I want maladaptive daydreaming to be talked about more in neurodiversity spaces, but also I'm too dang tired to write about it atm. Maybe one day. People really don't get how daydreaming can be a bad thing, but when it's taking up 10+ hours of your day, involves bad things as

well as good and can be extremely vivid, is incredibly hard to not get emotionally attached to (esp certain characters), is incredibly hard to not constantly compare your shit reality to, and you literally cannot drag yourself out of it sometimes and it is Always trying to pull

you back in so you can never fully focus on things in reality? Yeah, it's not ideal. It's basically an initially ok coping mechanism (regular daydreaming for escapism) that spirals way out of control and takes over your everyday life.

It's so deeply unhealthy to have developed emotional attachments to imaginary people and lives to the extent that I have (no, it's not the same as being in fandoms) and to be so invested in this stuff.

Maladaptive daydreaming, along with intrusive thoughts from OCD (tbh, maladaptive daydreaming is basically intrusive daydreams / nightmares) is one of the main reasons why I was so baffled whenever people said things like "Just focus and you'll be able to do [task]." or

talked about thoughts as something people have control over. I do not have control over where my thoughts go, no matter how hard I try (do not suggest mindfulness, I am Well Aware of mindfulness).

It's hard to explain, and I just do not have the spoons to try right now. But maladaptive daydreaming is real and really frickin' hard to deal with and to get out of. Mine isn't as bad as it used to be; I can more often pull myself out of it (though only for a short while) and

I'm not as deeply attached to the characters as I used to be. Now it feels more like they're characters in a story who I feel some emotional attachment to, rather than it being the same level of intense emotion that people can feel in real, deeply unhealthy relationships.

That's something; I've definitely progressed. I'm still losing hours a day to it. But it's still damn hard.

"Just choose to not daydream; just focus on other things." I can't.
"Just don't think about those characters so much and you won't get so invested in them." I can't.
"If you're gonna daydream, just daydream about nice things, not traumatic ones." I can't.

It's like intrusive thoughts, but some are about positive things (though they still have a negative effect when reality is compared to them) and some are about negative things, and they can last hours at a time and take you out of reality for that long.

They're not the same as hallucinations (speaking as someone who has experienced both) but it's hard to explain how, because when I'm in the middle of a maladaptive daydream it can seem just as real as hallucinations can.

You know how people describe getting so into a book that they forget reality around them and feel like the story is real? That's actually a relatively good description of maladaptive daydreams, except there's no end to them, we have no control over when they happen, and

frankly the plot often sucks. And it has way more of an adverse affect on day-to-day life than reading a good book. Losing 10+ hours of every day to being that absent from reality can really make it hard to manage everyday things or to progress in life in any way.

It's called "maladaptive" daydreaming for a reason.

My memories of things that have happened in my maladaptive daydreams are often more vivid than memories of things that have happened to me in reality.

And like I said, it's not just about positive stuff. There can be very negative maladaptive daydreams that are intensely vivid. Shout-out to the various times I've sat there crying for hours because imaginary people I deeply loved got murdered or assaulted etc and my damn brain

made me watch the whole thing over and over again. These are completely imaginary people, but maladaptive daydreaming tells me so much about them, gives me a whole life with them, then makes terrible things happen to them and plays it all like a video in my head that's so vivid

it seems completely or almost completely real while it's happening.
I know this really does sound like extended hallucinations, but it genuinely is different, just in a hard-to-describe way.

Idk. It's hard enough to deal with reality without your escapism spiralling into horror that you can't get out of for more than a few minutes at a time too.

And one of the difficult things is that stuff like scrolling through Twitter is one of the only things I know of that can actually keep me out of the daydreams for a while. But of course, this isn't healthy either and tends to just make me more depressed, which makes it harder

to not give into the daydreams afterwards.
And just building up this whole fantasy life and being so intensely invested in it that reality is unlikely to ever compare...that's not healthy, that's not good, that's not enjoyable. Idk how I'm ever gonna feel satisfied in real

relationships, careers, houses, etc when I've had those idealised ones in my head So much and got so attached to them. I've straight-up grieved, real raw painful grief over completely imaginary people and things. This condition needs to be recognised more.

And the only thing that ever got me out of it for a notable length of time was anti-psychotics, but that was because they dulled my entire imagination, and that was if anything even harder to deal with because then I had zero escapism from trauma instead of too much.

Idk. It's hard, and it's not recognised, and that sucks.