Maladaptive Daydreaming: When Daydreams Take Over Your Day

Clinically reviewed byMst. SwampaSenior Clinical Psychologist · MS & M.Phil in Clinical Psychology (University of Dhaka) · BCPS memberLast reviewed October 2026

Maladaptive daydreaming is excessive, vivid daydreaming that takes up hours of the day and gets in the way of study, work, sleep or relationships. The person usually lives out detailed stories with characters and plots in their head, often while pacing, listening to music or lying in bed, and finds it very hard to stop even when they want to. It is not an official diagnosis yet, but researchers now recognise it as a real and distressing pattern, and it can be helped.

Many people only find the name after years of feeling strange about it. Common descriptions sound like: “I live another life in my head for hours”, “I pace around the room with headphones and the story just runs”, or in Bangla, “সারাদিন মনের মধ্যে কাল্পনিক জগতে থাকি, পড়ায় মন বসে না”. If that feels familiar, you are not alone, and you are not “going mad”.

Normal daydreaming vs maladaptive daydreaming

Almost everyone daydreams. It becomes maladaptive when it starts costing you more than it gives:

• Time: hours a day, not a few minutes, often far more than you planned.
• Detail: long, ongoing storylines with recurring characters, sometimes running for years.
• Triggers: music, movement (pacing, rocking, swinging a leg) or films that “switch on” the daydream.
• Urge: a strong pull to return to the daydream, and irritation when interrupted.
• Cost: falling behind in studies or work, sleeping late, avoiding people, feeling ashamed or hiding it.

The key difference from psychosis is that you know the daydream is your own imagination. You are not confused about what is real; you are choosing, and struggling to stop choosing, an inner world.

Why it happens

Psychologist Eli Somer, who first described the pattern, and colleagues developed the Maladaptive Daydreaming Scale to measure it (Consciousness and Cognition, 2016). Research since then shows it often travels with other difficulties, especially anxiety, depression, attention problems and obsessive-compulsive symptoms (International Journal of Psychology, 2025 meta-analysis). Common drivers include:

• Escape: the daydream becomes a comfortable place to go when real life feels lonely, boring, stressful or painful.
• Loneliness and unmet needs: the inner world provides connection, success or love that feels missing outside.
• Anxiety and low mood: daydreaming soothes difficult feelings in the short term, so the brain keeps reaching for it.
• Attention difficulties: people with ADHD-type traits may drift into absorbing inner stories more easily.
• Difficult childhood experiences for some, where imagination was an early way of coping.

How it shows up for students and young adults in Bangladesh

We most often hear about maladaptive daydreaming from university students and young professionals. Long hours alone with a phone and earphones, exam pressure, family expectations and a lack of private space to talk about feelings can all feed it. A student may sit with a book open for three hours and realise they read one page; a young employee may lose the afternoon “in the story” and then work late in panic. The shame of hiding it from family often makes the cycle tighter.

Self-help steps that genuinely help

• Notice your triggers. Track for a week when it starts: a particular playlist, pacing, lying in bed with the phone. Awareness is the first lever.
• Change the trigger, not just willpower. Study without music, or use instrumental music you have never daydreamed to. Keep the phone outside the bedroom at night.
• Give the daydream a time box. Many people do better with “20 minutes after dinner” than with trying to stop completely.
• Ask what the daydream gives you. If the story is always about being admired, loved or safe, that need is real. Look for small ways to meet it outside your head.
• Ground yourself when you drift. Name five things you can see, put cold water on your hands, or stand up and change rooms.
• Protect sleep. Late-night daydreaming steals sleep, and tiredness makes daydreaming harder to resist the next day.

How therapy helps

A psychologist will not try to take your imagination away. The aim is to bring it back under your control and deal with what the daydreaming is covering. Therapy usually combines cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) techniques for habits and triggers, mindfulness skills to stay with the present, and work on the underlying anxiety, low mood, loneliness or past experiences. If attention difficulties are part of the picture, an assessment for adult ADHD may be useful too.

The cycle that keeps it going

Maladaptive daydreaming usually runs in a loop. Something feels uncomfortable, such as boredom, a hard assignment, loneliness or an argument at home. You slip into the daydream and feel better almost instantly. Then you look at the clock, see the lost hours, and feel guilt and panic about the work you did not do. That guilt is itself uncomfortable, so the pull to escape back into the story gets stronger. Over months the daydream becomes the default response to any difficult feeling. Breaking the loop means two things at once: making the triggers less automatic, and finding other ways to handle the feelings that send you there.

If you are a parent or partner

Families often notice the signs before the person names it: pacing for hours with earphones, talking or making faces quietly to themselves, falling behind in studies while seeming “busy”. Please avoid mocking or calling it madness (“পাগলের মতো একা একা হাঁটে”). Shame pushes the habit underground. Instead, ask gently how they are doing, show interest in their stress or loneliness, and offer to help them see a psychologist. Support is far more effective than confiscating a phone.

When to seek help

Consider talking to a psychologist if daydreaming is costing you exam results, work performance or sleep, if you feel unable to stop despite trying, if you feel depressed or anxious when you are not daydreaming, or if you are hiding it and feeling ashamed. Sessions are confidential, online across Bangladesh or in person in Dhaka, in Bangla or English. If you ever feel that life is not worth living, please call 999 or contact a professional the same day.

You can also start with our quick self-check to see whether anxiety or low mood is part of what you are feeling, then book a session when you are ready.

Frequently asked questions

Questions to ask yourself before you label it

There is no blood test or scan for maladaptive daydreaming. Researchers use a 16-item questionnaire, the Maladaptive Daydreaming Scale, and a psychologist will mainly listen to how the daydreaming works in your day. Before a session, it helps to answer these honestly, ideally after keeping notes for a week:

• Roughly how many hours a day do I spend in the daydream, and how many did I plan to?
• Does a song, pacing or lying in bed almost always start it?
• Do I feel annoyed, even angry, when someone interrupts me?
• Have I tried to cut down and failed more than once?
• What did I miss this week because of it: a class, a deadline, sleep, time with family?
• How do I feel in the hour after I come out of it: rested, or guilty and flat?

If most of your answers point to lost hours, failed attempts to stop and guilt afterwards, that is a pattern worth bringing to a professional. Bring your notes; they make the first session far more useful.