daydreaming

I really hate this word because there’s something a lot more important at play here. ‘Daydreaming’ and the female version of ‘airheadedness’ is just… oh fuck off. Seriously.

The thing about adhd daydreaming is that the second you try to lean into a daydream, your mind goes elsewhere. It’s not pleasurable. It’s not the same.

So yeah. TPN and DMN. Everyone knows that shite by now. The DMN is active while the TPN does its job; one of the key differences in an adhd brain. This is obviously one cause of daydreaming.

But it’s bigger than that. The mind wandering doesn’t feel like ‘easy wandering’ and more like a frantic searching. An escape. The mind is trying to protect itself from negative feelings by ensuring that there is not a spare instant during which dopamine could drop out. Remember that fluctuations in dopamine prompt all behaviour. Thought is a behaviour.

So I think the daydreaming is also a self-defence mechanism. It is to ensure that your mind never sits still, just like your body can never sit still. Avoiding Trainspotting mode.

My daydreaming took the form of constant planning. I thought I was addicted to productivity and grew to hate it, but turns out I’m just a mega monkey who needs 20 bananas instead of 2 thanks to some songkran shit in my juicy bits.

So every moment of every day was spent planning the next moment of every day. What went before is not held in my short working memory so I need to ensure that every task is completed before moving on. Slap bang wallop, テキパキ, slap it away and onto to the next.

And this is all while trying to process complex life events. They don’t work that well in the background so having to hop between slap-banging and trauma-processing can get quite tiring. It also never allows you to get into the trauma-processing groove, which is why I think these knives are so good for me.

In my 42nd year I discover a need for self-stimulatory behaviour. I discover the reason: I need to occupy my brain with a simple repetitive task so that it can process the hard stuff in the background. This is the time when I can daydream properly.

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