The Mind's Virtual Reality

Heard of a mental disorder named Maladaptive Daydreaming where patients waste productive hours daydreaming excessively, creating alternate lives in their heads?

- Ancillar Mangena

It’s an act so common you probably did it today or have done it many times before. The problem is, when done excessively, it could ruin your life. We are talking daydreaming.

“I found out the man I thought was my dad was not my dad when I was seven years old… my mom made it sound like it was a secret and no one was supposed to know. It was a heavy burden for me. Many times I would wonder who else knew and what my real dad was like,” says Bongi Ncwane (name changed to protect identity).

All these questions in her mind set off a world of fantasy and pathological daydreaming.

Ncwane says she would spend a lot of time thinking about what life could have been like with a dad.

“My two older sisters had their dad and my two younger sisters have their dad and then there was me. Although my sisters were great and we could share everything, there was this one thing I couldn’t tell anyone.”

To cope, Ncwane, says she created another world in her head.

“I started excessive continuous daydreaming. There is a separate life in my head. This world has a mom, a dad and I am the only child,” she says.

The continuous daydreaming happened for years before she knew there was a problem. One day, she realized that she was spending hours daydreaming. It was eating into her productivity.

“I daydream and it feels real. If something is happening in my head and it’s emotional, I cry in real life and when happy I would be happy. I realized I couldn’t control the daydreaming. I knew the difference between real life and what was in my head but there was always a need to do it,” says Ncwane.