'A parallel world': The people lost in addictive daydreams

Some people daydream for hours on end, playing out a single storyline for decades – and it can be hugely distressing. Here's how to tell when your daydreaming has gone too far.

When I speak to Colin Ross, a psychiatrist and researcher based in the US, I tell him that I have such vivid and immersive daydreams that I can make myself cry or laugh out loud. I also tell him that I have the power to dip in and out of them as I please, and that I enjoy them. He is impressed with my "athletic gift" and suggests I consider a career in acting. I'm not so sure about that but gladly take the compliment.

What if you can't snap out of this internal cinema? That's the problem for people with a condition called maladaptive daydreaming (sometimes known simply as MD). They spend often more than half of their waking hours creating elaborate and intricately detailed fantasies with narratives and characters in their mind. Ross says that in extreme cases, people can daydream for up to 12 hours a day. Their stories' plotlines can go on for decades at a time. It may sound wonderful and inspiring, but these people are so immersed in their inner world that it can cause huge disruptions to daily life and result in severe distress. 

This is not nearly as rare as it might sound. "It's probably in the ballpark of 2-4% of the adult population," Ross says.

So, how do you know if your daydreaming is becoming a problem? And how can you treat it? 

First of all, daydreaming isn't inherently bad. It's quite the opposite. "If you don't daydream at all, I'd feel sorry for you," says Ross.

Daydreaming is widely regarded as a normal mental activity that almost everyone engages with. Through self-reported questionnaires, researchers estimate that 30-50% of our mental activity while we are awake is spent in thoughts that are not related to what we're doing in that moment.

Not only can daydreaming benefit emotional regulation, empathy and creativity, but it can also relieve boredom and help people to find meaning in their life experiences.

Maladaptive daydreaming, however, can become "completely absorbing," Ross says. "It causes distress and it interferes with your ability to function… but you keep doing it because of the compulsive quality." This is what makes it a maladaptive disorder. When they eventually snap out of a daydreaming episode, maladaptive daydream sufferers tend to experience their fantasies as futile, and a waste of time. Yet the addictive nature of it means that the cycle continues – it is one that is hard to break.

Consider the experience of Kyla Borcherds. She remembers creating "other worlds" in her head from when she was as young as four years old. This intensified later after she moved to a new school and other children made fun of her regional accent. The stories became her "safe place", where "nobody teased me, and people liked me". 

Borcherds' daydreams went on to become a compulsion that would go on for hours at a time. "It was just this really powerful urge, like people say they have an urge to, you know, binge on chocolate, or go on social media," she says. 

This is where a healthy behaviour can become harmful. "The problem arises when the person no longer harnesses the fantasy, and the fantasy begins to harness the person," says Eli Somer, an emeritus clinical psychology professor at the University of Haifa, Israel. He coined the term "maladaptive daydreaming" and has been researching the condition for over two decades.

Maladaptive daydreaming is often enabled and maintained through listening to music, or repetitive physical activity like pacing – around 80% of people incorporate unconscious physical gestures to maintain concentration while immersed in their daydream. For Borcherds, this involved pacing up and down her driveway on her roller-skates or bouncing a ball against a wall for hours at a time. 

Because of the time spent daydreaming, people with maladaptive daydreaming naturally withdraw from social occasions or relationships, and become isolated – which in turn leads to a cycle of shame and regret. 

It was during the early stages of her career that Borcherds' noticed that her daydreaming was beginning to hold her back. "I had no motivation. Why would I put a lot of time and energy into trying to get promoted at work, when I can have that in my imagination right now with no effort, and it's 95% as good as the real thing?" she says. "I was still doing entry-level work when I was in my 40s, because I'd never tried to get promoted." 

It makes sense. "Imagine your favourite TV show, but you're the protagonist. How could you give that up, if your present life is not as exciting?" says Wanda Fischera, a clinical psychologist and the research director at the International Society for Maladaptive Daydreaming. 

If a person has unmet emotional needs, maladaptive daydreaming provides a chance for people to feel as though they are being met. For example, maladaptive daydreamers typically have a strong sense of being present in their daydreams and are often loved or heroic.

Maria, who wanted to withhold her last name, would often daydream that she was on a stage with people looking at her – she was successful and recognised.

This trope might occur because people with MD have a "sense of shame around, 'maybe I'm not good enough as I am, or people don't love me as I am, or I can't show my real self,'" Fischera says. "The fantasies are always full of connections… so it just shows that desperate need for reducing isolation."

