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It's good to daydream, but it's not good to indulge too much.

"for as long as I can remember, I have been lost in my own daydreams. some daydreams have people I know, some don't have me at all.

……

These daydreams are stories, and I can feel the real feelings, happiness and sadness. They are an important part of my life, just like anything that happens in reality.

……

When there is no one around, I can spend hours only with my daydreams. In public, I have to be careful to control my behavior so as not to let others see that there is a story lingering in my mind and not to let them know that I am involved. "

A 20-year-old female student from the United States, who felt that excessive daydreaming had affected her normal life, wrote an email to Eli Somer, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Haifa in Israel, about her experience and troubles.

The girl also said that those thoughts do not seem to be closed, and they all feel this way when they need to concentrate in class, when they are ready to go to bed, or when they just want to be quiet. She thinks she is suffering from "maladjustment daydreaming" (maladaptive daydreaming,MD), a concept proposed by Professor Elizabeth in 2002.

In fact, for most people, daydreaming is just a daily routine. For example, you have a task at hand, but your mind flies to the horizon, fantasizing about something that hasn't happened before and probably won't happen in the future. Scientists often emphasize that daydreaming is beneficial to the body and mind and may stimulate people's creativity, and so on. Perhaps most people do not get into trouble as a result, but when daydreaming invades excessively and immerses people in it, instead of interaction with others in reality, it may disrupt people's normal function and affect their academic, work or social interaction.

Today, the daydream of maladjustment has not been officially recognized as a mental disorder, but the dark side of daydreaming has attracted more and more attention.

Why does inspiration burst out when you take a bath? many people may have the memory of doing their homework in a daze and then being criticized by adults. In the impression of many people, the word "mind wandering" is full of pejorative meanings, in sharp contrast to the beautiful state of concentration. Psychologically, scientists call this phenomenon mind wandering, which usually means that the mind deviates from the task at hand and has nothing to do with the current environment.

The concept of daydreaming is very similar to mental wandering, and it is also used to describe thoughts that have nothing to do with the current task and do not rely on external stimuli, which often contain fantasy elements. Perhaps daydreaming and mental wandering are not exactly the same, but many researchers will mix them, and for non-mixed researchers, the cognitive states they refer to are highly similar.

Compared with people's negative impression of mind wandering or in a daze, it is generally believed that mental wandering or daydreaming is a common and normal psychological activity. In 2010, two Harvard researchers developed a web app (https://www.trackyourhappiness.org/) that contacted participants at random points in time and asked them to record what they were doing, their thoughts, feelings and actions on the site.

Of course, scientists do not wake up participants in the middle of the night, but just want to contact people when they are awake, so that they can investigate the situation of "daydreaming".

Using this method, the researchers created a huge database of nearly 250000 samples containing data on about 5000 adults from 83 countries, aged between 18 and 88, covering 86 major occupational categories. In a study of happiness, scientists analyzed the data of 2250 people. It turns out that people's minds wander very frequently: of the tens of thousands of samples provided by more than 2,000 people, 46.9% have mental wanderings.

In other words, nearly half of the waking time of adults each day may be spent in mind wandering. When the researchers looked at mind-wandering in a variety of daily activities, they found that mind-wandering samples accounted for more than 30% of every activity except sex. Difficulty in focusing is not peculiar to naughty children, but also to ordinary adult humans.

In the eyes of many scientists, mental wandering is not only normal, but also helpful to human beings. This has something to do with a neural network in our brain called default mode network (DMN). When the human mind wanders or daydreams, the interconnected areas of the brain in the default mode network become active. Due to the existence of the default mode network, scientists often associate mental wandering with human creativity.

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Previous studies have shown that the more difficult cognitive tasks people perform (requiring concentration), the less active the network is, and it is the most active when humans rest. Previous studies have also shown that humans are more likely to make creative breakthroughs when performing routine tasks that do not require much thought. In a 2013 study, scientists measured participants' creativity and found that the larger the gray matter of the default model network, the better people's creativity performance.

In a study published earlier this year, scientists explored the creativity of some patients who underwent brain surgery. These people stayed awake during the operation, and the divergent thinking task assigned to them by the researchers was to invent unusual new uses for commonly used objects, such as paper clips. The results show that whether we can successfully think of a new use is related to the connection strength between nodes in the default mode network.

In a study published in 2004, 65% of 100 7-year-olds said they had imagined friends. And some people who often daydream or wander their minds may also be free to fantasize or create when the neural network is active by default.

Of course, mental wandering is not only good but not bad. Not everyone can coexist peacefully with their daydreams.

