Maladaptive Dreaming. From a Twin's Perspective

Maladaptive Daydreaming

"Maladaptive daydreaming is a behavior where a person spends an excessive amount of time daydreaming, often becoming immersed in their imagination. This behavior is usually a coping mechanism in people who have mental health conditions like anxiety" Definition from google

My first thought when I read about this on a reddit post was, "What!!?" for a very long time, I thought I was being so creative by thinking about these made up characters and insanely detailed plots with 90+ seasons going on in my head, only to realize one day that these thoughts were part of a mental health condition like anxiety. 

I still remember the first time that I started using this, which was back in fourth grade when I got bored from reading a book in class and I decided to make my own story involving nothing but sonic the hedgehog characters. Yup, prolly wasn't what was expected. I was really into sonic back then that I had all the character go on adventures in my head and eventually in 8th grade I moved on from sonic to using anime characters from shows like AOT, Fairy Tail, SAO, anime's that were popular back in 2017. And then combined with music and headphones, it was like a field day for me, all those epic fights and dialogue. 

But, looking back now, I kinda regret even starting it. Looking at other people's post about the daydreaming coping mechanism made me sort of feel bad for even doing it in the first place. Some say it ruined their lives and other wished they could just stop. I'll say that there was a time in me when I didn't do it as much as I used to and that was fairly recent. Oddly enough though, it was during my Senior year of high school when I was able to spend a lot of my time with friends, whether that was playing a game online or hanging out during off-campus and after school. Junior, Sophmore, and Freshman years were full of daydreaming mostly because of the quarantine and things in my school that made 2022's freshman year of college a mess and classes being cancelled for almost two months.

Now honestly I didn't mind it at all, mostly because it never made me not want to do something and if anything it introduced me to writing as a hobby. But as I was having this, in my mind, creative mindset, I later found out that my twin brother had also experienced it. Even more he wanted to add in some of my characters into his made up story to make some of collab event. It was weird to say the least talking to someone, even though related, about maladaptive daydreaming. I never really stood by the logic of stereotypical twins sharing the same interest and even the same pain, but this one moment had me believe that this stereotype was more than true.

Now onto a more serious tone here. I hope this somehow reaches to someone who also has experienced it maybe a couple of times or maybe all the time. I don't think this is really taken as serious as it should be. Of course I never talked to my therapist about it because of insecurity but from personal experience, It's really hard to stop once it starts. A big reason I was a C student in middle school was because of this "hobby" that I had. Seeing the results that I had in high school, with very minimal daydreaming, made me wish to go back and tell myself to snap out of it. 

One way I learned to straight up stop it was simply to end the story. It may sound I guess cringe but have a finale, have that main character death or whatever is going on to move on from it. I feel a majority of the reason as to why I did it in the first place was because I felt like I had an unfinished project and there was always the need to go back because it was the only place in my life where I was able to do whatever I wanted with no audience to judge. I could add in this character, I could make this character the villain, I could make these two related and so much more.

I definitely feel that as an introvert, socialization has a big part in this. Socialization requires effort and is well, real life. Maladaptive daydreaming requires little effort and it can be done at anytime and anywhere. Ok this part made me realize how much of a coping mechanism it is.

I'll say to end this post that I still from time to time do maladaptive daydream but thankfully not to the point where it is a top priority for me. Once again if someone on here is also on the stop maladaptive daydreaming train like me, just know that it's ok to leave it there and then, and talking to someone about your story or whatever it is can in a way, snap you back to reality. I'll lend my support out to those who may not have a shoulder to rely on. 

But that's maladaptive daydreaming from a twin's perspective. Chose this as my first post because I feel it's not a topic a lot of people know exist.