Dangers Of Daydreaming: How Dreams Turn Into Real Life Nightmares

While people enjoy daydreaming to escape reality once in a while, some people are seeking professional help to get themselves out of their overly imaginative minds.

CNN reported that a severe psychological concept of daydreaming called maladaptive daydreaming (MD) has been turning people's fantasies into nightmares. These daydreamers said that they are often trapped in the pits of their unrealistic worlds that they could not be able to function normally in real life.

"It makes me get attached to people in an unrealistic way. It's awkward when real people, who are also characters in my daydreams, treat me different than they do in my dream world," confessed Sarah Waite, 28. The former grocery clerk said her longest job only lasted for one year because she was always distracted, nervous or late due to her daydreams.

A study conducted by an international team of researchers in 2016 led by Eli Somer of the University of Haifa in Israel, who first coined the condition, states that there is "a large and growing number of online international forums and websites on which individuals profess to have been secretly suffering from maladaptive daydreaming for years."

The team seeks to include this under-reported condition to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) along with its diagnostic scale that includes yearning, kinesthesia (a sense of movement) and impairment.

"We're only talking about significant impairment if daydreaming means staying in your room isolated, engaging in your fantasy life, and that is your life," Somer said.

However, clinical psychologist Peter Kinderman from the University of Liverpool argued that MD does not have to be included to the DSM since "daydreaming is a pretty common phenomenon" that does not need a diagnosis.

"The best way to tackle these problems is to talk with a professional such as a psychologist," Kinderman said. "They can help people deal with the intrusive thoughts. I would not create a new category of mental disorder for daydreams."

While wandering minds affect some people negatively, Psychologies reported that daydreaming actually makes people creative, reveals a person's innermost hopes and desires, prepares people for future tasks and is essential to coping with life.