- Hi, I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist and I make mental health education videos. Today I'm talking about
maladaptive daydreaming in response to several
requests to talk about it. Maladaptive daydreaming is
a psychological construct that explains a behavior, but it's not an official
diagnosis or disorder. There's not a lot known about it, but it is being researched more so that we can better
understand the prevalence, the characteristics of
it and how to treat it. Everyone daydreams to some extent and this is when you think about something that's unrelated to
what you're involved in and this is different
from nocturnal dreams when you're asleep and you don't have conscious
control over your thoughts. Daydreaming is a product
of the default mode network which I've spoken about before and this is a network of brain regions that are engaged in mental activities that run in the background. This network is suppressed when you're purposely
thinking about something, but when you let your
mind wander from a task or an intentional thought, the default mode network takes over. The usual mind-wandering is
unintentional and spontaneous. You can slip into it when you're inactive. But you can also engage
in purposeful thinking about something like
imagining your next vacation or picturing yourself
getting a job promotion, but normally this level of fantasizing doesn't interfere with
your normal activities or cause you distress. Maladaptive daydreaming is a state of deliberate mind-wandering on steroids. The fantasies are intentionally generated and are usually complex narratives with multiple characters
and multiple storylines. You can become absorbed in them for hours. Unlike a dissociative state
where you may not be able to distinguish reality from fantasy, with maladaptive daydreaming
you are fully aware that you're absorbed in your inner world. Your thoughts keep you occupied, but you don't get so lost in them that you lose touch with reality. To maintain focus on the fantasies, people will use gestures
like rocking or humming to keep themselves on
track with the thoughts. You may even find yourself
mouthing the words of the story or whispering to yourself. There's a compulsive nature to it which has made some consider
it on the addictive spectrum. It's like you have to
escape into your world and play out your fantasies. Some people can go stretches
of time without the dreaming, but then be triggered
by a song or a situation that prompts them to
escape into the dreaming. This kind of daydreaming interferes with your social and your work functioning because of the time
that you spend doing it and the need to be isolated. It can also cause a lot of distress when you feel like you don't have control over the urge to dream or the amount of time
that you spend doing it. A 2013 movie called, "The
Secret Life of Walter Mitty," depicted a man who escapes
into these fantasies. In the movie, he's often
caught daydreaming by others. He could be talking with someone and then start daydreaming
and become unresponsive. Then you see the person
snapping their fingers to get his attention. This is an entertaining
way to see it on screen, but it's not usually how it looks. For one thing, slipping into fantasy and having to be shaken back to attention suggests that it's something
completely involuntary, but it's not. That depiction is more characteristic of spontaneous mind-wandering. Typically with maladaptive daydreaming, if something triggers
you to want to dream, you go off and isolate yourself
to dream uninterrupted. We don't know enough about this to have a good sense of
what makes it happen. Some studies have shown an association with depression, anxiety, ADHD
and dissociative disorders. It's proposed that some
people with these disorders may use this as a coping mechanism. Some have suggested that
people with a history of trauma use maladaptive daydreaming as an escape. We don't have a set treatment protocol. One thing that may help is
recognizing your triggers and minimizing or eliminating them. Given the compulsive nature of it, exposure therapy may prove helpful. This is a behavior therapy that involves exposing you to a trigger
for your daydreaming and then helping you respond
to the trigger differently without dreaming. If you have another disorder
like depression or anxiety, it may be that improving the symptoms associated with one of those disorders has the trickle-down effect
of reducing your dreaming. One of the studies in the description found that people with
dissociative identity disorder were found to have high levels
of maladaptive daydreaming. With DID, your core
personality gets split off into these separate
entities called alters. Even though these alters
represent different aspects of your own personality, you experience them as
real separate people. By contrast, with maladaptive daydreaming, you can experience some of the emotions of multiple characters in your dream, but you realize that the
characters are a conscious fantasy. You don't confuse them for real people. I talk about dissociative
identity disorder in this video right here. Go watch it. See you next time.
