Your fantasy is a trap. The truth about maladaptive daydreaming

so what is maladaptive daydreaming it's a undiagnosable condition where someone gets overly attached to fantasizing or daydreaming when I say undiagnosable I mean it hasn't been characterized in places like the DSM so it's not a standalone condition that people will say that you have even if you see a professional but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that it is a thing it happens with people who have existing mental health disorders or other mental health disorders but it is likely to also have a standalone trait of its own it exists on its own as well so today we're going to be talking about what it is and why it might be damaging to someone to be engaging in maladaptive daying hi I'm Marios I'm a counseling psychology doctor living in London and on this channel we talk about psychology mental health and anything else that I think you'll find interesting or useful remember that anything you see on social media is not a replacement for therapy okay so maladaptive daydreaming first defining daydreaming so daydreaming you'll probably know is the indulging in fantasizing about things that are not real they could be based on reality but they are not reality so you're not thinking about something that in front of you particularly you might be triggered by something that is in front of you so it acts as the basis of your daydreaming but the daydreaming is about something that is not real so a lot of this is starting when you're young you might be looking outside the window when you're in class because you're bored or want to be distracted from that class and you look out the window and suddenly you know half the class is gone or maybe the whole is gone maybe the teacher noticed maybe you pulled yourself out of it and you were like whoa where did I go that's daydreaming I'd say it's slightly different to imagination in that imagination is a bit more deliberate like you have to make some effort to imagine something or to visualize it is another word people use a lot today whereas daydreaming is a little bit less deliberate it just kind of happens so you might be carried away by Daydream and that's where the whole time sucking element comes in you don't really know that you've gone into it you don't know that you're doing it and then you don't know how much time you have been doing it so what's so bad about it well actually nothing if it's not maladaptive now this has been studied by Professor Eli Som uh who is a professor from hia University he has studied how it appears in patients who have psychosis but also maladaptive daydreaming and has found that it is something that kind of flies under the radar as something that could be part of psychosis but it's not in that it can appear in people who for example have OCD I would say actually does happen the majority of the time with people with limerance so if you do have limerance I would argue you are categorically engaging in maladaptive daydreaming as part of that but we'll talk about that in a different video we're just talking about maladaptive daydreaming now so maladaptive daydreaming is going to be a situation where you become so comforted by the idea of going to that fantasy land you may consciously do it or not actually you may start by doing it unconsciously most likely and then it kind of becomes a deliberate type of dissociation if you've heard of that so it's a way of pulling yourself away from the experience of the now in order to become safer more comfortable maybe even entertained so that you can imagine becomes quite an addictive thing to go to in that if you know something will alleviate pain much like a pain killer you will take it so if daydreaming becomes that thing that pulls you away from the present moment which is unpleasant it starts to become a Crux for you it starts to become something that you resort to in order to alleviate that pain now we mean by pain it can be anything that you're trying to get away from for a lot of people it's boredom and you might see going to social media as being something that pulls you away from the current moment cuz you're looking for new information new hits you know a story gossip anything that might pull you away out of the boredom and maladaptive daydreaming is very like that in that once you become bored subconsciously your mind is trying to alleviate that suffering so you start to move away you can think about this when you become distracted if you sit down to do some homework or some work generally and you realize that I don't really know how to do this or I'm worried about what people think about it and you suddenly get up and start tidying or you go to pick up your phone or whatever like those are ways of coping with the fact that you're stressed so rather than sit there and be like okay what does this mean that I am feeling stressed about this work is it because I actually am doubting my abilities or that my manager is quite critical and I'm afraid of their criticism that is more directly going to address the problem but it takes more work than just getting up and moving and as I said this is not something you're deliberately doing a lot of the time you're just getting up because your body knows hey if I move away from the computer I'm going to be less stressed because right now I'm looking at emails and I'm looking at work and that stresses me out this is where the daydreaming comes in daydreaming is much easier to pick up right you can just start daydreaming whenever and of course it happens involuntarily a lot of the time now maladaptive daydreaming means that you have started doing it habitually as a habit that could not be conscious it could be a place that you default to as as soon as you engage in any stress or boredom or any feelings that you're trying to avoid and now you are so attached to the feeling of being in that fantasy world that it starts to become your default you're just always going to it and you may even start to feel like you're haunted or trapped by this fantasy world why well you start to become attached to a lot of your fantasies you might have stories narratives about people or things that you want or ideas about yourself that you really cling on to but are part of a fantasy this daydreaming has created a world of its own and because it is a pathway to alleviate your suffering and it's bringing you entertainment or at least getting rid of the pain of the current moment those stories about yourself about other people start to become very appealing very addictive and so maladaptive daydreaming means that you have become dependent in some way you're almost addicted to fantasizing imagining daydreaming yeah and I'm sort of using them interchangeably we will for now because you could be doing one that leads to the other uh or one could be supporting the other and creating the Habit more long term but there are distinctions we won't overly focus on that right now so how do you know that you're doing it if you are spending excessive time daydreaming it means you are becoming distracted from your work from socializing from looking after yourself all things that you should be doing naturally you know as part of living your life but they are suddenly much more difficult because you get easily anxious let's say and you'd rather stay at home and just living your head basically or you are zoning out of conversations a lot or you are not paying attention in times where you're supposed to be paying attention such as in meetings now this is not the only explanation as to why you do this so don't get too alarmed if these things are happening to you but I'm just saying that for