Sir Iam thinking about dying and feel like life is not worth living.i spend 24 hours for day dreaming. I seek medical help but they not understand the disese maladaptive day dreaming. Can you suggest medications for me, otherwise i will die

Maybe I'm stating the obvious here, but I feel like the immersion of my daydreams is due to the fact that I only remember what I was thinking about, rather than what happened around me while I was daydreaming. It's like my short-term memory is completely focused on something else.

wow, this is so interesting and helpful

Thanks for posting the interview. Very interesting to hear some more of Dr. Somer's clinical practice and experiences.

I disagree that maladaptive daydreamers don’t have negative false memories. It does happen.

This video is very accurate on how maladaptive daydreaming works. They need to do more studies on this.

What’s the best way to stop it. It’s destroying me. I can’t keep up with college anymore because of it. I walked around and swing my arms around a room for hours while listening to music(to intensify my daydream).

Hola Dr Somer, quisiera contactarme con usted a través de algún medio, soy una ensoñador excesivo, tengo muchas preguntas y cosas para aportar, gracias, saludos desde Argentina.

Can anxiety make you think that you're hearing things? Like, if the anxiety came from "outside" and you have a lot of it?

Thank you so much, Dr. Somer. I am 65 years old and FINALLY have a name for what’s wrong with me. I have been diagnosed ADHD but this takes my understanding of my condition to a whole new level. I have struggled ever since childhood with MD and it had caused countless problems in my real life. I have lost so much time which I can never get back, and at 65 I don’t know how much more time I have left. Please tell me where I can get help and support. I feel pretty desperate at times.

Dr, acho que é um vício no que Jung definia como "imaginatio fantastica".

do you have a treatment clinic

You look like an actor named ... what is his name? He is a professional tap dancer

This is the very best explanation of maladaptive daydreaming.

Thank you for working on this, are there any solutions? I'll pay good money to get rid of this habit. This has been a problem for a long time

Now I realized, there are more people like me

I have had this immersive daydreaming from the age of 6. Now I am 51. I used to be zoned out when I was younger, then it got worse. It disappeared for a long time and reappeared at 15..and has stayed ever since. I couldn’t tell anyone for a long time. Finally now this is out. It has cost me a lot in life. I am taking action now to stop it. At least I could live the rest of my life in the present.

It's trying to ruin my life, but I won't let it. I'm going to come back and share my testimony.

Hi dr Eli Somer Me and my sister have maladaptive daydreaming does it mean it is genetic ?

i hv physically injured myself many times while daydreaming and i hv been daydreaming for more than 24 years

thanks

Quitting cold turkey triggered a new disorder I was predisposed to, Intrusive thoughts OCD. It was nightmarish and hell. I had to go back to daydreaming. It's an addiction but WE dont have support groups or help. Thats the sad part.

Somer is just studying it for his own science and not to help anyone. I reached out and he just wanted to use my story but didn't offer help.

How amazing that my ways are not only mine 🤣

I only started maladaptive daydreaming when i was 42 and started to listen to music through earphones. Some of mine are real, have happened but i change the outcome dramatically 😁

I’ve been daydreaming since I was in kindergarten. Over time it’s gotten more and more intense. When I was 12 I started pacing back and forth while listening to music. It’s all I do now. If I’m not working I’m daydreaming. I have no friends. I don’t go out at all. The only other things I do is watch movies and shows to find materials for my daydreams. It’s affected my life. Like today for example. I’ve spent the entire day trying to clean my room but ended up spending most of the day daydreaming. Even cleaning my room is near impossible.

Thanks

thank you for this video! I have always been confused about if I was maladaptive daydreaming or immersive dreaming. Fortunately mine doesn't cause any harm to me or my life , and I have learned how to control it more :)

You have no idea how thankful I am for this. I'm 15, I spent YEARS suffering from maladaptive daydreaming and no one understood me, no one could help me, but then I came across your research and your videos and I wanna cry because of how understood I feel, I feel like someone finally understands what's always been wrong with me and that someone finally tells me that it's something real and not only in my head. thank you so much for making me feel seen ❤

I almost always daydream with headphones on. Everything from music to interviews is included... Sometimes, you quickly change the song to match the situation and mood in the daydream, or you repeat it thousands of times. I'm a 90s kid and grew up with CDs. I always had to change the CD to get to a different song. MP3 players, and later on wireless headphones and KZbin, were a game changer for me as a MD. My imagination and creativity are so advanced that I now even use scenes from Netflix series on my phone. Over the years, it has become more intense and detailed. The strange thing is, I'm German, but in my daydreams, I always speak English. This means that all the songs, interviews, and series i use are and have to be in English. I've been doing it since I was six years old, and now I'm 33, and as a result, I understand and speak very good english.