Dark daydreams can also kidnap you and me, if you remember, Harvard researchers once found that mental wandering occurred in nearly half of the waking time of 2250 adults. This is only part of the study, and the scientists also analyzed the mind-wandering of these people in their daily activities together with their happiness. In each survey, participants were asked a question related to happiness, such as: how do you feel now? If you feel super good, give you 100 points, and if you feel so bad, give you 0 points.

The results showed that the average score of the sex sample was 90, ranking highest of all recorded activities-one of the activities with the lowest mind-wandering rate (10%). The second activity is exercise (75 points), which is far away from the first place, while the following activities such as chatting, listening to music and so on are not much different from those in the first place. The activities at the bottom of the score can also be said to be the unhappiest activities, including at home computer, work and rest. With the exception of sex, mental wandering occurred in more than 30% of the samples of each activity.

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It seems that people are less likely to be distracted in happy activities, while they are often distracted in unhappy activities. To test the link between mental wandering and happiness, the scientists compared how people felt when their minds were wandering and when they were not, and found that people were less happy during mental wandering than when they were not wandering, as was the case with all activities.

So, is it mental wandering that makes people unhappy? Could it be that unhappiness leads to mental wandering? The scientists analyzed the time difference and concluded that mental wandering is the cause and unhappiness is the result. The title they gave to the paper was "A wandering heart is an unhappy heart".

If it is only said that mental wandering or daydreaming will reduce happiness, it may not necessarily make ordinary people feel how serious trouble. But for some victims of "maladjustment daydreams", some fantasies that are divorced from external stimuli and current tasks may break their normal pace of life and even affect their health.

For example, a woman who goes by the pseudonym Piedra has experienced "daydreams of maladjustment". She recalled that there was a time in her life when she couldn't stand it as long as she didn't daydream for 10 minutes. At that time, daydreaming was one of the things she enjoyed most. No matter what she was doing, she had to daydream. In such days, Piedra not only affected his studies and interpersonal relationships, but also could not even finish his meals on time. She said that even if she was already hungry, she could postpone the meal task for another two or three hours in order to daydream. Anyway, the meal was left there and could be eaten sooner or later.

Some scientists have suggested in previous studies that "maladjustment daydreaming" may be a behavioral addiction or obsessive-compulsive disorder. To some extent, reliance on daydreaming can be as overwhelming as dependence on alcohol or gambling.

However, "maladjusted daydreams" may not confuse fantasy from reality, as some mental illnesses do. The virtual worlds built by people are sometimes so complex and rich in details that some people can even spend hours searching for information on the Internet in order to write a good storyline. Professor Elisamer of the University of Haifa said that daydreaming is often voluntary, not invasive, and that a daydream itself does not harm a person's mental health.

But perhaps because of this, some people can admit that they are anxious or depressed, but do not admit that their lives have been invaded by excessive daydreams, and may say: this is controllable, I have tried, you believe me.

Perhaps with this idea, when people are in a bad situation in the real world, they will seek comfort in daydreaming and dispel their negative emotions. For example, Professor Summer once met a man in an early study who said that he was very shy in reality, but in daydreams, he could be the kind of person he wanted to be, and many women fell in love with him. Enjoy the feeling of all the stars and the moon.

In a study published in 2016, the team at the University of Ghent in Belgium found that people who are under great stress or who struggle with negative emotions are particularly vulnerable to mental wandering. Those spontaneous thoughts may cause them to be repeatedly plagued by negative thoughts, such as "I'm going to screw up", "so-and-so doesn't like me at all", "I'll never find a job", and fall into a vicious circle.

Therefore, if you feel you are trapped by daydreams, be sure to seek professional help. At present, scientists are still exploring the treatment of "daydreaming of maladjustment". However, Professor Summer has treated some patients and found that the "daydream of maladjustment" has a chance to be brought under control.

Have you been wandering for another day today?

Reference:

Https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/mind-wandering

Https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/people-maladaptive-daydreaming-spend-average-four-hours-day-lost-their-imagination

Https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5962718/

Https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1192439

Https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/11/wandering-mind-not-a-happy-mind/

Https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history-and-civilisation/2022/08/the-science-of-why-you-have-great-ideas-in-the-shower

Https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-021-01403-8

Https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2167702615622383

Https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/minds-business/daydreaming-can-have-a-dark-side.html

Https://sites.dartmouth.edu/dujs/2011/02/03/science-of-daydreaming/

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: global Science (ID:huanqiukexue), written by | Chestnut revision | clefable

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