Taming wild minds

In this small world of betrayal, I live two lives. One real, but so unreal for me. Beautiful and complete on the outside but full of regrets and incomplete on the inside. Surrounded by loved ones; it's a life full of happiness yet there is a yearning, wants, and wishes. All those wishes which can never come true.

There is a longing in my life that I fulfill in my other life. The life I live in my head. The life I often dream of. The life that makes me feel more alive than this real one. Here I just about exist. '

Does this click with you? Do you sometimes feel an urge to satisfy yourself by daydreaming about things you know you can never get?

All of us love daydreaming. We are all guilty of doing so at least to some extent, which is not bad. In fact it is pretty normal to do so. It's the addiction that is bad. I'm sure a lot of people out there can relate to the above passage, but I doubt many would know what exactly is this condition called. Does it even have a name?

Yes, it does. It is called maladaptive daydreaming. The following are its most common symptoms:

• Creating vivid characters, settings, plots, and other detailed, story-like features and daydreaming about them.

• Often one daydream is triggered by real-life events.

• Difficulty completing everyday tasks.

• Difficulty sleeping at night.

• Always feeling an overwhelming desire to stop work and continue daydreaming.

• Making facial expressions while daydreaming. And whispering and talking.

Now, what causes this maladaptive disorder? At some point, all of us feel dissatisfaction with our lives and with the state of things. We feel desperate to change our situation. With this unhappiness and desperation to change our lives and sometimes to just find an escape from unhappiness, our mind urges us to daydream. So that we can forget our present state and resort to fantasy; this is our mind’s way to make us happy; it creates a fake illusion of perfection.

We daydream about all the things we wish to do. And this to some extent is normal. The problem, however, starts when we begin to live in our minds and resort to it as a source of escape every time we are angry or sad.

It becomes a problem when daydreaming which started as a defense mechanism against dissatisfaction becomes a sort of solution to escape from problems and ends up engulfing our whole ‘self'.

We create a perfect illusion—a perfect little bubble in our mind and begin to live there. And slowly the world in our mind takes a life of its own. We fantasize about everything we feel incapable of doing in real life. Anything that is missing in real life we give ourselves there. Hence daydreams begin to involve self-fulfilling desires.

We forget it’s all in our heads. It’s not real. So when that bubble bursts and we are suddenly thrown back into reality it feels hard to deal with the present state. A crushing sadness engulfs us, leaving us in a state of distraught.

Maladaptive daydreaming starts as an escape and ends up distorting our ‘Self'. One feels more insecure than he was before. More afraid. More self-conscious of his/her present state. And unhappy, not just with his state of things but with himself too.

However, maladaptive disorder is different from the mental disease which is called schizophrenia. There is a misconception that people who become addicted to maladaptive daydreaming would end up becoming schizophrenic. Due to a lack of awareness about maladaptive behavior, few think they might even be schizophrenic.

That is not true. Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder, which occurs due to a chemical imbalance. While maladaptive daydreaming is not psychotic, nor does it have much to do with the chemical disposition of our brain. It is our mind’s defense mechanism which ends up being our addiction.

Does it have a cure? Yes. You can help yourself! You need to first question yourself that if you get all that you dream of would you stop daydreaming? No, you wouldn't. Because it's not just about your dreams anymore. It's about you. You are not daydreaming anymore. You’re feeling there. This is that needs to stop. You need to allow yourself to feel in real and not through your fantasies in your mind. Feel the anger. Feel the sadness. Feel it and express it instead of escaping from it.

Next step would be to let go of everything: One of the most difficult things to do is to let go of the fantasy world. Letting go of all the characters they made. First of all, you need to realize it's not about your characters. It was never about them. It is all about you. All along everything was about you. Everything existed just to protect you, to satisfy you, but somehow ended up being your addiction. You do not have to give up anything. All you did can stay with you as your memories. You just need to stop living there and begin living here. You need to make your two worlds as one.

Start with realizing the reason for your unhappiness; feel it and work for it. If it is unhappiness with one's ‘self' then first accept the fact that you are at present broken and insecure but at the same time know that this is not the real you. And this is a fact. You are more close to the image of your fantasies than what you have become in your real world. That is what you truly are without any peer pressure and the problems of the world. You can become that if you work to make your two worlds as one.