For me, it doesn't work without the movements either. I can daydream without them, but the experience of my daydreams is much more intense when I walk in circles, jump, and make hand movements. I even remember the day I started doing this and had to figure out for myself which corner to walk to and when to jump briefly. And that's how it became ingrained. I've sometimes done it for so long that I started sweating. Like 2 hours in a row…

I am from Germany, 33 y/o and I am daydreaming since i am 6 years old, like quiet 7 hours a day. My daydreams involve criminal acts, sexual acts, but all above, they revolve around recognition, being in love, and loyalty. The combination of the urge to get high on life while simultaneously feeling love and loyalty always reminded me of the movie "Suicide Squad". In real life, I feel dead. I'm either seeking high sensation situations or have completely isolated myself for weeks. In real life, I don't feel anything anymore. I don't trust anyone because I've been let down too many times, and I know this is due to my childhood trauma. I wanted recognition and admiration. That's why at one point, I even thought I was a sociopath, as these thoughts seemed narcissistic and psychopathic to me. But in real life, I didn’t behave that way. It's as if I have a deep longing for intimacy that I can't find in this world. And I've never met anyone who, despite being successful in many aspects of life, has reached the level of loyalty and love that I would consider exemplary. It’s a deep longing for intimacy and connection. Strangely enough, I know I can offer this intimacy, but I can't find anyone in real life who is as deep. A Rabbi ones said, that the opposite of being narcisstic is intimacy, so I new i wasn‘t, but maybe my abuser was. I think meeting that one loyal person in real life would maybe heal me. It’s like a Bonny and Clide thing, which isn't a good goal because their loyality and story ends in a hail of bullets. That's why I retreat into my dream world, where I experience emotional contact and intimacy with other characters, but expecially there is one man saving me, loving me and sometimes i make him jealous, too. I have a deep connection to them, and it drives me to despair that they don't exist in real life. If I lived as I sometimes dream and would put my dreams into reality, I sometimes think I would be in prison, dead, or just extremely successful and full of life. That's why for a long time, I thought I was a psychopath or sociopath. It's the thought: „what the hell is wrong with me“, that has haunted me my whole life. Like there is nothing in reality that can fullfill me. Thank you for your work. I hope i can get help one day.

Been MDD since I was a little girl. I wanted to fix my mothers problems. Now. I want to escape mine. It’s not that severe. It’s only on my down time.

Ever since I was a child I did that

Dr Somer, I apologize again but I forgot to point out that: the 65% of participants who reported a complete sense of agency therefore also had body awareness, correct?

Dr Somer, I forgot to ask: the Embodiment Model of Movement in MD is: MD-->Efferent stimulation from the sensorimotor cortex-->Body movement-->Afferent sensory stimulation to the brain-->Intensified emotions and feelings, and then again MD, it's a circle. So, for those who voluntary use movement to trigger the MD, since the movement precedes the beginning of the MD, the circle would be: Body movement-->Afferent sensory stimulation to the brain-->Intensified emotions and feelings-->MD-->Efferent stimulation from the sensorimotor cortex. Right?

Dr. Somer, if I understand correctly, there are many MD or ID who can consciously decide to initiate a movement (like rocking ecc.) with the specific goal of initiating one's daydream, correct? Thank you

Great subject. Thanks for the video!

Very interesting

I am 17 years old I have been subscribed to you for a while I’m so glad that there’s a doctor who specializes in this I’ve gone through very traumatic things in my life which has formed into of this dissociation/daydreaming.. I walk about 10k to 20k steps everyday in my room because of maladaptive daydreaming.. my daydreaming can be bad depending on how I’m feeling if I’m feeling depressed or insecure I’ll do it for hours on end even forgetting to eat or do anything else.. I’ll be seeing a psychiatrist to hopefully sort this out because my mind has never been silent since the age of 6.

