Maladaptive Daydreaming: Interview

Last episode, we covered the research on maladaptive daydreaming, the cycle, and the mechanics. This week, we bring in someone who has been living it for 32 years.

Our interviewee has a background in psychology and a lived experience of maladaptive daydreaming that started at age two. In this conversation, we talk about what it actually looks like from the inside, why "just stop" is not an answer, and what it means to navigate this from within a collectivistic culture where privacy, access to therapy, and even the concept of mental health support look completely different.

Our interviewee also talks about the day she spent hours in it and skipped both lunch and dinner without noticing, how a therapist dismissed her experience as a tic, how she found validation in an online community before any clinician gave her a name for it, and why she thinks the biggest gap in the research right now is biological: fMRI scans, brain waves, physiological data that simply doesn't exist yet for MD, and why that needs to change

This is the first of what I hope will be a recurring format on Brick by Brick, because the research gives us the map. But the person who has lived experience will always know things the map doesn't show. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Brick by Brick. So if you are here for episode 4, you know we spent a bit of time talking about maladaptive daydreaming, the cycle, the research, and the mechanics. And if you haven't listened to that one yet, I'd suggest starting there before diving into this episode. Not because I think that this conversation won't make sense without it, but because what you will hear will allow a holistic picture to form, especially if you have context. Today is a different kind of episode. Normally it's just me, a paper, and a metaphor. But something I've always wanted to do is bring in someone who has actually lived topics we've covered. Because I believe the research gives you the mechanism. It gives you the cycle, the number, the direction of the data, but it doesn't tell you what it feels like to be the one actually living it. It doesn't talk about real subjective experiences, and that's something that I want to tackle today. Today we have the Sneema Boss who has been navigating maladaptive daydreaming for almost all of her life. We're gonna go through what it actually looks like from the inside, what research gets right, what it misses, and what has and hasn't helped. But before we get into the actual research and before I ask you more questions about that, do you want to share with everyone a little bit about your background, maybe what you're doing right now, what you maybe studied, what your life has looked like? So this name, over to you.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Hello Nafisa. Thank you for having me on your podcast. I am very happy to be here and share my experience as a person who has maladaptive daydreaming since a very, very long time. Actually, my maladaptive daydreaming onset has been since my childhood, particularly since the age of two. And for all my life, I have known myself to be only a maladaptive daydreamer, and I would like to share my experience more openly. So, my background is of bachelor's and master's in psychology, and I promote uh a lot of psychology subjects as well as psychology research amongst my students, and currently I am working as a psychology teacher as well in one of the most prominent schools in the UA.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Thank you so much for that. We really appreciate having you on the show. I want to ask you something, I guess for the podcast, but also for myself. Is psychology something you always wanted to teach?

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Uh, that is an excellent question, Afisa. Thank you for asking me that. The truth is, my first option was political science. That is what I really wanted to do in my life. However, coming from a middle class collectivistic culture background, which is very conservative, my parents were strongly against it. And also the country that I come from, which is India, uh over then to be involved in politics, it seems you need a lot of connections, which I did not have. And so, political science was a dream. When it did not come true, I shifted my focus to psychology.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Wow, that's so interesting. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. So, I'd like to ask you our first question. If you had to explain maladaptive daydreaming to someone who has never heard of it before, what would you say?

SPEAKER_01 3:44

That is also an extremely interesting question, Nafisa. And actually, it's a very difficult question as well. Because recently I have found out that it is like being on magic mushroom all the time. You see, yeah, because I was with a friend right now at a barbecue brunch. They had invited me over to show me the new grid, and they they actually said, What are your plans for the rest of the day? And I said, I'm on a podcast for maladaptive daydreaming, and they said, Okay, what is maladaptive daydreaming? And as I explained to them that it is a person's escape or it is a person's fantasy world in their mind, and so they were like, Oh, so you are naturally on magic mushrooms, and I was like, That is a very interesting way to put it. Yes, it's like your brain has grown the magic mushroom inside its head, and you are constantly in it. Everybody daydreams, I definitely agree, everybody daydreams, but in a maladaptive daydreaming world, you are constantly there, and the grasp between reality and daydreaming, actually, more than the grasp, the alternative between reality and daydreaming is becoming farther and farther away because it shows where you want to be at a certain place in a certain time. I'm not really sure it explains it very well, but I think my story is a better explanation of what MDD is.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

That's actually really interesting. I found it interesting that you compared it to being on magic mushrooms. It's like you're almost in an alternate state of reality, but not. It's like wearing AI meta glasses, you know what I mean? Yes, definitely. I would agree. So, when did you actually first realize that this wasn't normal daydreaming? Was there a specific moment in your life, or was this more of a gradual realization as you got older that you were okay, not a lot of people are like having this?

