The Ability to Create a Fantasy World
“When I was in middle school, I could never pay attention in class. I was consumed by my stories. I felt insane. I would use fantasies to fix any of my problems. I was sad; I went into dream world. I was happy; I went into dream world. But, it was so addictive. It was like a drug.”
The user lr1220 on Reddit under the subreddit, r/MaladaptiveDreaming, had posted about his condition two years ago. He had associated this obsession with a form of dissociation, a disconnection from reality that for him, started young and progressively turned into a pleasant nightmare that haunted his everyday lives.
The official term maladaptive dreaming was defined and coined by Professor Eli Somer of the University of Haifa in 2002. Mal, the latin root and prefix meaning “bad” or “evil,” and adaptive, describing something that serves a specific function and improves one’s fitness, combine to form the term maladaptive, which means to not adjust appropriately to a situation or condition.
Maladaptive daydreaming is an abnormal and often highly addictive fantasizing that distinguishes itself from other disorders by its intense vividness and high structure. Patients could suddenly merge into another world in the middle of a lecture and stay for hours while their body in reality would often do something in repetition. User Vira_Blaise even claimed that her body had continued the act of driving when she fell uncontrollably into another daydream on a highway. Thankfully the experience lasted only for a short amount of time, but the experience has brought her tremendous anxiety and even played a part in her later diagnosis of depression. Vira commented that she would be afraid to do anything without someone accompanying her, causing inconveniences on both her and those around her.
This form of psychiatric condition usually develops from a traumatic experience in childhood and is meant to help the individual cope with the pain associated with the memory.
“It was like our brain pulling the ripcord,” a licensed therapist Kati Morton said in her Youtube video “Maladaptive Daydreaming.” “It's a way to cope or get through an overwhelming situation when we don't have other skills to help calm our nervous system down.”
At this time, maladaptive daydreaming is not listed in the DSM, the diagnostic tool published by the American Psychiatric Association, as a diagnosable mental illness because there are more that need to be known, and there are only a few groups, such as those on reddit, coming out to voice their support.
Maladaptive daydreaming clearly has its own set of symptoms, but psychiatrists are not giving it its own treatment by oftentimes misdiagnosing it with other conditions like depersonalization derealization disorder, a type of dissociative disorder that consists of the patient feeling out of body. Currently, there are only small groups, such as the one on Reddit, huddling together and seeking comfort in the vast world where there is no foreseeable official treatment. However, despite their small recognition, the seriousness of maladaptive daydreaming is not small and should not be disregarded.