Maladaptive daydreaming: When being caught up a world in which people love you can be bad
Hannah found daydreaming could help her escape a difficult childhood.
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Hannah Byford is a 28-year-old nurse from Los Angeles, who likes riding horses and playing the cello. And for the first two decades of her life, she kept a secret.
Her experience of growing up was one of pain and anger and she would retreat to an imagined life inside of her head an elaborate daydream. It was an escape. It was to protect myself and give me that outlet in a way that maintained my sanity and in a way that I could oftentimes feel love and I could feel acceptance, and I could be who I am without worrying about being hurt, she says.
For two decades of Hannah Byford’s life, she kept a secret.
When things at home got too much to bear, she’d retreat to an imagined life, inside her head an elaborate daydream.
As a child, Hannah would spend hours a day in these intricate dreams, building entire new worlds.
And by her early 20s, she was spending up to seven hours a day deep in her daydreams.
On
All in the Mind this week, when daydreams turn dark and the unusual disorder that is maladaptive daydreaming.
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