G-0-th-9-m - PVNK

"the universal autistic experience–" gonna stop you right there

The Dark Side of Maladaptive Daydreaming

TW: I don’t talk about specific violent topics(just mainly say “i have violent daydreams”), but if you don’t want to read anything about the dark side of daydreams just go ahead and skip this one.

I’m feely kinda shitty and anxious, and to actually be a little more proactive this time I pushed myself to write this overdue post instead of daydreaming. I mean either way I’ll end up daydreaming before I go to bed…moving on.

A couple of weeks ago The Daydreamers was released. And it was a good dip-a-toe-in-the-water introduction about maladaptive daydreaming. Afterwards I read a few tumblr posts about it, and I remember there was one post where anon expressed their frustration with the doc presenting MaDDing as this escape to a happy wonderland. This is a criticism I’ve heard before, and one I’ve had myself. 

When I first got involved in the MaDD community online I was frustrated to see -what appeared to me - MaDDers not taking it seriously. They were sharing art of their paras, paracosms, writing about their wonder fantasies, and posting memes. To me this came across as almost “lacking a depth”, I knew that humor is a coping mechanism, but I was upset that there seemed to be so so few posts with in depth dives into the negatives of MaDD. To me it looked like everyone else was peachy with it, while I withering with it’s burden. That’s why I started this blog, to create the content I wanted to see(no shame to those who rather post light hearted stuff).

To start off, I always dislike that the word “daydreaming” is included in the name of this condition, because “daydreaming” has a very “cute” and “innocuous” connation in our language.  And to be frank, cute and innocuous are probably the last words I’d use to describe my daydreams.

My daydreams can contain incredibly dark, morbid, and violent things. There is a common theme of isolation, loneliness, being misunderstood, and martyr complexes. My parame suffering, all the while being criticized and hated by those around them.  That’s a very common theme, being hated because I’m misunderstood and I am going through some struggle unbeknownst to those around me. I would best title it as “Look at how everyone misjudges and hates me, but I am really a good person whose made sacrifices for others but has been wronged many times but I refuse to open up about it because I am afraid and because I don’t think I deserve to seek help and I am socially anxious”. 

And while there is this common underlying theme, it tends to manifest in disturbing and/or violent ways. 

*by manifest I mean what the content of the paracosm is.

And if I were to be honest, alot and I mean alot of my paracosms are straight up depressing, and their frequency tends to increase in quantity and disturbance level the more unhappy I am in real life.

But why do I/we do it? My best answer is that it’s a way to live out and externalize negative emotions I/we struggle to express and explore in our actual lives. The daydreaming gives a filter, a “safe place” to externalize, feel, and express these bad feelings. I wonder too if it acts as a disconnecting mechanism, you can experience your emotions through the paras you created, that way you don’t have to feel them as your own emotions that have occurred due to your life circumstances. Can I say it’s bit like a disassociating mechanism? Personally for me I’ve always tended to feel invalidated in my negative feelings. I felt (and still do) that I did not/have not earned sadness. That its stupid for me to be upset so much by something when there are so many other people with so much worse, so I create a fictional world where my parame experiences traumatic events that then make me feel justified to express my negative emotions through my parame. Because obviously those negative emotions make sense in the context of my parame’s life, but my actual life? Absolutely not.

TBH, I was gonna write a few examples of these dark paracosms but I backed out because honestly I’m still too nervous and scared to share the details. Sure I’m anonymous on this platform, but I know once somethings out on the internet it stays there forever. And I am afraid of the wrong people finding my post detailing my horrific daydreams and then somehow finding out who I am and they think i’m fucked up and so on….So this is all for now. These thoughts are from my personal experiences and I don’t speak for every MaDDer. 

Is it normal to have a paralyzing tic where your whole body goes limp it last a few seconds to a a few minutes and I'm conscious during it or should I search into it?

Please let these men kiss and make up thx

this show is fucking incredible

riddle me this

why is it when a new supernatural drama comes out every 2 minutes with straight white leads reviewers call it fun and sexy but when a new supernatural drama comes with a wlw plot line with a black non stereoytpical protagonist suddenly the trope is tired and boring?

im so fucking tired of this shit.

and im just gonna say this too:

if it was two white leads half the hot takes about “ poor representation of sapphic media” would be non existient cause not one thinkpiece i’ve seen has been groundbreaking

call my friends and tell them that I love them, and I'll miss them, but I'm not sorry

fucked up hurt/comfort. the person who stabbed you tends to your wound. the person who killed your loved one helps you grieve.

Want to try something new? Try Maladaptive Daydreaming!!!

It's the best way to spend your time when you're alone with your own thoughts!

It has a lot of amazing benefits, including!:

Wasting between a quarter and a half of your day daydreaming instead of doing useful stuff!

Pacing around your room like a caged animal until you feel dizzy and your legs hurt!

Jumping, running or doing sudden movements in the most intense moments that can lead to you accidentally hurting yourself in the furniture from running straight into it!

Making the same faces as the characters to visualize them better in your head!

Daydreaming in public, including the weird movements and faces, and hoping nobody saw you!

Making yourself happy, sad, angry or panicked just by daydreaming something as vividly as possible!

Dropping whatever you were doing just to daydream! Washing yourself? Doing your homework? Paying attention in class? Drawing? No!! Your daydream is more important!!

Imagining yourself as the-nobody-who-turned-into-a-hero-and-is-admired-by-everyone because no one cares about you irl!

Having multiple storylines with the same characters and alternating between them while you try to find the best one to keep!

Stopping the fictional daydream you've worked for almost half of your life just because a furry anime that came out recently has almost the same plot as your daydreams, and feeling like you're stealing their idea!

Switching your daydreams from a fictional world with fictional characters to using real life people!

Daydreaming about situations that have a close to zero chance of happening, and obsessing over them happening!

And if they can happen irl, daydreaming about them until you actually do them!!

Daydreaming about people you'll never meet, and I don't mean only celebrities!

Obsessively daydreaming about said people as a coping mechanism that you'll never meet them in real life!!

Slightly altering your daydream after you find something new about those people, which conflicts with the current storyline!

Having dramatic daydreams about what someone might say and what you'll answer and how you'll feel, only to get an underwhelming answer irl!

Imagining THE worst scenario if something bad happens to someone and you know about it only vaguely, and seeing it so clearly in your head that you panic because you don't know what's actually happening to them irl!

Taking the "thinking about what you could've said in an argument" to the next level and preparing yourself in case one happens based on vague hints that it might happen!

Daydreaming so much about an idea and for a longer period of time, "waking up" and being sad that the daydream wasn't real even though you knew it wasn't real from the get-go!

And this is only my experience! Yours could be completely different! Maybe even better than mine!!

Experts recommend starting it as early as possible, preferably in kindergarten!! So you can daydream for as long as this short life allows you!!

Soon enough you won't want to live in this boring "real" life anymore!