Confessions of a Maladaptive Daydreamer

If you've ever been in a heated argument, odds are you've come up with a clever response only *after* several hours had passed. And maybe, in your mind's eye, maybe in the shower, you've imagined how things would have gone if you had thought of that response in-the-moment, rather than when it was already too late.

I mean, we've all been there, right? Finding ourselves embodied in a fictional hypothetical, with our emotions getting worked up as though it was actually happening.

Some people do this much more than others. For instance, like me. It's probably rather embarrassing for me to confess, but I've never been one to shy away from being candid on this blog.

Ever since I was a child and had nowhere physical to escape when my parents were arguing about money at three in the morning, or when I was getting scolded for drawing a variety of colours on the walls—the only place I could retreat was my own mind. I'd imagine alternative realities made of pillowforts for shelter and refuge. Where I could hide, and where things would be quiet and calm.

As I got older, these daydreams became more elaborate and specific instead of subsiding. They became primarily about other people and how I'd interact with them. During my walks home from school, I would find myself constructing hypothetical futures where I had repaired relationships I ruined, or finally said all the sentimental heartfelt things to someone I was too shy to say in reality. During restless nights of insomnia, I would craft the environments and the textures and the visuals—I'd imagine myself crashing events or hosting my own, inviting dozens of people only to care about one particular person attending à la *The Great Gatsby*.

I'm standing in the ramshackled doorway of a liminal apartment, walls the colour of dried sage. There's a girl I liked and never told, she has anonymous brunette bangs, and she's sitting at a lopsided kitchen table with a water ring left by somebody's glass. Of course I'd write her half of the dialogue. And then, I'd run the same three minutes over and over, changing the line that made her laugh, or frown. Until the cinematography and stagework all snapped into place.

Or maybe I'd construct a bookstore to host a reading when I get published. Folding chairs squeaking against linoleum as people shifted their weight, a friend from years back turns up unannounced in the last row. I'd deliver the same sentences of the introduction over and over, adjusting the joke, adjusting the pause. All long after I'd stopped consciously choosing to think about any of it at all.

## Not Recognized

Clinical psychologist [Eli Somer](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=cIDL8CEAAAAJ&hl=en) coined "maladaptive daydreaming" in 2002, after years spent researching trauma and dissociation at