SPEAKER_01 5:44

So, this is also an extremely good question. To me, being in a maladaptive daydreaming state has been something I have been doing since forever. But it is when I ask the people around me, you know, when has this started, that is when I realize that what I am doing is maybe not something which is normal. When I was like around seven or eight years old, I asked my parents first, when did I start maladaptive day dreaming? And they said that when I was two years old, apparently I would go into a corner and calm down or shake to self-soothe. And then after shaking vigorously for around like some time, I would put myself to sleep, and then they would carry me to the bed and I would be off to sleep. And so apparently they were not really sure of what kind of behavior this was. They just thought that the child is trying to put herself to sleep, and that is why this behavior is happening, and probably she will outgrow it. But unfortunately, I did not outgrow that behavior, and then it ended up that it wasn't just for sleeping that I was using it. Now I was constantly staying in my alternate state of reality through natural, you can say, natural neurotransmitters of my brain or natural ability of my brain. And I'm not proud of this, but I have been a maladaptive daydreamer for 32 years because I started at 2 and I'm 34 right now. So uh this it's been a very long time that I have been a maladaptive day dreamer, and how did I realize is that people pointed it out to me that what you are doing is not normal. But if you see it from my point of view, since I've done it always, to me it was always normal.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

Like you didn't know what the alternative was.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

No, I didn't know what the alternative was. Actually, the alternative was told to me by my parents, my friends, my siblings, my grandparents, everybody said it that the alternative is to just stop. But see, here's the main question with maladaptive dating: how do you just stop?

SPEAKER_00 8:06

True, true. That's that's so interesting. Um, you know, I I've only ever read the research, and I only recently found out about this, but it's so interesting to hear you say that that you've been doing it since you were two years old. That means that you went to school and you know, you lived your whole life also being in an alternative reality. Did you face a lot of challenges when it came to academics and friendships and you know, people that really were able to understand you and considering everyone would say just stop? That's that's an interesting thing because a lot of people, even in today's day, are like, um, you know, why why do you feel like this? Why do you do that? You should just quit it or try something else, and it's not one size fits all, you know. So, how did how did you overcome that? How did that make you feel? How is it being in school and making friends?

SPEAKER_01 8:56

So we start with a school and making friends first. It's I was not a very extroverted child. So I was more of an introvert, so I did not have a lot of friends and compatible with my peer group, like I didn't have fights with them, or neither did I get bullied, or neither did I bully anyone, or anything like that. So it was a fairly normal childhood, actually. And the thing about just stopping is that when you are in a certain time and place, you do not stop, you just control it, or you hide it. So, for example, if I'm in school and I have the urge to, you know, shake and maladaptive daydream. I cannot do it in class. My peers are looking, my teachers are looking, I will look very, very odd, right? So, what do I do? I ask the teacher if I can go to the washroom, and then in the privacy of the washroom, I can just maladaptive daydream for a little while, and once I feel I am capable of seeing reality again, I can just come back. Um, I got in trouble in school, unfortunately. That was not very looked well upon, you can say for a person that young of an age, right? Right. Let's say somebody with obsessive compulsive disorder, there is a reason they have the compulsions. A lot of psychological disorders and a lot of studies in psychological disorders have also said that you cannot just stop the compulsion, it just doesn't go away one fine morning, right? And so at that point, I would view the maladaptive daydreaming as a compulsion because clearly, well, reality was not going well, and so somewhere you want to be in control, you want to be in in a place where you have a choice, where you have a voice, right? And so that place, if it exists in your brain or it exists in your daydreams, won't you go there?

SPEAKER_00 11:19

Oh, that's so fair. That's such an interesting way of putting it. Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

If you if you if you remember, if children say, I don't want to go to school, right? Don't we ask them the reasons why?

