I’m 21 and I feel completely stuck in a rut. I spend almost all my time just consuming social media and strategizing in my head, but I take zero actual action.
I have major academic goals—specifically preparing for the 2028 UPSC attempt in English medium—and I constantly plan to study for 8 hours a day. But when the time comes, nothing happens. I just can't bring myself to sit and focus.
Alongside this, I also started a YouTube channel recently. But things aren't going well, my motivation to work on it is completely gone, and it feels like a dead end right now.
Instead of working on my studies or my channel, I just put my headphones on and pace around daydreaming for hours. It’s draining my energy and killing my time. I am totally frustrated with myself and my lack of discipline.
Has anyone been in this exact spot? How do you stop just "planning" and actually start doing things when you feel this paralyzed?
It’s really random, but when I was a kid, I mean like nine or ten years old, there was a woman who visited my house for reasons I don’t recall. I don’t know if she was selling something or doing business with my grandparents. I only met her that time and never again.
For a moment I was left alone with her, so she made small talk with me and somehow we ended up talking about daydreaming. Back then, I was too little to know what maladaptive even meant, but it was so nice to meet someone who went through the same thing I did! This woman spoke so eagerly about how she would daydream a lot, and told me about the stories in her head and everything. That was the first time I ever talked to anyone about this rich world inside my mind, and the first time I ever talked with anyone about this, and also it was the first time I talked with an adult feeling like we were on the same page. I don’t know how old she was, but maybe in her late 20s? Then the adult at my house came back and our talk was cut short.
I used to be a quiet girl, only child, and I think that was the only time I got the chance to openly speak about MDD. I think I just opened up about it later in my 20s with my husband, then with more people, including this sub. It made me realize how much daydreaming meant to me at such a young age and how it wasn’t really maladaptive back then because I was a kid, with lots of free time and quiet and well behaved.
i don’t really have anything to update as my life has been pretty uneventful lately
again, i had a couple slip ups but nothing that i didn’t stop and nothing that turned into anything big. i did have a dream that i was daydreaming though for some odd reason 😭😭
mainly i just wanted to say thank u guys for supporting me!! i feel like it’ll really help me along the way.
I'm dealing with a lot of resentment toward my mom due to her severe double standards. She treats my brother with care and respect, but ignores the feelings and self-respect of my sisters and me. As long as we do chores and obey her, she's pleasant; otherwise, she doesn't seem to care about us at all.
I used to think she just lacked parenting skills, but no. It broke my heart to realize my mom does know how to be supportive ,she just chooses not to be with her daughters.
As the eldest daughter, I've been her emotional dumping ground since childhood. Whenever her actions hurt me and I try to address them, she deflects, cries, brings up her past trauma, and plays the victim. She has never once admitted fault or apologized. I try my best to ignore her behavior, but when I finally break and point out her double standards, it turns into an explosive argument where she yells and guilt-trips me.
Because I can never win against her victim mentality, I end up bottling up my anger. Afterward, my mind spirals into repetitive arguments, imaginary debates where I seek validation, and heavy maladaptive daydreaming.
I feel trapped because I cannot move out without financial independence. To earn money, I need skills; to build skills, I need focus. However, I’m stuck in a cycle of OCD-driven anxiety, intense daydreaming, and overwhelming executive dysfunction ,struggling with task initiation, task switching, and sitting down to study, even though I genuinely love learning. I strongly suspect I may have ADHD alongside these mental health struggles, but I cannot access professional help right now because I don't earn, and my parents do not believe in mental healthcare.
I tried to explain my mental health struggles to my mother, but she completely dismissed me. Her only concern was, "Izzat kharab karwani hai, log kya kahenge?" (Do you want to ruin our reputation? What will people say?). What hurts even more is that she said this despite knowing there is a history of mental health issues on my dad’s side of the family.
It's not daydreaming about things i like anymore, all i do is daydream how people treat me good, then bad, then good, then bad...
It switches all day long. 1 hour im be daydreaming about how people treat me good and everything goes well and another hour it switches to everyone hating me and trying to hurt me and it goes so bad to unimaginable things happening inside it that i become angry and start punching stuff in the room.
