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So... I was planning to write an intro post in one of the other forums but it was getting too long. So this kind of doubles as an intro post??? This is technically my third post though, but still. Nevertheless... it's nice to see that there are forums on here. I haven't been using this app as much until now, though I don't think I'll really be using the app to post on the forums, I'm much more comfortable typing it out on my laptop instead!
Let's go ahead and start this thread with a background on myself, so you can understand me a little bit better.
My name is Harana, and I'm a community college student that hopes to transfer to university by next year! My hobbies include kpop, kdramas, anime, video games, manga, tv shows, movies, and aesthetic things. I love learning about things in my spare time, and I also enjoy building worlds and writing stories, though I'm rusty after having not written things for a while.
I...never really interacted with my classmates in elementary school. Even when I was invited to birthday parties, my parents often rejected the offer whenever I asked and told me not to go. I ended up spending a lot of my time in my room, listening to music and daydreaming. My daydreams were very, very vivid and had many characters and a plotline, like the novels I used to read. Sometimes, I would often act my daydreams out while listening to music by dancing around in my room. At first, my parents thought it was cute. Until a few years passed by, and I was still doing it even in middle school. My daydreams were becoming more vivid, and with that, I was procrastinating more and more, and worse, it got to the point where I was daydreaming often in public. It was at its worst in high school. In elementary school, I was an honor roll student, but by the time I was in high school, you could look at the grades I had on my report card, and you wouldn't be able to tell. B's, C's, withdrawals from college classes across the board. My parents were rightfully disappointed in me and would scold me all the time for it. Later on, during my junior year in high school, while looking through Pinterest, I found something that changed my life - there was a word for my mental health condition. While it was never in the DSM, and its existence is still being debated, a psychologist had discovered the term and was doing studies on it.
The term was called "maladaptive daydreaming".
Instantly, I began looking into it just to be sure this described me well, and the more I read, the more convinced I was. This was definitely it, this was definitely me. This described me to a T. I had mixed emotions that night. I was happy because there was a word for it, but sad because I knew my parents wouldn't approve. This was only proven when, not long after I had the courage to ask my mother, around two years after I first learned of the term, I asked if I could participate in a study by the psychologist who found the term (Dr. Eli Somer, if anyone's curious), and she immediately shot me down, while unfortunately saying some hurtful things that still affect me to this day (and won't talk about because it could be potentially triggering for some).
Around a year and a half ago, I learned through another one of Dr. Somer's research papers that maladaptive daydreaming is often comorbid with other mental illnesses, such as OCD, anxiety, depression, and particularly autism and ADHD. This made me reevaluate myself and come to the conclusion that I have any mix of the above. I will definitely have to do more research, but it definitely fits, given how I behave.
As you might expect, my parents are not too keen on the idea of sending me to a therapist, yet have (ironically) threatened to send me to a psychiatrist a few times if I don't straighten up my act, though they probably should have. Part of it was due to how expensive it was, and out of concern for the medications they might be giving me. Honestly, part of it was because I struggle to stand up for myself in front of them. As such, I'm taking small steps towards my independence as of right now. I really hope to be able to move to a university dorm (I strongly doubt they'll have vaccines for COVID ready by then, though there are some universities that are accepting students into dorms on a first-come, first-serve basis). I won't be able to grow or thrive while being stuck at my parents' house. I need to find a place to focus on my own.
The main keyword is "focus" because I'm absolutely terrible at that. My parents are still concerned that I won't be able to focus much while I'm at uni, so I have to prove to them that I can. So this whole diary is going to document all of that. My goal is to live on my own and find a psychiatrist to help me with an official diagnosis. The sooner I accomplish this, the better. And sure, meds aren't going to completely take the weight off, but they will help. A LOT. So that will be my goal.