SPEAKER_00 11:32

Right, right. Yeah, you wanna you wanna understand better.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Yeah, but there was a time when nobody cared, nobody said, Okay, why don't you want to school, or what is going on, or what is happening. They're like just that there were only two choices go to school or don't go to school, and if you say not go to school, the that choice is not listened to, you just go to school.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Yeah, like there's not really there's not really an option there, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Exactly, and so now take such people, and you will see in a lot of maladaptive daydreaming stories, you will see there's a lot of underlying issues with choices and control.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

Interesting. So, in the last episode, I talked about something the research described as you know, people having characters that they've known for years and you know, storylines that they've been running alongside these characters that have also aged with them. Is this something that's true for you? What does that world actually look like for you when you are dreaming?

SPEAKER_01 12:34

That is also a very interesting question, Natusa. So I would like to start with the shorter part. What does the world look like me for when I am daydreaming? That is actually a very subjective question. The world for me can look like absolutely anything. Right. Given what I am daydreaming or what I am fantasizing, or what is my storyline at that point? Yes. I could be in a garden, I could be on another planet, I could be discovering new life, I could be doing anything. It changes from time to time. Right and characters and storylines that grow with you, that is also a very, very subjective point of view. So I will say both yes and no. Do I have characters and storylines that have remained with me for very long periods of time? Yes. However, do I remember all of them? No. There are some storylines that I may have completely forgotten. Like they are so erased, I cannot even find even like a flicker of a memory of them. And there are some storylines or some characters that I have brought with me down 20 years down, or maybe 30 years down the line they're still here. And so, yes, this is a very subjective part. The daydream itself is a very subjective part of maladaptive daydream. Because no two daydreams might be similar or the same.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

I have a bit of a question, you know. I think like some children grow up having imaginary friends. Yes. Um, so would you say that they're kind of like that, similar or completely different?

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Uh again, it's a yes and no. Because as I said, yes, they are imaginary friends in the sense they give you advice, or they help you cope with things, or they help you process things, or things like that, right? But imaginary friends can be outgrown. You you do not need them to be specifically in maladaptive detriment, they can be outgrown in any sense, okay, and no, as well, is because uh in these scenarios where these characters are whether they are friends or not, yes, you control them, you control how they are, or what kind of advice they are giving you, or what they're saying, etc. So are they really friends if you are so much in control?

SPEAKER_00 15:14

That's interesting, that's so true, right? So they're only they're limited to your bound of reality and to your information and what you know. Um, it's almost like you're it's almost like something that you wish you heard someone say to you.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Yes, in a way, because I would never say that they are bound to any form of reality, they are not formed of any reality, that is 100% true. However, they are bound to that daydreaming world that only you have.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Interesting. So I am curious to see what the paper gets right in terms of research. So, whether it's accurate to your lived experiences, and so the paper found that average people were spending over four hours a day maladaptive daydreaming, which is more than a quarter of their waking time. Does that number feel accurate to you?

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Okay, so this is a very, very good question, actually. Nafisa, thank you for asking me this. Time is a very important concept to maladaptive daydreaming, and I would like to tell you of an experience where I clearly remember time being a very important issue in my maladaptive daydreaming. Okay, and so this was around I think maybe 2010, 11, I'm not really sure, but it was very long back. I was home alone for some reason, and so it seems that I woke up in the morning, and as soon as I woke up, I started with my compulsion of maladaptive daydreaming, and I went into my daydreams, and after maybe two or three hours of daydream, I realized that if I were if I had woken up, let's say I had woken up at 6 o'clock that day, after two or three hours of daydreaming, I noticed that the actual clock is telling that it is now 9 a.m. And so after I had to, you know, do something for like breakfast, etc. So I made my own breakfast and had my breakfast, and then I went back to daydreaming at around 10, maybe 11 o'clock, right? And so that 11 o'clock daydreaming turned into let's say 2 o'clock of daydreaming. Now it seems that you know it is around lunchtime, and so I am in the midst of a very intense storyline, or with some intense characters. If you ask me what that was today, I have no recollection of it. But I was in the middle of some intense storyline and intense character building at that point that I came back to reality and I saw that clock is saying two o'clock. But I was like, 15 more minutes. That 15 minutes turned into 3 o'clock and 3 to 4 o'clock, and then I was like, Oh, but lunchtime is over, you know, like it's okay. I'm not I'm not feeling very hungry either. It's okay. Lunch, I will I'll just eat something for dinner, and then again went back into my daydreams, went back to my character storylines, etc. Intense daydream. Now it's already four o'clock, four turns to five, six, seven. Now it's around dinner time, and again, the same thing. It's just like you know, uh, just 15 more minutes, or five more minutes, six more minutes. Oh, that's such a nice song. That music is so nice. Let me just after this one, after this one, and that turned into eight, nine, and ten. And now at this point, it is time to go off to sleep again. I have skipped lunch and dinner, and I have had almost like a whole day of nothing but maladaptive day dreaming. And so, in this way, if you look at it from reality's point of view, I have lost so much time, and then the disassociation comes, the shame comes, the I didn't get anything done today, I didn't eat, I didn't do anything today, all that comes, and so to escape that, where do you go?

