I thought “daydreaming” meant letting your mind or thoughts wander and just kind of staring off into space, or not thinking about anything in particular.
When the topic came up, my sister told me she daydreams nearly every day and even keeps a photo collection of outfits and destinations to use as daydream material.
Until today I never knew that other people were inventing detailed fantasies and essentially directing them in their heads, and now I’m wondering how common it is?
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I thought everyone did this
I think both are forms of daydreaming? A daydream is just a series of thoughts that distract you, doesn’t mention how elaborate it needs to be.
I have elaborate stories, plots of fiction, imaginary conversations… it goes on in my head all the time!
Lots when I was a kid. Less as I got older, but I’m in my 50s and still do it. Isually happens when I can’t sleep or I go hiking without my earbuds.
I think people don’t experience it as much now because we are always getting stimulus from phones, tv, etc.
Been building elaborate fantasy stories in my head for my entire life. It’s why I become a comic artist as an adult. Somewhere to stick all the ideas!
Some people daydream outfits, I daydream revenge arcs. Everyone copes differently.
I have an inner monologue, but that’s as close as it gets for me. I remember a couple of years ago I learned I have aphantasia, and I wonder if that has something to do with why I don’t daydream like everyone else does.
Maladaptively daydreaming is part of my ADHD with a sprinkle of autism. I don’t suspect everyone does it to the extent I do, but it’s very normal for me.
I daydream all the time and my inner monologue is very busy. I’m glad to know there’s others out there like your sister because most people around me are like you!
OP – do you see pictures in your mind when you think of things?
I daydream stories, scenarios, full conversations.
I find myself in all kinds of Walter Mitty scenarios in my head without meaning to be.
I daydream in 3 act structure
Literally constantly I do this
Do you really not daydream about anything? I even daydream about my evening plans, just to plan it out lol
Wait, there are people who don’t daydream by inventing elaborate scenarios in their heads?
I have a Homestead in my head. Me and my husband live in the late 1800’s and we have been given a plot of land to start a town on. He’s an inventor and I’m a homesteader. Just to show you how elaborate it can be:
I go through my day feeding the chickens, gathering eggs, milking, tending a field, putting on a soup, mending some socks, helping my husband with his invention. He invented running, hot, water for our cabin (and i can explain how it works), The animals are never sick and we have a reliable husbandry agreement with two nearby towns. We took a two year trip by caravan then Steamboat to South America and brought home some new exotic animals: Alpacas. I’ve also been to Asia and brought back this new thing called Nail Varnish but it didn’t quite catch on. People we know IRL have also made an appearance. Like his two best friends are a sheriff and deputy sometimes. Even though there is no crime on the homestead.
I often go to the homestead when I am trying to go to sleep and my thoughts are racing. Sometimes i just like thinking of things my husband could invent.
Between daydreaming, random music playing in my head, anxious overthinking, and internal dialogue, my head is almost never quiet. I get rare moments like maybe once every few months where all goes quiet for a second and it’s such a strange sensation. It startles me so much every time it happens
Hold on. There was that person in class who you really really liked and you never imagined holding their hand?
That’s not elaborate, not a movie plot, but it still counts as daydreaming.
I’ve done this constantly since I was a kid. Sometimes, I have the patience to turn them into fan fics.
I have been building this same elaborate movie in my head since I was like 6 years old. It just keeps growing an evolving and it has grown up alongside me. I’ve got like notebooks and notebooks of written content for it as well as sketchbooks. It blows my mind to hear that people don’t do create movies in their heads.
I also love imagining my favorite characters singing the music I listen to.
I’ve heard there’s people who visually imagine things in their minds and people who don’t. Also with the people who have an internal voice and those who don’t.
I am a person that doesn’t see visually in my mind, it’s just dark with concepts of what I’m imagining but no real picture. I also have a thinking voice.
ETA daydreaming to me is spacing out and thinking about scenarios
Yeah sometimes it goes on for like a half hour
I made it half way through your post and was already thinking about a show i watched last night….
all the time. it’s the egos way of flexing itself and you need to be cautious of the grandiose feelings it gives you
For probably the last 8 months whenever I walk my dog I continue this story of me, if I was a dragon….