Maria confesses to feeling lonely as a child. She would rock back and forth for hours while listening to music to facilitate her daydreaming. "It captures your attention constantly," she says. "It's a kind of a parallel world.” Parents and teachers failed to grasp the nature of her struggle. "It was very disruptive, so I couldn't study, and people would automatically think that I didn't want to study, [or] that I was lazy."

Maria would come up with various storylines and characters, some fictional, some adapted from real people, and fixate on one for a year at a time. Now, she has "enough [stories] for 10 movies", she says. When she finished a daydream, she didn't do anything with the material, like write it down, and was heavily aware of the time wasted.

Like many others, Maria found out about maladaptive daydreaming as an adult and felt a huge relief that she is not alone. "I've grown up with the idea that maybe I was weird," she says. 

Maladaptive daydreaming has been associated with various risk factors that seem to increase its prevalence. For example, some studies have linked MD with childhood trauma such as neglect, emotional abuse and attachment issues – with those individuals using maladaptive daydreaming to avoid painful memories and feelings. 

It may also provide a way to cope with the challenges that arise from neurodiversity. One study of 235 adults with an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis, 43% of them reported experiences of maladaptive daydreaming, and these experiences were closely tied to loneliness, and emotional regulation difficulties.

Other research has shown strong links or similar cognitive features between with both dissociative and compulsive disorders, like ADHD and OCD, depression and anxiety.

Borcherds was diagnosed with depression at 18 years old. "The depression was the problem, and I coped with it by checking out of real life," she says. While in her 40s, she spent a month in a psychiatric unit to receive treatment for her depression and finally felt as though she got the help she needed. It was also a turning point for gaining control back over her daydreams – they returned to being more creative and enjoyable, and she no longer felt the compulsion. 

Maria hasn't been diagnosed with a mental health condition but has a specialised therapist to help her.

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"With ADHD, the overlap is especially important because excessive fantasy can look like inattention from the outside. With OCD, there are shared features such as intrusiveness, compulsivity, and difficulty disengaging," Somer says. 

But "overlap does not mean sameness," he says. "Current evidence indicates that MD cannot be fully reduced to ADHD or OCD. It has a distinct phenomenology [conscious experience] centred on immersive narrative fantasy, dissociative absorption, and emotional investment in an inner world." 

So, is maladaptive daydreaming a coping strategy that helps you deal with real life, or a dissociative disorder that cuts you off from real life and your true identity?

The evidence suggests that it is often both, Somer says. "For many people, maladaptive daydreaming begins as a coping strategy, especially for loneliness, stress, trauma-related distress, or unmet emotional needs. But in a subgroup, it develops into a chronic, compulsive, dissociative pattern of mental functioning," he says.

"I would therefore describe it as a maladaptive coping strategy that, in its clinical form, can become a dissociative disorder in its own right."

It's worth bearing in mind that while maladaptive daydreaming is considered a clinical condition by Somer and his colleagues, it is not yet recognised in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or the International Classification of Diseases. There aren't yet large-sample studies on case numbers of maladaptive daydreaming – but plenty of smaller samples.

This has also prevented the establishment of an evidence-based standard treatment, says Somer.

"Still, the early clinical evidence is encouraging," he says. "Case reports and initial treatment studies suggest that targeted psychotherapy can help, especially when it addresses triggers, compulsive immersion, attentional control, emotion regulation, avoidance, and shame." 

The clinical goal is usually not to eliminate imagination, but to restore choice, flexibility and control so that imaginative ability can serve life rather than replace it, Somer adds. 

Finding a therapist who knows about maladaptive daydreaming and how to tackle it, is seemingly hard to come by. But if you're being consumed by your daydreams, Fischera suggests trying these strategies before considering therapy: 

While it might be an effortful journey to recover from MD, it can be overcome, Fischera says.

Take Maria – who found that she enjoys writing, and jots down stories instead of maladaptive daydreaming.

Borcherds now has a positive relationship with daydreaming, too. She even moderates a Reddit community for people with MD, that has 18,000 weekly visitors and is increasingly attracting more people who suspect they have the condition.

To anyone struggling with MD, "it doesn't have to be forever", Borcherds says. She wants to celebrate the stories in her head, because her characters "believed in me when I didn't believe in myself".

"Having stories in your head is not the problem. Being addicted to those stories is the problem. And that is the distinction that almost everyone on social media misses." 

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