u/FairChampion2461

This is a quote from an interviewee I recently had on my podcast. It was an extremely insightful conversation, where the interviewee described what it was like living with MD since the age of two.

I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to interview someone with lived experience, and share that!!

I hope this interview can help some of you feel heard, seen and most importantly understood!

Feel free to check it out on at brickbybrick.series. Streaming on all platforms.

Instagram: @brickbybrick.series

Hi everyone. I host a mental health research podcast called Brick by Brick, where we explore mental health research one paper at a time.

Last week, I covered the Soffer-Dudek and Somer (2018) daily diary study on MD, the OCD cycle, the mechanics, and the research. After receiving an overwhelmingly positive response from this community.

I wanted to bring in someone who was willing to share their lived experiences. So, this week, I decided to interview someone who has had MD since the age of two. I genuinely believe this kind of conversation can help foster understanding and offer some hope to people who have been looking for both.

In the interview, she describes the biggest cost as lost time.

"You are either dreaming, thinking about dreaming, or you can't wait to go back."

She also talks about what it's like to navigate MD from within a collectivistic culture, where therapy isn't subsidised, resources aren't easily accessible, and the DSM wasn't there to validate her experiences.

She speaks honestly about the gaps in the research and makes a direct call to action for biological research. fMRIs, EEGs. She wants to know what's happening in the brain during MD, and why that data doesn't exist yet.

The episode is on Spotify and all major platforms!!! Link in the comments below.

I really hope it helps someone feel a little less alone.

Most people talk about how the daydream affects them or how long they’ve been in it. This paper talks about what happens on the before and after.

The research tracked 77 people over 14 days, who reported every evening on how intense their daydreaming was, how many hours, plus depression, anxiety, OC symptoms, dissociation, shame, everything.

On average the results showed that individuals spent over 4 hours, which is more than a quarter of their waking time daydreaming. Most of them had jobs, relationships, full lives running alongside this.

Nobody around them knew.

This is where it gets interesting, out of everything the researchers measured (anxiety, depression, social anxiety) one thing showed up consistently, and that was OCD symptoms.

Furthermore, it was reported that the day after an intense daydreaming day, three measures went up: OC symptoms again, dissociation, and negative emotion.

So the cycle is: something uncomfortable happens → the pull toward daydreaming gets stronger → you go in → you come back and the discomfort is worse than when you left → which strengthens the pull again.

It doesn’t just pull you in. It makes coming back harder every time.
I broke this down fully on my podcast Brick by Brick, Episode 4 if anyone’s curious.