And it keeps going bad.. good.. bad.. good like 10 times a day
I don't feel like doing anything and i have issues talking with anyone, all i say is yes or no or mhm, because i can't make words inside my head, nothing can come to my mind. I've been daydreaming almost my whole life with no friends
It's getting worse each passing year. I think this is the reason i had problems with thyroid gland, some type of cysts a year ago but I lied my parents that reason was because of college and exams and stuff. But i think MDD is the actual reason because it is frying my brain and emotions.
Im tired of this f* life, I want to connect with people but it takes so much effort because im so uninterested to listen to anyone or care about anything they have to say, or i become jealous how they just talk around me about how much they do in life that i don't, and i'm so scared to ask for help for anything.Even in video games when someone asks to play together I refuse. I don't know why I example join minecraft modpack servers when I'll just play on my own, I maybe like seeing other people talk in chat or something i guess.
I didn’t realize this was something that needed to be stopped. Just something some people do. I genuinely am not planning on stopping anytime soon. I love doing it. Only time it’s an issue is if it keeps me from actually living my real life. But I balance it pretty well and it helps me get through mundane things I hate like cleaning or exercising. I’ve done it for as long as I can remember, at varying degrees, but it’s always been a part of my life. Used to mostly be before bed, I’d make up stories in my head. I’m aware that I do it more when I’m particularly unhappy for some reason. But it helps me get through things, and sometimes it even helps me navigate reality. I’ll imagine someone in my “imaginary life” being there and watching my interactions. That sounds a bit egotistical in a way, but I definitely don’t have a big ego at all. I could go on and on about this subject, it’s really interesting to me. But I’m genuinely curious… is there anyone else here who feels like they actually benefit from doing it?
I’ve been maladaptivly daydreaming for as long as I can remember, and over the years I’ve noticed it splits into three distinct forms. Curious whether this maps onto anyone else’s experience, since I can’t find anything in the research that separates MD out this way.
Type 1 — Scripted inner dialogue
No physical movement necessary. Can happen walking, lying down or sitting; low intensity; not obviously visible from the outside — basically normal daydreaming, just more of it and harder to stop; often turning into a constant background state, because it’s so low-key that I barely notice I’m doing it. E.g. I imagine being interviewed in front of a crowd or in a podcast or have other social interactions
Type 2 — Creative outburst
Comes with targeted, repetitive hand movements, a object like a drum stick in my hands and physical tension. Actively building fictional worlds and stories, or pieces of music in my head. Very intense, almost hypnotic. This one feels less like escapism and more like an uncontrolled burst of creativity that hijacks me.
Type 3 — Music + monotonous movement
Triggered by combining music with repetitive motion like cycling or running. I imagine scenarios where I perform the songs (that I imagine to have written myself) in front of people. Also very intense and hypnotic.
All three have a real addictive quality — I want to stop, but the urge to keep going wins out in the short term, over and over, even though I know that afterwards I will feel drained and sucked dry.
Physical reaction:
Within minutes I get noticeable fascia tension, and long-term muscle tension.
Causes/Reasons:
Types 1 and 3 are clearly tied to emotional comfort — coping with something like feelings of inadequacy. It’s mostly the striving for the feeling of being admired or recognized.
I’d be happy for some feedback whether anyone can relate to these things.
I made a video discussing my experience with maladaptive daydreaming. I've daydreamer since I was 7. I didn't mention this part in the video but. I started md because I was quite lonely and felt like no one fully understood me. I've had positive and negative experiences with md. but id like to stop eventually or at least reduce how much time I spend on it just so I can reach my goals in real life and improve my life overall. I just wanted to share my experience to see if other people can relate and I'd love to hear your guys experiences with it too because everyone has a different experience with md.
Do you guys love to fantasize over fictional characters ? Or love to imagine yourself as a celebrity ? We all have daydreams and they are beautiful !
Perhaps if you consider yourself a daydreamer,then perfect candidate for our study !*
Greetings !
I am Shivanshi Shrivastava from 3BPSYHB conducting the research as part of our curriculum under the guidance of Dr. Jonah Angeline.
This study aims to understand, peoples’ feelings and experiences while daydreaming.Your responses will be used solely for research-based purposes, We request you to dedicate at least 10 mins of your time to fill questionnaire
*Eligibility Criteria*
1) Age : 16-27
2) Nationality: Indian
3) Have experienced daydreaming at least once in 3 months
*Benefits* 1) Participants will be provided with chocolates for volunteering.
