Fantasy and Daydreaming Obsessions

Fantasy and Daydreaming Obsessions

Daydreaming and fantasy may lead you to pursue your desires, or keep you stuck and immoveable right where you are in life. Everyone daydreams of perhaps a nice vacation, buying a boat, or any type of goal or desire that you wish to pursue. That is normal when your imagination comes from an inner hope and joy.

However, if you’re daydreaming and fantasizing to avoid your feelings and avoid reality this is unhealthy and can bring pain and destruction. If you are using daydreaming and fantasy as an escape and it hinders you and locks you in an unhealthy cycle this is the formation of an addictive pattern. Addiction is an unhealthy relationship with a substance or event.

In this example the event is fantasy and daydreaming. It becomes an addictive pattern when you use it to change your mood, avoid your feelings, and escape your circumstances.

For example: Bill felt lousy when he thought about his situations, feelings, and focused on his negative expectations and faulty core beliefs. When he felt bad he would immediately begin to daydream. He would daydream about an attractive woman who showed interest in him, or he would pretend to be a successful sports figure. As with any addiction, it changed his mood and made him feel pleasure while he was daydreaming.

He would escape his reality, his eternal struggles, and faulty thinking with painful emotions, to feel better and would lose himself in the fantasy. This left him not facing the root problems, or tearing down what was driving him to meet his need in an unhealthy and ungodly way. Thus, he was left feeling empty inside.

This cycle of pain, avoidance and more pain, led to a crushed identity that continued the cycle and pattern. Daydreaming became the way he escaped himself and his feelings. This then produced a cycle of pain and avoidance through daydreaming and fantasy that created a majority of the pain he felt.

The very thing that he was using to escape and avoid his pain was actually causing his pain. This is the way a poor coping skill of avoidance develops into a progressive addiction. The more he daydreamed and fantasized, the less time he spent in the here and now and he continued to feel worse and worse as the pattern strengthened. It wasn’t until Bill was willing to look at the root of his wounds, unresolved issues, pain, faulty core beliefs, and faulty life skills that he was able to get free of his addictive pattern.

Cali was also addicted to fantasy. When she met someone that she was attracted to and liked, she would obsessively think about him and create her dream man. She would fantasize about him, making him into the man that she wanted him to be. Instead of staying in the moment and using social skills to get to know him, she would create a character in her fantasy and then behave toward him in the here and now as though this is who he was and what their relationship represented.

Cali was in a sabotaging pattern because she was creating a make believe man and then was let down when she tried to interact with him in the here and now. For example, when she met Dave at a friend’s house, she was immediately attracted to him and began a fantasy with him as the main character. When he chatted with her she decided that he really liked her and she fell in love with the man in her fantasy. When Dave asked her out she was already sure that she was in love with him and he reciprocated the feelings. When he didn’t ask her on a second date and did nothing to initiate and move the relationship forward she was devastated.

She felt abandoned by Dave. She did not realize that in the here and now Dave did not abandon her because he was never with her. It was a fantasy and a real person just happened to be the main character. Cali created the rejection and abandonment that was in the root system of her past. She was adding bricks on her mental strongholds by acting out a fantasy with real people and the end results were painful, resulting in a continuation of the cycle. The fantasy caused the pain and the pain drove her to more daydreaming.

She was disconnected from her true identity in Christ, and making good choices in reality. Cali needed to identify her faulty beliefs and the life and relationship skills that developed in an addiction pattern of fantasy and daydreaming. This faulty coping skill of avoidance sabotaged all areas of her life and kept her from bonding in true and real relationships. The addiction pattern kept her from trying to meet her needs with real people in the here and now which created more pain. This sent her back to the escape of fantasy over and over again.

Too many Christians find them self in this cycle. There is good news however, Christ died so that you can break free of any bondage. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1

Receive the truth that every bondage pattern can be destroyed because Jesus died to set you free. “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32) Knowing the truth does not mean just having an intellectual understanding of something but rather knowing the truth is walking it out in application through your daily situations.

You can overcome the struggles with any form of bondage: drugs, alcohol, porn, codependency and people pleasing, negativity, anger, fear, or any other type of escape coping skill that seeks to meet your need in an unhealthy and ungodly way. Seek Christ and learn the tools to tear down the faulty root system in your thinking, life, and relationship skills so that you can walk in your true Christ identity and meet your needs in godly ways. Contact me today by filling out the form below.

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Dr. Michele

Life Renewal Inc.

Contact: (904) 730-0775
Email: DrMichele@DrMichele.org

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