castle: a linear daydream

The loss of identity from containing dozens of massively different personalities, each with their own mannerisms, voice, beliefs/practices etc

Your body feeling alien because you’re not your paraself

Loss of memory; memories being replaced with events from your paracosm

Becoming unaware of your surroundings, zoning out for weeks and just getting deeper and deeper in your paracosm to substitute

Life starting to feel like a movie because of the semi-controlled and cinematic nature of daydreams warping your perception of everything

Predisposition to mood swings from oscillating between paracosm and thisverse quickly and oftenly

On the other hand, complete numbness; especially in paracosm, when your paras can’t cheer you up/take your mind off things anymore

just immediately throw yourself onto the ground and flop like a fish

do a split

crawl under the nearest piece of furniture

t-pose

just run and at fucking offensive tackle the offender

scream to express dominance

say “what the FUCK is up kyle, what the FUCK is up”

act possessed

Maladaptive daydreaming (abbreviated MD or MaDD), although it has likely existed forever, is a recently “discovered” disorder still within the early stages of research and is not yet listed in the DSM, and therefore cannot yet be clinically diagnosed. It may be a symptom of a disorder such as ADHD or OCD, or it may be a disorder of its own. Here is the proposed diagnostic criteria for Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder. A few major symptoms include:

absorption — an experience of intense immersion into the daydream, to the point that they can become oblivious to the actual, physical world around them for a time, and their bodies may respond to events within the daydream as if they were really happening— an adrenaline rush, emotional responses such as crying, etc. MDers fall into trancelike states where they feel almost as if they can truly see/hear/feel the sensations within the daydream, though they are still able to distinguish fantasy from reality. They may act out their daydreams with facial expressions, hand gestures, speaking out loud or whispering or mouthing the words they imagine themselves saying, etc. 

emotional attachment — MDers may become extremely emotionally attached to the places/people within their daydreams— genuinely falling in love with their imaged lovers, etc. (to the point that many MDers express a sense of betrayal at taking up a romantic relationship in the physical world. They feel a need to return to their worlds in order to fulfill the responsibilities that come with having friends and family, checking on them and taking care of them and spending time with them. These attachments are so strong, in fact, that the MaDD community on Tumblr has coined new terms for the people who exist within maladaptive daydreams— they are often referred to as “parallel people”, or “paras” for short, because it is difficult to simplify them to “characters”). 

withdrawal — MDers report experiencing withdrawal symptoms if not able to daydream for an extended period of time (here meaning a day or two). and they become distressed, irritated, and aggravated if prevented from daydreaming. They may deliberately distance themselves from friends and family and shirk responsibilities of school or work in order to save time to daydream.

enhancement — daydreaming is often enhanced by repetitive movements such as pacing, rocking back and forth, swaying or swinging, and listening to music. 

failure to quite — MDers have repeatedly attempted to quit their extreme habits and have repeatedly failed. Maladaptive daydreaming is an addiction, and it is difficult to combat. 

significant levels of distress and dysfunction — maladaptive daydreaming interrupts and impedes the necessities of a lifestyle including.

Maladaptive daydreaming is characterized by significant distress and dysfunction caused by an obsessive and addictive need to daydream. It is estimated that they lose an average of four hours a day inside their heads, and daydreams are not necessarily pleasant and are not always welcome. Many MDers describe their daydreams as uncontrollable and intrusive, invading their mental space with disturbingly violent/sexual thoughts that they do not enjoy but cannot escape.

Even within pleasant or idealized fantasies, MDers report a lack of control over the “characters” or “paras” and the storylines. They find themselves unable to intentionally drive the plot in any direction and are often left to watch it unfold by itself or, if they exist within the world, they can only react to things their brain conjures for them. Combined with emotional attachments to the people and places within the daydreams, it is not all that surprising that, although MDers are able to distinguish between fantasy and reality, many consider their daydreams to be secondary/alternate lives, not just whimsical fantasies. In extreme cases, some consider their daydreams to be their primary lives, and the actual, physical world to be an inconvenient secondary.

MDers often become so lost within their daydreams, they unintentionally skip meals and lose sleep. MDers often experience a distorted sense of time and may lose hours in a daydream while believing only fifteen minutes have passed. The effects of unwanted daydreams keep them up in the night and exhaust them throughout the day. They must disguise an adrenaline rush in the middle of a work day and are unable to explain why are they are so tired afterward.

They catch themselves making facial expression in public. They walk/pace so much, they ruin their feet. Many quickly develop tinnitus from listening to too much music, and too loudly. They experience deep feelings of guilt and shame upon valuing their secret lives, and preferring their imagined friends and family to their “actual” friends and family. Some are plagued by a fear that they will never be able to form real attachments as strong as their imagined ones, or that they are cheating on their real/pretend lovers by having both. MDers experience overwhelming loneliness and a feeling that they do not belong in this world, or in any world. Maladaptive daydreaming is often accompanied by severe depression, and the two can build off each other to tragic consequences.

Her hair is a beautiful rose gold, cropped up short and pinned behind her head. Eyes are ablaze with her signature honey coloured pupils, sprinkles of gold slumbering on her pretty pink cheeks. They blink once or twice, long eyelashes fluttering at me with anticipation. I feel a bit like a deer caught in the headlights, her beauty distracting me from what I been pondering on earlier.

It’s so easy to let her allure draw me into the world behind her, which has evolved from a grassy field speckled with dragon snap flowers and wheat to a civilization composed of so many foreign elements. Years back most of the concepts would be alien to me, but my hunger for human knowledge had sent be spiralling into an adrenaline rush mothering intense studies.

Most prominent were phases when I locked onto ideologies and fantasies that outstretched even mine. A simple video game took an idea of mine so tiny and delusional and enhanced it until the tip of my fingers couldn’t reach the summit of the outcome. Had a stranger approached me on the name of Amaterasu five years ago and asked me to explain who it was and what it meant I would have no answer, no response. It was a name that once held no weight, but now it clips my wings.