Yes, but usually I do this to make myself fall asleep.
Yeah, I have story scenes that I want to write later play in my head before I go to sleep. It helps me sleep and sometimes helps with uncomfortable situations like the dentist.
I used to do this when I was younger, now I have succumbed to thinking only what is more probably right in my head.
Wow, your sisters daydreams could rival Hollywood scripts
Until reading this thread, I had no idea that kind of elaborate narrative fantasizing was something that takes up any significant fraction of an adult’s waking life.
When I daydream, it’s more like imagining different ways I might build a shed for my garden, or how I might put vertical blinds on the front windows, not some sort of elaborate fictional narrative. That kind of narrative fantasy storytelling was certainly part of my childhood play, which included drawing and telling stories with pictures and playing with toys and playing pretend, but it has never been something I do as a purely mental act.
For context, I’m an adult male in my 50s, and pretty neuro-typical, as far as I’ve always assumed.
I find it’s amazing to help fall asleep. Banish the day’s worries and replace them with an epic adventure trying to survive in a post apocalyptic wasteland.
I have multiple well established, highly detailed stories and scenarios. I’ve even been told some would make good books.
I also discovered in my middle age that I have ADHD and this is often labeled as a symptom “maladaptive daydreaming”. Personally I think that’s a bit insulting but hey ho, off to my daydream worlds I go!
I have daydreamed the rise and fall of fantastic empires, escapes across the country from the living dead, and adventures in the depths of space with a blue skinned alien babe co-pilot. And that was just this afternoon.
I recommend the song “Rich Fantasy Lives” by Tom Smith as a way to understand this mindset, the Vixy and Tony version is my favorite
I used to do this at school because I was so bored. A lot of my imaginary dramas involved characters from soap operas.
When I read about this for the first time, it was like a light bulb moment: I realized I’m not the only person who does that! Some of my scenarios do end up in stories I write.
Almost every line I have been on in a bank is either me robbing the place or it being robbed and I and fight off the team of robbers with just the pens chained to the desks until the teller calls next, then I make my deposit and continue about my day
I dive into my ‘stories’ daily. Perfect for disassociating
It can be exhausting sometimes.
This is my default daydreaming. I have a few scripts and scenarios that I play out.
I definitely had those elaborate daydreams when I was younger. Now at 40, all the light and creativity have been stomped out of me, and I just crave silence in my brain.
I used to fall asleep every night with an elaborate and exotic fantasy running. I love looking up beautiful places on the Internet and looking at them and learning about them a little bit so that I can incorporate them into my bedtime stories.
I’m now taking a medicine for my mental illness, and I no longer have a mind eye. I can’t imagine anymore, but at least I don’t want to kill myself. 😆
I think it depends a lot on how you were stimulated as a child and if (or not) you were encouraged to explore and imagine and create and invent and etc.
I know for me (as a child).. I was a voracious reader. I would read everything I could get my hands on from westerns to sci-fi to history books to encyclopedia sets to comic books and newspapers and magazines .. it was nonstop. I remember one time my parents stopping to talk to some old friends and when I went down the hallway to find the bathroom I accidently walked into a bedroom-storage room that had a wall full of old paperback books and I just plucked one out and started reading it (I remember the dude just told me to keep it and take it with me)
As a grown adult,. I also have a technical job (IT).. where troubleshooting problems often forces me to keep an open mind and to imagine ways a certain system could break or change behavior,. so “imagining how something might work differently” (especially outside my preexisting biases of how I believe it’s supposed to work) .. is something I do every day in my job.
So.. daydream imagining fantasy scenarios of different things I wish I could do in life. is not much of a stretch from that.
You never imagined what your life would look like if you won the lottery ? Or grew up in Europe instead of wherever ?
I do both, honestly.
I like re-writing books in my head to make myself a character lol.
But there’s also times when I’m pretty sure any telepath in the area is just getting that radio-static sound from me while i stare at a wall.
It’s a curse. Don’t start if you never have.
For me, it’s always an oompah band.
What the heck do you do all day
I always have. My imagination is very entertaining. I write for a living so anything that helps my brain stretch is good.
