Syndrome zoning out
Daydreaming can help solve problems, trigger creativity, and inspire great works of art and science. When it becomes compulsive, however, the consequences can be dire.When I was a small child, I would pace around in a circle shaking a string for hours at a time, mentally spinning intricate alternative plots for my favorite television shows. Usually I would be the star—the imaginary movie child actress in KKHH , for example. "Around the age of eight or nine, I used to put makeup and dress my elder sisters and on the front varendah there was window of the room where I used to act and talk to myself, my mom and sisters used to tell me again and again 'You're doing this in front of the varendah and the neighbors are looking at you. You just can't do it anymore,'" I recall.
So I retreated to my bedroom, reveling in her elaborate reveries alone. As I grew older, the television shows changed every now and then first the show "Victorious" and then "cat and sam" —but my intense need to immerse myself in my imaginary world did not.
"There were periods in my life when daydreaming just took over everything," I recalls. "I was not in control." I would retreat into fantasy "any waking moment when I could get away with it. It was the first thing I wanted to do when I woke up in the morning. When I woke up in the night to go to the bathroom, it would be bad if I got caught up in a story because then I couldn't go back to sleep." By the time I was 17, I was exhausted. "I loved the daydreams, but I just felt it was consuming my real life. I went to school with friends and then go their home or they used to come mine, but I just couldn't help myself. There was nothing else that I wanted to do as much as daydreaming.
Convinced that I was crazy, I consulted six different therapists, none of whom could find anything wrong with me. The seventh prescribed Prozac, which had no effect. Eventually I began taking another antidepressant, Luvox, which, like Prozac, is also a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor but is usually prescribed for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Gradually she brought I brought my daydreaming under control. Now age 25, I am persuing masters in engineering , still nervously guarding my secret world.
The scientific study of people such as me, is helping researchers better understand the role of daydreaming in normal consciousness—and what can happen when this process becomes unhealthy. For most of us, daydreaming is a virtual world where we can rehearse the future, explore fearful scenarios or imagine new adventures without risk. It can help us devise creative solutions to problems or prompt us, while immersed in one task, with reminders of other important goals.
For others, however, the draw of an alternative reality borders on addiction, choking off other aspects of everyday life, including relationships and work. Starring as idealized versions of themselves—as royalty, raconteurs and saviors in a complex, ever changing cast of characters—addictive daydreamers may feel enhanced confidence and validation. Their fantasies may be followed by feelings of dread and shame, and they may compare the habit to a drug or describe an experience akin to drowning in honey.
The recent discovery of a network in the brain dedicated to autobiographical mental imagery is helping researchers understand the multiple purposes that daydreaming serves in our lives. They have dubbed this web of neurons "the default network" because when we are not absorbed in more focused tasks, the network fires up. The default network appears to be essential to generating our sense of self, suggesting that daydreaming plays a crucial role in who we are and how we integrate the outside world into our inner lives. Cognitive psychologists are now also examining how brain disease may impair our ability to meander mentally and what the consequences are when we just spend too much time, well, out to lunch.
Most people spend between 30 and 47 percent of their waking hours spacing out, drifting off, lost in thought, woolgathering, in a brown study or building castles in the air. We may not even be aware that we are daydreaming. We have all had the experience of "reading" a book yet absorbing nothing—moving our eyes over the words on a page as our attention wanders and the text turns into gibberish. "People oftentimes don't realize that they're daydreaming while they're daydreaming; they lack what I call 'meta-awareness,' consciousness of what is currently going on in their mind," Schooler says. Aimless rambling across the moors of our imaginings may allow us to stumble on ideas and associations that we may never find if we strive to seek them.
"Is daydreaming a distraction from work, or work a distraction from daydreaming?"