Two Decades of Daydreams

Written By Hannah Zello

so oft have I sailed amongst wine-tinged stars

scouring galaxies

conducting binaries

my hours slipping into black holes

the vacuum leaving me breathless, high, and broken

 

all along, searching for the astronomical Arbiter I already had

the love that wrought the heavens and told them to stay put

the wrath that flung fallen angels down amongst asteroids

the majesty that tore apart their holding place from his own supra-celestial palace

 

my king of the stars,

forgive me for not worshipping you

for searching my own confection-crafted blasphemies for meaning

for conjuring counterfeit burning spheres—

flickering,

dying,

drawing every speck of light into their wake—

when even the artificial photons we conjure

belong to you,

shine and spin solely for your glory.

 

—Journal Entry, August 23, 2023

When the inspiration first hit me to write a blog post about maladaptive daydreaming, I wondered how to condense two decades’ worth of content into a few pages. So this is my way of preemptively thanking you for sticking with me through this lengthy exploration of my experience with this disorder. I suppose I’ll start at the beginning—quite literally.

 

A Girl with a CD Player

Words she’d hear made worlds appear

Brought light to the fading black

She’d wish on satellites instead of stars

To her, they were the same

—“Ms. Protagonist,” J. Maya

As a five- or six-year-old kid, I had a room with yellow walls, a bed with a plastic house over the top, and one of those rounded CD boom boxes. So it’s really no surprise that I began to experiment with daydreams set to music: I was armed with a creative mind, a cassette tape of Disney songs, and an innocent desire, like every little girl, to be noticed. My earliest daydreams centered around my favorite fictional characters going on adventures with me in their respective universes. I orchestrated these adventures to soundtracks and acted out the scenes in my room with the door closed—a habit that would follow me all the way into adulthood. I imagined scenarios where I could be heroic, cherished, and admired. 

This wasn’t to compensate for a lack of love in the real world—I had loving family and friends: a supportive social network. I was plugged into activities and co-ops and sports. I just happened to be extremely imaginative. At this age, my daydreaming wasn’t maladaptive—it was simply present. I was also learning to read and stapling together printer pages with colored illustrations to make my first books. So it made sense that my fantasies would extend into the world of my imagination.

In the time leading into my teenage years, however, the scope of the habit would change dramatically.

 

A Teenager with a Fictional Crush

“That’s not healthy,” they said

“To live in your head”

But it hurts a lot less to me

         —“Fictional,” Chloe Rose

An uptick in my daydreaming habits occurred around the age of thirteen, when I developed a fictional crush on a character from a TV show. I won’t say which one; suffice it to say it was animated.

…Yeah.

There were stressors that probably pushed me into more concentrated daydreaming, as every teenager has: private school, extensive after-school sports practices, the push to get good grades. I had a perfectionistic streak that resulted in a lot of self-imposed pressure to perform well. I was in honors classes and often woke up at 4:30 a.m. for cross country practice, not finishing my homework after a second practice until ten or eleven at night.

So what is maladaptive daydreaming, actually?

Think regular daydreaming and healthy amounts of escapism, and multiply that by about ten. Imagine (pun intended) that the fixation on these fantasies and scenarios begins to infringe on all the other facets of your life—your work, your friendships, your rest, your leisure and other hobbies. Imagine an urge—similar to that present in other kinds of addictions—to escape reality, even in the midst of living it.

Conjuring daydreams in the middle of classes, conversations, cross-country courses, and car rides…it was almost nonstop. It could provide relief from any number of stressors, not the least of which was the universal teenage sense of being left out—of not being seen.

Throughout high school, this was my story. I was full-on addicted to these imaginary scenarios. This produced a sense of shame that kept me from confiding in anyone about the nature of my addiction. How much weirder would people think I was, after all? I wasn’t like the kids sneaking alcohol or drugs into their lockers—mine wasn’t a rebellious fixation.

Every Sunday, I tried to surrender this addiction to the Lord. And every Monday, I was spinning around my room with my headphones in (by that time, technology had progressed and I could now carry my songs in my hand). I assumed I simply wasn’t a good enough Christian (what an oxymoron), that I wasn’t committed enough to Christ, wasn’t trying hard enough, wasn’t holy enough…the list goes on.

