What is Maladaptive Daydreaming?
Maladaptive daydreaming is a psychiatric condition that causes intense daydreams that distract a person from their everyday life. Sensory stimuli, physical experiences, and media can trigger these intense daydreams. People that experience these daydreams are often obsessed with their stories and characters and they choose that over real life. Unlike hallucinations, people with MaDD can distinguish between real life and their daydreams but they often have trouble doing daily tasks because the urge to daydream is so intense. Maladaptive daydreaming stems from but also can cause depression, anxiety, and OCD.
English
For English, I decided to focus in on one person's story and connect that to the research I did to find similar themes. Out of the response from a 19-year-old girl who suffers from MaDD I created poems that talk about themes like addiction, self-image, sensory triggers, and distractions. All of these themes occur somewhere in every online post or interview I read. I took the poems I created and put them into a dream journal which is meant to take the poems from the point of view of the girl and turn them into daily writings and a collection of her thoughts. I put extra thoughts and explanations in the margins that come from the point of view of the girl which added to the poems as well as connected our thinking skill contextualization. |
Art
My art pieces connected to my English piece. I took the response I got and put a little more attention on the actual words and the story she sent me. I took the quotes from her and pieced them in a way to create a story and awareness of how this started and what is going on in their minds. I took inspiration from an artist named Glenn Ligon who creates these giant pieces from literary works and turns them into social awareness pieces. The way he created his pieces with the smudges and the blocked letters gave off a certain tone that I believe works really well with my topic. It gives a messy and unorganized look but it is still beautiful and put together.
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