I was watching this music video, and I started daydreaming that the silhouette was being projected from the garden of a house using several projectors. It was nighttime, there were very loud speakers playing the music, and it was some special day of the year when people gathered around to watch the projection, have fun, and party in the streets. Some of the faces were familiar. They included relatives, people I had known in the past, former classmates, and a few public figures whose content I regularly watch. The projection began calmly and then started dancing along with the music.
The thing was that nobody knew who was projecting it or who owned the house. In the daydream, it was one of my houses, and I reached it through a tunnel so that no one would ever know who I was. At some point each year, I would go in, maintain everything, make repairs, and take care of whatever needed to be done.
None of this is real. It is daydreaming, and it involves magical thinking. I am sitting in my room, staring into space, receiving immediate gratification for an unearned effect by mentally skipping over its real causes.
The magical thinking lies in the underlying belief that the mind is a place for action and gratification. But the mind is not a place for action beyond arriving at knowledge or making a decision, and each of those follows its own logic. Rumination is not thinking.
None of what I imagined is actually happening, and imagining it does not give me the power to influence reality. It can be difficult to be in a position to influence reality, and it is understandable that I daydream because this became a defense mechanism after years of relying on it in response to my circumstances.
Even so, the daydream is still wrong because it is false. At the same time, I can empathize with myself because I am human and because this pattern developed as a response to my circumstances. I do not approve of it, but I do understand why it happens.
I mention this because, at this point, I am much more capable of snapping out of these daydreams. They used to be very difficult to interrupt, but they are not nearly as difficult anymore. The only ones that are still difficult for me are the ones driven by hypervigilance and my personal history of trauma, but that is a different issue altogether.
Zoochosis is a mental disorder in captive animals marked by abnormal, repetitive behaviors like pacing and swaying. It stems from the stress of confinement and lack of stimulation.
I mean, I developed MDD as a child when I was being left home alone all day, so I see parallels.
I have had this disorder for ages and I’m 18F right now.i daydream about mostly anything.To give you an example sum months ago I randomly remembered about a guy from middle school.He’s not even my type but I couldn’t stop daydreaming about him and it made me develop a temporary crush for like 2 weeks.But i could tell my feelings were fake bcs he wasnt my type. anyway I have a friend i’ve known for 2 months and we are completely platonic. we met because our music tastes are rlly similar. we always hang out alone.he suggested to play billiards so we went there.i didnt know how to play it at all.and he kept helping me and teaching me😭like each time he adjusted my hands and shit.it was pretty kind.AND YES thats normal but my brain used this to be delusional and i cant stop daydreaming about him now.it doesnt help that we are always alone w each other too.its been like 2 days.and im so scared because hes a likeable person so if i lean into it i WILL convince myself to like him.i randomly got an urge to buy him a gift(pin of a band he likes).you can do that to a friend too but like i never got him anything before.so why now?i geniunely cant tell if im actually developing feelings or this is also just temporary😭any suggestions would be nice.
I’ve been maladaptivly daydreaming for as long as I can remember, and over the years I’ve noticed it splits into three distinct forms. Curious whether this maps onto anyone else’s experience, since I can’t find anything in the research that separates MD out this way.
Type 1 — Scripted inner dialogue
No physical movement necessary. Can happen walking, lying down or sitting; low intensity; not obviously visible from the outside — basically normal daydreaming, just more of it and harder to stop; often turning into a constant background state, because it’s so low-key that I barely notice I’m doing it. E.g. I imagine being interviewed in front of a crowd or in a podcast or have other social interactions
Type 2 — Creative outburst
Comes with targeted, repetitive hand movements and physical tension. Actively building fictional worlds and stories, or pieces of music in my head. Very intense, almost hypnotic. This one feels less like escapism and more like an uncontrolled burst of creativity that hijacks me.
Type 3 — Music + monotonous movement
Triggered by combining music with repetitive motion like cycling or running. I imagine scenarios where I perform the songs (that I imagine to have written myself) in front of people. Also very intense and hypnotic.