There’s only so many cost-free, fun, legal ways to make it through adult life and the mind can be a playground that never closes.
Ever hear of Walter Mitty?
Fictional character written by James Thurber.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and My Life and Welcome to it.
Character had a RICH fantasy life. Written in the 1940’s, but on TV/Film a few times over the decades.
I knew about Walter Mitty as a kid…and it SPOKE to me. Wow. Yes. I had a rich fantasy life starting at about age 5 as I remember. Got more vivid as I got older.
How it came out:
As a kid I hated being a kid. Grew up in an abusive home. Yes, I daydreamed of plotting murder, but knowing Columbo would be on my ass, I knew I’d never go through with it. I was highly imaginative.
I also fantisized being an adult to the point I would scan the newspaper classifieds for jobs (I would “try on” jobs like people try on clothes), then imagine a salary, then scan the classifieds for a one room or studio apartment I could afford, then consider how I would like the layout of my apartment, furniture, decorations. I fantasized how I would live my life.
Then I really got into reading house plans and architecture. I would draw up fantasy floorplans. Example: A full bathroom just for dogs! With a floor toilet they could be trained to use (flush automatically when stepping off) with a spa-like bath for everything from muddy paws to full shower/baths they would be comfortable in, with a nook for toys, leashes, towels, etc. Ha!
Yeah. Walter Mitty.
I think it’s called maladaptive daydreaming? Unless that’s referring to something else.
r/maladaptivedayreaming
I’m imagining a manga I’m in the (slow!) process of making which will eventually (hopefully) turn into an anime.
When I daydream it’s all random thoughts interrupting the next. If I’m actually trying to envision a cohesive and linear situation it’s me sitting there and consciously putting in the work to stay on track. One is daydreaming the other is fantasising.
Look up aphantasia – some people can’t really envision things in their minds eye. And it’s hard to explain daydreaming to non-daydreamers and vice versa.
Personally I am a frequent daydreamer
Dnd is essentially organized daydreaming.
This reminds me of when I found out some people can’t picture things in their head
Often when waiting I will put my phone away and just daydream. I can go pretty far away in my mind, and it’s relaxing.
Where do you think novels came from?
I’ve always been confused by this because I just can’t do this. I can in a sense if I’m bored but it’s more like imagining a simple verbal/textual storyline. It’s also just not engaging to me like I can’t get carried away daydreaming. I only do it if there’s literally nothing else to do and I never get really invested
Check out r/aphantasia
100%. I have Maladaptive Daydreaming though, so I do it in exess.
I assumed everyone did this, I also like to learn subjects related to my daydreams to make them more accurate
I do this all the damn time. Daily. I can full conversations in my head between me and other people in random situations, like at a store or going through a tax audit. My brain doesn’t like being quiet.
Conversely, I’ve never had the experience of not thinking about anything in particular. Some brains are always on and some have a snooze function.
Like you, I didn’t realize that other people thought differently. I don’t see pictures in my head unless I am dreaming or hallucinating. I had no idea that the majority of people walk around with an image. Oddly, my visual spatial is much stronger than my verbal. (I got an iq test when they diagnosed me with adhd). So it doesn’t necessarily correlate to brain strength and weakness.
It’s very common. The only difference between a daydream and a book, TV show, etc, is that the stories are just daydreams that someone knew how to put down on paper
I create entire books / film in my head. They are very elaborate
Wait, people DON’T create elaborate fantasies in their head all the time?!
Wait, it’s mainly MEN who daydream about having to stay behind and fight off pursuing enemies so their loved ones can escape?!
…damnit, I hate being reminded I’m not normal.
Well, at least I’m not aphantasic. Sorry, those who are.
The main reason I got into art was to get those day dreams out of my head for others to see.
Not always. Some daydreams are for monotony. Some daydreams are for adventure.
I do it all the time- don’t know how common it is though. Mine is influenced by neurodivergency.
I used to do this, but this (and pretty much everything else requiring creativity) isn’t something I can do since I had a spat of hypoxia due to acute respiratory failure 3 years ago. I miss it all dearly.
Now I’m questioning how I daydream. I don’t create new fantasy worlds or anything like that. As far as I recall I just think about things that are happening. How I should have responded to someone, remembering that party I have to go to, did I move the laundry into the dryer, to-do list for work and what else do I need to add to it, etc. Just life stuff.
