Maladaptive daydreaming: signs, causes and what helps in India

By Sakshi Shah, Co-founder, GoodLives. Updated November 2026.

Many of us have had a long daydream and lost half an hour to it. For some, that half an hour is three hours, and it happens every day. If you have been Googling what is going on, you are not being dramatic.

Trusted by 500K+ people, GoodLives connects you with verified psychologists who can help you make sense of the pattern. One honest conversation can be the start of something gentler.

What maladaptive daydreaming actually is, in plain words

Maladaptive daydreaming (MD) is a proposed syndrome where a person spends long stretches of the day inside vivid, immersive fantasy that interferes with real life.

The term was coined by Prof. Eli Somer at the University of Haifa in a 2002 paper in the Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy (Somer, 2002). It is a research field, not a formal diagnosis.

Important to know up front: MD is not currently in the DSM-5-TR (the American psychiatric manual) or in the WHO’s ICD-11 (WHO ICD-11). That does not mean it is not real for the people living with it.

It means clinicians are still studying how to classify, screen and treat it. The main screening tool used in research today is the Maladaptive Daydreaming Scale (MDS-16), developed by Somer, Soffer-Dudek and colleagues.

In short: MD is a serious pattern that researchers are mapping. It is not fringe, and it is not a diagnosis in the formal manuals yet.

What it feels like, from the inside

Everyday daydreaming is a soft drift. MD is a pull. It can feel like your real day is the interruption, and the fantasy is where the real life happens. People describe plots that run for months and characters they know as well as friends.

Common features reported in MD research:

• Hours a day inside the fantasy. Some people report four, six, eight hours on a tough day.
• Movement that triggers or deepens it. Pacing, rocking, spinning a pen, shaking a leg, often without noticing.
• Music as a doorway. A specific playlist pulls you in. The fantasy will not land without it.
• Distress about the habit itself. You want to stop. The wanting-to-stop is often what brings people to a therapist.
• Impact on real life. Deadlines slip. Replies go unsent. Sleep gets shorter. Friendships quieten.

If you are nodding at four or five of these, you are not alone. These are the specific features MDS-16 research has clustered together.

In short: MD is not about being imaginative. It is about losing hours to a fantasy you cannot easily put down.

How is MD different from a normal, healthy daydream?

Most of us daydream. It is a healthy mental default, and it helps with creativity, planning and rest. MD looks different on three honest counts.

Why does it start? What may it be protecting you from?

MD rarely starts in adulthood. For many people, it begins in childhood, often around age six to ten.

Research by Somer and colleagues at the International Consortium for Maladaptive Daydreaming Research links MD with early experiences like loneliness, bullying, emotional neglect, or trauma (ICMDR research page). The fantasy becomes a safer place when the real world feels too much.

For many people, MD was once a coping system that worked. It kept them company. It gave them a sense of control. Years later, the stress has passed, but the system is still running, and now it costs more than it gives.

It also often sits alongside other things. Studies have found high co-occurrence of MD with ADHD, OCD, anxiety, depression and dissociative conditions. One does not cause the other, but living with one often makes the other harder to spot.

If you have been diagnosed with ADHD and never understood where “zoning out” ends and “MD” begins, you are not imagining the overlap. Our guide on adult ADHD in India covers that side. The same holds for OCD, for overthinking loops, and sometimes for anxiety that sits underneath.

In short: MD often starts as a child’s survival tool. It is not a flaw. It is a system that may have outlived its usefulness.

Is MD the same as dissociation, DID, autism or psychosis?

A fair question, and the honest answer is no, with care. MD overlaps with these conditions but is not the same.

• Dissociation. MD researchers describe absorption as sitting on the dissociation spectrum, but MD does not involve the identity shifts, memory gaps or depersonalisation of a dissociative disorder.
• DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder). MD characters are experienced as characters, not as parts of the self with their own identity. In DID, the shift is in who you are.
• Psychosis. People with MD know their daydreams are not real. In psychosis, the line between internal and external is lost.
• Autistic special interests. Deep interest in a topic is not the same as hours inside a changing fantasy world. Some autistic adults also live with MD.

A trained clinical psychologist can tell these apart in an assessment. Guessing on your own is kind to no one.

In short: MD is its own thing. A good assessment separates it from dissociation, DID, autism or psychosis.

What has been shown to help

MD research is young. There is no formal clinical guideline, no DSM-approved treatment protocol, and no pill for MD specifically. Here is what the research so far points toward, delivered by a trained clinician.

• Trauma-informed therapy if the MD seems to have started as a response to childhood neglect, loneliness or trauma. Approaches like EMDR, somatic therapy and polyvagal-informed work address the underlying wound, not just the symptom.
• CBT adapted for MD. A functional analysis of your own pattern: what triggers it, what feeling it is relieving, what you lose when you stay inside it, and what might take its place.
• ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy). Making room for some fantasy without being ruled by it. Committing to small real-world actions that matter to you.
• Reducing the triggers. Many people find a shift when they limit the music playlist, the pacing time, or the screen hours that cue the daydream.
• Treating what rides along. If ADHD, OCD, depression or anxiety are also in play, a psychiatrist and psychologist can help you with those, which often loosens MD too.

If a daydream is pulling at you right now, you do not have to read the next section first. You can take sixty seconds and anchor your senses in the room before anything else.

In short: trauma therapy, CBT, ACT, trigger reduction and treating co-occurring conditions are the main lanes. There is no single playbook yet, and that is honest.

Who to see in India, and how to vet them

MD is still unfamiliar to many Indian clinicians, so the search needs a little more care. The right starting point for most adults is a clinical psychologist registered with the Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI), with experience in dissociation, trauma or ADHD.

Three questions to ask on the first call:

• Have you worked with maladaptive daydreaming before? A yes or “I have read Somer’s work” is fair; a confused “what is that” is a sign to keep looking.
• Do you work with dissociative experiences, trauma, or ADHD?
• Can we start with an assessment, not a treatment plan?

You can also talk to a verified psychologist on GoodLives in English, Hindi and more Indian languages. See our pricing page for session costs.

In short: look for an RCI-registered clinical psychologist with experience in dissociation, trauma or ADHD. Ask the three questions. Trust the fit.

When MD becomes urgent, and when it is a season

Most MD is distressing but not an emergency. There are a few patterns that mean the next conversation should not wait.

• The pattern has been severe for more than six months and your daily functioning has shifted (sleep, work, hygiene, friendships).
• A loss, a grief or a big transition is driving longer and more intense episodes.
• You have begun using alcohol, cannabis or other substances to extend or deepen the daydream.
• The content of the daydream has turned intrusive, dark or hard to shake off.
• The gap between inside the fantasy and outside has started to blur.

If any of these fit, please book an assessment this week, not next month. A clinical psychologist can tell what the pattern is pointing to.

In short: six months plus, grief, substance use, intrusive content or blur in the line are the honest urgency markers.

The honest limits of what we know

MD is a serious research field, and still a young one. There is no formal diagnosis in the DSM or ICD yet. There are no India-specific prevalence numbers we would stake our name on. There is no single therapy manual your psychologist can simply follow.

What that means: progress is often slow. Trial and adjust. Some weeks the pattern will loosen. Some weeks it will not. That is not failure; it is how a condition without a settled protocol gets managed.

Not every intense inner life is MD, either. If what you have is softer than hours-a-day-for-months, it is okay to not call it a disorder yet. A season of lonely or heavy daydreaming may be a season to walk through, with sleep and support.

In short: MD research is early, India data is thin, and progress is often slow. The honest clinician will tell you the same.