Recent literature on maladaptive daydreaming disorder has begun to shed light on the symptoms and manifestation of the condition. As The Sleep Foundation explains,

Maladaptive daydreamers may spend 4.5 hours of their day distracted by their daydreams. They may become so absorbed with their inner world that it becomes harder to ground themselves in reality. Due to the all-consuming, immersive nature of their daydreams, people may end up neglecting their relationships and responsibilities in the real world, causing them emotional distress. Unfortunately, despite the strong desire to daydream, people generally feel worse emotionally after doing so.

         ­—“Maladaptive Daydreaming: Symptoms, Diagnosis, and Tips”

This has become so much more prevalent with the advent of new technologies—new methods of escapism—and circumstances like the global pandemic, which isolated and insulated the world socially, creating stressors on stressors that begged for diversions to distract from them.

I graduated high school still hopelessly tied to my daydreaming habit, wishing it hadn’t invaded my life so thoroughly and, it felt, irrevocably.

 

Dorm Room Daydreams

I just looked up dissociation online and found a Wikipedia article that made me burst into tears because it describes me almost perfectly…for the longest time, I thought fantasizing was only me—that not even other writers did that.

—Journal Entry, March 29, 2014 

Sharing a room with another human being made daydreaming by myself trickier. I had to capitalize on times my roommate was out. I had to rip the earbuds out of my ears the moment the lock on the door clicked open and pretend to be staring into the mirror contemplatively (like a true college student with an identity crisis). I had to daydream as I walked to classes, biked to the gym, ran around the indoor track, and fell asleep in my loft bed.

One instance particularly stands out to me—it was autumn, and I was just wrapping up edits on the second novel-length story I’d written on fanfiction.net about these characters. My daydreams had become almost inexorably intertwined with the written stories, so much so that both felt tainted. But I truly did enjoy the writing itself—the community online, the reviews from fans, and the art that some people even drew me on Deviantart. Those parts were, I hoped, redeemable and enjoyable. But anyway, back to this moment in time that sticks with me to this day.

I was walking outside, entering one of the buildings on campus that housed restaurants, study spaces, mail rooms, and other common areas. In my head rolled the ongoing film of scenarios, placed against the backdrop of reality like some twisted precursors to AI. I, lost in the scenario, opened the door to the commons area, stood there, held it open, and turned around to wait for the people behind me. 

You’ve probably already clocked that there was no one behind me.

The shock of that moment—of the non-real bleeding into the real, of my physical body, in a public space, acting out a scenario for the first time, stopped me in my tracks.

Okay, I was already stopped in my tracks, but it baffled me. It grieved me. Though these daydreams didn’t, couldn’t, encompass the sheer number of hours they had in high school, it was painfully apparent that they were still with me, like a shadow that wouldn’t quit sticking to me. I felt trapped. Hopeless.

As the years passed, the maladaptive daydreaming seemed to ebb and flow, but mostly to ebb. I developed stronger social bonds. I built memories. I dated. I got a job. I wrote original works of fiction for class. I imagined other scenarios in healthier, more wholesome ways. I got engaged. I graduated. I got married. I moved a few times. I worked full-time. I had social outings and attention that was tangible, real, authentic. I learned even more how to love myself and how to love others without trying to siphon artificial affirmation from the recesses of my own imagination.

I had a daughter.

She was six months old when I realized, spinning around in my living room with earbuds in, that I did not want her to remember me like this: checked out. Escaping, while she rocked right there in the swing, looking at me with uncomprehending eyes. I didn’t want this to register with her in a year, two years. I didn’t want to still be doing this.

That was when I finally drew a line in the sand.

 

Defining the Relationship

Drawing boundaries can help put out fires before they become all consuming. But if the fire keeps burning with increasing intensity, you’ve got to get away from the smoke and flames. Sometimes, your only option is to say goodbye.


― Lysa Terkeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes

In May 2021, I finally decided to go “sober,” which required, first of all, defining what sobriety meant for me personally. Eliminating all daydreaming or visualization or imagination from one’s life is virtually impossible. I figured that approach would be nothing but legalistic and frustrating—which had been my approaches to date.

So the first step was defining where the daydreaming had become unhealthy for me, and then drawing a line, a boundary, to guide me moving forward.

My line was imagining myself in scenarios with fictional characters. It was all right to imagine myself in other scenarios—perhaps with real people, or running someplace interesting during a regular suburban workout—and it was all right to imagine characters in my stories acting out scenes to music. That was actually still extremely enjoyable for me! But the cross-pollination of the two: the combining of myself with fictional characters as agents of self-fulfilled love and affirmation, had to stop. That was the addiction that had addled my ability to have self-control. So I downloaded a sobriety app, clicked the button, and began what would be two years and two months of the freest days I’d ever been from maladaptive daydreaming.