I also have a hard time visualizing stuff sometimes. Like trying to imagine a route somewhere, I’ll try and “step into the map” but occasionally nothing shows up in my head. Just blank.
That’s one of my main coping mechanisms during stressful times. Just unfocus my eyes and mentally drift away into a story or scenario that I’m making up.
Do you have aphantasia
Nope. Never did this.
I pace around my room listening to music and daydreaming about elaborate fictional worlds and stories. Pretty sure it’s maladaptive daydreaming or at least more intense than regular daydreaming, but hey, it gets me moving.
I daydream about how I could have alternatively handled every situation I encounter.
I mean for me it’s both. Depends on where my head is at and what I’m doing
@OP
I have a hunch. And on the off chance that it may help you, I want to write it out.
When I ask you to picture an apple in your mind, what do you see?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3d/Aphantasia_apple_test.png/1024px-Aphantasia_apple_test.png
Theres a thing called aphantasia, it’s basically a difficulty to visualise things very well. It comes as a breadth of intensities, from the complete inability, to simply having trouble doing so.
In some people I spoke to it manifests as only being able to see outlines, in others nothing at all, yet others again can sort of ‘draw’ the lines of things they know logically..
Oftentimes they all have in common that they can’t rotate geometric shapes really well, or can’t imagine what the other side looks like without actually looking at it.
I’m not certain how many people have this, just that a proportion do.
Maybe this info will help you. If it does, please let me know.
You don’t even have old mate parkouring next to the car on a long drive as a passenger? I thought that one was universal
I sometimes opt for him to have a skateboard
So you basically just go into standby mode?
Ive got several different ‘story lines’ that i switch through as I’m feeling that day!
I have maldaptive daydreaming
My worlds are as old as I am doing it since I’m 5
I always daydreamed in classrooms that something bad would happen and I’d be the hero and save everyone and nobody would get hurt. I wanted to be liked so bad.
I do this but it’s more like I’m in first person imagining everything. Like a video game… currently when I go to sleep it’s bounty hunting time in alien universe
Omg you don’t??
Sometimes it is literally the only thing that gets me through the day.
My daydreams include dialog, characters, plot, locations … the whole enchilada.
I had absolutely no idea anyone would define daydreaming as anything but dreaming up things that haven’t happened or won’t happen, but I looked it up and your thing is technically considered daydreaming too. Personally I would call that “wool-gathering” lol.
I do it unconsciously all the time. I’ll imagine a situation playing out that’s so real I can feel everything, it feels like i’m there to the extent people can tell i’m not present in social situations.
I daydream all the time but not necessarily in the form of a movie plot or stage play. I’ve always been astounded at the philosophies of parallel universes; I daydream about what the world would be like if myself and others around me (coworkers, friends, family) would make different choices; from the past to present.
I have an entire world in my head I’ve been building up/reshaping since i was like 12 years old. It’s funny thinking back to how the world was built when I was young compared to now.
Can’t imagine going out to eat, or to the convenience store and NOT imagining an intruder coming in and how I would whoop their ass like Keanu Reeves and get a key to the city
What the hell do you think about when your wife is telling you about her day?
Daydreaming is the only thing that helps me make it through some days
This was once a major part of my life. Not so much these days but it still happens a lot.
Have done complicated stories for decades to help me fall asleep.
My daydreaming is always a sci-fi mythos eons into the future
Several times a day, every day, since I was a little girl!
Never day dreamed. Unless it’s the same thing as running potential scenarios of future outcomes of real situations I know I will find myself in.
I don’t know if I’d call it daydreaming but I do imagine myself in somewhat boring scenarios, lol. Usually explaining some concept to myself in depth like rules to a more complex game (D&D for example) or mechanisms to how some piece of software functions. Maybe how some aspect of the government or court works or advanced sudoku techniques. Even if I don’t completely understand it, doesn’t matter.
Explaining something like this engages my brain enough that it passes the time quickly in a meditative way. Useful for long waits where I can’t zone out on my phone or driving long distances.
