, with day dreaming, I have good days and bad. It's almost like manic daydreaming. Either way, the best way is to stop daydreaming and think about a to-do list and force yourself out of your chair into work. With me at least, I have to force myself like an internal parent telling me to clean my room. I guess it's kinda like a similar decision to whether or not I'm going to have another ice cream or something. Now I'm a stay at home mom, and I do have a hard time getting on track to do things that are not computer related or doesn't deal directly with my children like clean the house, paint a picture, read a book, anything. If the diaper needs changed, that's a different story, but if it can wait, I tend to make it wait. Either way, daydreaming is my default when I just don't feel like doing anything, so sometimes it helps me to get motivated by leaving the house for a second and either run errunds or just pick up some fast food or something and then come back to it. It also helps to get on the phone and call a friend and talk for a while. Basically, just anything to remind you of the world outside of your head.

Daydreaming is a GOOD thing. It is a release of stress and gives your brain a chance to relax and ponder things. Despite what the school system likes to say, daydreaming is healthy, postitive and often pleasurable.