Walter Mitty is a jaunty World War I pilot commandeering a hydroplane with a faithful crew. He is a seasoned neurosurgeon with a slew of swooning nurses. He is a celebrity defendant with adoring fans. But when author James Thurber drops the curtain on his protagonist’s drab reality, he is just plain Walter Mitty — a meek man leashed by his iron-fisted wife. The famous tale follows a mousy man plagued by the shortcomings of his masculinity, turning to fantastical daydreams of heroism as a soothing salve to his reality.
When The New Yorker published Thurber’s novel “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” in 1939, the term maladaptive daydreaming was 63 years away from conception. But the author’s vignettes of lifelike escapism through prolonged daydreaming depicted maladaptive daydreaming before its 21st-century scientific label.
Today, maladaptive daydreaming is not yet classified as a disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders with its neighbors: schizophrenia, brief psychotic disorder, dissociative amnesia, delusional disorder and other mental health disorders. However, its exclusion from standard diagnostic manuals does not invalidate this substantial behavioral addiction of self-hypnosis.
Innocent mind wandering and simple daydreams are expected habits of the average Joe. In fact, it is an evolutionary adaptive advantage of the human mind to diminish boredom or strategize prospective goals.
A maladaptive daydreamer, on the other hand, intentionally dissociates from subjective experience. They overload their senses and mind with elaborate, utopian narratives in which they are famed, invincible, charismatic and complete contraries to their earthly selves. In these expansive fantasies, they can play God — their “paraself” knows no bounds.
Following an imaginative episode, a person can experience a hike in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms, functional impairment and a routine decrease in dopamine levels. Considered a viral TikTok community rather than a psychopathological illness, there is a vacancy of preventative discourse surrounding addictive daydreaming. Through sensory solutions and cognitive behavioral therapy, people can and should strive to be clean from maladaptive daydreaming and regain agency in their internal and external lives.
Maladaptive daydreaming is not a manifestation ritual. It causes clinically significant distress, overlapping with psychopathological symptoms of depression, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, impulsivity and fervent mood swings.
The trance can easily be onset by a favorite song. Once the mind has an immersive soundtrack for the fantasy, repetitive gestures frequently ensue for full body engrossment. Incessant pacing and mouthing dialogue to the nonexistent ghosts of their glorious internal world, they are now hell-bound for hours on end of imaginary preoccupation. The dopamine rushes in as the gap widens between valuable time invested in one’s fantasy and one’s reality. The come down from an imaginative episode is a swarm of shame and self-loathing. Despite the tortured letdown of maladaptive daydreaming, the embedded compulsion to indulge will routinely entrap the victim day in and day out.
In novelist Daniel Frey’s “Dreambound,” he ruminates over how our virtual age makes the truth and tangibility of the world less valuable to the individual. The literal truth of an object is no longer a priority for a multitude of modern humans. When COVID-19 quarantined people to be left to their own devices, relativity became irrelevant to a number of impressionable brains, leading to a surge in reality-shifting and maladaptive daydreaming.
These nirvanas of prowess and prestige captivate those with depleting levels of self-esteem. Rather than proactively reconciling their human imperfections, they rely on false narratives for momentary solace. It is no wonder that many maladaptive daydreamers wrestle with suicidal ideations. These immersions are synonymous with death and rebirth into an alternative heaven of eternal bliss. When people find a haven in their fantasy, the ongoings of the tangible become increasingly unbearable.
Corporeal touchstones are an intentional technique to avoid getting warped into internal illusion. Fixating on the smell of a room, the texture of a blanket or the sound of a drumming air conditioner can ground a vulnerable individual in reality. Another strategy is to poison the well of a fantasy. Every time a person slips into a daydream, they can modify it to possess a negative proponent. The further a daydream is from utopia, the easier it will be to halt it.
Like Mitty, it is easy to find refuge in the dazzle of a freewheeling mindscape. This paradise is an accessible way to cope with the rotten realities of being human. But this simple habit is an addictive preoccupation of the mind, causing people to abandon their identity for an unreachable promised land. Maladaptive daydreaming is the antithesis of self-care. It is an unhealthy obsession that neglects reality.
Isabella Ehring is an Opinion Apprentice for the winter 2025 quarter. She can be reached at iehring@uci.edu.
Edited by Zahira Vasquez