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When one is bothered by issues in their personal life, they can start indulging in imaginary fantasies as a coping mechanism. This is especially common with people with conditions like ADHD, OCD, anxiety and depression. An extreme case of day dreaming is regarded as Maladaptive Dreaming.
Maladaptive Dreaming is a psychological condition characterized by excessive indulgence in day dreaming that usually interferes with an individual’s daily life. Unlike normal day dreaming, which is typically brief and infrequent, it involves prolonged and immersive fantasies that can consume several hours each day. Individuals with this condition often experience vivid, detailed, and complex day dreams whose content often involves elaborate storylines, with the individual often imagining themselves as a character within these fantasies.
I have personally suffered from this issue quite a lot for most of my life. I was often frustrated with life events when I was a child and used to day dream to create my imaginary world where things would happen according to my desires. It was my way of escaping the problems I had in the real world. I hated going to school, and didn’t like being around family either. I was totally disengaged with the real world which is why I failed most of my classes and used to have suicidal thoughts. This severely affected by character (gati) and developed a habit of maladaptive dreaming that I have to this day. I tried to find a cure for this in the past only to dismally fail.
A statement from Cleveland Clinic in the #1 reference below regarding this issue is: “Maladaptive Daydreaming is a mental health issue. Because of that, there is no way to prevent it or reduce the risk of developing it.” How disappointing!
Having attempted to find a cure for this mental disease and failed multiple times, with a glimmer of hope that things will get better someday, I thought I have no choice but to surrender to it, until now! I think Buddha dhamma can provide the permanent cure for this issue that western psychology can’t.
Dhamma perspective:
To understand the Dhamma perspective on this issue, we need to understand our mental volitions i.e. the ways of thinking. The mano sankhara acts like the subconscious part of our mind which generates various thoughts (cittas and associated cetasikas) according to an individual’s character quality (gati). One does not have direct control over these thoughts but they have control over the thoughts that can be generated consciously. When one starts day dreaming, they are generating conscious thoughts via vaci sankhara. Since this involves attachment to different thought objects (as people with this issue are often emotionally engaged with their day dreams), they are generating thoughts with abhisankhara which can impact their gati. This will further impact their mano sankhara which will start generating (subconscious) thoughts based on the new habit (gati). Various stimuli, such as music, movies, books or real-life events (as mentioned above) can trigger this issue. This causes mano sankhara to generate thoughts that involve the memories of the emotionally intense and comforting day dreams. As a result, an untrained mind will automatically react to those thoughts by further feeding more similar thoughts that perpetuate this issue and intensify their day dreaming habit. This makes it clear that one gets stuck in a loop which is why it feels like this issue does not have a cure.
To add to the explanation above (from Abhidhamma analysis), the mind is directed to a thought object (ārammana) that can come through any of the six sensory inputs. There are various stimuli that can incentivize an individual to start day dreaming. The awareness of a thought object i.e. vipāka viññāna can turn into kamma viññāna when one develops an expectation. In the case of a maladaptive dreamer, as an example they may become aware of a music via hearing and start fantasizing about being a musical star. This newly formed kamma viññāna can stay for a while and will even grow if one keeps thinking or doing things related to that expectation (via vaci and kaya sankhara). The memory of such expectation can come back as vipāka viññāna. There are many such vipāka viññāna lurking in the background to bear their fruits. They will ripen when the right conditions are there. We could conveniently call this “the subconscious”. And of course, like mentioned above, the untrained mind will further generate more kamma viññāna based on those vipāka viññāna and this cycle will continue.
Cure for this issue:
From the above analysis, it is clear that while we don’t have direct control over the thoughts generated by the subconscious, we have control over the way we respond to them. Thus, through mindfulness we can avoid being reactive towards those thoughts which will eventually remove our tendency of attaching to them. The different viññāna waiting in the background to bring their fruit are not permanent. When we stop feeding them with suitable conditions, they will gradually fade away. The only way of accomplishing this is to significantly change our habits (gati). This is at the heart of the Ānāpānasati/Satipaṭṭhāna meditations. To summarize this, when an appropriate stimuli triggers one’s mano sankhara to generate thoughts involving the deceptively captivating memories of day dreams, one can use their conscious ability to mindfully avoid reacting to them. The goal is to avoid being deceived and ensnared by those thoughts. This will automatically lower the associated craving and reduce the gati to attach to such sensory inputs over time. Eventually, there will be no such gati left and hence, the constant cycle of maladaptive daydreaming will be broken. This will obviously require time and patience, but it is achievable with consistent effort and mindfulness.
References:
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/23336-maladaptive-daydreaming
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Good analysis. Thank you!
1 user thanked author for this post.
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I missed an important aspect of the cure. Removing the negative gati pertaining to maladaptive dreaming becomes easier when one ponders its anicca nature. Day dreams in this context are like cheap thrills that provide temporary (mind-made) pleasure. Becoming addicted to them isn’t much different from being addicted to drugs and alcohol. It will have negative consequences in the current life and of course in the samsara itself. So it is quite obvious that such habit can’t be maintained to one’s satisfaction in the long run.
The ultimate happiness can be experienced when our minds are no longer attached to the cheap temporary thrills.
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