It was emancipating in the best way. Calculated and defined surrender yielded far better results than white-knuckling my way towards liberation (for what addict, ever, has that been fruitful?). The occasional dreams (actual, sleep-time dreams) and temptations befell me—my brain wasn’t used to functioning without these characters, these “hits” of affirmation, these adventures that had always, always been accessible. So it would send me a dream that made that world seem alluring, faultless, innocent…

And for a couple of days after one of those dreams I’d fight not to “relapse.”  

This got easier over time. The dreams became less frequent. And before I knew it, I was coming home to the reality of…well, of being content in reality.

  

The “Dry” Months

As a writer and an artist, it’s so hard to walk the line between inspiration and losing myself—between passion and recklessness. I stay grounded with my family and friends here, in this life; but my mind so often launches into a thousand different universes—my dreams immerse me into them—and my flesh wants to disappear into those adventures forever.

—Journal Entry, December 27, 2022 

I was finally experiencing balance, but now the hard questions came up—the intersection of reality and my creative gifts. How did they coincide in a healthy way? For so long, my creativity had largely been equated with rebellion against what I knew the Lord was calling me to—investing in this reality.

Now that I was focused on using my inspiration to pen original stories, wholesome things that could benefit this world, I had to grapple with how to do that in a healthy capacity. How much imagination was too much? How much dependence on creative time was too much? How much escapism was too much? These were lines I hadn’t drawn, boundaries I hadn’t explored, vague coasts on which the tides always seemed to be moving.

…Today, I want to write a story in a way that encapsulates both my inspiration—the freedom of temporarily losing myself in a scene—and my self-control—the sense to stay grounded in the middle of it, to know what’s valuable and what’s just fantasy, what will pass away and what will last for eternity.

—Journal Entry, December 27, 2022 

On some level, however, life was busy enough to preclude relapses: I had an infant girl to take care of, church responsibilities, friendships and whiskey nights and Christmases and flights out to see family. My life was finally filling up with meaningful things, and I was learning how to be content with them.

That didn’t mean the temptations didn’t keep coming, like those waves, though…

I had another dream of relapsing during my nap today…my mind remembers even more clearly the “mercurial high” (thanks, Taylor Swift—that lyric is from “Illicit Affairs,” fittingly enough). It conjures tantalizing possibilities for new fantasy scenarios. It puts the creative, alluring possibilities front and center, as if the best daydreaming sessions of my teenage years were yesterday.

But there were many other sessions.

Tonight I read Proverbs 23, which warns against gluttony and the lust that consumes us for everything from sex to steak to thinking we know more than those who love us most. I found verses 31-32 pertinent tonight, as I celebrate a sobriety milestone and simultaneously am sobered by how enticing my addiction still is.

“Do not look at wine while it is red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly. In the end it bites like a serpent and stings like an adder.”

Oh yes, there were many other sessions. Tears. Despair. Opportunities and memories and friendships I forfeited to spend just one more minute chasing a high that always faded. I held open college campus doors for no one, not realizing I was staring at an empty doorway behind me. I prayed vehemently for freedom. I agonized over how to tell those who loved me most, drowning in my shame for years, unable to enjoy stories and shows purely for what they were. I gave months of my life to a lie and my fingers were empty, my bed cold, my eyes tired, my heart still yearning for the love of a king…

Now, my days are finally filled with the love of a real Ruler. 

So when the wine sparkles red in the cup, I’ll take the best of it—decant out the lust, filter the selfishness…I’ll bottle the creativity and serve inspiration, preserve the tannins and the truth…

Because I’ve mined the well of wine that is gluttony until it ran so dry that I swallowed dirt and fancied myself a queen. And I’d much rather be here, in a row home, a humble servant, decanting an actual bottle of red and feasting on the satisfying love of my Lord.

 

Journal Entry, March 24, 2023

Then, earlier, this year, I made a decision I wouldn’t have thought possible two years prior: I tentatively decided to finish the fanfiction trilogy I’d been penning for over ten years.

 

Tentative Exposure

I knew this decision was fraught with the potential for relapse. I was basically an alcoholic putting a drink in front of me on a table, smelling it, running my finger along the rim, swishing the liquid around in the glass, and daring myself not to taste any of it.

