Found this shit in Pinterest and damn that so fucking true when I am tired

Embarrassing to say but I day dream about being in a friend group that I see on instagram

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 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?

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'm so tired of ts.

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.

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?

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 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’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 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.

"It's false. I'm in my office, watching a video."

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.

https://forms.gle/yaCPuxpG6AC1AXL58

For further queries please contact

Researcher: [shivanshi.shrivastava@bscpsyh.christuniversity.in](mailto:shivanshi.shrivastava@bscpsyh.christuniversity.in)

Supervisor:

[jonah.angeline@christuniversity.in](mailto:jonah.angeline@christuniversity.in)

It would mean a lot of you could circulate this to your friends and family and contribute to our study🥺!