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u/SlappyClappy69 21h ago
I love dreaming up complex worlds, characters, and plots.
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u/Sexy_Marionberry_ 21h ago
And then never having the capability it seems to actually ever be able to put it down into words.
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u/8-BIT_Project_Laser 20h ago
Or to depict them in drawings
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u/Altines 15h ago
I hate how vividly I can see the picture in my head and how all the lines should go and the second my hand touches paper that all goes away and my brain has no idea what to do anymore
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u/JulyOfAugust 4h ago
Right ? Like I'd know something is exactly what I had in mind if I saw it but I'm incapable of drawing it despite being able to draw things I see in real life pretty accurately.
I really want to ask my brain how that work.
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u/CeaselessPain89 20h ago
Exactly. Why can't I put my thoughts into writing, I literally can't. I can write a bit but it comes out all jumbled and not the way I was originally thinking about it
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u/AffectionateRiceball 20h ago
I have the same thing but with drawing it’s just so hard to piece together once I try and start :/
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u/gloomybirder 9h ago
I’m so sorry you all deal with this too but ya’ll have made me feel less alone, so thanks for that!
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u/Your_Friendly_Nerd 2h ago
That's something you want to do? That's such an alien idea do me - those are my worlds, and by putting them to paper I feel like I would give them away
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u/skadishroom 14h ago
I descovered I can chatgpt my ideas into my fanfiction favourites. I now have maladaptive chatgpting.
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u/Giraffe-colour 18h ago
I have full character sheets and timelines for my daydreams now. When I’m super bored or struggling to get to sleep I’ll actively jump into a daydream. It’s great for going on walks too since you can just zone out. 4K would feel like 10mins cause I was daydreaming the whole time.
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u/grand305 High Functioning autism with ADHD 20h ago
I kept doing that, and daydreams are the side stories, and the main story was sleeping dream.
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u/MartialLol 21h ago
I distinctly remember waiting in line for the cafeteria in kindergarten when it occurred to me that I could just daydream myself out of the situation. Probably shouldn't have done that 😬
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u/Heavy_Original4644 21h ago
Same. Been like this since I gained consciousness, probably. Or at least as long as I can remember
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u/KaerMorhen 20h ago
For me it was car rides or on the school bus I'd imagine people riding motor bikes all through the terrain along with the ride. Then in class it could be whole worlds. Trying to turn that into writing now.
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u/TechnologyEconomy858 20h ago
That's wild...I used to do the same thing on any road trip. Dirt bikes, ATVs or snowmobiles...the occasional car. I was just recalling that, and then saw your comment. You're apparently not alone, odd Internet Stranger...there are others 🫡
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u/OneToyShort 16h ago
When I was young our family used to travel from Minnesota to Incline Village NV to visit grandparents. I use to day dream watching out the windows of the 76 Ford station wagon, that a dirt bike would be riding the ditches and jumping the culverts along side us.I never knew other people had weird ass brains like myself or that I'd read such a thing so many years later. Howdy stranger ;)
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u/Drewbloodz 18h ago
I did that on the school bus with ninjas running alongside and jumping over the driveways
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u/MartianLM 59m ago
For me it was a monkey swinging on the lampposts along the side of the (otherwise largely featureless) motorway 😆
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u/tamati_nz 19h ago
Oh me a my adhd autistic love for kitset models and diorama, WH40K and sci-fi - my brain and daydreaming puts me into those worlds/I can get lost in them. Great creativity though!
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u/jimbowesterby 18h ago
Yep, same here. I think I’m starting to figure out how to turn it into some sort of design business tho, fingers crossed!
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u/KaerMorhen 17h ago
Graphic design and photo/video post-production (really the whole process) were amazing for my mind to bite into. The hard part for me was deciding if I wanted to remain passionate about it or if I wanted to make money. Now I don't get either, so, go with your heart!
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u/jimbowesterby 10h ago
lol I feel that, I’m thirty and going back to school for the third time, never made it past the second term on either of the other two attempts. This time I’m going for trade school tho, should be a lot better. First day today, so fingers crossed lol
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u/BontanAmi 9h ago
I didn’t graduate college til i was like 28 after sporadic sessions of higher ed…finally i graduated with summa cum laude as a graphic design major once i finally found a path that ticked all the boxes. You too can make mediocre wages, I believe in you! Haha seriously though we need that spark of interest in our school/work to be moderately happy.
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u/jimbowesterby 8h ago
Actually one of the perks with this is that the money’s likely to be pretty good, the skills are in global demand and the unions are generally fairly strong. It means I’ll be “working in the belly of the fiscal beast” to steal a lyric, but hey, at least I might be able to buy a house lol
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u/rainbow__raccoon 10h ago
Trade school when I was older was a thousand times easier than regular school when I was “supposed” to. I liked what I was learning and have matured enough to get it done. And there wasn’t much homework!
