Maladaptive Daydreaming
I spend an alarming amount of time inside my own head.
I brought this up with my therapist a few weeks back. I was humblebragging about the fact that I’m rarely bored, because I can always retreat inside my own head and start thinking about the current work in progress. She deflated my bragging by suggesting it might be a form of escapism. That I was running away from the real world because the world in my head was so predictable and comforting (well, usually). We concluded it wasn’t escapism, exactly, in fact I spent much of that time in my head wrestling with problems and issues, albeit through fiction.
The next day I read the term “maladaptive daydreaming” in an article. In a nutshell, maladaptive daydreaming is a “form of addiction characterized by an urge to daydream and absorb oneself into an imaginary world, neglecting social, academic, and occupational obligations.”
Okay.
The big difference, I suppose, is the “neglecting…obligations” part, which I don’t really think I do. Some aspects of my daydreaming—those that have to do with writing—are, I hope, about meeting obligations.
But there’s no question that escapism is involved. A LOT. Since hearing the term “maladaptive daydreaming” I’ve been noticing all this times I slip into my own head on any given day. It’s not just writing I escape into, or even mostly writing. When I fill up the car with gas I play a complicated game with myself where I guess what the final cost will be (I’m improbably accurate). When I’m in public I often spend my time making up stories about the people I encounter. If I’m watching a boring movie I’ll just retreat and work on my inner story as I watch the movie with half an eye. When I go to sleep at night I have a “happy place” that was once suggested as a way to cure insomnia, but has morphed (this gets weird, trust me) into an elaborate fantasy currently involving a small personal submarine powered by salt-water (other versions of the happy place have been observatories, hillsides, and the even the inside of an asteroid).
I don’t think I’m alone in doing this. I was in the grocery store last week, watching people as I and they shopped (I’m addicted to the intense look people get when they are focusing on something they are about to buy), and they all seem pretty lost in their own worlds. So, to get to the conclusion of this meandering post: I think most of us live inside our own heads. Maybe not in a maladaptive way, maybe not daydreams specifically, but we’re more comfortable inside the comfort of our brainpans than the enormous unknowns of actual reality.
I’m not going to make a case for “being in the now,” or its opposite, in a state of constant inner preparation. I need both. My “in the now” moments tend to revolve around watching something very intently, like the night sky, or a good book or movie. I can get lost looking at clouds for hours. These times are important to me, and I suspect important to my sanity. But I don’t want to live like that for the majority of my waking hours. I want to work on stuff. I want to think about stuff. I want to observe, and play with those observations. So, I spend most of my waking hours voluntarily trapped in a very small space: the bubbling world inside the bones of my skull.
Peace.
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I have a story in the upcoming “A Woman Unbecoming,” by Crone Girls Press, with proceeds going to women’s reproductive healthcare and the fight to regain the right to it. The cover reveal is Thursday (my birthday!). The story was well outside my comfort zone, and I’m not even sure I like it. But I’m very happy to be included, and look forward to reading the other stories inside.
The website has an update. Go visit if you like. Buy a story!
