Maladaptive daydreaming is the preoccupation with an imagined life, which causes significant distress because of the personal and interpersonal problems it creates. It's used to cope with loneliness, stress, sadness, and anger. It can entail visions of unlimited success and an admiration undiluted by criticism or a love that negates the horrors of childhood neglect, where each need is anticipated and gleefully met. Those who engage in fantasizing of this type often feel entitled to their imagined lives; sometimes due to a perceived innate specialness and, at other times, due to a life carved out of trauma.

Limerence, obsessing over whether the object of your affection reciprocates your feelings for them, is often bidirectionally related to this extreme form of fantasy, meaning both feed one another. The object, in this respect, is idealized; flaws are either overlooked or framed in a more positive light. Aggression is recast as assertiveness. Physical flaws are recast as unique. Entitlement is recast as being ahead of one's time. Grandiosity is recast as reality. Lloyd Alexander wrote, "Fantasy is a way of understanding reality." Yet, the maladaptive daydreamer creates their reality based on their fancy, skewing the........

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