SPEAKER_00 19:39

You go back into your day. Back to the daydream, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

Oh my god, and so this is a cycle of compassion. And four hours is what research is showing, but when MDD takes over your life, it can be more than four hours, and that's when you realize that okay, this is taking up so much of your life that it is getting maladaptive.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

Yeah, yeah, that's fair. Wow. And I guess that's also probably something that made you want to hide it from everybody. The shame and the guilt that you felt of not being able to do as much that you wanted to do in the day. Is that is that why also you think people hide it from their families or partners? The research said that people also hide it from their therapists. Can you maybe explain, or have you ever been in a situation where you might have done the same thing? And maybe you can explain why?

SPEAKER_01 20:46

So that's also a very interesting question. We will start with when it comes to families. Okay, let's say that if you are living with your family and you have maladaptive daydreaming, etc. Maybe in some cases you can stay in your room and uh close the door and then maybe maladaptive daydream, etc. etc. Right. However, I have found that a lot of these researches or a lot of these stories they are from very individualistic cultures where privacy is actually a concept, right? Right. However, yeah, however, in a lot of collectivistic cultures, privacy is not a personal privacy, is not a concept, or an individual's privacy is not a family's privacy, is the concept, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:41

It's very collective, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Yes, it's very collective, and so we have to see also that most of the maladaptive daydreaming research they all view a very individualistic point of view, whereas we are coming from collectivistic cultures, so is that point of view really? Resonating with us. And in these collectivistic cultures, it's not even that we have our own rooms or things like that. Sometimes the family shares a room. Or sometimes you share a room with a sibling. So just like closing doors and maladaptive daydreaming is not an option at that point. You see. And so uh the family more or less knows it. There's hardly anything hidden from them. Whether they approve or disapprove of it is the actual matter at this point, and most of them disapprove of it. Right? Because it's out of ordinary. Yes, because it's it's odd behavior, it's not not normal. People are not doing such behavior, it's it's odd. But they don't understand can you stop? Can you just wake up one day and stop? And so that is the point of contention between the maladaptive daydreamer and their family members. Is you're asking me to stop, but can I stop? Right? And so, and so this is when it comes to families, uh hiding, I I do not really think that that was the option at all. Now we can talk about therapists. Now, therapist is uh also a completely different matter. Now, I would like to again take you back in the past, where again from the time that I come in, the 90s, okay. Please note that many people had not even heard of what a psychiatrist is.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

Right, right, of course.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

Okay, and okay, again, the individualistic culture and collectivistic culture here plays a very big role because maybe in individualistic cultures they had heard of what a psychiatrist is, but I assure you, in a collectivistic culture, they had not showed up at all.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Right, there was like no other form of alternative, like people didn't think that this was something that was real or necessary or helpful.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

Correct, and collectivistic cultures, before going to any psychiatrist, they will look for other reasons, other sociocultural reasons like religion or uh supernatural, also, right? Right, and so that is their first response. It is the first response is no, she has a mental health disorder, let's go. No, and it wasn't just the same for maladaptive daydreamers. You can take absolutely any disorder, depression, autism, down syndrome, all of them would look like this. Right, right. They were not thought of uh as mental health disorders, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

So, so that again, as I said, the onset of this is in childhood. So, how much control does a child have over the life if you really think about it?