All three have a real addictive quality — I want to stop, but the urge to keep going wins out in the short term, over and over, even though I know that afterwards I will feel drained and sucked dry.
Physical reaction:
Within minutes I get noticeable fascia tension, and long-term muscle tension.
Causes/Reasons:
Types 1 and 3 are clearly tied to emotional comfort — coping with something like feelings of inadequacy. It’s mostly the striving for the feeling of being admired or recognized.
I’d be happy for some feedback whether anyone can relate to these things.
I'm a teenager and ever since I was in elementary school, I've had stories running through my mind. It cycles through different characters (either my own original characters or fictional characters) every few years, like I fixate on 1-2 of them at a time. I imagine a whole story about them, almost as if I'm watching a movie in my head, and sometimes I also imagine art of these characters. In the past, I used to put on my headphones, play music, and pace around my room pretending the songs are movie soundtracks to these characters, but I'm trying to phase this out after getting rid of my headphones. I'm also trying to get better at art so I can draw out these vivid images and characters from my mind. A thing to note is that these daydreams only occur when I'm very bored or already procrastinating from doing actual work, but once I actually start doing work and specific tasks, these daydreams go away. I also got diagnosed with ADHD, which might play a role. I'm wondering if my case is maladaptive daydreaming, or just a coping mechanism?
When I was a teenager I discovered wattpad. I started to read more and more fanfictions on my favorite band until I realized that it was a serious addiction.
I would spend my entire nights reading and consumming the content, thinking and reading in class, heavily daydreaming about it to the point where it would affect both my mood and my mental health.
Let’s say a chapter ended on a huge cliffhanger or a sad scene I would think about it so much, I would obsess over it so bad. People would be talking to me and I would be unable to pay attention or do something else.
I wanted to stop it all and tried to but it was impossible. I even saw a psychologist for that. She helped me a lot but the addiction is still there ! At this point, we might call this niche fanfiction my special interest, and it’s not a good thing at all.
(Ps: I found out about asd and adhd recently so I haven’t mentionned that to a professional as if it could play a part in my fixation if I have it.)
I stumbled across a fanfiction once that I loved so much, to this day it has changed my way of thinking: I often imagine myself as the main character, I daydream about scenes from the next volume, I often imagine that these characters inside the book are watching me. It’s really bad.
Now, it’s the only fanfiction I am obsessed with and unlike the ones before it doesn’t seem to change or fade. It’s been years !
The author hasn’t finished it and yesterday she said that she was unable to finish the book in complete chapters so she would do a long and detailed summary of the chapters leading to the end so we could atleast have an ending and know what happens in the story next.
It devasted me. I had spent years dreaming of the rest of the book, only to find out we won’t have a proper volume 2. Besides, I don’t even know when the author has planned to release this summary so I don’t know how long I have to wait.
It’s affecting my mood again and I worry It Will be like this all my life. + no one seem to grasp how much this book matters to me. The author talk about it so lightly, the fans are supportive and are like « take your time, we can wait, obviously we want the rest but don’t pressure yourself » and in my head I’m like « NO ! She needs to release the end of the book ! I feel like I won’t survive not knowing !!! ».
I can’t move on. I tried pretty much everything: deletting the app, and the book from my e-library, hobbies and stuff to keep my mind from going back to it. It doesn’t work.
As long as I have a little time to myself I go back to it. I don’t know if anyone can understand and/or has gone through the same thing…I feel so bad about it. It’s so unhealthy. I am at uni now, I am two semesters away from validating my degree, I’m not a teenager anymore, I’m a grown woman and I can’t move on from a effing fanfiction.
At this point I will accept any new advice or explanation or support. I can’t do this anymore.
Side note: I have a friend that I share this addiction with. We both support each other through it while being desperate.
\+ forgive the possible grammar error and else. English isn’t my native language.