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u/Redpanda132053 8h ago
I daydreamed an imaginary friend following the car Spiderman style. Parkouring between trees, fences, buildings, and shooting webs to get through the big gaps
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u/DankLordOtis 16h ago
I would watch full episodes of DBZ in my head during class around the same time in school
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u/Redditauro dafuqIjustRead 17h ago
I can't even nightdream, what's daydreaming? You just dissociate and start dreaming but woke up?
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u/dfasaAZ 11h ago
I can put myself into any scenario i want or afraid of, like i am actually there: moving, talking, feeling, etc. Imagine it like a full immersion film with your own script.
Time flies incredibly fast while you are doing it.
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u/Bjalla99 11h ago
I used to do this so much, inventing all kinds of stories with me as the main character until one day in school I almost answered a question with info from my daydreaming stories and that scared me into stopping. I notice I do it more frequently when I am not in good mental health so when I feel the urge to start daydreaming again and actually manage to get really lost in the stories then I know I need to take a deeper look at what's going on.
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u/EmbarrassedPage195 21h ago
Oh fuck, that's an ADHD thing too?!
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u/texxelate 14h ago
It’s shit like this which makes feel just so.. not special haha. Oh my entire existence and personality is just a quantifiable disorder? Cool beans.
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u/Fortified_Phobia 12h ago
It suck shit, especially if you built your identity as a kid on ~being different~ I love an identity crisis in my late 20s, like who the fuck am I??? Am I just a disorder manifested in to a person?
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u/telescopeinmynose 10h ago
Reddit made me realise I'm just ADHD+ Bipolar the person
All my personality quirks and flaws were just disorders
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u/DramaLlamadary 7h ago
It's only a "quantifiable disorder" against the backdrop of a society built for neurotypicals. And that's a useful way to think of it in as much as it helps you get the supports you need to survive Neurotypicalandia.
But it's still your personality, your existence, and not inherently flawed or somehow less than. It's just not an easy fit for the incredibly unnatural way we live our lives currently.
Do what you have to do to survive, but try not to see yourself as nothing more than a diagnosis. The diagnosis is just another tool for surviving. You're unquestionably you, so much more than whatever version of the DSM wants to say you are.
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u/yeaman1111 8h ago
Think of it as the mandatory color on like a lot (but not a plurality) of the legos that make up your body. The other colors have immense impact on who you are too. And we havent even gotten to the part about how they're arranged, exactly. And there's millions of pieces.
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u/PickledBrains79 21h ago
I hated living in the real world. My fantasy world was so much better! I had friends, people would talk to me, I had useful skills.
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u/peachmangler 20h ago
One of my first maladaptive daydream staples was imagining myself being adopted by panic at the disco.
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u/pcklkssr 19h ago
That's my favorite FOB tune.
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u/peachmangler 19h ago
"I spent my formative years wishing Ryan Ross was a vampire who loved me and all I got was this shitty tumblr addiction"
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u/Inside_Lifeguard_281 15h ago
„My mum with a drug addiction sold me to one direction - ello darling“
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u/horvathkristy 12h ago
Mine was that Lara Croft would burst through the door of my kindergarten looking totally badass. And taking me on an adventure so I wouldn't have to take an afternoon nap. I was daydreaming that while being forced to take said afternoon nap (I could never ever fall asleep)
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u/iamtheUGLY 20h ago
Except when you have a ton of anxiety and its just constant daymares. 🥲
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u/trash-juice 20h ago edited 20h ago
At 60 I finally got an answer, not ruminating …. maladaptive daydreaming, the best escape hatch. Well FMGWAC!
Edit: read the stuff, here’s my retort … if it can be used or focused then its not maladaptive. I actually thinks it’s adaptive
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u/BoltMyBackToHappy 11h ago
Heard this phrase a while ago to help me snap out of it, "Reminisce, don't ruminate."
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u/Objective_Frame8397 20h ago
I never really got into trouble when I was in school, but I did get quite a few letters sent home to my mom telling her all I do is daydream. Not my fault you're extremely boring. Lost in my own thoughts was much more fun than the monotony of fucking school.
I hated every minute of it.
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u/Elamimax 20h ago
Turned it into my job. Now I'm not allowed to stop 😎
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u/DamePants 19h ago
How?!
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u/Elamimax 19h ago
I'm a writer lol. I turn my daydreams into novels and it's been working out, financially
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u/DamePants 19h ago
Yay! Get that bag!!
