'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? 

Awake, perchance to dream 

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........

© BBC