My Coping Mechanism

As a child, I've always noticed that I was different. It was so obvious, from spending recess by myself reading Harry Potter, to classmates labelling me as the "weird kid". I've noticed it in the way my classmates stayed away from me for fear of me "infecting them with my weirdness". I've noticed it in my only friends at school being teachers, or sitting the gym bench alone during school dances, wondering why no one wanted to dance with me.

With those experiences came loneliness. Intense, piercing loneliness that ate up my soul and saddened me to no end. It's no surprise that many children who are in this situation end up developing different coping mechanisms to distract themselves from this excruciating feeling of rejection. In my case, my main 2 coping mechanisms were excessive reading (especially fantasy) and constant imaginative work that I didn't know had a name: Maladaptive Daydreaming.

Oh, how I adored my reading. I loved nothing more than to open up the Prisoner of Azkaban and lose myself in this wonderful world of wizards and giants and Hippogriffs, laughing at my favorite comedic bits and savoring the moment where Sirius escaped successfully. I felt so excited! So ecstatic! It was a wonderful way to forget about my social life, my school life, and the real world in general. My strongest wish was that I lived in the universe that I loved so dearly. Reading definitely made my 4 years of school (or hell, in my own terms) a little more enjoyable.

But the real kicker was my maladaptive daydreaming. You see, I've had it for as long as I can remember ; I could even trace it back to kindergarten. Whenever I got bored in class, I would slowly lose concentration and go to what I call "my daydream universe". There's no harm in daydreaming every now and then, everyone does it, but I noticed a problem as soon as I hit high school :

I couldn't stop daydreaming. Whenever I had a minor inconvenience, instead of dealing with it, I hid away and daydreamed for hours on end. I daydreamed about a universe where I wasn't faced with problems, where I wasn't the class outcast, where I felt loved by others. At first, it felt good, but once I remembered the real world, I felt so incredibly sad and lost, sometimes to the point of long crying sessions, wishing that my little world was real.

What had once started as innocent daydreaming was screwing up my well-being. I couldn't concentrate, often talked to myself and suffered of acute bouts of depression after long reverie spells. After I had confided to a close friend (also a philosophy/psychology major) about it, he had asked me why I daydreamed so much. I didn't know, so I told him that. Before clicking off, he leaves me with a question I didn't dare ask myself for years :

"Are you sure there isn't something deeper that you're looking for in this behavior? Like a feeling of security, for example? Are you sure that you aren't trying to satisfy a lack within yourself?".

And then it hit me like a sack of bricks : I hated my world so much that I needed an escape, every minute of the day and into the night. I daydreamed for hours on end because I was trying to fulfill this need for escape.

I could compare it to a river well : It was so infinitely big and deep, and it never dried up. No matter how many hours I spent, lost in my imagination, I just couldn't fulfill this need. I was so greedy when it came to it, and never got enough.

According to the British Psychology Digest, a daydreamer can spend an average of 4 hours in their imagination. 4 hours! Can you imagine what you could do in that time? It was very difficult for me to acknowledge my problem, due to denial, but that is just the first of many steps to controlling it.

Because I didn't want it to control me anymore. Because I wanted to actually appreciate the real world. Because I didn't want to be so dependent on escapism. Because I wanted to experience real, lasting joy, and not just fleeting daydreaming happiness (usually followed by the morose realization that I'm still in the real world.).

I am currently in my first year of college, doing an awesome Literature major. I still daydream, but not as excessively as high school me. It differs for everyone, but busying myself with schoolwork helps me spend more time on keeping up good marks. In fact, I have found a way to use my daydreaming to my advantage : It made me a creative person, so I unleashed it in my writing.

My bizarre daydreams make good stories. Who knows, maybe someday it will help me create another fantasy universe that others could lose themselves into, right up with Harry Potter.

BPS article : https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/06/25/people-with-maladaptive-daydreaming-spend-an-average-of-four-hours-a-day-lost-in-their-imagination/