Why you feel safer imagining than in reality (maladaptive daydreaming) | avoidance, escapism

Why does imagining life feel safer than actually living it?

In Snack Size Deep Dive 5, we explore maladaptive daydreaming: the habit of retreating into imagined scenarios, worst-case outcomes, or fantasy worlds as a way to cope with discomfort, anxiety, or trauma.

If real life feels unsafe, overwhelming, or unpredictable, your mind may have learned to escape inward. While imagination can feel protective, relying on it too heavily can quietly keep you stuck, disconnected, and avoiding growth.

If you struggle with:

• Avoidance and escapism
• Living in your head instead of the present
• Social anxiety or fear of embarrassment
• Feeling safer imagining life than participating in it
• Wanting to heal but feeling stuck

This episode is for you.

Transcript

You spend more time living in your head than in your real life because your mind is the safest place that you've got. 

Hello everyone. Welcome back to your regularly scheduled self-reflection. I am Tash, and this is things we say in therapy at Snack Size, deep dives. Episode six, I think this is just a little snackable deep dive into a mental health topic to aid self-reflection and

self-compassion.

So today's snackable topic is why you feel safer imagining scenarios than engaging in your real life. This is also called maladaptive daydreaming.

It is so common to retreat into your imagination as a coping mechanism to feel safe 

daydreams worst case [00:01:00] scenarios, fantasies. Especially when real life feels too hard or unsafe.

In my episodes, I always talk about topics that I have personal experience in. This is because I am a firm believer that you can't truly understand a mental health struggle unless you've been through it yourself.

This one was my life for a very long time.

So in this episode, we will break down what maladaptive daydreaming means psychologically. We are gonna talk about why it happens

and how facing this uncomfortable truth can help you live more fully.

So stay until the end for some practical tips and self-reflective questions on how to move past maladaptive daydreaming.

So this is one of those things we say in therapy that people don't wanna hear but need to. This is uncomfortable on purpose, so let's call it like it is.

So let's start with why We escape into our heads,

our brains can form coping mechanisms to deal with pain and trauma [00:02:00] of retreating into our own heads because reality feels too unpredictable, too unsafe, it's too painful or overwhelming for you to deal with, and so you retreat into your mind because that is an environment that you can control.

In your mind, you control every outcome. There's no judgment, there's no surprises, and there's no risk of really being hurt.

It feels safe from harm, but it comes with a lot of repressed anger, a lot of resentment.

And potentially feelings of failure because when you are forced to go back into your real life, you realize you are not actually living the life that you want to be living

or working towards it at all.

When you are maladaptive daydreaming, you're just looking forward to the next time where you can sit by yourself and retreat into your own world again.

I remember a life where I would spend hours alone. Anytime I had spare time from school, I would sit with my headphones on music on full blast. [00:03:00] Scrolling through PRI Pinterest, just imagining a happier place. because life felt so unsafe, I had nowhere to go, but inside my head.

Using your imagination as a coping mechanism, it might feel safer initially.

And it is the easier option right now to avoid the discomfort of facing your fears,

but it will lead to an unhappy life.

Imagination provides temporary relief.

It's amazing for the creative mind, but it can keep you stuck.

It helps you to avoid real growth or change in your life. It fuels anxiety by focusing on worst case scenarios.

And it creates a false sense of progress

because it feels like preparation without any real action.

So let me further define what maladaptive daydreaming is.

It's engaging in vivid fantasy

to replace your real life.

It's daydreaming to the point of self-sabotage and it creates dysfunction in your real life because it stops you from being able to perform your daily tasks.

[00:04:00] Maladaptive daydreaming. It is not recognized as a formal psychological diagnosis, but it is a symptom of other diagnoses,

and relying on maladaptive daydreaming can worsen your mental health.

My entire life, I've been imagining case scenarios before social events. Imagining every embarrassing thing that could possibly happen to me. Every terrible outcome. And a lot of the times it's actually just stopped me from going because the anxiety of it felt too real because I was engaging in such vivid case scenarios in my imagination, and it was running wild.

Our minds create our reality.

Your mindset and your outlook on life. It controls your truth. It controls your reality,

so your real life might feel unsafe, and therefore you engage in maladaptive daydreaming because life feels unpredictable. It feels vulnerable.

It is full of failure and judgment and difficult [00:05:00] emotions and general discomfort, not just you. Everyone experiences this. Everyone experiences failure. Everyone experiences tough emotions that feel unbearable at times. The key is in how you deal with it. The people who look like they have it all together They just know how to deal with it in a way that isn't self-destructive. You can't control your environment and therefore you retreat into your mind.

Having these deeply uncomfortable

emotions, scenarios, things happening to you in your real life. It is so necessary for growth. It's necessary for life lessons and becoming who you need to be. And ironically, feeling discomfort is necessary for a happy life.

You can't have true happiness without fully experiencing the discomfort that comes with life. It's just a fact.

