Maladaptive daydreaming (MD) is defined as a compulsive cycle of dissociative absorption in mental fantasy that results in distress and impaired functioning. MD can occupy a majority of waking hours for some individuals, reported as high as 57 percent versus an approximate 16 percent average for typical daydreaming. MD shares features with obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, anxiety, and the fantasy-prone personality, and it leads to lost time, distress, and impaired daily functioning. Normal daydreaming can support creativity and pleasant escape when kept within healthy limits, but becomes harmful when it is compulsive and dissociative.
Most people engage, especially when we are idle, in the seemingly harmless reverie of daydreaming. Letting your mind escape from the humdrum of your daily existence to a more pleasant set of circumstances seems not only harmless but, at times, necessary. Perhaps you're stuck in a long checkout line after stocking up at your favorite big box store. You've checked all your texts; your phone provides no relief.
defining MD as "a compulsive cycle of dissociative absorption in mental fantasy that results in distress and impaired functioning" (p. 1). Rather than just daydream when people are bored, those who engage in MD may spend as much as 57 percent of their waking hours engaged in daydreams compared with most people, who daydream an average of perhaps 16 percent, according to previous studies cited by the authors.
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