There’s hope for us dreamers yet.
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u/Elamimax 16h ago
I'm also a kick-ass dungeon master bc I can just run a setting simulating in my head lol. "I want to go to x and talk to y". Fuck it! Sure! They have a whole life now!
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u/DamePants 6h ago
A side quest where you excel at adding side quests and instant back story. This tracks 😆
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u/nukez 20h ago
I miss it, meds kill any capacity to do it in a sustained manner. As a kid, for years it would be crazy adventures with whatever crush I was fixated with at bedtime. As a grownup work commutes where I didn't have to drive were a special treat, Id have my stimming playlist and shift into alternate dimensions where I was a main character. Plane trips where a blow out, endless cloud skyline was the cherry on top.
But between meds and adult stress it has become nearly impossible to even follow a gross narrative.
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u/pikadegallito 20h ago
And thus begins the story of how I was too busy daydreaming and lit my hair on fire as an acolyte during the Christmas Eve service in 2000. 😔
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u/UntitledRedditUser 14h ago
While reading this I began daydreaming about that scenario 😫
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u/pikadegallito 9h ago
Imagine 14 year old me, sitting up behind the altar, holding my lit candle during the sermon.
Our church had a big pipe organ with the pipes up in a room above the back of the sanctuary. There was open space at the top.
Now imagine spending that time thinking about doing cool acrobatics off there and along the handing lights and eaves. Sweet flips. Cool dance moves in the air.
Now come back to reality when the Deacon starts slapping at you and your long hair that you caught on fire. Now everyone is looking at you like 😲
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u/BetterThanOP 19h ago
I distinctly remember getting through hour long church ceremonies by creating pokemon gym battles in my head
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u/nantonel 20h ago
Once in 5th grade social studies, I zoned out and was thinking about who knows what… the kid at the desk next to me elbowed me and I came back to see my teacher red in the face screaming at me 1 foot away. He responded to my shock and confusion by sending me to the principal. I later learned that he had called then shouted then screamed my name no less than 5 times before my neighbor elbowed me out of sheer empathetic embarrassment. I tried to explain myself to the teacher later. He said that he put himself directly into my line of sight and was talking to me before calling on me. I had no awareness of the situation at all
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u/Technical_Spirit_389 19h ago
I did something similar to you.Switch teacher to drill sargeant,lol..fun times
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u/scarlette_delacroix 16h ago
Omg when I was a kid they had me take a hearing test because people would call out my name or talk to me and I didn’t react, turned out I had perfect hearing and was just “in my own word” haha
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u/Ccoyotee 15h ago
I was standing at the cash register on a quiet afternoon just staring out the window.
Then there was a hard finger pressed into my arm fat.
"Are you deaf?," asked my boss. "I've been shouting your name for for 3 minutes.!"
Turns out she had been calling for me to turn around and grab the food for the customer that I'd forgotten was there.
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u/Consistent_Stick_463 19h ago
I daydream stuff into reality. Like six months ago I started day dreaming about doing some kind of music on stage again. I imagined not having a band and just doing remixes of some of my more “poplar” songs from long long ago.
I imagined how it would sound and how people would react. I imagined having a really unique portable light show and visualized how it all would work and how I could get parts of it for cheap.
Then like two months ago the vision finally was in clear focus, so I started building the light show and programming it and making remixes of my old songs until everything was set up like I imagined. Now I have a couple shows coming up and I guess I’m doing this thing.
I should point out that this process started as pure daydream. I had no clear goal or plan until nearly the end, and I imagined myself in all sorts of different scenarios and situations that didn’t lead anywhere, and things just swirled on a whimsical breeze until they firmed up. But I could certainly see them never firming up, and people just getting lost on that breeze forever.
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u/BigBullshitta 21h ago
I have Aphantasia. I can't picture anything in my mind. :/
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u/YooAre 21h ago
That's like telling me your holodeck isn't working, fren I'm sorry.
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u/BigBullshitta 21h ago
Probably one of the reasons I self-medicated so hard on so many things throughout life. You don't need to imagine pictures when the walls are melting and Abe Lincoln is recruiting you to fight the shadow people.
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u/YooAre 20h ago
Tell Abe he broke the covenant and the shadow people are his problem.
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u/BigBullshitta 20h ago
You wouldn't say that if you saw them rapeating your grandma. Those bastards need to pay.
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u/rezwell 21h ago
Serious question, if you had a scrap paper in front of you, can you doodle characters and worlds?
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u/BigBullshitta 21h ago
I can't draw for shit. My stick figures don't connect right. But I've never really focused on it, because I don't really have any interest in it.