Oh man you’ll love The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, the original AND the newer one with Ben Stiller!
I like to create alternate endings for my favorite movies/books
Yeah. And I’m now a published author. I suggest anyone else who does this to pursue writing their thoughts down at the very least.
Anyone do the same thing with music as well? Since I was little almost every song I liked was bc I could create a music video in my head (normally related to my daydreams/ characters). Ofc some music I can’t do this to and it’s just good for dancing/ sounds nice, but for a lot of my favourite songs, they’re my favourite bc of this fantasy/ daydreaming aspect.
100%, almost daily in fact lol
My “daydreaming” is thinking of things I need to do that day, or remembering previous events that have already happened. Sometimes, I will imagine a change to that scenario, or very rarely will I imagine something random, like being a singer. But it will always be prompted by something external, like a news article.
I don’t “picture” anything in my head. It’s more like a narration of a specific interaction or event.
For example, if I am daydreaming of being a singer, I will imagine an interaction with a fan. I don’t picture anything. I just think, “I would want to be as nice to fans as possible, without sacrificing my own wellbeing. At least beyond a certain extent. It is somewhat expected to sacrifice mental health when you’re in the spot light.”
Sometimes it’s not that in-depth. I’ll think of the event, experience the emotion that accompanies it, and- to some degree- narrate it.
My imagination is so vivid it causes issues paying attention when reading. Within a paragraph, I’ve situated myself as whatever character I was just reading, and I’ve pulled myself into the story acting like I would, and next thing I know, it’s been half an hour, and I’ve been staring blankly at the same spot on the page (somehow it’s always the bottom left page about the last paragraph).
I honestly cannot focus for more than a minute or two before my mind wanders into its worlds.
I’m trying to skim comments for other people (like you) that don’t. I got far enough to get bored and haven’t found anyone, so. Stopping to say that I don’t do this and never have. I did realize some time ago that people seem to do this, or talk about it, and I wondered if I should be doing it. So I tried to somehow develop the habit. I can’t do it. It feels stupid. Perfectly happy not doing it.
I just think about things, and my “daydreaming” is more about realistic projections about things I am either nervous or worried about, and how to prevent them, or hopeful for or excited about, and how to bring them about.
Or .. I think about things from the past, fondly or not fondly, etc etc. But no fantastical thinking.
I used to do it to fall asleep, since I was kid up to my 20s. I did it to help stop spiraling with my raging anxiety.
Edit: I’m really glad to find out I’m not the only one who did/does this. It’s not something I ever talked about.
I do this to fall asleep. Could be anything really, yeah clothing, scenarios. Im not sure if having Aspergers contributes to this but I used to be able to watch the whole Austin powers movie in my mind when I was a child.
I daydream a lot! Have had a vivid imagination since childhood. Like there is a monster that I had a nightmare about as a kid. The Boogeyman in name but he looks nothing like what others see him as.
Guys.. there is a difference between regular daydreaming and Malapdative daydreaming. Daydreaming itself isn’t some weird stuff, almost everyone does it.
But daydreaming excessively to the point it’s changing your daily life, it’s making you addicted, it’s making you pace in your room, you do it for hours and hours without stopping etc.. and become a real addiction, that’s when it’s MALADAPTIVE daydreaming.
It’s all I ever do in my head… I have an ever evolving stable of characters, plots, settings, props, exciting scenes, sweeping romances, epic duels, heists, spy stuff, pirate stuff, alien stuff….
What do you do in your head all day? You can’t really be thinking about “nothing.” You must be thinking about something.
When I was in high school or younger I would have whole soap operas going in my head, mostly a fantasy of what I thought my life would be someday with a fantasy husband etc. Now as an old, I just space out. I just think about work and politics and stress 😕 but day dreaming was very real for a long time.
My daydreams often have multiple chapters, various characters, plot lines, conflicts between characters and an inevitable ending. Kinda sad when one ends but I usually move on to another one pretty quickly.
I daydream about elaborate made-up storylines that I started since I was a kid, with a ton of characters and world building. I’m now at series 4. I hope someday I’ll have time to actually turn the stories into a comic.
It’s wild to me that people haven’t. What fills that time in your head instead?
There are two types of people: