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 INTRODUCTION
Welcome!
First of all, I want to say thank you for taking the time and energy to go
through this course. Hearing kind words from those who have gone through
this course and found it helpful absolutely make my day.
I’m always here to help and my e-mail address can be found at the end of
this course.
As you likely already know, my name is Alex. I was a maladaptive
daydreamer. It derailed my life while I was working at a fancy job in New
York City.
I overcame my maladaptive daydreaming, but it took years and tens of
thousands of dollars to do so. My takeaway from my experience was that I
wasted a lot of time and a lot of money.
…The issue is (and you’ve likely already encountered this) that most
professionals just don’t understand what maladaptive daydreaming is.
I talked to dozens of psychiatrists and psychologists who quite frankly
didn’t take my daydreaming seriously.
They couldn’t conceive that something like daydreams – something we all
do, something that has some benefits – could ever be truly maladaptive .
However, I knew the truth: that maladaptive daydreaming was eroding my
life. Wasting my life. It was an addiction that came out of nowhere and
refused to leave.
This guide is part of the broader MaladaptiveDaydreaming.org course. It
seeks to define what maladaptive daydreaming is, how it arises, the best
methods to overcome it, and what pitfalls lay in front of you.
This course was created so that I could move the ball forward and help
those who are in an analogous position to where I was. It’s to help ensure
that you don’t spend years of your life mired down in the frustration of
maladaptive daydreaming. It’s to help ensure you don’t spend thousands of
dollars going in circles; feeling like perhaps your mind is irrevocably
broken because no one sees the problem that you see.
I have helped hundreds of maladaptive daydreamers since I began. It takes a
lot of time and it doesn’t make me much money compared to my day job.
However, being able to connect to people who have suffered like I have is a
joy and a blessing, because I know I am in a position to help.
Solving the puzzle of maladaptive daydreaming does require work on your
end: you have to be honest about what your daydreams are (they’re harder
to write down and analyze than you would think) and work through the
survey and test provided.
This guide – and the associated survey and test – are meant to give you all
the steps and resources you need to succeed. However, it’s a bit like giving
you a complicated puzzle and the instructions on how to complete it: it
makes your job easy, but you still have to put in a bit of work.
With that said, let’s begin…

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 HOW DOES THE
MALADAPTIVEDAYDREA
MING.ORG COURSE FIT
TOGETHER?
The course has three sections, each broken up in this document. The three
sections are: the test, the survey, and the guide (that you’re reading now).
The Test
The test is a numerical one. You simply answer honestly, using the scale,
regarding the most common attributes of maladaptive daydreaming.
This gives you an idea of where you fit into the maladaptive daydreaming
spectrum. I’ve included the aggregate results of those who have taken the
test so far to give you an idea about where you fit in.
Note: You don’t need to share these test results with anyone at all. They are
purely so you have an idea of how you relate to others with maladaptive
daydreaming.
The Survey
The survey goes deeper than the test. You don’t simply choose a number on
a scale; you have to actually write down your answers. The more details the
better. This survey should take hours – even days – to complete.
For many, this is a very difficult thing to do. You have to actually give voice
to your maladaptive daydreams and give your own rationales – whether
correct or not – as to why you believe they have originated.
I’ve had people get this course and then spend weeks trying to answer this
survey. Not because it’s intellectually difficult, of course. But rather
because it requires you to be honest with yourself and to write down your
struggles.
Chances are you, like me, have spent thousands of hours in your
maladaptive daydreams, but yet have never written them down or talked to
anyone about them. This is because of the deep shame and embarrassment
so many of us feel regarding our daydreams; this sense that if others knew
who we were inside our own heads, we’d be viewed as unusual at best and
as somehow broken at worst.
With that said, many have found the survey to be incredibly cathartic. It’s
like relieving a release valve that diminishes the grip maladaptive
daydreams have over them.
You do not need to share your survey results with anyone. Simply
answering the questions in as truthful and unfiltered a way as possible is all
you need to do.
Remember: Your maladaptive daydreams are likely your biggest secret that
no one knows the full extent to. The way to release their grip on you begins
and ends with yourself . You need to do the intellectual work to make it
happen.
The Guide
The guide you’re reading now is meant to place everything in context. I’ve
spent hundreds of hours with maladaptive daydreamers and have seen
hundreds come out on the right side of it (including myself).
As a result of my own experience, I developed a seven-step strategy for
overcoming maladaptive daydreaming and a number of tricks along the
way. Like anything, it only works if you commit to it. But for those that do,
the use of my simple system ends up creating remarkable results within a
very short period of time.

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 WHERE I WANT YOU TO
BE
While many fear that overcoming maladaptive daydreaming will takes
months or years, it can actually be much more immediate.
Around 50% of those of whom I’ve talked to have noticed substantial
decreases within the next 48 hours and being able to stop within a few
weeks altogether (with the odd relapse here or there).
For some others, it takes a bit more time. However, where I want you to be
is in a place where you can honestly tell yourself that your maladaptive
daydreaming has decreased by at least 50% within a few weeks.
The reason why progress can be made so swiftly for many is because
you have already made the decision that your daydreaming is
maladaptive and that you want to make a change.
Once you go through the process of documenting your “fantasy worlds” and
implementing my process a sense of relief is almost immediately felt. Like
a burden has been lifted. Many find the enjoyment of these worlds simply
removed. It can be a bit of a bizarre process.
…As soon as I could be honest with myself and follow a simple method to
ensure I didn’t fall into maladaptive daydreams again, the weight was lifted
and the daydreaming grinded down lower and lower as the days past.
So, our goal is that within 14 days you notice a 50% reduction in your
maladaptive daydreams at a minimum and within a month we want your
daydreams to be sporadic. Sporadic being defined as having some days in
which you don’t daydream at all and some days in which you spend just an
hour or so in them.
Ultimately, what the vast majority of people find is that they’ll make
tremendous progress in diminishing their maladaptive daydreams and then
occasionally their old maladaptive daydreams will pop into their mind, but
they just no longer seem that interesting or enticing.
…It’s important to note that during these next few weeks it’s entirely fine to
have daydreams. They’re normal! It’s about disrupting your maladaptive
world that has sucked so much of your time out.
For instance, I found myself immediately after reducing my maladaptive
daydreams starting to daydream about my own immediate future. I started
daydreaming about future careers goals, future relationships, etc.
That’s perfectly healthy and well-studied by psychiatrists. Daydreaming
about your future is adaptative , it is part of what helps us make informed
decisions about the future.
Some adults lose the ability to daydream at all as they get older. I find this
terribly sad. Daydreams that are adaptive , not maladaptive , can be
wonderfully useful and are a sign of a keen, imaginative, and creative mind.
Our goal is not to stop your daydreams. Our goal is to stop your
maladaptive daydreams and ensure any daydreams you have in the future
are adaptive.

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 WHAT IS THE PROCESS?
The process that we are about to embark on has been constructed based off
of what gets the best results given my own experience and the experience of
those who I have helped.
The process goes like this:
1. You read this guide all the way through (perhaps a few times, if
needed)
2. You do the Maladaptive Daydreaming Test (total time will be 10-
20 minutes)
3. You do the Maladaptive Daydreaming Survey (this can vary in
how long it ultimately takes you to do)
4. You begin implementing the tactics and strategies described in
this main guide every day
5. You also should keep a copy of your survey results – where you
describe your maladaptive daydreams – and read it over daily or
at a minimum weekly

This process is aimed at helping you learn about maladaptive daydreaming,

discover methods you can immediately begin implementing, then moves on
to taking the test and survey that will help guide your recovery process.
As you’ll come to find out, opening up and being honest is at the core of
cracking the maladaptive daydreaming nut. But opening up – as I’m sure
you’ve realized – is very hard to do. So, we gently work up to this. If it
takes you a few weeks to find the courage and the words to fill out the
maladaptive daydreaming survey fully that’s perfectly fine – there’s no
expiry date on this course and no timeline you absolutely must follow.
The process you’re about to discover will work whenever you are ready; it’s
just important that you are eventually ready.
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 WHAT TO EXPECT
Results come much quicker than people often think, because people are not
aware that there are methods to reducing their maladaptive daydreams and
haven’t taken the time to ever truly write down what their dreams are.
Roughly 50% of those who go through the course report a 90% decrease in
their maladaptive daydreaming within two weeks. The remainder report
anywhere between a 25-50% reduction in their maladaptive daydreaming
within two weeks.
Ultimately, this process is about getting to better understand your
maladaptive daydreams and working to find a solution to slowing them
down and then stopping them from interfering with your life altogether. If
you’re committed, we’ll make a difference together. I’m sure of it.
Now onto the main section of this guide…

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 WHAT IS MALADAPTIVE
DAYDREAMING?
We have to start first with a definition. Ultimately, definitions of any
ailment of the mind are a bit fraught. Maladaptive daydreaming is often just
one of those things that you know when you see it.
Further, psychiatrists use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) to
diagnose various maladies of the mind and maladaptive daydreaming has
not been included within it (despite pressure among some psychiatrists to
include it).
The reason why is that many psychiatrists either don’t believe daydreams
can ever be maladaptive or they believe that maladaptive daydreams are
simply a manifestation of some deeper, known issue (such as being
delusional, being depressed, etc.).
A pragmatic, and I believe correct, way to define maladaptive daydreaming
would be as follows:
“Maladaptive daydreams are any daydreams that not only serve
no useful purpose to furthering your life, but actively harm your
‘real’ life by consuming increasing quantities or your time and
energy”
We can further drill down on this definition by saying a few other things.
First, maladaptive daydreaming is often characterized by increasingly
abstract worlds.
For instance, I recently spoke to one young woman. Her maladaptive
daydreams involved her being a young musician despite the fact that in real
life she was already quite a bit older than her age in her maladaptive
daydreams. However, when this maladaptive daydream began the young
women was simply herself when she was younger; she looked the same,
had the same personality, etc. The only difference was that she was her
younger-self and a successful musician.
…This in and of itself is on the borderline of being maladaptive. If it’s
distracting to her - consuming too much of her time and energy – then that
would classify it as maladaptive. But the nature of the dream isn’t overly
maladaptive.
However, over time something happened that turned this borderline
maladaptive daydream into an absolutely maladaptive daydream.
The young musician in the daydream changed from being a reflection of her
younger self to being quite abstract . She looked different (was prettier),
played instruments this young woman couldn’t actually play, and began to
be involved in a series of relationships with fictional characters.
This tendency toward abstraction is the largest single signal for daydreams
becoming maladaptive. When I first spoke to this woman, she confessed
that her character in this maladaptive daydream used to be a close reflection
of herself, but now was nothing close to it.
Second, maladaptive daydreaming is often characterized by a “time
sink”.
Continuing with the example of this young woman, her maladaptive
daydreams began in a border-line state where she would really only have
them when she was about to go to bed. She estimated it took up no more
than an hour of her time a day in one single block.
However, by the time we connected she estimated these daydreams
consumed up to four or five hours of her day and were persistent throughout
the day.
You see, it’s not just the duration that matters in a single block of time.
Maladaptive daydreaming is most pernicious when it runs on autopilot in
the back of your mind throughout the entire day. Always creeping up
whenever you have a spare moment. This leads to the kind of mental “fog
state” that many maladaptive daydreamers confess to having. The
maladaptive daydreams simply become woven into the fabric of your real
day-to-day life and are always gnawing away at your attention and mental
energy.
Third, the maladaptive daydream “script” becomes more detailed.
Another common feature with maladaptive daydreamers is that the abstract
world the maladaptive daydreamer has created is continually refined over
time, perhaps changing and becoming more abstract, by repeating the same
sequence of events.
For example, this young woman who daydreamed of being a younger
musician would repeat the same opening concert that skyrocketed her to
fame hundreds of times. Nearly every day – multiple times a day – she
would daydream about the opening song choice, the clarity of her voice,
and when an agent would come over to her after it was all done to offer to
represent her.
She told me that initially this sequence was vague and hazy in her mind.
But after hundreds of repetitions it became increasingly vivid and detailed.
She could even describe the subtle shape and vibration of the microphone
as she belted out her tunes.
She was deeply embarrassed to bring this up. But there was no need to be.
It’s immensely common for this to occur to those suffering from
maladaptive daydreams.
Four, interpersonal relationships expanding
Finally, a very common element in many maladaptive daydreams is an
increasing focus on interpersonal relationships.
For the young musician, it began with the fictional agent who had offered to
represent her. Over time she began to give this fictional agent more and
more details; from looks to personality. She began to have pre-set
conversations with him after certain events.
What finally made this young woman – the real one, not her fantasy version
– realize she needed to stop maladaptive daydreaming was when, in a
moment of clarity, she realized she had constructed such detailed fictional
characters in her abstract world.
Where you are now…
After dealing with hundreds of maladaptive daydreamers, I’ve realized
there is most certainly a spectrum.
If you’re reading this report, you’ve recognized at a minimum that you have
maladaptive daydreams and wish to cease them.
Any of the four elements (or perhaps all of them) may apply to you.
Task #1: You should take a minute to consider which of these four
elements resonates with you. How are you like this young woman
who maladaptively daydreamt about being a musician?
The purpose of the Maladaptive Daydreaming Test is to figure out just how
entrenched your daydreams are. You may think that the more entrenched
(meaning the more detailed and involved) your daydreams are the harder
they are to stop. This is not necessarily true. Often the more detailed the
maladaptive daydreams are, the more ready you are to “cut the cord” and
we’ll go over how to do that.

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 WHY DO MALADAPTIVE
DAYDREAMS OCCUR?
Given that the definition of what maladaptive daydreaming is quite
ambiguous, understanding why it happens is even more difficult.
Psychologists and psychiatrists have a number of different theories
depending on the school of thought their partial to.
However, exploring the question of why, even if it’s unanswerable, is
important to prompting your own internal thinking.
My belief as to why maladaptive daydreaming occurs stems from my
personal experience and the hundreds of those whose stories that I’ve heard.
I have come to believe in the rationalist view. The rationalist view – as the
name would suggest – states that maladaptive daydreams start as an entirely
rational form of escapism .
In other words, choosing to daydream, even to the point of it being slightly
maladaptive, isn’t an irrational thing to do. It’s a form of a coping
mechanism and one that perhaps most people engage in.
However, a certain subset of the population (like you and I) simply devolve
further down the maladaptive daydreaming rabbit hole. While others may
only engage in a maladaptive daydream one-time for perhaps an hour after
a stressful day at work, we prolong the maladaptive daydreams and have it
take over part (or all) of our lives.
The rationalist view begins by positing the following fact: daydreams are
entirely rationale and adaptative but can expand to being maladaptive.
This is well-studied and well-agreed upon by psychologists and
psychiatrists. Daydreams are often based on thinking about ourselves in
slightly different situations at slightly different times in life.
For example, perhaps you have two job offers in quite different fields. You
may daydream about what life would be like in each one of these fields in
order to better figure out what one is best to pursue.
Of course, you have imperfect information (you haven’t worked at either
job!) but through daydreaming you can give yourself some closure that job
A is inferior to job B, so you’ll choose job B.
Or perhaps you’re thinking about asking out a close friend on a date. You
daydream about what it would be like to be romantically engaged; do your
personalities fit, are you physically compatible, etc.
Daydreaming – when done right – is entirely adaptable. In fact, a certain
subset of the population has trouble daydreaming because of the abstract
nature of it and they tend to have inferior life outcomes.
This is because they have trouble dealing with abstract decision making,
which is critical to making the most important decisions in our lives that
require it (where should you go to school, what should you study, what
career should you pursue, who should you marry, etc.)
Likewise, maladaptive daydreaming can be shown to be adaptive if it
“closes down” your mind to adverse stimuli for a brief period of time.
For example, I was extremely stressed and miserable in my fancy New York
job. Of course, I could have quit my job, but I was making a lot of money
and had great career opportunities if I stuck it out and gained the experience
of working at such a fancy institution.
If I let my job absorb me, I almost certainly would have quit. It would have
been like water coming to a boil. Traditional daydreaming wouldn’t provide
any form of relief, because it would involve daydreaming about future
career opportunities and relationships all wrapped up in the same
industry/field as I was so miserable in.
So instead – unbeknownst to me – I began to maladaptive daydream. I
began to develop an abstract world entirely divorced from my high-
powered job in New York. This acted as a form of release valve for all the
pressures of my job, which had taken over my life. When I had free time, I
could enter into my own stress-free world and get the pleasure of that. It
reset me, in a way, and that’s beneficial. It’s, in psychiatric terms, an
adaptive and rationale response to being in such a high-pressure, stressful
situation.
However, instead of my maladaptive daydreams being a release valve only,
they grew in importance. Perhaps if I had just spent an hour a day or less –
as I unwound before bed – in this “maladaptive” daydream it would not
have been really maladaptive at all.
…Instead, this maladaptive daydream began to grow. I began to daydream
whenever I had a spare moment. The maladaptive daydream played like the
score of a movie behind the scenes. Always present. Always there.
As my maladaptive daydream began to grow in influence, distracting me
from my job, it began to make my “real” life worse. Instead of acting as a
release valve, it began to compound by making my job performance worse
and making my life more stressful.
The reason why so many psychologists and psychiatrists have trouble
grappling with maladaptive daydreams is that there’s a continuum flowing
from daydreams that are adaptive to daydreams that are maladaptive .
Figuring out where someone is on this continuum is difficult and
appreciating how this affects someone, when you yourself haven’t
experienced it, is even more difficult.
Many people I talk to about their maladaptive daydreams are deeply
worried that their maladaptive daydreams are a sign of some deeper mental
illness. They’re so embarrassed by these abstract worlds they’ve created
that they think it can’t possibly be rational; it must be a sign of some bizarre
sickness within them manifesting itself in these daydreams.
What I hope I’ve illustrated is that nothing could be further from the truth.
If you remember back to how your maladaptive daydreams began, they
probably originated out of some point of pain (whether trauma, stress, or
anxiety). It probably, in hindsight, seemed rational for you to enter into an
abstract fictional world as it acted like a release valve to the pressures of
your real life.
…The issue is, for you like me, your maladaptive daydreams began
growing in influence and began to tip from being likely adaptive to
surely maladaptive.
As a way to prompt you, as you think about how your maladaptive
daydreams began, here are some of the common points I’ve heard as to how
other’s maladaptive daydreaming began:
A high-powered, high stress job was consuming their life
A close family member was in distress (dying, struggling with
illness, etc.)
A divorce was occurring in the family
Academics was engrossing them (high school students stressed
about college choices, undergrads stressed about post-grad jobs,
PhD’s struggling with their thesis, etc.)
Some form of abuse (emotional or physical) was occurring or
had occurred

All of these situations can lead to entering into an abstract daydream as a

way to escape and decompress. It can take your mind off of your real-world
issues allowing you to pause and reset. However, for some subset of these
people their daydreams grow and expand to the point of being maladaptive.
Task #2: You should take a moment to try to pinpoint how your
maladaptive daydreams could have started rationally. Do any of the
prompts above apply to your situation? What drove you to
maladaptively daydream and how could it initially have been rational?

Common traits among the maladaptive daydreamers…

One observation that I’ve had – and point out to those that I discuss
maladaptive daydreaming with – is that maladaptive daydreamers tend to
have a few similar attributes.
They tend to have very creative personalities. Many have found success –
academically or professionally – in creative pursuits and thus likely have an
active (perhaps overactive) imagination.
In conversation with one psychiatrist I realized how rare it is to construct
such elaborate, abstract worlds in one’s own head. While your maladaptive
daydreaming is a sign of distress, and should be gotten rid of, it’s important
to note that just being able to create such elaborate daydreams is a form of
creativity worth being a bit proud of.
There is no particular point here I’m trying to make and, of course, every
maladaptive daydreamer is different. However, even in your frustrations
and agony over your maladaptive daydreaming it may be worth taking a
step back and realizing it may be a sign of having a creative gift that is
simply being applied to the wrong area.
Task #3: Do you consider yourself to be more creative than most?
How can you apply your creativity – through writing, speaking, art,
programming etc. – in a way that benefits your real life? What is a
creative challenge you can immerse yourself in for no other reason
than to just do it?

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 THE PRIMARY METHOD
FOR STOPPING YOUR
MALADAPTIVE
DAYDREAMING
The following method was developed in order to help you stop your
maladaptive daydreaming. It’s a general method, meant to be the most
effective for the largest amount of people.
Further on in this report I go over some more tricks you can utilize that are
quite powerful in preventing maladaptive daydreaming in their own right.
For some, just using one of these tricks is enough to almost entirely stop
them.
What’s important to note, before beginning, is that by utilizing the
Maladaptive Daydreaming Test and Maladaptive Daydreaming Survey you
are covering many of these first steps anyway.
With that said, let’s begin…

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 STEP 1: TAKE THE TEST,
TAKE THE SURVEY – PUT
PEN TO PAPER
This course has been set up for you to do the hard, but necessary step first:
putting pen to paper.
Most maladaptive daydreamers – despite spending so much time in their
daydreams – have never written down, never mind told anyone, what is
going through their head all day long.
I get it. It’s embarrassing and often seems just bizarre.
However, stopping maladaptive daydreaming always begins with putting
pen to paper. You need to articulate what your maladaptive daydreams are
to yourself.
This has the effect for many people of releasing the power of their
maladaptive daydreams. No longer kept secret, many people feel a
tremendous relief wash over them. In fact, many realize just how silly, for
lack of a better word, their maladaptive daydreams are when they finally
write them down.
So, step one is to fill out the Maladaptive Daydreaming Test and
Maladaptive Daydreaming Survey. These will ask you tough, but necessary,
questions that cause you to probe and think about the nature of your
daydreams. Take your time, there’s no word limit or rush and there are no
right or wrong answers.

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 STEP 2: CONSIDER WHY
Part of the Maladaptive Daydreaming Survey you’ll fill out asks you why
you think your maladaptive daydreams began and what you think is the
underlying rationale behind them.
Once again, there are no right or wrong answers. In fact, your rationale is
by definition entirely subjective. It’s important for you to take a stab at
answering these questions yourself because you know yourself more than
anyone else.
Many people find relief by simply making the rational case for why their
daydreams occur. Like in step one, the grip that your maladaptive
daydreams have on you is lessened if you can just come to terms with the
fact that, for example, these daydreams began because your job was so
stressful that you needed something to take your mind off of it.
Many people subconsciously feel that their daydreams are sacred and can’t
be probed too much. The abstract world that’s been created by you is
delicate. Probing it just a little bit can release the air out of the metaphorical
balloon.

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 STEP 3: TEST DRIVE THE
TRICKS
In a few pages I’ll begin detailing some of my “tricks” that I’ve used to not
only completely get rid of my own maladaptive daydreaming, but that of
hundreds of other people.
I use the word “tricks” here, because what we’re doing is “tricking” your
maladaptive daydreaming into losing its power over you. We’re trying to
make your maladaptive daydreaming – that you’ve held in your head and
refined for so long – simply unappealing to you.
These tricks are not to be underestimated. They are incredibly powerful
ways to hack your maladaptive daydreams.
You should read through the tricks and find at least two that you begin
implementing right away. Not every trick will work for everybody. But
there has never been someone who has got this guide who has not found at
least one of the tricks to work wonders on their maladaptive daydreams.
Four: Recognize When it Happens
Step four is simple, but more difficult than it sounds. Often what happens,
when our maladaptive daydreams are quite developed, is we enter into a
state whereby we slip seamlessly into our maladaptive daydreams.
You’ve probably had the experience of sitting somewhere and drifting off
into your daydreams and then you realize hours have drifted by. It can be
infuriating, but it happens to all of us.
You need to recognize when your maladaptive daydreams begin. It’s fine to
have those initial seconds where you slip into the maladaptive daydream,
but you need to recognize it and then move immediately to Step 5.
It is also worth writing down any triggers you may have. For instance, is the
music you listen to a trigger for a certain kind of maladaptive daydreaming?
If so, you need to stop listening to it for a little while. Perhaps, after full
recovery, you can enjoy it again without triggering the start of your
maladaptive daydreams, but for now it must be stopped.
When you begin to notice yourself falling into a maladaptive daydream,
write down the situation you’re in. Are you bored at work or school? Are
you listening to music? Are you watching a certain program? Are you
having a tough time academically?
Some of these things can be stopped (i.e. music) and some are
unpreventable (i.e. boredom at work or school) and that’s fine. Because
Step 5 is meant to prevent your maladaptive daydreams from entering into
full stride .
I can’t impress on you enough the following: you will continue, for at least
a few weeks, to lapse into maladaptive daydreaming. It’s likely so
automatic for you that you simply can’t help it. Your goal in these initial
weeks is to immediately recognize when you have just begun maladaptive
daydreaming (which is harder than it sounds!), snap out of that maladaptive
daydreaming state, and move on with your day.

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 STEP 5: AIM TO REPLACE
When I first started working with maladaptive daydreamers, they would
often express frustration at maladaptive daydreams bubbling to the surface.
The reality is that, at least initially, this is unavoidable! Of course, if your
maladaptive daydreams have taken up a large part of your day, you’re going
to end up having them pop up through the day.
What you want to do is recognize them (Step 4) and try to put yourself in
situations where they don’t occur if possible (using some of the tricks
outlined below).
However, no matter how hard you try your maladaptive daydreams will pop
up in your mind through the day. When this happens you can either use the
tricks outline below all the time or part of the time you can aim to replace.
For instance, I often recommend finding something – anything – more
tangible to think about in the real world whenever you recognize (Step 4)
that a maladaptive daydream is about to occur. It doesn’t have to be
something intellectually deep, it doesn’t have to even be something
sensical!
For example, the young woman who had maladaptive daydreams about
being a musician used the following technique. Whenever she listened to a
certain kind of music her maladaptive daydreams would begin. So we
agreed she would temporarily stop listening to that music by taking the
(large) step of cancelling her Spotify music account and blocking YouTube
on her laptop.
She still had her maladaptive daydreams pop up frequently – although less
frequently than before – and so we replaced the “impulse” for her to
continue with them. I told her it didn’t matter if she began maladaptive
daydreaming 50 times a day, so long as no maladaptive daydream “really
got going” (meaning didn’t take up more than a few minutes of her time). If
you cut your maladaptive daydreams short you choke them of oxygen and
eventually they die out.
We did this the following way: whenever she recognized she was about to
enter into a daydream, she would turn to the New York Times website and
just start reading. It didn’t matter what the article was, she just had to start
reading something on the website. She likes following the news and so we
turned the time she would have spent maladaptive daydreaming into time
for her to read the news.
To create a step-by-step formula, it goes something like this:
1. Recognize when you are about to enter or are currently in a
maladaptive daydream
2. Immediately turn to some other stimulus (a book, a video, a
website, a puzzle, etc.) that distracts you from the maladaptive
daydream (so it must be actively engaging, not passively
consumed)
3. Continue focusing on this stimulus for at least a minute (but it
doesn’t need to be any longer than that)

The keywords – put in italics – are recognize , stimulus, and distracts .

That’s all you need to remember.
When you feel yourself about to enter into a maladaptive state you need to
recognize it first, then turn to a stimulus that is not passive (like listening to
music or fiddling with something, which causes your mind to wander) but
that actively engages your mind and thereby distracts you from your
maladaptive daydream.
This works wonderfully because, despite what many people assume, your
mind cannot multi-task well. That’s why, for me personally, maladaptive
daydreaming caused such negativity during my job. I couldn’t do my job
while also daydreaming!
What you will find is that, by immediately switching to an intellectually
engaging task, after just a few minutes of doing this your mind will have
forgotten all about the maladaptive daydream it was just entering. Then you
can get back to what you were doing before you were prompted to
maladaptive daydream to begin with.
So, this step-by-step formula doesn’t involve replacing hours of your
maladaptive daydreams with hours of something else. It takes just a few
minutes for your mind to have forgotten it was about to enter into a
daydream and once that has occurred you can move on with your day.
As a general rule, the more engrossing the stimulus is you’re using (say
reading an engaging book) the quicker you’ll forget about your maladaptive
daydream for the moment and move on.
For example, Chris came to be with serious maladaptive daydreaming. It
was taking up around eight hours of his day while he was a freshman in
college. Chris and I discussed a few ideas and we decided whenever he
would find himself maladaptive daydreaming, he would turn to doing a
quick game of online Sudoku. Chris became so good at it that on one online
leaderboard he was within the top 200!
Sudoku is a perfect example of some engaging stimulus to turn to. It
involves having to focus on what numbers to place where in a limited time
frame. You can’t maladaptive daydream while playing sudoku. As soon as
Chris would open up the sudoku app on his phone his maladaptive
daydreams would be quickly forgotten and when he was done playing his
maladaptive daydreams wouldn’t crop up for a few more hours. When they
did crop up again, he’d repeat the process.
After a few weeks of starving his maladaptive daydreams of oxygen Chris
found himself playing sudoku unprompted by maladaptive daydreams. In
fact, his maladaptive daydreams rarely even popped up in his mind. Within
a month Chris reported no maladaptive daydreams, a new love of sudoku,
and a bit of embarrassment about how he even found himself in such a
maladaptive daydreaming state.
Much of maladaptive daydreaming is just an engrained habit that we are not
even conscious of. We get triggered by something (often unconsciously)
which prompts us to enter into a maladaptive daydream and then hours slip
by with us hardly noticing a thing.
In this step-by-step formula we break the habit by never allowing ourselves
to get into that deep maladaptive state. We are conditioning ourselves to
replace the bad habit (maladaptive daydreaming) with a new habit (like
reading a few pages of a book each time this occurs). We are starving the
bad habit of oxygen because we never allow ourselves to get deeply
engaged in the bad habit and eventually the unconscious impulse to enter
into maladaptive daydreams just slips away.

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 STEP 6: KEEP TRACK
The sixth step is to keep track of your progress. Every day write yourself a
little note, it can be just a few sentences long, detailing roughly how many
times you were tempted into a maladaptive dream and how many minutes
you feel into it for. There’s no need for exact numbers here.
Keep track of if you’re able to break the habit – by recognizing it and
replacing it with an active stimulus – and most importantly don’t beat
yourself up if you’re not perfect.
Your maladaptive daydreams have been a big part of your life for quite
some time likely. It’s unreasonable to put pressure on yourself to
immediately get rid of it. Sure, some people can get rid of their maladaptive
daydreams very quickly through the methods I’ve detailed in this course.
But everyone is different. If it takes 50% of people just a few weeks to
nearly get rid of their maladaptive daydreams, but it takes you three weeks
that’s perfectly fine. It’s not a competition. No one is keeping score and
ranking you.
What cannot be in doubt is that if you apply yourself, follow this method
and the tricks I’ll share shortly, and are honest with yourself your
maladaptive daydreams will diminish severely (and one day they will just
stop and you may not even realize that they have).

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 STEP 7: REPEAT
Recovering from maladaptive daydreams can involve slight “relapses”
every now and then (almost always less intense than your initial
maladaptive daydreaming phase).
You may go months free and clear, but then suddenly relapse when an
adverse event happens (like your job or academics becoming more stressful,
trouble with a significant other, etc.).
The key is to not get down on yourself and to not feel like any setback is
taking you back to square one. Do not treat your maladaptive daydreams
like some form of sobriety.
For drug and alcohol addictions there is an active, physical act: you need to
ingest the substances. For maladaptive daydreams there is no physical act,
it’s all in your mind. This means at times, even with your best intentions,
you will fall into a state of maladaptive daydreaming without even
recognizing it.
Forgive yourself, reapply the method above, continue to utilize the tricks
below, and keep moving. If you need help, reach out to me. There are no
medals for days spent without maladaptive daydreaming. It’s a process that
you must endure. As time passes it’ll get much easier, but demanding
perfection from your mind is like trying to hold back the tide with a
sandcastle.

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 TRICK YOUR MIND TO
STOP MALADAPTIVE
DAYDREAMING
While these tricks don’t necessarily need to be utilized in conjunction with
the seven-step method outlined above, these tricks can “super charge” that
method because of just how easy and effective they are.
In fact, these tricks can be utilized immediately on their own without even
utilizing the seven-step method. Many people have told me that using just
one of these tricks has entirely ceased their maladaptive daydreaming
entirely in just a few days.
However, it should be said that just because you end one maladaptive
daydream doesn’t mean another one won’t begin in the future. So, you want
to be mindful to replace your maladaptive daydreams with good habits that
are aligned with your values and who you – the real you – want to be in the
future (we will discuss this later on).
Part of why the seven-step method succeeds for nearly everyone is that it
engrains these little habits that ensure you don’t replace one maladaptive
daydream with another.
Put another way, the seven-step method ensures that you stop your mind
from even subconsciously falling into a maladaptive daydreaming state.
These tricks take your current maladaptive daydream and try to kill it off
(but don’t always prevent new maladaptive daydreams from occurring in
the future).
With that said, let’s take a look at these tricks.
Killing Off a Character
If there is a central character in your maladaptive daydreams, consider
briefly continuing your daydreaming and devising a scenario in which he or
she is killed off.
We retreat to our maladaptive daydreams for comfort. Your goal should be
to envision an arc to your maladaptive daydreams where you no longer find
comfort in them; where the main character you’re vicariously living
through no longer shares your same values or suddenly is no longer around.
It can all seem a bit silly to talk about killing off a character in your
daydream as if it’s all one big soap opera. But, of course, aren’t our
maladaptive daydreams really just that? Fictitious, abstract things we’ve
made up? Surely, we can kill off the main character and wrap up the series.
A number of those I’ve talked to have done just this to great effect. Others
have found it just too hard to do, which is fine.
You need to exercise caution using this method because ultimately what
you’re doing is continuing your maladaptive daydreams on purpose. If you
can’t kill off your character and move on, you should focus on the main
seven-step method to avoid maladaptive daydreaming altogether.
Poisoning the Well
A similar strategy to the one above is to continue your maladaptive
daydreams, but take the narrative in a direction that turns your daydreams
into a form of a slight nightmare. If characters you associate with in your
daydreams are funny, gregarious, and attractive make them loath, reserved,
and ugly.
Create an event in the narrative that turns your daydreams sour in some
way. Like with the previous trick, there is some risk here. You are
purposefully continuing your maladaptive daydreams. You can try this trick,
but if you find you just can’t get this new narrative – that removes
enjoyment from your maladaptive daydreams – to stick then you should
simply utilize the seven-step method and try to block out your maladaptive
daydreams altogether.
Repeating Bad Experiences
Another related, but slightly different, trick is to imagine some “bad
experiences” you can have in your maladaptive daydreams. Repeat these
bad experiences over and over in your mind and you’ll find that the shine of
your maladaptive daydreams begins to wear off dramatically.
For instance, one individual I talked to had maladaptive daydreams about
living off-grid in a remote part of the world. He had grown this abstract
world to the point where it completely distracted him from his job as a
computer programmer.
I came up with the idea – that he implemented – of repeating a bad
experience where he became miserable in this off-grid world; lonely,
isolated, and dealing with annoying animals ruining his camp.
He simply ran over this script in his mind whenever he noticed himself
going into a maladaptive state. Suddenly – like in the “poisoning the well”
method – the maladaptive daydreams he had spent so much time on simply
became unenjoyable.
He couldn’t believe after many thousands of hours he had spent in this
abstract world it all suddenly lost all of its appeal. It sounds hard to believe
that simply changing a script of your maladaptive daydream can make it
lose all appeal. But that is the case.
In fact, if you think about your own maladaptive daydreams you’ve likely
evolved and changed them significantly over time because the old versions
became stale, boring, and no longer comforting.
These kinds of tricks don’t work for everyone. Some can utilize them and
create an aversion to their maladaptive daydreams (which is what we want).
Some, however, just revert back to the “old” script in their mind – they just
forget about the killing off of a character, the poisoning of the well, or the
repeating of bad experiences. Their maladaptive daydreams move on, or
pivot, as if nothing ever happened.
Breathing Exercises
The final trick here might seem a bit odd but keep with me for a minute.
Some have found recognizing your maladaptive daydreams, but then
distracting yourself with an alternative stimulus (as described in the seven-
step method), to be a bit anxiety-inducing.
This is understandable and does occur to a small number of people.
The solution I’ve found that works best is to have folks do very quick and
simple breathing exercises when they recognize their maladaptive
daydreams creeping in (as opposed to distracting yourself with stimuli in
the ways previously mentioned).
The breathing exercise I recommend was founded by Dr. Andrew Weil who
is also the director of the University of Arizona Center for Integrative
Medicine. Dr. Weil has named his approach the 4-7-8 breathing technique.
This technique has been clinically shown to reduce anxiety and help control
willpower in times of need (such as when you’re on the verge of
maladaptive daydreaming).
The process is incredibly simple, and goes like this:
Breathe out fully
Breathe in through the nose for 4 seconds (counting in your
mind)
Hold the breath in for 7 seconds
Exhale forcefully through the mouth – creating a “whoosh” noise
– for 8 seconds
Repeat this cycle 4 times

This technique has worked wonderfully for many as a way to calm the
anxiety that can appear when trying to stop maladaptive daydreaming. It’s
perfectly normal for anxiety to creep in as you feel your mind pulling you
towards your daydreams when you’re trying to stop them.

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 WHAT’S THE TIME
COMMITMENT?
The time commitment necessary to start seeing a large reduction in your
maladaptive daydreaming varies, but for almost everyone a very large
decrease in seen within just the first week or two.
I’ve seen cases where just using a few of the tricks – in particular
“poisoning the well” – has led to an immediate stopping of all maladaptive
daydreaming.
I think this is most likely due to the fact that some people who get this
course are at the point of such desperation that once they discover these
tricks, they utilize them immediately and with incredible intensity. Those
who do this almost always have very quick and meaningful results.
For those who use the full seven-step method (in conjunction with the
tricks), effects are normally felt immediately with significant reductions
occurring over the first few weeks as is detailed below.
Ideally what I like to see is at least a 50% reduction in maladaptive
daydreaming within two weeks.
In my experience, roughly 50% of those who go through the course will get
a 90% reduction within two weeks and the remainder will have anywhere
from a 25-50% reduction within two weeks.
In other words, the majority of people who use the seven-step method and
the tricks utilized will have a severe reduction in their maladaptive
daydreaming within two weeks. For some it can take a little bit longer to get
it down to a 90% decrease level, but if you keep with it I’m confident that
level of reduction will be seen.
Every workable solution to maladaptive daydreaming I’ve found has been
founded on the principle that solutions that take many hours out of your day
just do not work. That’s why the seven-step method and the tricks are so
non time intensive. They focus on recognizing when you’re maladaptive
daydreaming (or about to), making a mental switch, doing an action that
takes just a few minutes, and then moving on with your day. Or they focus
on using a trick that can immediately shift your perception of your
maladaptive daydreams.
I’ve seen various people over the years recommend things such as
meditation to help with maladaptive daydreaming. I’m sure that can work
for some, but it’s time intensive and hard to keep up with.
It’s extremely important – even though your motivation to stop maladaptive
daydreaming is high – to not overcommit. Instead focus on the steps laid
out here and commit to doing them for a two-week period and see where
you end up. You’ll likely be shocked.

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 WHAT DOES SUCCESS
LOOK LIKE?
Many think that maladaptive daydreaming simply goes away. While it’s
true that – with enough time – your maladaptive daydreams will fade for
months or even years you’ll still occasionally drift, even if for a few
minutes, back into those maladaptive daydreams.
That’s fine. That’s normal.
As I said before, maladaptive daydreaming is a function of your mind and
your mind can only be controlled so much.
Success looks like your maladaptive daydreams becoming much more like
faint memories. Occasionally they’ll pop into your head, you’ll notice them,
and then a few minutes later they’ll disappear away.
What we want is not for your maladaptive daydreams to be entirely
forgotten forever, as that’s to wish for something no one can fulfil. Instead
we want to stop the desire to maladaptive daydream at all. Losing desire is
nature. It happens to all of us.
This course and all the methods and tricks outlined here are about making
your maladaptive daydreams unappealing and not something you
subconsciously drift into.
The satisfaction that comes from overcoming maladaptive daydreaming is
unparalleled. It’s an accomplishment. It’s a victory of your current self over
your prior self.

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 IS IT NORMAL TO FEEL
LIKE IT’S UNNECESSARY
TO STOP?
Absolutely!
I do not like referring to maladaptive daydreaming as an addiction. But it
does share similar characteristics and it can be difficult to explain it without
falling back on the crutch of addiction clichés.
So, with that said: you ultimately have to want to help yourself. You are
reading this course now because you want to help yourself currently . But in
the future, you may slide into thinking that your maladaptive daydreams
aren’t really so bad and maybe you shouldn’t bother trying to stop.
This is entirely common, because it is often a bit uncomfortable to use the
seven-step method or the “tricks” for the first few times. You want to
maladaptive daydream, you’re pulled toward it, and you feel a bit let down
when you don’t allow yourself to do it.
The best way to ensure that you keep your commitment to stop maladaptive
daydreaming is to write down how you feel when you are most fed up with
your maladaptive daydreaming.
Write it down on paper, or in a document on your computer, and just keep it
handy. Whenever you maladaptive daydream you can refer back to it and
see that in your recent past you wanted, more than anything, to stop this.
This acts as a promise from your past self to your current self; it reminds
you of what maladaptive daydreaming has done to you and how you need to
prevent it from continuing to make your life worse than it otherwise could
be.
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 WHAT STEPS SHOULD
YOU DO RIGHT NOW?
You should fill out the Maladaptive Daydreaming Test, which is numerical
and thus quite quick.
Then you should find a block of time – ideally at least an hour – and think
deeply about the questions asked in the Maladaptive Daydreaming Survey.
Don’t rush your answers to these questions. Take your time, think about
them, and try to condense your answers down to their core essence.
Then you should think about whether or not you’re first going to use the
seven-step method or just one of the “tricks” outlined in this course. I
recommend using the seven-step method in conjunction with at least one or
two of the tricks. So you should make your game plan and if you’re doing
the seven-step method decide on the stimulus you’ll be using when you
recognize your maladaptive daydreams creeping in.
However, if that seems like a bit much and you think that just one of the
tricks can work for you then give that a try. It’s better to do something than
nothing so don’t overwhelm yourself.
It’s important – as in all things in life – to strike when the iron is hot. So,
you should try to get this all done quite quickly and begin utilizing the
seven-step method or one of the “tricks” as early as possible.

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 WHAT SHOULD YOU DO
WITH YOUR FREE TIME?
One thing that has happened to a number of folks I’ve met who have
struggled with maladaptive daydreaming is they start strong, reducing down
their maladaptive daydreams by 90% or more, and then they run into an
issue: all of this free time.
For many, maladaptive daydreaming fills a void of free time. When you
stop maladaptive daydreaming suddenly your days have a lot of “empty
space” – a lot of time that you need to find some use for.
A big mistake is thinking that this time needs to be filled with productive
activities. Lots of maladaptive daydreaming occurs during parts of the day
that are “low energy”. For instance, as you’re getting ready for bed. In these
times you may not have the mental energy to read a book, for example, so
maladaptive daydreaming is a low-energy way to fill that time void before
you fall asleep.
I recommend drawing up a list of things you are mildly interested in that
you can fill these pockets of empty time now in your day with. The reason
why I say “mildly interested” is that many are susceptible to maladaptive
daydreams because they don’t have real hobbies or interests that they’re
deeply interested in.
I had a very fancy job in New York, went to a great college, etc. but in
reality had no burning passions. That’s partly why I took a high-paying,
high-stress, long-hours professional job – it was perfect for people like me
with no real passion in life!
What’s important to understand is that interests are cultivated through
exposure. So, you should draw up a list of things you find mildly interesting
or that seem intriguing that require various levels of intellectual work.
For instance, if part of your maladaptive daydreaming occurs during the day
when you have spare time and lots of energy pick a few books that may
seem interesting to read during those moments. However, if part of your
maladaptive daydreaming occurs at night, find an engaging podcast or
video series that requires much less intellectual engagement; something a
bit more passive, but that still prevents you from falling back into a
maladaptive daydreaming state over the ensuing hours.
Your list will vary, but here are some broad categories of things that can fill
the new time void you have:
Doing a course on a subject of interest (programming, painting,
public speaking, etc.) through an online platform (like Udemy
or Masterclass)
Very intellectually engaging, perfect productive
daytime activity
Finding a series of engaging, interesting, or entertaining
podcasts
Mildly intellectually engaging, good for nights
Finding a series of engaging, interesting, or entertaining books
Can be intellectually engaging or not, depending on
the book
Finding an engaging, interesting, or entertaining video game (so
long as you aren’t prone to becoming addicted to video games)
Mildly intellectually engaging, depending on the
game
Finding an engaging, interesting, or entertaining TV series
Not very intellectually engaging, perfect nighttime
activity

I’ve heard from a number of folks that are worried that they have been able
to reduce their maladaptive daydreaming down to nothing (which is great!),
but they now spend a great deal of time watching TV or playing video
games.
The question then is, is this really any better? Has one ailment been
replaced with another?
The answer is that in an ideal world maybe you wouldn’t want to replace
maladaptive daydreaming for four hours a day with watching TV or playing
video games for four hours a day.
However, it is unequivocally better to do those things than to maladaptive
daydream. The reason why is TV watching and video game playing are
passive pursuits that do not disrupt your sense of self .
What makes maladaptive daydreaming so disruptive is not just the hours of
the day that it consumes, but the fact that it morphs your sense of self. You
create an abstract, foreign world that impedes your ability to think about
your “real” life and make appropriate decisions that will help you lead a
better life. Maladaptive daydreaming derails everyone’s life who engages in
it seriously.
Now in an ideal world we would all spend our “free” time reading
intellectually engaging books and taking courses that better ourselves.
However, there are many very successful, contented people who watch
Netflix, play video games, or do other non-productive things with their free
time.
Watching TV and playing video games are forms of entertainment,
maladaptive daydreaming is not. Maladaptive daydreaming is a serious
form of escapism that distorts your sense of who you are, what you want to
be, and what you want to do with your life.
Maladaptive daydreaming drains you of your own self-conception and
replaces it with an unattainable fantasy in its most severe form. As a result,
do not worry for a moment about “anti-intellectual” pursuits replacing your
maladaptive daydreaming.
Don’t put pressure on yourself to stop maladaptive daydreaming and then
become an uber-productive person – learning French, Italian, and computer
programming at the same time. Be happy and content with just stopping
maladaptive daydreaming. If you replace it with something unproductive –
like playing video games – then after your maladaptive daydreaming is
firmly in the rear-view mirror maybe you can try to replace playing video
games with reading books.
Baby steps win the race when it comes to maladaptive daydreaming. Don’t
try to reconfigure your entire life while stopping maladaptive daydreaming.
Just focus on putting one foot ahead of the other.
Of course, many find that after a period of time their maladaptive
daydreams are replaced with normal daydreams. Remember: there is
nothing at all wrong with just daydreaming! Daydreaming is perfectly
adaptive and beneficial when it revolves around the real you as the main
character and envisions what you could be doing with your life now or in
the future.
You should absolutely not fear daydreaming. I still do it nearly every day.
Daydreaming is an incredibly pleasurable, productive, and adaptive pursuit.
My daydreams now help me work through thorny issues in my own life
currently or aspirations I have for the future.
When you’ve implemented the method and tricks I’ve outlined here and
overcome your current maladaptive daydreams you do not need to worry
about your new daydreams becoming a “gateway drug” to maladaptive
daydreaming. So long as you understand how to overcome maladaptive
daydreaming, you can stop a maladaptive daydream in the future before it
even begins to take hold.

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 WHAT ABOUT RELAPSE?
As I’ve tried to drive home throughout this entire report, maladaptive
daydreaming is a condition of the mind. That means that it will be
impossible to ever completely stop a maladaptive daydream from poping
into your mind since you can’t gatekeep your mind.
That is why we have focused so much on recognizing when you are in the
early stages of maladaptive daydreaming and quickly switching to a
stimulus . You can’t ever get it to go away entirely in the early days. All you
can do is just recognize when it appears and not get sucked into hours of
maladaptive daydreaming as you currently do. Further, we have tried
through the tricks to diminish the appeal of maladaptive daydreaming in the
first place.
With that said, you may have long stretches – days, weeks, or months –
where you don’t maladaptive daydream at all. Then one day you get sucked
in and spend hours maladaptive daydreaming – perhaps using the identical
script that you used to use.
That’s normal. That’s fine. As I mentioned early, don’t fall victim to the
“sobriety” clichés that surround drugs and alcohol. Taking drugs and
alcohol are active choices that have physical actions associated with them
(ingestion). Maladaptive daydreaming is purely a function of the mind; it’s
incredibly difficult to never have a relapse.
When you do have a relapse, recognize it and perhaps re-read this guide and
re-read what you wrote in the Maladaptive Daydreaming Survey. Recognize
how much progress you’ve made and ask yourself if your life is better than
it was before you first found this course (the answer is almost certainly
“yes”).
Then take a moment to reflect on why you fell prey to maladaptive
daydreaming again. Use the rationalist mindset that we discussed earlier on
to try to come up with an answer (e.g. “Why was it rational for me to get
into a maladaptive daydream again after not doing it for so many
months?”).
You’ll likely find that you fell into maladaptive daydreaming again because
of a stressful day at work or school, inter-personal troubles, or you’ve just
found yourself in a particularly sour mood. As a result, you’ve turned to
maladaptive daydreaming to escape and find some peace but are likely now
aggravated for breaking your streak of being free from maladaptive
daydreaming.
Once again, forgive yourself and move on. Employ the same tactics you had
been previously and trust the process. It’s entirely common for folks to
relapse every few days initially, then every few weeks, then every few
months, and then your maladaptive daydreams become foreign memories
from an earlier time with no power over you.
Part of recovering from maladaptive daydreaming is better getting to
understand yourself. That’s why I talk so much about the rationalist mindset
– constantly asking yourself why you’re maladaptive daydreaming right
now and why you began maladaptive daydreaming to begin with. When you
have concrete answers to these questions, then the power of maladaptive
daydreams diminishes.
I relapsed about once a week initially after initially “solving” my
maladaptive daydreaming, but I found when I did relapse (after utilizing the
seven-step method and tricks discussed here) that I no longer found my
maladaptive daydreams to be as comforting or enjoyable as they were
before.
As a result, I spent much less time when relapsing in my maladaptive
daydreams then before. So even though I did technically relapse, it wasn’t
nearly as bad as it was previously. Then gradually overtime my relapses
became more and more infrequent and eventually my maladaptive
daydreams just disappeared altogether.
Whenever I did relapse though I’d just ask myself why and write down
what my day had been like. Almost invariably my day had been difficult;
lots of stress at work, difficult interactions with my colleagues, etc. I
recognized that I was maladaptive daydreaming because it gave me some
control, comfort, and showed an abstract world where I was happier. Even
just recognizing this made my maladaptive daydreams less appealing; it
showed how futile and silly these maladaptive daydreams really were.
Don’t be afraid of relapse. Just try to understand why they’re happening and
notice that they almost certainly are less appealing to you than they used to
be. That’s progress. Even if it seems frustrating at the time.

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 CONCLUSION
Here we are.
Maladaptive daydreaming is a scourge that has the ability to warp your
mind and unravel your life. However, you are not alone. I’ve personally
talked to hundreds who all had their own unique stories, but who also all
had the same fundamental issues as I had.
The seven-step method and “tricks” laid out in this course will work for
you. For some it is quite immediate and for others it takes time.
I truly hope you’ve taken something away from this course. If nothing else I
hope that what I’ve written here for you resonates with you. I hope that how
I’ve described maladaptive daydreaming rings a bell and makes you realize
just how common what you’re going through is.
When you get to the other side of maladaptive daydreaming – when it all
just becomes a distant memory – you’ll look back at your maladaptive
daydreaming curiously. You’ll remark how almost unbelievable it was that
you invented this abstract, foreign world that sucked you in so deeply.
Please take the time to reflect on what I’ve written and reach out with any
questions. I struggled creating this report with how many stories and
examples to include. Ultimately, I aired on the side of only including a few.
This is because I don’t want you to think there’s a certain type or mold of
maladaptive daydreaming. Everyone has a different maladaptive daydream,
but they all share common elements and can be solved in the same way.
Here’s to your future of being free of maladaptive daydreaming and to
opening up your life to new, real-world possibilities once again.
Yours truly,
Alex
P.S. – The next step is to fill in the Maladaptive Daydreaming Test and
Maladaptive Daydreaming Survey below.
P.P.S. – If you purchased the additional e-mail access to me - so that you
can have someone to talk to and get advice from - feel free to reach out to
me at [email protected] whenever you are ready.

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 THE MALADAPTIVE
DAYDREAMING SURVEY
Welcome!
As you likely already know, my name is Alex. The Maladaptive
Daydreaming Survey should be read and completed only after you read The
Maladaptive Daydreaming Guide. So if you haven’t read the guide yet, go
and do that. The guide will give you context into how this survey fits into
this broader MaladaptiveDaydreaming.org course.
For some this survey takes just 20-30 minutes to complete. For some this
survey takes hours to complete. For some this survey is one of the hardest
things they have done in years.
This disparity is because this survey asks hard questions and you need to be
brutally honest with yourself when answering them.
In my experience, having dealt with hundreds of those with
maladaptive daydreaming, 95% of those suffering have never written
down what their maladaptive daydreams are honestly.
This is remarkable when you think about it. Maladaptive daydreamers are
typified by spending hours each day in abstract maladaptive daydreams, but
yet these maladaptive daydreams have never been written down. These
maladaptive daydreams stay firmly inside one’s own head.
The reason why this is the case is quite obvious: there’s a mix of
embarrassment, shame, and confusion about even admitting to yourself
(never mind to other people) what you’re going through.
In my personal experience, I thought my maladaptive daydreaming was
quite “normal” until I really began to think about it and notice how
disruptive it was to my life. Then I quickly became embarrassed that I
found myself in this situation.
When I first committed pen to paper and wrote down what my own
maladaptive daydreams were, I could not bring myself to even put all of the
details in because I was so ashamed of myself. I hope this won’t be the case
for you, but understand that if it is, it’s entirely normal.
This survey contains a number of questions that I’ve created that are meant
to draw out not only what your maladaptive daydreams are, but how you
think of them.
Completing this survey requires introspection and it requires honesty.
Ultimately, you know yourself and your daydreams better than anyone else
could.
It is important for you to know that well over half the people who have
gone through this course have said the process of filling out this survey
has acted as a release valve.
This is because prior to filling out this survey, they had never actually
written down their maladaptive daydreams and thought about their causes.
Many feel that just the very act of filling out this survey releases the
power their maladaptive daydreams have over them. It makes their
maladaptive daydreams feel less “real” and less controlling.
That’s ultimately the power and purpose of this survey. It’s about being
radically transparent with yourself about what you’re going through.
It may seem silly that just writing to yourself can have such a powerful
impact. But trust me, for the vast majority it will have an effect if you are
truly honest with yourself.
With that said, let’s begin. There’s no time limit here. Take however long
you need. However, try not to procrastinate on starting this. The first step is
always the hardest.
Question 1: Describe your maladaptive daydreams in as much detail as
possible.
Question 2: How have your maladaptive daydreams evolved over time,
if at all?

Question 3: Are there particular “scenes” or “scripts” that you replay

over-and-over again in your mind? Why do you think your drawn to
those “scenes” or “scripts” in particular?
For example: you’re maladaptive daydreaming about being a famous
musician, and you play a certain concert venue over-and-over again.
Maybe you think your drawn to this “script” because for the first time
people admire and respect you.

Question 4: How abstract or different is the main character in your

maladaptive daydreams from yourself?
For example, is it yourself currently; yourself when you were younger or
yourself when you are older; someone who looks different, but has the same
personality as you; or someone who looks different and has a different
personality from you?
Question 5: Do you know, in real life, any of the other characters in
your maladaptive daydreams? If so, why do you think you include
them? What do they see in your daydream character than you do not –
in real life – possess?

Question 6: Are there other primary characters in your maladaptive

daydreams who are real people, but that you do not know (such as
famous people)? Or are the other primary characters completely
fictional characters?

Question 7: As your maladaptive daydreams have evolved over time,

have they been becoming increasingly more abstract? If so, how?
In other words, did your maladaptive daydreams begin in a way somewhat
related to the real-world, but then became increasingly divorced from
reality over time?
Question 8: Think back to when your maladaptive daydreams began, if
you can. Was this a time of acute stress or trauma?
For example, the acute stress could be in terms of work, school, or inter-
personal relationships.

Question 9: Are there particular emotions that you feel your

maladaptive daydreams evoke in you? In other words, do you feel
sensations of love, happiness, sadness, etc. when maladaptive
daydreaming? Or some mix of all emotions?

Question 10: How has the number of hours you maladaptive daydream
per day evolved over time? Why do you think this has happened?
For example, perhaps it began with just 20 minutes a day, but has morphed
into being four hours per day or more.
Question 11: In the main guide we talked about the “rationalist
mindset” and the fact that most maladaptive daydreams start off as
adaptive coping mechanisms. Did this resonate with you? What could
these maladaptive daydreams initially have been helping you cope
with? Did they work (at least initially)?

Question 12: Why stop maladaptive daydreaming now? What was the
breaking point for you?

Question 13: When you think about your maladaptive daydreaming, do

you feel embarrassed or ashamed? If so, why do you think you feel this
way?
Note: it’s entirely normal and rational to feel this way, just try to put it into
your own words as to why you feel this way, if it applies. It can help just to
articulate your feelings here.
Question 14: If you fail to stop your maladaptive daydreaming, what
will that mean for you personally?
For example, will it just be disappointing, or will it have implications for
your inter-personal relationships, schooling, and/or career?

Question 15: What has your maladaptive daydreaming prevented you

from being able to do “in the real world” since it began?

Question 16: If you’ve seriously thought about stopping maladaptive

daydreaming in the past, what do you believe prevented you from
success?
For example, did it just free up too much time, did it cause you to feel
distressed, or did you just not know what methods or strategies to utilize?
Question 17: When you think about no longer maladaptive
daydreaming, how do you feel? Why do you think you feel that way?
For example, do you feel energized, do you feel anxious, do you feel
hesitant?

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 THE MALADAPTIVE
DAYDREAMING TEST
Welcome!
As you likely already know, my name is Alex. This is the Maladaptive
Daydreaming Test. If you haven’t already read the Maladaptive
Daydreaming Guide, please go and do that first.
Unlike the Maladaptive Daydreaming Survey , the Maladaptive
Daydreaming Test is much quicker to fill out. It’s a series of assertions that
require you to rate how much you “agree” or “disagree” with a particular
assertion on a scale of 1-10.
If you strongly agree (meaning the assertion strongly pertains to your
situation) you give it a 10. If you strongly disagree (meaning the assertion
does not pertain to your situation) then you give it a 1. Obviously, if you fall
somewhere in the middle you give some score in-between.
At the end of the test I show you the results of the 600 people who have
previously taken the test. This gives you a solid understanding of where you
fall in the distribution. With that said, if you score quite high or quite low
there’s no need to draw any kind of negative conclusion.
I’ve found that those who score high and those who score a bit lower are
roughly equally able to overcome their maladaptive daydreaming. In fact,
those who score below 30 tend to have the toughest time overcoming
maladaptive daydreaming. This appears to be because they haven’t quite hit
the “breaking point” yet where they’re fed up and desperate for change.
Those who score above 50 on this test tend to be at their breaking point and
thus are more motivated to finally stop their maladaptive daydreaming.
With all that said, let’s get started. If you have any questions, please let me
know.

Instructions: Choose a number between one and ten for each of the
following assertions. Choose 10 if you “Strongly Agree” with the assertion.
Choose 1 if you “Strongly Disagree” with the assertion. Once complete,
add up each of your answers to get a final score (that score will be between
10 and 100).
Note: Not all of these assertions may be relevant to your kind of
maladaptive daydreaming. If a question does not apply, simply put a 1.

1. Maladaptive daydreaming has impacted my life in a severely

adverse manner.

1 ​2 ​3 ​4 ​5 ​6 ​7 ​8 ​9 ​10

2. Maladaptive daydreaming is something I do multiple times a

day, every day.

1 ​2 ​3 ​4 ​5 ​6 ​7 ​8 ​9 ​10

3. Maladaptive daydreaming has impacted my academic, social,

and/or professional life.

1 ​2 ​3 ​4 ​5 ​6 ​7 ​8 ​9 ​10
 4. My maladaptive daydreams have become increasingly
abstract over time.

1 ​2 ​3 ​4 ​5 ​6 ​7 ​8 ​9 ​10
Explanation of assertion: your maladaptive daydreams used to be
somewhat related to your real life, but now are entirely divorced from
your real life.

5. I repeat many of the same “scenes” or “scripts” from my

maladaptive daydreams many times.

1 ​2 ​3 ​4 ​5 ​6 ​7 ​8 ​9 ​10
Explanation of assertion: you repeat the same stories, scenes, or
scripted dialogue from your maladaptive daydreams over and over in
your head.

6. My maladaptive daydreams have grown much more

complicated and complex over time.

1 ​2 ​3 ​4 ​5 ​6 ​7 ​8 ​9 ​10
Explanation of assertion: the timelines and stories involved in your
maladaptive daydreams have grown more complicated and complex
over time.

7. My maladaptive daydreams no longer revolve around the

“real me” as the central character.

1 ​2 ​3 ​4 ​5 ​6 ​7 ​8 ​9 ​10
Explanation of assertion: your maladaptive daydreams began as
something close to the real you being a central character, but now this
central character shares very few similarities or attributes to the real
you.
 8. I find it difficult to concentrate when I absolutely need to
because my maladaptive daydreams will enter my head.

1 ​2 ​3 ​4 ​5 ​6 ​7 ​8 ​9 ​10
Explanation of assertion: even when you absolutely must focus on a
task, your maladaptive daydreams still enter your head and distract
you (making it difficult to focus and/or concentrate when needed).

9. I find myself thinking about my maladaptive daydreams

whenever I have spare time.

1 ​2 ​3 ​4 ​5 ​6 ​7 ​8 ​9 ​10

10. I consider my maladaptive daydreams to now be a central

part of who I am as a person.

1 ​2 ​3 ​4 ​5 ​6 ​7 ​8 ​9 ​10
Explanation of assertion: you have trouble sometimes differentiating
between real life and the life being lived through your maladaptive
daydreams.

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 PAST MALADAPTIVE
DAYDREAMING TEST
RESULTS
The following are the accumulated results of those who have previously
completed the Maladaptive Daydreaming Test. In total there have been over
600 participants.
As previously noted, these results are put here merely so you can see where
you fall in the range. Often it is the case that those who score highest have
the best ability to quit their maladaptive daydreaming because they are
more motivated to stop.
You should not be discouraged by the score you receive – neither scoring
low or high is necessarily a bad thing. The results are here just to show you
how others scored.
Cumulative Score % In Each Category Accumulated %
0-20 9% 9%
20-40 13% 22%
40-60 19% 41%
60-80 31% 72%
80-100 28% 100%
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