Addicted to fiction/daydreaming?
Hi, I'm sorry if this doesn't fit, but I really don't know what category to put this in.
I guess I was always an imaginative person, able to occupy myself for long hours. I did a lot of daydreaming and zoning out, and was later diagnosed to have ADHD? I also think I have OCD due to obsessive thoughts and compulsive actions. I feel like these aspects play into this.
Anyway, for essentially my whole life, I never had many opportunities to interact and socializw with people other than my siblings. I felt like I wasn't apart of anything. So, about ten years ago that's when it started. I began to get more invested in television and fiction. I'd daydream about certain shows, imagining i was friends with characters and things like that. I always figured I would stop once I "got a life".
This mainly started to become a problem with the show I'm recently into. I won't go into detail(because this already a humiliating realization for me to begin with), but I've gotten in deep this time. My sisters and online friends are able to do what I do, discuss shows, write about them, make their own characters and things like that, but I just seem to dive in too deep. This has become an addiction for me. It makes me anxious now too because I fear that any further information or plot details could ruin my make believe. By now I feel like an empty person without fiction.
After looking this up, I found out I had what was called "Maladaptive Daydreaming". I readup on it and was horrified at how much this applied to me. I just wanted a fun escape. I never wanted my mind to go overboard, but it always seems to.
The thing is that, I don't want to have to stop liking shows, discussing them, watching them, and even imagining things just for fun. I just don't want to go overboard. I don't want it to interfere with my life and I'm afraid that that's the path I'm headed down. There just isn't much information on this, so I have no idea where to start. I'm still waiting for therapy and I don't even know if my family would listen to me if I confided in them.So any help on this would mean the world to me.