someone who is engaging in maladaptive daydreaming those might be some symptoms that they might be picking up on now another thing is that you spend an incredible amount of time daydreaming and the reason for that is as we've discussed it is better to live in that world easier to live in that world than to live in the real world that is what implicitly you have learned by becoming dependent on maladaptive daydreaming so what happens once you realize this is something you're doing you should seek professional help and I will always say that social media will never be a replacement for therapy so seek professional help if you feel like you need it if you do notice that you are slipping into maladaptive daydreaming very often the first thing I think might be helpful is to notice when you're doing it and see how fast you can catch yourself in that world if you decide hey this fantasy world is not really motivating me in any significant way it's taking way too much of my time I'm using it as a way to self soothe emotionally basically by going back into that fantasy again and again and it's also turning into loads of weird different stories about when this happens I'll do this when that happens maybe I'll say that or I'll wait for her to say this to me and then I'll do that and it's a lot of like engineering really of what you want in order to get that hit that emotion hit you feel you need and suddenly this once you know enjoyable casual exercise of daydreaming starts to become something that you rely on and you are wasting an incredible amount of time on so when you realize that the first thing to do is to be able to know when you're slipping into it start to make know when is it that you're doing it is it first thing in the morning is it when you're in meetings is it when you're hanging around with friends and you start to talk about certain topics do you not know at all when you start to slip into it maybe you just slip into it so in those cases you're going to have to start to think okay I don't know what on the outside is creating this change for me to need to go into this daydreaming world but you might start to notice how did I feel just before that was I starting to feel anxious was I starting to feel bored was I scared of something those feelings might be the thing that are triggering you to move into daydreaming so that's one is knowing when you're moving into it the second thing is might you might want to start to think about why is it this content that you're daydreaming about so daydreaming might be about specific areas in your life that you want to get better or things that you want to develop in your own life for example some people do romantic ones they might visualize the perfect partner or being with a specific person it might be about your own successes and Glory something about you becoming a certain person it might be about fictional characters so looking at that content and starting to think not too much I mean don't think too much about the daydreaming that you start to daydream more of course but if you can pull yourself out and kind of almost look at the daydreaming from a third person perspective and say I tend to dream about these themes I tend to daydream about these topics these fictional people or these real people and start to look at that and say what is that trying to tell me what is that doing for me right like I feel better imagining about romantic partners because I find it stressful to actually engage with people and explore romantic Partnerships with people so you've learned something about what that daydreaming has done for you and possibly how you might start to remedy it by saying well I'm going to challenge myself to get out there and start dating someone and not live in my head even though that feels more comfortable right now so acknowledging what makes you slip into it what the contents are and also just being objective and compassionate with yourself in the sense of don't beat yourself up for being in this state you can accept that that is where you are right now but you can also commit to the fact that you do not want this to continue and by committing you're saying I'm going to do this exercise of noting when I'm slipping in and what these fantasies have been doing for me what pain have they been alleviating what the themes are and then saying right when I'm doing the daydreaming I'm going to make sure I start noting down all the stuff we've spoken about so far and then you're going to say right I know I'm feeling anxious I know this daydreaming is pulling me away from that and trying to help me by not keeping me in that anxious place what am I going to do as a result you might say I'm going to sit with the anxiety for a bit longer because I know that I can endure that I don't need to run away as soon as things get difficult okay so there'll be various degrees maybe your anxiety is very high and this is why you should seek help if it is something that you need help managing but if it's something that you think you can sit with a bit longer you can start to teach yourself hey I don't need to immediately escape to the Dreamland right I can sit with the anxiety a bit longer and eventually you know you can't Panic forever with that thing that causes you anxiety it's kind of like with phobias one of the remedies for phobias is exposure therapy it's not very pleasant one but the principle is the same in that someone who's scared of spiders might be put into a room with a lot of spiders in a safe way in a safe way in that you know maybe not with them crawling on you uh but in a room with spiders which would be wholly unacceptable for them in any other situation but they have said you know what I'd rather not be scared of them for the rest of my life so I'm just going to do this and they do it and the thing is your body cannot keep you in that state of panic the whole time So eventually your body just learns okay well it's been 15 minutes in this room with spiders and nothing bad has happened so I just don't have the energy to be stressed out anymore it's similar here with the daydreaming if you can figure out when you're slipping into it and say it happens at these points and I'm doing it to remedy this feeling because the daydreaming gives me another feeling which is more pleasurable then you can say right when I catch myself getting anxious getting bored whatever it is I'm going to make sure I can sit with that for longer than I've been able to before yeah and just challenge yourself just start a timer and say I've realized I'm anxious I've realized I'm bored I'm going to start sitting with that 30 seconds 1 minute 2 minutes see how long you can do it another way of dealing with it is rather than sitting with it until the feeling starts to subside so you break that Association of going into the daydream in you can also create a behavior that you replace with it so you might say if I'm getting anxious and this is the kind of thing I would end up daydreaming about I'll take five deep breaths with the box method which is like a specific way of breathing just give yourself something clear that you can resort to instead of the daydreaming once you've done all the themes analysis and that stuff to make sure that you're acquainted with why you've been resorting to this thing so that's all I've got for the first video on this hopefully this is helpful I found this area really interesting hopefully you did too remember social media is not a replacement for therapy look after yourself

Channel: Marios Georgiou

Views: 7,399

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Id: 5KYQzS7p8mk

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 16 2024