“Realistic goals will never satisfy me” “as long as I am daydreaming I will never be okay” I definitely feel this way about life, there is just no way I can en corporate daydreaming with reality and actually be okay. Daydreaming has always been an escape for me, and I think for many of us who keep trancing in this high-chasing state everyday, it will always make us bored of anything else.

Does anyone else have OCD with maladaptive Daydreaming???

Childhood......... It just seem so UNJUST that a traumatic Childhood can haunt you for so long...... I mean you were a child.None of it was your own fault.

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Your video is very interesting and made me think a lot about my personal story. I'm 20 today and I've been living with MD for 9 years. I don't know if it's possible or not but in November 2015 there was an attack in my country. I remember exactly in minute detail that horrible night (no one I knew near or far was touched, not even me). I remember that 3 days later we held a minute's silence at the swimming pool and I was the only one of 70 people crying. Maybe 1 or 3 months later, I remember starting MD after watching a teen series on TV at my grandparents' house. I immediately went into the bathroom and started dreaming of being in the place of the lead actress, who was a singer. For 2 or 3 years I dreamed of this dream life as a singer. Then my dreams got darker and darker. And that's where I wonder if the November 2015 attack didn't have an impact on me. For the past 6-7 years, my dreams have been linked to the army, saving people from attacks, or imagining myself on trial for these attacks. I've even strongly considered joining the army. But on the other hand, my parents worked a lot and weren't around much during my childhood. So maybe that had an effect on me. I don't know (Sorry if my english is bad I'm not a native speaker 😅l

If u cant escape daydreaming, reduce it every minute less is a progress per day.

Great video, my friend told sent it to me after he and I hada brief, impromptu discussion about our mental/emotional health. He mentioned that he thought he had maladaptive daydreaming and I said "oh I've heard of that! I think I might have it too". I em ever considered he might have it too but it makes sense. We're both 42 now and I increasingly feel terrible about having so many good ideas but wasting so much time just *thinking* about them. Somehow he's managed to at least carve out a career for himself, which is something I never quite managed to do, and yet I know now that even though he undoubtedly has more income that I do, he's still been struggling with this too. I'd love nothing more than to be able to put my vast imagination and creative abilities to good use, but I just can't for the life of me seem to actually *do it*. I'm going to start seeking out some support groups and stuff for this, because it's really impacted my life and continues to do so, especially when it comes to sex, relationships, and career/meaningful work. Getting lost in maladaptive daydreams about those things has very effectively held me back from ever really experiencing them much in real life. I've also got ADHD and perhaps anxiety, so it didn't surprise me when the one doctor mentioned that maladaptive daydreaming is very comorbid with ADHD. I also notice that many of the people interviewed were creative types... Fashion, design, etc. I too am a creative and when I think back, I can see that daydreaming about my grand works has always kept me in the "development" phase of my works and rarely yielded finished work. I really want to start changing that.

Thank you so much.

When I was very young (around the age of four) I watched my mother and father argue (she had cheated with another guy) which lead to me panicking and trying to get in-between them both. Big mistake because I ended up taking a swift punch to the face from my father who felt unbelievably bad after. Although my father hugged me, apologized and I tried to forget about it my subconscious held on to it and that was the beginning of my shadow self. Over the years I would watch my mother snort drugs and get drunk and have parties with rough crowds when I stayed with her. My father got upset and took me back home (he had custody of me). My father was very hyper and couldn't regulate his emotions, he also had a fragile ego and was very condescending. He would continue for years to argue with me, torment me, jump scare me very often, lock me in the dark basement or a dark room, ridicule me, slam me against the wall, make me very uncomfortable, accuse me of things I didn't do, I could go on for awhile. All of this just kept adding to my shadow until it got so big that I had an existential crisis. I started maladaptive daydreaming around six years old and it only got worse with the trauma. Now I'm a 26 year old introvert who struggled in school, graduated at 20, didn't get a diploma, has a poor socioeconomic background, has no car or license, never been employed, never had a relationship, still live with my horrible alcoholic step mom and my father who is now getting dementia with myasthenia gravis and fibromyalgia. I have horrible social anxiety, lots of trauma, maladaptive daydreaming disorder, lack of education because of the MDD, and most likely won't get the help I need. In America the system is flawed and allot of psychologists think this stuff is BS sadly. All I want more than anything in the world is for people to know about this disorder, what causes it and how to heal from it possibly through shadow work as a last resort if not therapy for trauma.