SPEAKER_00 25:22

Right, because everything is usually planned out and is taken care of by people that are older, that you know they tend to seem to know better, have more lived experience, etc. etc. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

And in a collectivistic culture, right, it is the parents and the adults and the family. And the family is not just limited to mother and father, the family is limited to like parents, grand other grandchildren, uncles, aunts, their children. You know? So it's not it's not just one adult who's in charge of everything and okay, it's done. No, there are multiple adults and multiple uh decisions, and so all of their decisions and all of their um all of their decisions tend to control the child's life, so the child themselves do not have much control over their life. That is one of the major reasons why they go into the daydream, right? And now, even after that, when it comes to a therapist, okay, especially again, collectivistic cultures, all of this is not socially subsidized. Right, that is, if we do not have so socialistic countries like the Nordic countries, right?

SPEAKER_00 26:44

They give you grants, or you have like the ability to seek help or resources or even information.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Were these resources also available in the school, actually? Right, right, that is they have school counselors, their teachers are trained to look for mental health disorders, things and those were not really available then. And so at that point, the child has to wait till they are an adult until they have the financial power to be able to see a therapist, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Right, because I guess it's not just about having the resources, it's about being able to access them. Being able to access that, exactly, and now there is one more roadblock.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

One more roadblock is that maladaptive daydreaming is not as a listed disorder under DSM files, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:34

Right. So it makes it even harder because what you go and say, because there's no official word for it.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Exactly. So even if you are revealing it to the therapist, I revealed it. I revealed it to the therapist, right? And I even told them that I think it's maladaptive daydreaming, etc. And in the end, when I did ask her, is it maladaptive daydreaming? She gave me the most logical answer possibly. Is that she doesn't think it's maladaptive daydreaming, she thinks it was more like a tick or something from the Turret syndrome. Oh, okay. Yes, but the reason she's saying this is because that is what is in the DSN.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

Yes, because that's all she knows. No, there's no there's no guide or rule book to think outside of that, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:23

Correct. And so I will not sugarcoat it when she said that it hurt. It hurt that she's taking my experience and you know she's she's saying, Oh, it's just a tick or a Toret syndrome, it's nothing like that.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

She's almost undervaluing your experiences and undermining what you've been through.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Yes, however, I I found the community of maladaptive daydreamers online, they are everywhere, they are on Instagram, they are on Reddit, they are on the web pages, and I I said that okay, I have found them, and their validation is more than enough, that is all I need. And I am I can tell you that after that I never went back to that therapist or any other therapist ever again.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

Ah, I see. Okay, okay. Wow, so almost like seeking therapy made you avoid it later.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

Avoid it later? No. I did get something very good out of that therapy session before she invalidated me. Is that uh uh the two things I found very good from that therapy session was that I was put on fluosamine. I was put on fluoxamine. Fluvoxene, yeah. Yeah, it was a small dose, and that small dose also I was supposed to take half of it, but it actually improved a lot. It helped me improve, it brought my neurotransmitters up and it helped a lot. I didn't stop maladapted day dreaming, but yes, it was like coming back into your senses, so that helped. That was nice. Was that like an SSRI or uh I will have to recheck because my research back then from fluazamine, and again, as I mentioned, this is all more than 10 years back.

SPEAKER_02 30:15

Right, yes, right, of course.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

So uh my memory is hazy of it, but I did find that fluozamine was uh also a medicine or a drug used to treat OCD symptoms. Right, right. And upon checking off OCD, I found the book by David Adam called The Man Who Couldn't Stop. And that book was also a life-saving book because it was one where I found out that he has taken OCD as a whole spectrum. He himself suffers from OCD, his was from needles, apparently, he had an OCD of needles and an HIV OCD it was, and he had done a whole spectrum of research on OCD, and in that spectrum, he had also spoken about the internet communities on maladaptive daydreaming, and that is when I met the people of the internet communities of maladaptive daydreamers, and I realized that what they are feeling, I am also feeling, and how they are showing their compulsion, I am also showing my compulsion. And so at that point, that was very eye-opening, and that was the real validation that helped to finally put into words the experience, and also it made you feel very less isolated because you used to. Because everybody around me was not doing it, right? And so it makes you feel like you're sticking out a lot like a sore thumb. Right, but now you realize that no, you are not the only person in on the planet of 8 billion who is doing this, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

Like there's comfort and solidarity, right? Of course.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

There is comfort and solidarity, but there's also an understanding, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:13

Right.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

More than the comfort, there is an understanding.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

That's fair. Um, I also have a question. You said that when you were living with your family, or if you were in a classroom and you couldn't really go into maladaptive daydreaming at that moment in that time. Do you think controlling it and doing it later made it worse? If you tried to control it, the urge to go back became stronger or it became weaker. Did you ever have an experience of that?

