Maladaptive daydreaming

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I spend a great deal of my life daydreaming. I do it while I'm working, as well as while engaged in recreational activities. I often find myself falling into the daydreaming state when I'm trying to do something else, including reading, watching TV, even when I'm talking to someone.

What do I daydream about? Various sorts of things. Very often the daydreams take the form of me imagining myself telling something to someone else. It's essentially a form of conversation practice, if "conversation" is defined as me monologuing. This very post, for example, was formed partly through one of these monologuing daydreams. I've used it to practice things I want to write, things I plan to say to people, and sometimes even rewriting earlier conversations in my head. It's not all bad--it's partly a practical technique I use to put my thoughts together for future reference. But I do it way more than is remotely practical--literally hundreds of times during the day, over and over again, often about the same topics.

I get so absorbed in these daydreams that people tell me I look as if I'm silently talking to myself--something I am definitely not conscious of when I do it, and which I work hard to avoid in the presence of people.

I have not gotten a satisfactory answer as to why I do this from therapists or mental health professionals I've spoken with, or from things I've read. But I recently participated in a study on something called "maladaptive daydreaming," and it does fit certain elements of what I'm describing. Here's a description of some of its features on the site NOCD:

* A strong urge to engage in daydreams
* Trouble concentrating on things in the real world
* Loss of time spent daydreaming
* Dissociation from reality
* Trouble focusing or getting work done
* Acting out behaviors in daydream, repetitive movements, whispering or talking to oneself
* Becoming irritated if a daydream is interrupted
* Urges to “finish the story” in the daydream
* Using MD as an escape from anxiety, distress, or trauma

The problem is that maladaptive daydreaming is currently not recognized by the mental health field as a distinct disorder, or even a disorder subtype. Most of the material I've come across describe it as essentially an experimental construct (it was first described in 2002), something that might one day be the basis for a diagnosis but which still is in need of a lot more research. The symptoms tend to be incorporated into more commonly recognized disorders, such as ADHD and OCD (which is what my therapist believes is going on with me). I also suffer from persistent intrusive thoughts, and sometimes these turn into nightmare fantasies coursing through my mind--scenarios of terrible things happening to myself or others. My normal daydreaming is done more as a form of relaxation or escape from the stresses of daily life--so there is a compulsive element to it. But what's striking to me is how involuntary it feels; I have a lot of difficulty preventing myself from falling into this daydreaming state during the day, even when I try hard to stay focused on the present.

When I'm doing things I'm also imagining how I'd write the scene as a narrative. I try to think of descriptive verbs and adjectives for what's happening, and I try to articulate my thoughts into words as if I'm presenting them to an audience. I don't actually write these passages but there's always an internal monologue as if I'm an author, and everything around me is part of the story.

There's a thread here somewhere on MD. I'll take a poke around. I know it's very normal though, especially for people on the spectrum. My daughter does it all the time.

I can distinguish between full blown disruptive MD from just this repetitive mental loop and tunneled focus towards specific things of related to autism does from time to time.


I had both at some point; the former is just this coping mechanism from unprocessed emotions, which I solved overnight.

The former had affected my executive function really hard. It's not that I even want those stories in my head -- it doesn't matter whether I like it or not, it's just my head that wanted it; so it just kept coming.
Like a true addiction, it draws me away from the present and dissociate with it.

The latter is a habit and a tendency.
But it's more manageable than the former in my case; I can dismiss it easily if it even comes.
It doesn't draw me out of the present nor cause me to dissociate; it can be persistent, but it doesn't drag me in like any addictions do.


Both can be triggered by certain associations.
Both can end up getting me engage with it for hours on end...

However...
Full blown MD for me is like the means of my brain subconsciously dissociate by avoiding this constant irritation in the background which is my unwanted and unprocessed emotions.
It's just... Endless consumption and endless reaffirming of what I already knew and it's not very useful in my case. It's not even like anxiety full of what ifs.
Even if I'm overwhelmed and tired, it gets worse and it just refuses to stop until I'm drained out.

The typical daydreaming I get from autism is drawn from wanting, fancying, curiosity or just control and predictability.
I can pursue it until the end or that I'd suddenly get bored with it. Usually I repeatedly do when I find something really funny... And laugh out loud because of it.
Most at the time, it's drawn from emotions, boredom most of all -- but less like coping mechanism and more like whatever stood out I wanna try and do it or just engage with it to kill time.

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I do that all the time and I'm not positive as to whether it's related to ASD. I think it's not. Often I'll stop paying any attention to what's right in front of me and simply imagine some scene inside my head, or replay a situation and picture a different aftermath, or make up stuff that could be either hilarious or depressing, and it's all just inside my mind. Things that never happened, never will happen, and are mostly useless.

I don't usually do it when I'm going about my day, more at idle moments or when I'm in bed trying and failing to sleep, but I have ongoing stories with characters that I create in my head, a bit like a long-running TV series. When I tried to search whether other people do this, I only found sources about maladaptive daydreaming, which is not what I do, since it doesn't interfere with my life.