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u/MarineGF01 20h ago
OH MY GOD IS THIS WHY I AM NOT CREATIVE AND NEVER DAYDREAM?
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u/Hapless_Wizard 20h ago
That depends: do you realize that when most people say "picture something in your mind" they very literally see a picture of it?
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u/Earthsong221 20h ago
At various levels. For an apple, they might see nothing, the idea of an apple (hazy general round figure), a vague, reddish ball, an apple, or a bright 3D apple with detail.
Some might also have other senses involved: the scent of the apple, the taste of it, the sensation of biting into one, the sound that makes, etc.
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u/Pyrite_skywing 19h ago
Wish I could imagine things like that. I think of an apple in the same way that I write I'm thinking of an apple. It's just words and the idea that's there
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u/Earthsong221 19h ago
I've got a mix. I'll see it vividly for a moment, then it fades to a vaguer idea, and then sometimes it's just the idea of the idea too. If I shift to think of it again in a different way/angle/part of the thing, then that repeats.
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u/CitrusVixen 15h ago
Same, but I've never had an issue daydreaming. It's just like words spilling from a pen, telling the story.
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u/Drewbloodz 18h ago
All I did in grade school was look out the window and daydream
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u/David_High_Pan 17h ago
Is maladaptive daydreaming a form of dissociation? I know dissociation can't have physical sensations.
I need to look up the differences and similarities.
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u/barebearbeard 15h ago
I call this watching Brain Movies. It helps my wife understand the activity better so that she can bring me back to reality without too much frustration. The other day she caught my 9-year-old nephew staring into nothing for a while and asked if he was watching Brain Movies. His suprise and happiness in being understood was beautiful. He has however not been diagnosed (yet).
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u/Geminifreak1 12h ago
The worst is doing it while I’m driving and I reach my destination wondering how the fuck I arrived safely
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u/-illusoryMechanist 20h ago
Not me as a kid daydreaming about socializing and becoming actual friends with my classmates and then just, not. Definitely
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u/SookiSwann 9h ago
And then you get a girlfriend in the maladaptive daydreams and she’s themed around a real person and you now have discovered limerence
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u/Famous-Vehicle9694 12h ago
Maladaptive daydreaming is one of my main reasons why I love going to for walks while listening to music so much.
Depending on the song I listen to, the story I create can be a revenge story, an action Kung fu movie or just me and my imaginary friends (who of course, have names, ages, character flaws and growth) sitting in a backyard grilling and chilling.
A world in which people actually like me for who I am and don't judge, a world in which I can fly, go wherever I need. A place, where I visit a cemetery and the ghost of my grandfather appears to give me wisdom so I am ready for the major battle ahead, before disappearing forever.
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u/Happy-For-No-Reason AuDHD diagnosed 17h ago
oh...shit.
I thought that everyone did this, you're telling me that's NOT normal?
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u/OphidianSun 9h ago
Which led to disassociating as a coping mechanism which caused all sorts of other problems.
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u/Mecha-Dave 6h ago
I figured out how to Lucid Dream and now I have to smoke weed so I don't spend all my time in bed dreaming.
I also smoke weed for other reasons, but that is one of them.
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u/raven_roost 5h ago
Just combine this with making art of it and you can take it somewhere other than just your head. Or just call it worldbuilding 😅
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u/gayperson1248 17h ago
Everyday I learn that something I've done my whole life is something that correlates with my ADHD... Sigh the signs were there
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u/PawesomeSauce484 15h ago
In class when I could barely take sitting there anymore, I used to imagine/create the inside of my head as the genie bottle in I Dream of Jeannie and just hang out in there in the pink comfy room. Is that what this is?
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u/lostintimeyetagain 15h ago
What’s interesting is since being diagnosed and understanding myself more I don’t do this anywhere near as much. Maybe it’s the being medicated half the time or the coming more to terms with reality.
Preparing for sleep though, it’s the only way I will actually fall asleep at night 🤷🏻♂️
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u/mamasemamasamusernam 13h ago
TIL this. Now I look back at 7yr job that I hated and the most memorable times were me in deep daydream
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u/RedBorrito ✨current hyperfixation: Muderbot Diaries✨ 11h ago
It is honestly something i look forward too, judt Layout down, put some music on and daydreaming about a book or a series. It's great.
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u/emotionalexplosions 10h ago
How do you guys keep your mind focused on the daydream? I have tried many times to do this to help get through work but I can’t focus.
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u/NovaCoyote 3h ago
Fucking fine. I’ll look into getting tested.
Stupid relatable memes and subreddits that describe my every waking moment in my exact words from a day or two ago so I can’t even pretend I’m just thinking this because I just read it.
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