SPEAKER_01 32:43

This is an excellent question, Nafisa. Thank you for asking me this. And so I would like to bring into this answer the concept of time. Right. Okay, time we have as two concepts. The objective concept of time is that you are living through the clock. This is an objective measure of time. 9 40, 1040, 11:40. Right? So we this is how we count our 24 hours. And another concept of time is very subjective. The subjective concept of time is past, present, and future. Okay, so think about it this way. If I ask you, Nafisa, when you were 16 years old, did you dream about being 23? Like, how will life be at 23?

SPEAKER_00 33:47

Yeah, I guess. At some point I'd be like, oh, it must be so cool to be older. Right?

SPEAKER_01 33:53

And so, right now, what is your age?

SPEAKER_00 33:54

I am 24.

SPEAKER_01 33:55

You are 24, so you have reached that exact period of time that you were thinking about when you were 16.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

Right.

SPEAKER_01 34:04

Is it exactly like that?

SPEAKER_00 34:07

No, no, of course, of course not.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

Exactly. And so, in maladaptive daydreaming, you kind of live like this, either in the past or in the future, and it is the present that kind of suffers in that time. So, think about it this way: if I'm at school, okay, I am doing all of the things in the school so that but my mind is in the future. My mind is in the future. How that when I go home, I can date.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

Ah, okay, I see. So you're never winning. It's either you're it's either you're dreaming or you're thinking about dreaming, or you can't wait to go back to dreaming. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 35:00

And so you are always living in the time ahead.

SPEAKER_00 35:04

Okay, okay, I see.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

And the current time lives and it becomes the past.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

Oh wow, okay, interesting.

SPEAKER_01 35:14

And then in some cases, you are obsessing about the time lost, so the past, right? But the time present, it's not there, it's also going. And so you can see this concept of time when it comes to maladaptive daydreaming, it's it's actually very centered to maladaptive daydreaming, if you think about like that. One one of the ways that as we have already established in our conversation right now, that you know, in maladaptive daydreaming, and let's take, for example, a mental disorder like schizophrenia. In schizophrenia, what is the main symptom?

SPEAKER_00 36:02

Hallucination.

unknown 36:04

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

Hallucination is the main symptom. So at this point, what is the difference between a person who is maladaptive daydreaming and a hallucinator?

SPEAKER_00 36:15

Oh, I see. Okay, right, because it's not the same, but if you really think about it's like an apple to an apple.

SPEAKER_01 36:26

It's like a red apple to a green apple. Right, right, yeah. You see, so the main difference is that the schizophrenic person, the hallucinator, he is actually playing out his hallucination, or you can say his maladaptive daydream in real time. Oh, okay, I see, okay. But the maladaptive daydreamer goes into their daydreams, plays out their daydreams, or the hallucinations there, and then comes back to reality.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

Okay, so the day.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

Right, so the daydream is actually like taking up hours of time while also going into different storylines while the hallucination is in real time for shorter amounts and bursts, you can say it is there in real time, shorter amount and bursts, but look at all disorders from this point of view: depression, schizophrenia, bipolar, anxiety disorders, mood disorders, OCD, personality disorders. Don't they all take up time?

SPEAKER_00 37:35

Right, of course, of course they do. Because you're yeah, which is the whole point of it becoming maladaptive, because it's hindering your your daily life. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 37:45

But they have recognition as a mental disorder. Does maladaptive daydream you have?

SPEAKER_00 37:52

No, yeah, that's true. So why why not? Something I've also realized as doing more research into it, that the community is not small at all. It's quite large, and you know it's really interesting because they also updated the DSM 5 not too long ago. So the fact that they didn't consider to even um, like I guess, add this into it is quite shocking. And but the fact that a lot of therapists also don't have a lot of knowledge about it is also quite shocking.

SPEAKER_01 38:22

Exactly, and as you can see, this is I think this would be my main aim of coming on this podcast, would be to ask this definition of normality, abnormality that the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is in charge of, right? And there are people who are suffering from certain kind of maladaptiveness, yet they are not completely validated or they are not represented in the DSM simply because, and okay, I take this distinction to be very important is that a maladaptive daydreamer can function when required.

