A Plan to Quit Maladaptive Daydreaming

I've read a lot of Maladaptive Daydreaming blogs on the internet, and it seems like most people have a two step recovery plan:

1. Stop themselves from daydreaming from moment to moment
2. Fix the root cause of the daydreaming, usually by forming or developing their relationships with other people

I think this is very valuable because it makes the psychological tangle that is Maladaptive Daydreaming a little bit more manageable. The second step will be what ultimately removes the need to daydream, but the first step is what gives you the room to do so. Daydreaming takes a lot of emotional energy and time that you are going to need at your disposal while you are develop areas of your life that you have not paid a lot of attention to.

Due to the nature of my daydreaming, my steps looked like this:

1. Stop myself from daydreaming from moment to moment
2. Develop my relationships (by paying attention to the people around me and by seeking out people to fill my social need instead of automatically daydreaming)
3. Find meaning from or develop meaning in my own life
4. Do entertaining things

The reason my plan has two extra steps is because I realized that there were actually three reasons I daydreamed: I was lonely, I was bored, and I didn't feel that the things that I was doing were meaningful. 

For example, while washing dishes one morning when everyone was still asleep, I started to pretend that I was an anime character who was guarding a high ranking official's son. Washing dishes became meaningful in that context because it showed how the character was practical and took care of things that needed to be done. Doing the dishes in that context was meaningful. 

When I realized why I was daydreaming that particular scenario, I thought about how my doing the dishes was meaningful. I realized that washing the dishes was meaningful because it meant that when someone wanted to eat later, they wouldn't have to wash dishes first and be stressed about it. Because I was too busy thinking about that, I stopped daydreaming. Then, every time I started to daydream, I could just go back to thinking about how good it was to wash the dishes.

That was a great discovery for me because it meant that I now had a way to avoid daydreams when there was no one else around. Of course, I have other methods, but I find that the ones that fulfill one of my needs had the longest effects. Instead of staving off the daydreams, they remove the cause, at least for a while. 

However, I am aware that other people don't have the exact same experience I do, and that even the first plan might not be applicable. But the framework might still be useful. Basically, both of the above plans melt down to two steps:

1. Stop using the maladaptive coping mechanism on a moment to moment basis. 
2. Figure out why you were using it in the first place, so you can replace that coping mechanism with something else.

The first step will be mostly you figuring out what works for you. Singing? Writing intensely? Calling someone on the phone? The second step will require a bit of introspection, and you might have to write down your daydreams in order to recognize a pattern like I had to do. Either way, Maladaptive Daydreaming is something that can be managed.