However many people have experienced trauma or pain in their lives that has

trained their brain to find a different way to feel safe.

This becomes maladaptive daydreaming.

[00:06:00] Especially like in my case 10 years ago.

If you don't have anywhere in your real life that feels truly safe, you retreat into your mind.

The brutal truth is that if your mind feels safer than your real life, there is something wrong in your environment.

The mindset is it's signaling that

your environment doesn't feel safe to you.

You shouldn't ignore this. Ignoring that is denying your pain. It's denying the discomfort of the reality

and denying your pain just leads to more pain.

This is not to say that engaging in these behaviors is.

shameful or embarrassing or bad. It's bad in the long term, but we all develop some sort of coping mechanism throughout our life.

If this is yours, that's okay.

But it needs to be acknowledged in order for you to move past it in order for you to lead a fuller life.

So let's get onto how you actually start choosing reality over your imagination.

Uh, the first step is to actually find [00:07:00] out what you're avoiding. Is it a fear of rejection? Is it a fear of pain? Is it a fear of failure?

This could be particularly difficult for people who have experienced mental health struggles in the past and healed from it.

I did an episode on this about the difference between a real mental health decline and just feeling normal discomfort

because it can be hard to tell the difference if you've never learnt what normal discomfort feels like. If you've only ever really known your deep mental health struggles. If you feel discomfort after healing from that, it can feel like you're just declining again, when in reality it's just normal, difficult emotions.

So it's worthwhile to be wary of that. I

notice when in your life.

You start to retreat, what emotions are you feeling that make you want to just disconnect and go into your head? That is what you need to target.

You need to accept that discomfort is a part of growth and learn to sit with it. I want to scream this at some people.

Because there is no shortcut. You have to learn to [00:08:00] deal with discomfort.

The next step is to build small real life. Actions to replace the imagined ones.

This could be taking a small risk or saying an uncomfortable truth. It will teach you that experiencing spouts of discomfort in your real life and facing those fears, it's actually not as scary as you think.

And once you get through that initial scariness of learning how to deal with discomfort, it becomes easier and you'll realize that

creating. A happy life in your real life, working towards healing and

learning to deal with the vulnerability and unpredictability of life, it can actually be quite exciting.

Because when you retreat into your head a lot of the time, we all imagine worst case scenarios as well as those fantasy, idealistic, euphoric worlds. But in your real life, the reality is [00:09:00] that a lot of the time, those worst case scenarios don't come true. And beyond the discomfort and dealing with your initial fears, there is a lot of happiness

and gratitude that comes with healing and moving past your struggles.

Something else to do is to practice bringing your focus back to the present. This is to do with mindfulness techniques and all those things. I used to think that mindfulness techniques were really dumb, um, but I just hadn't worked out what was right for me. I love breathing techniques. I find them really grounding.

I think that they bring me back to the present and it helped me focus on my body and bring my focus back to me and what I need in that moment instead of running away. There is a lot of apps and information out there on the internet about mindfulness techniques. Find out what works for you.

It could be things like meditation, yoga. Being creative, seriously, whatever helps you

bring yourself back to [00:10:00] the present.

Retreating and avoiding.

It's impossible to stop and bring yourself out of that habit unless you learn to catch yourself in the act.

For me, when I let my maladaptive daydreaming spiral,

it actually caused my social anxiety to completely deteriorate.

Real social scenarios, felt so intimidating that I would just completely avoid them at all costs.

Because I couldn't bear risking the worst case scenarios that I was thinking of coming true.

And because I was so used to living in that space, in my mind that was completely controlled by me. I couldn't bear going into such an uncontrollable environment. Because I was fearing being embarrassed, things being awkward, things like that, and it just completely controlled my life.

I want to remind you as well that this doesn't mean that you can't spend time in your imagination.

I always imagine scenarios to fall asleep and it helps me sleep and that's healthy. What I'm talking about here [00:11:00] is when daydreaming becomes a mechanism you use to retreat from your real life, it starts to affect your daily functioning.

It is not about eliminating your imagination completely, it's just about learning how to not let it control you.

Growth requires risk, and it requires vulnerability in real life.

It is so important that you start to teach yourself to deal with reality more often, even if maladaptive daydreaming isn't your poison.

Hiding away from certain emotions, hiding away from

discomfort, whatever you do in order to avoid it.

It is not going to be healthy in the long term. You have to learn to sit with it.

Please share this episode with somebody who might be struggling with this, might be struggling with avoiding their discomfort.

If this resonated with you, please give this a like and follow for more like this.

I really hope that I can make some more relatable content. I

please [00:12:00] also comment your experiences. If you feel comfortable, I would love to

hear about them, how you've moved through this or let me know any questions you might have. I will see you on Monday for next week's long episode. Thank you so much for listening.

If this felt uncomfortable, that means something clicked. Sit with it. I'll see you again. Bye.