SPEAKER_00 39:12

Right, but it's also subjective, right? Like it depends on what you think is necessary and a requirement as opposed to what's actually going to help you survive in your daily life. Like you mentioned times where you went hours in your day without eating or doing anything else except for maladaptive daydreaming. So I feel like that is also very subjective of what that means in order for you to recognize what's necessary and what's important to survive.

SPEAKER_01 39:43

Yes, absolutely. And so this is the distinction that they have removed, uh, especially the DSM. I completely understand that the schizophrenic person would have trouble in absolute reality, as because, as I've said, their hallucinations are playing in real time, in the reality. Yes, but the maladaptive daydreamer, their concept is that they are surviving reality now so that they can daydream or go back into maladaptive daydreaming later. Alright, so there is no guarantee for how long, right?

SPEAKER_00 40:23

Of course. You know, that's that's so interesting. And being on the topic of OCD and being in maladaptive daydreaming for so long, the study found that OCD type symptoms such as intrusive thoughts and disassociation and negative emotions were consistently higher the day before and the day after that you daydream. Is that true? You mentioned this a little bit in the beginning about having more disassociation after coming out of a maladaptive dreaming episode. But was it also there before?

SPEAKER_01 40:56

I wouldn't say that they come before, I say they are there. Right, right. So think about it in terms of other mental disorders as well: schizophrenia, depression, bipolar, etc. Is there a cure for any of them?

SPEAKER_00 41:14

No, not really.

SPEAKER_01 41:15

Exactly. And so when somebody manages to, through treatment and therapy, they manage to start functioning and realize that their hallucinations are not real. Yes. Do we say that their schizophrenia is cured?

SPEAKER_00 41:31

No. What do we say?

SPEAKER_01 41:33

We say that it is managed, and so all of these schizophrenia, depression, bipolar, anxiety, all of them they have in common as a mental disorder, is that the symptoms are never cured, they are always in remission, and they can always be relapse.

SPEAKER_00 41:54

Right. Relapse is a big part of it.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

Exactly. So similar to MDD, the symptoms, I think, are according to me, they are in remission rather than in complete cure.

SPEAKER_00 42:10

Right. But I guess the research said that they would be elevated. So I guess what the what it's trying to say is that maybe they were a bit more prominent the day before and after.

SPEAKER_01 42:23

I definitely think that that would be the case. However, if you ask me for concrete experiential proof, I would not be able to pinpoint exactly right, right, of course.

SPEAKER_00 42:35

Because I guess it's also about like asking someone who's maybe having really high anxiety what they were thinking about in the moment. You cannot really run through each and every thought. You just know that it was bad. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 42:48

And so I would say that these are symptoms in remission where consistent relapse can be seen.

SPEAKER_00 42:55

Ah, okay. I see. Interesting. That's that's so interesting. That's so fascinating, also. And I guess something that I'm realizing as I'm having this conversation with you is that just reading a paper and just finding out what the science says is not a full picture. I think it it makes it more real, it makes it easier to understand just having someone explain that from first-hand experience. So, really, I I really thank you for coming on here and sharing your story.

SPEAKER_01 43:23

I'm very glad to be here. Thank you for inviting me, Nafisa. This is uh this is long overdue, I can say. It really is. And I would encourage others also to talk about their experience as much as possible because only it is through the lived experience of mental disorders that can that we can learn about them in both objective as well as subjective ways.

SPEAKER_00 43:48

Okay, so something I also wanted to check with you about what I read in the research versus what we're talking about right now is that the research talked about doing a lot of mindful practices and a lot of grounding practices and using SSRIs like fluvoxamine to really help you be more present and maybe manage some of the co-occurring symptoms like OCD or disassociation. So, what do you have to say about what the research says? Do you think that's something that helped you? Do you think that's something that's relevant? Do you think that's something that can help the community? I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 44:22