But at the same time, I knew moving forward in growth and health meant not stigmatizing the things that had triggered me in the past. I knew that, to move forward meant recognizing my own agency in the equation. The fanfiction stories aren’t what tripped me up—my own addiction to escapism was the culprit. So, I figured, if I could write the fanfiction without falling back into my own little pit of fantasy, I could prove to myself that I’d grown.

Suffice it to say this: don’t get cocky. Don’t lose your humility. Don’t think you’re beyond…whatever it is you’re tempted to think you’re beyond. 

So I decided to finish this trilogy. And for thirty of the thirty-one days in July that I was writing it, I had a healthy, fantastic time crafting the plot, the characters, the ending to a story I’d been passionate about for years. I still wrestled with the interplay of reality and imagination, but it seemed like, for the first time, I was a tightrope walker actually making progress, actually enjoying myself.

Being lost, deliciously, intricately, and purposefully lost—in the annals of story: plot, character arcs, Spotify playlist songs, the feel of the story wrapping around me like threads in a maze…the weaving of those colored threads together, the integration of new, unexpected ones, the shining of characters, the blend of their essences together, the lines of dialogue and description, artfully rendered…

These things feel like they are part of my DNA. My essence. The way Christ knit me together. They feel like oxygen to me, in a way. Like if I forsake them, if I don’t get lost in them enough to truly feel them, to be distracted by them in some way—that I will forfeit them. And a piece of my soul.  

—Journal Entry, July 20, 2023 

It seemed like I was doing all right.  

And then July 31st rolled around.

 

The Relapse

“The printed words of One greater tell of a different kingdom. And I have to trust Him. Because the synapses in my mind that construct these terminal gates, these ends of worlds, these vermillion saviors, are burning themselves to death. They’ll disintegrate, but His Word will hold. Will be. Is the only thing that makes it to the end. I miss you. But I love Him more. And I have to pivot my gaze from your face to look upon His. Because you don't exist, and He gave his life for me. Because you aren’t, and He is.”

—Journal Entry, July 30, 2023

I relapsed at the end of July 2023.

Surprisingly, this actually didn’t consist of the habits that had defined my escapism for so long. But it did involve fictional characters, emotional dependence, the crossing of those lines between realities…and that was enough.

I reset my little app timer and gazed out the window of the restaurant my family was having dinner at, grieved and sobered. What had I expected, right? I played with fire. But at the same time, was it really the story’s fault? Was I in denial about being able to write this story? Or was I simply fixating on one day out of an entire month of healthy engagement?

Would I ever be content in this reality? Or would there always be a corrupted part of me that sat, discontent, staring up at the stars and wishing for another?

Thoughts on Recovery

“I’ve come home at last! This is my real country…this is the land I’ve been looking for all my life.”

—The Chronicles of Narnia

It’s September now. I don’t have the answers to all of these questions. I do know that His grace is sufficient where my efforts are not—that His wisdom will keep me moving towards Him, whatever that means. That every iota of desire for another reality I experience in this life—the empty shells of realities I try to fill them with, little substitute galaxies of cold, dark moons—are echoes of the desire knitted into my heart for the eternity coming one day. That every yearning for affirmation is satisfied in my Lord. That every legitimate need to be cherished and seen, He has already fulfilled. That I am empowered to be content.

I used to think that psalm, the one that says, “I shall not want,” was a guilt-ridden command, something to chant in my head whenever I wanted: “I won’t do this. I won’t. I won’t. Stop it.”

As it turns out, it’s a promise uttered in relief and rest: “I will not be in need. I will be provided for. My cup will be filled. My heart will be seen. My needs will be met.”

What a more beautiful understanding of the Lord’s goodness, his provision, his character. What better way to decentralize my self-perception and put Him back on the throne of my life where he belongs? What better way to maintain perspective on our daily failings, seeing the broad scope of our lives, and of eternity, as the tapestry of everything, and these little failings as tiny threads, nothing more, covered by the blood of the cross?

So I can’t say I’m utterly free of maladaptive daydreaming. I may never be able to say that this side of heaven. But what I can say is that I’m enjoying reality—and creativity—more wholesomely and wisely than I ever have before.

And really, is there anything better I could want to say to my daughter one day when she asks about my stories?

  

Resources:

Again, thank you so much for reading this far and caring about my story.

If you or someone you know struggles with anything related to maladaptive daydreaming—or if you’d simply like to learn more about it, here are some resources I’ve compiled:

Hannah Zello
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