Head Stuck in the Clouds: Life as a Woman with ADHD and Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder
By Julieta Barbiero
At six year’s old my mom found me walking around my bedroom talking out loud to seemingly no one. I don’t remember what I was saying, but I remember my mom telling me it was like I was somewhere else entirely, talking to the air, like characters in a movie in which I was playing a part. She thought it was a weird phase, or a hallmark of an over-imaginative child, but it never went away. When I was sixteen, I was officially diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a surprisingly young age compared to most women who are diagnosed with ADHD well into adulthood. I knew that I always had trouble focusing and that my intense daydreams weren’t anything out of the ordinary. Yet, it wasn’t until I was on Tik Tok this year (of all places) that I realized my daydreaming had a name, Maladaptive Daydreaming (MD), and that this thing that allowed me to escape from reality was actually a mental disorder.
Healthline.com describes MD as a psychiatric disorder, where intense daydreaming distracts from personal life. MD can be triggered at any time by conversations, sensory stimuli, and physical experiences and it has its own setting, plotlines, and characters. A person with MD can be talking to themselves out loud and making facial expressions for minutes to hours at a time. According to the British Psychological Society, people with MD spend about an average of four hours a day dreaming.
MD is an immersive experience where one can feel transported to a different world without ever physically leaving reality. When I am in a maladaptive daydream I am completely shut off from the world. While MDing, I experience loss of focus and sleep, heightened anxiety and an inability to distinguish where I am or what I was doing prior. I can also lose track of time and work tasks can suffer; I might unexpectedly talk to myself in public, forget who I’m talking to, and sometimes forget who I am. At times, I have become deeply depressed and anxious from daydreams that were extremely intense and even traumatic. On more than one occasion, I was so deep into a daydream that I developed a panic attack.
I never realized that my daydreams were a hindrance and a symptom of a disability like ADHD. However, as much as MD has caused me to disassociate from the world, I can’t imagine my life without it. I recognize that it disrupts my life, but I don’t know who I would be without it. So much of what I’ve been through and who I am is reflected in my daydreams.
Research from the University of Haifa in Israel and La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia found that females with MD often experience psychosocial problems from experiences of child sexual abuse. The study, conducted with 194 participants -half of whom were survivors of child sexual abuse and the other were control recipients with no history of abuse- found that survivors scored higher on MD compared to the control group. Survivors with higher MD scores compared to other survivors experienced higher psychological distress and social phobia.
MD is a way to shut of the outside world and intensify your own inner world. It has exacerbated my anxieties and even caused me to relive some of my traumas. But as much as MD is painful, in my experience it has also been a relief. As a woman with MD, I know I’ve unintentionally used it as a protective barrier from a patriarchal and sexist society. For instance, when I’m in MD while walking down the street, I don’t hear the catcalls and gross comments about my body, because the men making the comments aren’t players in the world that I’m creating. My daydreams can be violent and painful, but they can also be a delightful distraction from the outside world.
When we think of ADHD we think of hyperactive boys, that can’t sit still, disrupting classrooms. I want to broaden this picture to include girls, when we think of ADHD and MD, creating adventures and reliving pain. I want us to see them using MD to bring inner comfort to themselves.
MD has its consequences, especially as a woman. In general, MD and ADHD make it difficult to organize, focus on, or pay attention to details in life. Culturally speaking, women are supposed to be the household organizers; the ones that know everything in everyone’s lives and have the family schedule memorized; the type-a glue that keeps it all together. Women with ADHD sit in direct contrast to this and what the patriarchy expects of women, broadly. The difference between men and women with ADHD is that men have the luxury and social permission to be disorganized. Men aren’t pressured to manage family life. Young girls are taught and conditioned to be family planners and household organizers by enforced gender norms and culture; think, for instance, of dolls and toy kitchen sets. Studies have shown that both men and women with ADHD experience societal consequences, but differently. For men, these consequences tend to play out in the workplace, while women may experience conflicts in the home, not being able to meet socialized gender expectations. Boys and men can be the daydreamers, visionaries, and a chaotic mess of ideas, while girls and women are expected to be on the sidelines- staid, organized and focused.
MD is a common symptom of ADHD, even though not everyone who has ADHD experiences it. MD is a haven and a hindrance, just like ADHD is both a burst of energy and a distraction in life. Every mental illness has its costs and benefits and most mental illnesses are culturally associated with a certain person or type of person. When we think of ADHD we think of hyperactive boys, that can’t sit still, disrupting classrooms. I want to broaden this picture to include girls, when we think of ADHD and Maladaptive Daydreaming, creating adventures and reliving pain. I want us to see them using MD to bring inner comfort to themselves. Women and girls with ADHD and MD are not ditzy or have our ‘heads in the clouds,’ but rather reflect on our own world and dreams within ourselves.
About the author
Julieta Barbiero is an Argentina-born-Texas-raised writer and upcoming graduate student for public health. Along with researching mental health and intersectional feminism, she is obsessed with plants and reading fantasy novels.
