There are two ways that I know about. One is neurofeedback training. Brainwave training which helps a variety of things. One of which is addiction and your reward system. The other is to find a doctor who knows about MDD and ask about Luvox (Fluvoxamine), which works for the OCD component to it. Hope this helps!
I've had the same "alternate life" going for nearly 8 out of my 19 years of life. I've grown up in this world. Sometimes I feel like I've wasted my life away in an alternate reality instead of focusing on real life. It's hard to give it up because the idea of leaving that world behind is so scary. It's comforting to see people talk about something that's so taboo to most.
I have soooo many worlds in my head. I have a lot of characters, and they take on different personalities and life stories/fates/skills, depending on which world I'm in. But physically, they remain basically the same (every once in a while, I'll make someone taller, or shorter, or change their age, but I preserve most of their facial features). I am in one of these worlds 90% of my day. I can't control it. My attention span is very short, so even if I make a conscious decision to stop daydreaming, it only takes about 1 minute before I forget that I was supposed to be quitting, and I end up daydreaming again. I am in complete control over what my characters do, so fortunately, I don't ever come back to a paracosm to find that they've been living independently of me. They completely depend on me for their existence. Everything they do is determined by what mood I'm in. Also, am I the only one who has two different types of Maladaptive daydreaming? I have the one I do in public, which is more like watching a TV show: I wrote the script, and I watch my actors play their roles. That's the one that's hardest to control, because I can do it anywhere. But I have another form of daydreaming which I can only do when I'm completely alone, when no one can see me: I actually BECOME a character in my dreams. I am no longer just an outsider watching a TV show. It's like I completely leave the real world, feel the emotions of my character and even display those emotions (crying, laughing, raging, etc.). I do it when I'm alone because if anyone saw me doing that, I'd be taken to a mental hospital (imagine seeing someone rapidly and easily transitioning between crying and laughing and talking to people who aren't there...). It's not like acting. It's like I really change personalities and become other people. Even though I have hundreds of characters in my head, the number of people I can completely change into is limited: I only have about 5 alternate personalities that I can completely take on. Other characters are simply there, interacting with "me". I'm really addicted. Real life is just boring, to be honest. Why limit myself to being me when I can explore being so many other people?
Travis Leong oooooooooh my god it's like you are talking about me ommmg i can't believe that there's someone out here living the same thing as me and yes I have 2 kinds of mdd the same kinds /types you've talked about.... I hope one day we can get over this whole mdd I am praying for us 😙
My imaginary world is actually TOO complicated to write a book about. I have all these elaborate story arcs about how I'm part of a race of humanoid aliens that was genetically engineered by other aliens for use in a social psychology experiment. (We had to go on a huge quest through space to figure that out, though.) I also have drama involving my imaginary siblings, who are geniuses and have made huge science breakthroughs.
I've always had this, while pacing and usually listening to music. Most of them are realistic, and it's not always a specific setting. It's basically stories/scenarios that I come up with and can be triggered by movies, books, shows, real events, etc. I always thought that I was the only one with this secret problem. Even though it's taken so much time out of my life I never wanted to talk about it, especially the daydreams I have if they involve real people or if it's very childish/unrealistic fantasies. I just found out about this disorder, and I can't believe there are other "normal" people who can relate to this. I'm glad I've discovered this disorder early in life (I'm 16), because now I'm going to try to tackle it and get my own real life. I wish there was support groups for MDD, because I would really like to meet others with this disorder. It would also be nice if my parents had more support than "It is how it is. You can find all of the disorders you want, but you just need to snap out of it. We can't help you be less lazy.".
Yeah. I want is to be a diagnosis, so I can tell someone I have it. I don't even know if I like maladaptive dreaming or not. I do it nearly all the time. I've had different settings for my daydreaming, though I don't know about you. Mine usually relate to books or movies.
In my current immense daydream, I am an intellectual genius with an IQ of 212. I'm friends with Green Day, Garry Kasparov, and Stephen Hawking. I've also been to Hogwarts. I was Noah Riddle, daughter of Tom Riddle who helped Harry save the day. I was Natalie Grace, the sister of Jason and Thalia in the Percy Jackson series. Each story may last as long as four years. I have to convince myself to change my stories. I daydream all the time. I almost never not daydream. Does music help change what is happening in your daydream for anybody else, other than myself?
For me, it started when I was 12 which was a difficult time, i used daydreams as a form of escapism and as a way to amuse myself when I was bored. I think it helps me to write stories because it makes it easier to describe settings and characters. I used to spend much more time daydreaming, but I have to revise and stuff now so I don't get bored as much, soooooo, I've stopped daydreaming as much. Anyway, so I don't think it's 'maladaptive' any more because I don't spend hours day dreaming in bed any more, so yay.!
I always dream of different things, very rarely do I return to the same daydream twice. I mostly talk to people I already know or used to know, or to celebrities I'd like to meet. While I'm writing this to you I'm also automatically imagining your response as if we're talking. I don't need to move my body to come into this state like some people do, it gets triggered by random thoughts or visuals or smells. When I become aware of it I often stop it unless it's really enjoyable, but initially I'm not aware. As a kid I used to talk to my grandmother's ghost a lot (she died when I was 4) and she would give me tasks I should do in order to be happy.
Even though I have this, I have to admit I have always been in control of my characters but at the same time because they their own personality and I feel emotionally attached to them, it feels wrong to make them do anything out of character. That being said even though it feels real I can tell it's not like you said. Thank you for posting this.
I have this and it freaking sucks sometimes. I've had it since i can remember. Thanks for posting about it, i'm not sure if i could- i dont know anyone in my life who has this or understands it so i dont talk about it.
Sometimes I leave my world and come back to find out that a character ended up in the emergency room, ran away from home, or had a huge bonfire and burned another character's stuff because they were mad at them. I'm kind of the person that keeps everyone from doing stupid stuff (that's why they made me queen!).
e. It gets more and more intense and many people fall in love with some of these fictional characters. And despite having an amazing boyfriend in real life, I'm one of them.
I have to help y guys cuz I'm really like y it's my fourth day stopping this shit so how we can overcome it? Well,mostly there are two kinds of daydreaming first kind is silly daydreaming like imagining yourself post a silly post on Fb and people reacted it and this kind y can deal with by saying *STOP* just say it and come back yr life it's an easy deal and the second kind is daydreaming about good goals like y imagine getting a very good grade but actually y didn't study a word so here talk to yourself well what should I do to get this shit to real life? What are obisticales on my way...so wht y do here is to come back yr mind to reality..still stick with it for 66days to get ride of this habit like any bad habit y wanna get ride of.
I used to have daydreams about space ships and aliens and stuff as well, even though I have different "favorite" daydream themes at the moment. Could it be that you had some kind of stuttering problem at some point in your life? Bc you sometimes do this kind of humming in between the sentences. It seems to me like you do it to relaxe between sentences.
I subsricribed. Sadly I'm not as creative as you, all my characters are from cartoons. I'm 18. That should say something. I only TECHNICALLY have 3 paracosms, but I mostly only use 1. It's a kind of safe haven both for me and my character friends, with time paused in their world, an endless supply of food, a shield from bad guys, a way to predict the future, an Ultimate training room and meeting and befriending eachother. basically its an extreme crossover, but it interferes with my work and lif