I definitely think a lot of the treatments out there can help everybody in the community. But I always say that there is no one size fits all. Because, as we have very clearly seen in a lot of psychological disorders, not just maladaptive dating, all of them, all of the psychological disorders. It's very clear that a lot of it has stemmed from emotional problems, and everybody's emotional problems are different. The core issues are different. Okay, they they might have similar correlates, definitely. Maybe family might be an issue, or religion might be an issue, or sociocultural issues, or society, etc. They all might be issues as a broader point of view, but in the very macro or the micro point of view that you take, everybody has different reasons for the reasons that they are maladaptive daydreaming. So I would definitely say that you should try to understand your maladaptive daydreaming and also try out more than one therapy when you are trying to help your maladaptive daydreaming. And don't ever think that oh, this is something that can be cured. No disorder can be cured, it can go into remission and it can go into management, like you will have better control over it. Definitely. This is with me. Okay, and then to manage it and work with it becomes easier. I see. Right. That's fair. All the Ps are safe, and those you can try out, whichever ones you like. There are many, there is mindfulness-based therapies, ERP-based therapies, there is narrative therapy, there are many, many kinds of therapies. Those you can definitely try out and pick and choose which one fits you and which one helps you. If if one doesn't work, please try another one. Do not think that, oh, if it worked for her, it'll work for me. That's not necessary. Sometimes it might happen, and if that happens, great, wonderful. But uh, if it doesn't happen, don't be afraid to try again.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

That's really good advice, actually. Speaking of advice, I'd like to move on to some of our final questions of this interview. Is there anything about your experience that you feel the research hasn't captured or that you haven't found um as prominent in data?

SPEAKER_01 46:58

One prominent complaint about research and maladaptive dreaming is lack of biological correlation. Right. So, for example, schizophrenia, depression, etc. They all have, you can say to an extent, brain scans are involved, uh, or even sleep disorders. There's electroencephalography involved. Uh, why does maladaptive day dreaming not have such physiological correlations when it comes to uh MDD? Because I would definitely like to see what areas of the brain are prominent or what kind of waves are going on in the brain when a person is maladaptive daydreaming. I think I would I would definitely love to see how the MRIs, fMRIs, and the electroencephalographs look at the brain of a maladaptive daydreamer.

SPEAKER_00 47:55

That's honestly a really interesting point. And you know, there are a lot of people out there that have the resources, and there are a lot of institutions that have the resources. So, this is a call to action for any of them to maybe try and implement some MRI scans or fMRI scans for people who come with MD. And the next question is for anyone who's listening who recognized that they might have MD, what would you want them to know?

SPEAKER_01 48:24

My advice would be you are welcome, you are validated, and you are wanted. And my advice would be that the internet is a very big place, it's a very safe place, also in some areas. Okay, there are social media groups like Instagram, Reddit, etc., that have very good resources regarding maladaptive daydreaming. In fact, our uh Instagram account, Engage with Psychology, follows two of the maladaptive daydreaming society pages as well. And so you could access good resources regarding maladaptive daydreaming from there, and there are internet communities also regarding that, so you can share your experience and you can also read about others' experience, and if something has helped them, then it can also one day help you. Uh, there is there is hope, and hope may not look exactly like the one you think it's looking like, but it is there and it is waiting for you to reach out. And so do not be afraid, you are not alone, and help is out there if you try to find it.

SPEAKER_00 49:39

That's some really, really, really good advice. That's beautiful. Okay, so there you have it, everyone. Thank you so much, this neem, for coming onto the show. I mean it. Talking openly about something like this is so meaningful and it takes a lot. And I'm really, really, really grateful and honored to have been able to have this conversation with you and also share it with everyone.

SPEAKER_01 50:01

Thank you for having me. It was very nice, and I'm very happy that uh you are so interested in psychology and that you are looking into psychology in not just the known areas, but even the unknown ones or the lesser known ones. And it's very important to talk about these lesser known areas because one day somebody will listen and they will uh they will see it as a beacon of hope or the light house in the storm that okay, that is where I'm supposed to go, and it's calling to me. So it's very important that today we do this and we talk about these things.

SPEAKER_00 50:39

I'm really, really grateful that you said that because that's exactly why I started the show was to spread some information and to help people find community with evidence-based research and now hopefully also some subjective lived experiences so they don't feel alone. Definitely. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you so much. This is something I want to keep doing in this podcast. After every topic episode, I want to bring in someone who has lived experience of what we just covered because the research gives us the map, but a person who has lived experience knows the map, knows what the map doesn't show. And I think both of those things matter equally. Next episode, we're finally getting into masking what it is, what the research says about it, why it happens, and what it actually costs. I've been waiting for this one for a while, and I'm really looking forward to sharing it with you next week. Until then, remember, things can be redesigned. They just have to be built brick by brick.