Maladaptive Daydreaming at Night: When Daydreams Keep You Awake

While it may seem obvious, daydreams typically occur during the day. For most individuals, they serve as brief and harmless distractions from the rigors of daily life, often fading quickly from memory.

But what happens when your urge to daydream is so strong that it keeps you up at night?

Research shows this is all too common for those suffering from maladaptive daydreaming (MD)—with nearly half of all people with the condition showing symptoms of insomnia.

Why Does Maladaptive Daydreaming Happen at Night?

Maladaptive daydreaming is often rooted in a response to trauma and unmet needs.

When life is hard to endure, people learn to turn to fantasies as a coping mechanism. These fantasies, often involving themes of power, sexual dominance, or love and recognition, are highly pleasurable to engage in.

As a means of escaping from the difficulties of reality, MD can become a highly compulsive habit that takes over a person’s life because they crave immersion in their fantasy worlds.

Case studies of individuals with high levels of maladaptive daydreaming illustrate just how life-consuming the practice can become:

“Oh gosh, nothing gets done! Homework, studying, cleaning, sometimes I would lie there, my stomach will be growling and hurting and I won’t get out of bed because I’m trying to daydream. It’s that bad . . . I’ll try not to go to the bathroom because I don’t want to get up and stop for a second.”

“There have been times I have been caught up in the daydream for entire days. Many nights, I force myself to stay awake and get no sleep so that I can have my ‘daydreaming’ time.”

“I can’t stop myself from doing that [daydreaming]. I have to pace when I’m dreaming even if my feet ached or if it is two in the morning and I’m already in bed”

One study found that 47% of people with MD suffered impairment to their sleep as a result.

Impairments to work, social lives and one’s ability to meet important life goals were also very common. One study participant described feeling like a ghost trapped in a vicious cycle:

“My anxieties that this is how I will spend my life are increasing. I feel like a ghost that misses out on life. The stronger my fears get the more depressed I become and then I need to daydream to make myself feel better.”

The addictive, compulsive quality of MD illustrated by the cases above is one reason that maladaptive daydreaming occurs at night.

The need to engage in fantasies is so all-encompassing that other areas of life start to suffer, and sleep is no exception.

There are, however, additional reasons why the early hours can prove especially problematic for people with MD.

Lack of distraction

Some people with MD describe certain triggers which facilitate their daydreaming, such as TV or music.

Others see it differently, viewing MD as being their default state and only engaging with the real world when specific situations prompt them to.

As one patient responded when asked what his triggers for daydreaming were:

“A better question is: When does it stop?”

Most individuals with maladaptive daydreaming agree that social interaction and tasks which require one’s full attention were incompatible with daydreaming.

In the absence of these tasks, such as when lying awake at night, resisting the urge to daydream becomes much harder.

Mind wandering and sleep quality

Even among people who do not daydream to such extreme levels, there is a well-established link between being prone to mind-wandering and poor sleep.

This makes sense: The more prone you are to getting caught up in your own thoughts and ideas, the more difficulty you may experience switching off when it’s time for bed.

Similarly, a person’s capacity for absorption—their ability to become fully engrossed in something to the point that everything else fades to the background—is linked to both sleep disorders and to MD.

This link between sleep difficulty and problems with focus and mind-wandering is bi-directional. Being too prone to mind wandering makes it harder to get to sleep at night, and poor sleep quality leads to greater impairments in concentration the following day.

This link highlights another way in which the symptoms of MD create a self-perpetuating cycle that can be very hard to escape.

Comorbidity

A final factor worth considering is that of the comorbidity between MD and other psychological disorders.

MD has been shown to be highly comorbid with numerous conditions including ADHD, anxiety disorders, OCD, and depression.

Many of these conditions have their own connections to sleep difficulty.

Anxiety disorders, for example, are often characterized by constant tension and uncontrollable anxious thoughts, both of which can inhibit sleep, while sleep impairment is one of the defining criteria for depression.

The exact link between these conditions and MD is not currently understood.

What is clear, however, is that the minds of people who engage in maladaptive daydreaming are rarely in a place to facilitate good sleep.

Treating Maladaptive Daydreaming at Night

Given how vital sleep is for good mental health and its role in improving our ability to focus, helping people with MD sleep better is an important goal for any treatment.

While no structured treatment for maladaptive daydreaming exists yet, recommendations from the sleep foundation and psychologists who work with MD patients include:

Developing Good Bedtime Habits

Following the same sleep schedule each night and creating a relaxing routine in the evening can help your mind relax (and focus your mind on something other than your daydreams).

Limiting Your Daydreaming Time

Similar to the technique of worry postponement used in CBT for anxiety, in which a person postpones engaging with their anxious thoughts until a specified time, choosing to only engage in MD at certain times of day can help you limit its impact and teach you a greater level of control over your fantasies.

Mindfulness Meditations

Mindfulness meditations that train your ability to focus on the present are widely used in psychotherapy to help people who struggle with uncontrollable thoughts.

Meditation could therefore help people disengage from their daydreams at night, and it has also been shown to promote relaxation and improve sleep quality.

Don’t Lose Touch

Maladaptive daydreaming at night is partly caused by a lack of distractions on which to focus the mind. This highlights the important role that choosing to focus on the outside world can have on overcoming maladaptive daydreaming during the day.

Despite the often uncontrollable urge to wile away their days in fantasy worlds, some individuals with MD achieve a level of control over their condition through deliberately filling their days with tasks that make MD impossible.

Keeping their minds occupied with quality time with friends and family meant that these individuals had less time to devote to their daydreams.

Maladaptive daydreaming may cause you to lose touch with the rest of your life—at night and during the day. Pushing back and throwing yourself fully into pursuing companionship appears to offer one solution.