deep daydreams

[1lovecoffee+stars74]

Sometimes i daydream so strongly that i space out for ages. I could be making tea or anything and i just start daydreaming. I can stand there for an hour even. Ive done nothing else the water is cool. I normally think of something very emotive, oftento do with the past. (No clear triggers) Sometimes I realise during or as its starting and really concentrate on becoming present. Sometimes, in honesty im content seeing the daydream through.

I think it's natural to daydream, but not be completely lost in a daydream for so long. I believe that I am dissociating and would like to be able to bring myself out of it.

Im normally on my own when it happens, but it has happened at work before. I have had someone saying my name several times before i wake up. Its embarrassing.

It gets in the way of me being productive. Its so hard when i have stuff to do.

Any advice?

[Joon]

I relate to this a lot, excessive daydreaming is and was a main coping mechanism for me. I would even prefer daydreaming over meeting with friends at times, and it has definetly affected my ability to get things done in the past. I can only say that changing my environment helped me, as there was no need for it, at least not to that degree, once i was safer.
I don't really know what else could help, maybe strategies similar to regular grounding tools whenever the daydreaming is inconvinient or unhelpful?

[Kizzie]

Dissociation is really common for us and takes work to not drop into it because we use so often, at least I did. 

One book I can recommend is "Coping with Trauma-related Dissociation" by Boon, Steele and van der Hart.  It has lots of info and exercises and can be used with a therapist or on your own.  Link = https://www.amazon.ca/Coping-Trauma-related-Dissociation-Training-Therapists/dp/039370646X.

There may be other material out now but this is a tried and true resource.

[Joon]

Thank you, Kizzie! I was considering getting this book, Its good to know other people found it helpful!

[Papa Coco]

My daydreaming as a serious issue began when I was 10, in the 5th grade. I jokingly tell people today that I'd be a lot smarter today if K-12 classrooms didn't have windows in them. I stared out the windows, imagining myself outside, away from the abuse.  I was badly abused in Catholic school from first through eighth grade. At home I received no support. No one believed a word I said about what was being done to me at school. Dissociating into the land of my daydreaming was the only escape route I had out of my school and family. As a result, my grades tanked to straight Ds and I didn't learn hardly anything at all. If the school had not been a for-profit Catholic school, the incompetent teachers (most of them were nuns or bored housewives who had no teaching experience of any kind) would probably have held me back. But knowing parents will get angry and stop paying tuition, meant they just gave me barely passing grades to keep the tuition money coming.

The daydreaming was a constant daily life for me until I turned about 50 years of age when I walked away from my family, and then wrote out the story of my life in a fictional novel series. They often say that the arts are very important to C-PTSD sufferers. Writing, music, painting, photography...anything that gives us the voice we didn't have when we were children.  Something about me writing out a fictional story that mirrored my real life, and then publishing it for the whole world to see, pulled me out of my daydreaming. I was finally heard!!!!  I told every secret!  My family's abuse was coercive control. They looked like the perfect American family, so the abuse I took was secret and I myself didn't understand it. I thought I deserved to be ignored and laughed at and told to be quiet. They treated everything I said as if it were a lie. I had no voice in reality. I only had a voice in my daydreams. So I lived in my daydreams. But once I published I was HEARD!  I had a voice. I'm 62 now and I can't daydream anymore. I honestly believe that telling the world the truth about what I went through, and "tattling" on my family and church, somehow satisfied the need I once had to be somewhere else, or someone else.

Overall, it's great to be able to stay in reality most of the time now, but I have to admit, there are times when I feel like daydreaming was a superpower and I've lost that power. I now have to make myself distract from my problems with projects, puzzles or movies, because I can't just use my former superpower to fade into a dream world at will anymore. In summary, I'm glad I've been able to stay in the real world now, but sometimes, for just a few minutes, I wish I could go back and live there in my imagination again for a while. But...My brain seems to think I'm done with daydreaming, so now I'm learning how to distract appropriately like non-trauma people do.  I still struggle with anxiety, depression and a difficult time forgiving myself for being who I am, but most all day long now I'm in the land of the living.

If I could go back to school now, I'd probably get muuuuuuuch better grades.

[jimrich]

HI... In therapy, regaining my self-respect/worth and dignity helped to reduce the number of times and ways that I habitually went into daydreaming as an escape from unhappy or dangerous situations. Learning about and staying in "the now" along with the affirmation: I'm OK helps me stay "present" but it's still an ongoing struggle not to drift off into a safe & happy fantasy.  Self-worth helps me avoid embarrassments when others CATCH me spacing out.