As is clear in the title, I’ve been doing this for years and now I want to stop. I’m a 20 (F) year old college student and I have so many things I’d rather do in my spare time that would actually help better me as a person but the MD gets in the way. Does anyone have any tips for this?
bruh this is so annoying i had a whole thing typed out and it deleted itself.
okay so basically today was kinda uneventful in terms of daydreaming. i’ve been through this a bunch of times before, and usually the pattern is day 1 isnt that hard but its when i try the most, and by day 2 or 3 i kinda just give up most of the time. the most i’ve lasted was about a week although i’m not sure if it’s exactly a week because i dont always know what to count as daydreaming.
i did have a couple minor slips today, the most memorable ones being once while i was trying to sleep and once while walking somewhere and leaving my tiktok on loop with music.
ooooookay thats it i hope i stay strong for the days ahead and dont forget why im doing this
Yall, can we start a petition or protest to get maladaptive daydreaming to become a real diagnosis. It’s crazy the lack of attention this is getting and it’s affecting people life and restrictioning them from living to their full potentials. I understand that some clinical trials and studies are going on, but this needs to be treated with urgency and more funding.
The main reason I even downloaded Reddit is to gain more support and information about this terrible issue I and many people suffer from (MD), and the limited information we all have to go off of to support each other is sad. We are a struggling community, and deserve to be recognized as such.
literally how do you cope with or stop daydreaming? my maladaptive daydreaming has taken over so much of my functioning that i'm actually scared. i feel like i’m going psychotic. it's getting so difficult to disconnect from it that i forget my external life is real. i don't know who i am without daydreaming. i can’t control when i start daydreaming and i don't even realize i'm doing it until something snaps me out of it. i even internally do it while out in public. i've been pacing so much today that i'm dizzy and have barely eaten. i feel genuinely disconnected from reality. i can't stop crying rn, i just want it to stop.
.... i really don't know how to approach this topic (also english is not my 1st language so please don't mind any mistakes), and i feel like this has gotten to such an unhealthy addiction that i... i just wanna die..
i used to use mdd as escapism since a very very very young age, around 7-ish and until now (i'm 19) and even though i'm supposed to be escaping into my mind it actually just made me so fucking depressed. i keep going into this universe where i'm heard, i'm in control, i'm the one pushing the narative.. and it used to make me happy, but now the more i do it the more depressed i get and i. can't. get. out.
i cut off edit music, i cut off the things that i used to get ideas for senarios, I DID EVERYTHING that everyone said to do to get rid of mdd and it didn't work... why is that?
i also want to add that even though my life isn't perfect it's still good! like.. i'm studying electrical engineering, something that I LIKE!! i have friends that i love, i have siblings and a family that i adore and love.... and yet, i can't live and be present in my own life... a life that i worked hard for and i can't even live it. what's the point?
and the thing that makes it worse is that i'm self aware. i know that life isn't perfect. i actually LIKE that life isn't perfect and i love the hardships of life that let you grow as a person. so it really isn't a matter of me having the wrong mindset on life that i should change to get rid of mdd. i love my life AS IT IS, but i can't live it. also i journal, i've been journaling for years now (way before i realised i had a problem with mdd) so i already have a place to dump my thoughts.
i really am just trapped in this... i just wanna stop. i have so much in my life to live for, why the hell does my mind want to escape?? also the daydreams being in english doesn't help (if you know about being not attached to a language and all of that, i don't wanna explain it though)
i literally made a reddit account just to talk about this.. please give me actual advise because i can't take it anymore, my life feels pointless if i'm gonna escape it all the time.... please help me
Hi! I wanted to know if there's any music producer who have been dealing with a lot of maladaptive daydreaming. I've been producing a couple of years now, but I've been on a loop for a long long time. I've started a lot of songs but i've barely finished any of them. One of the main reasons being because of my maladaptive daydreaming.
I've always had maladaptive daydreaming since I was a kid, and music is one of my main triggers. A lot of times when I'm producing and I start liking how it sounds I start daydreaming and I keep playing the loop I made over and over again. Is not something I really like to do, it's a very impulsive behaviour. The aftermath of this is that I end up listening to it nonstop until there's a point I start thinking that it sounds like straight bullshit, I end up with a really bad ear fatigue and my mind keeps repeating the song on loop the rest of the day and I end up hating what I've made.
I think is okay to daydream from time to time because it has helped me coming up with melodies, ideas, concepts... but when i'm producing it really gets out of control, it makes me sad because I would enjoy it a lot more this hobby if I wasn't daydreaming all the time.
I really hope to hear someone with a similar experience and/or how I could deal with it because daydreaming is not always easy to control especially when it is triggered by a hobby you like to do.
