I recently read an article on the benefits of intentional daydreaming. As a non-intentional daydreamer from way back, this caught my eye. The article focuses on mood and productivity boosts that can be achieved from setting aside thirty minute breaks (or shorter, if you can’t hack thirty minutes) to daydream.

The catch is that the daydream has to be something both pleasant and meaningful for you to get the benefits of it.

It’s difficult to allow ourselves time to just be in our own heads these days. We’re besieged with constant pinging from our little devices, alerting us to new emails with news, advertisements, updates, work, etc. And when we do have time to take a break, often we choose distraction in the form of scrolling through social media, throwing on a podcast or streaming a show.

I mean, who’s wanted to be inside their own head so much the past year plus?

When you have time for your mind to wander, it’s way too easy to start going over everything that needs to be done, everything that could go wrong, everything that is currently going wrong, et cetera, et cetera. I’m incredibly familiar with this type of brain spiral also.

When I was very young, I often got distracted in class by my own daydreams. Being in my head was so much more pleasant than sitting among kids who were mean or slogging through math that was boring. I even integrated my daydreams into physical life for a while, as most small children do, I’m sure, until I got teased for galloping like a horse on the playground. Eventually, I shoved it all down and away to integrate myself. I learned to write about it, thankfully, and I could always go somewhere else when I was reading a book.

The last several years of my life have been occasionally seasoned with high stress situations. For a period of time, being in my own head for too long was an invitation to ruminate on the spiral. This was especially pronounced in the weeks just before Jake died. I would break down sobbing during runs, even meditation took me to dark places and brought me to tears. I didn’t want new reading material, new movies or new comics, I only wanted to hide inside familiar favorites where I knew what was going to happen. I’ve read that this is common when people are in high stress situations.

This past year, things have been gradually turning around.

My Christmas haul. I’ll let you guess the books that lit the fire.

For Christmas last year, my writing group decided to do a secret Santa and my Santa got me two new books. I hadn’t read anything new in a long while and it sparked my reading flame again. Over the next several months I began devouring books. Entire 600 page fantasy novels in under two days. My friend Patti lent me entire series, the plan being that we would read them ‘together’ but I always passed her (she was in law school at the time) and burned through them weeks before she finished. (Then pestered her occasionally to let me know where she was so I could discuss the feels that I was having about them.)

In May I was sidelined from running due to a tragic tug-o-war injury. I’d been through this before and tried not to get too in my head about it. I started biking and walking and physical therapy. I started making playlists to listen to on my walks. One thing that I’ve learned about walking, it’s a great time to think.

Somewhere during this time, I had a nightmare. I wrote about it. It’s since turned into a novel that I’m almost finished with. It’s the most favorite thing I’ve written so far and I can’t wait to finish it, edit it, and hand it over to beta readers.

While I was reading the article, I realized that I have returned to daydreaming. On my walks, my rides, my runs, and even on my lunch breaks. I’m daydreaming in a way that I haven’t done in a very, very long time. I daydream about my work in progress, about books that I’m reading, and sometimes about completely imagined things, all fun, none stressful, frequently fantastic. I have been happier recently and I have been experiencing waves of productivity.

Ironically, before reading the article, I was starting to worry about the amount of daydreaming I was doing. Was it healthy to spend so much ‘unproductive’ time in my head? Shouldn’t I be spending this time thinking about the world that I’m actually living in and the things that I need to be doing?

I realized that those concerns stem from when I was in school and would use the cerebral world I had created as an escape during unpleasant or uncomfortable moments in class or in peer relationships, often with the consequences of getting called out for not paying attention or for acting ‘other.’ As an adult, I’m able to discern appropriate moments for my escape time, and realize when an uncomfortable situation is uncomfortable because it’s new and I’m learning/pushing myself, or because it’s a situation with rude/mean people that I don’t need to stay within.

Might have to break out the Inigo Montoya costume again this year. I really hope one day Mandy Patinkin sees me on social media and tells me how amazing my costume is. Then we become friends and hang out. (Fun daydream!!)

The article pointed out that people adept at ‘going somewhere else’ during times of discomfort (the example they used was test subjects with their hands in ice water) were able to endure it for longer than those who weren’t as proficient. I’d like to add that in real life, some situations are nice to be able to ‘push through’ by having a fun daydream to play in. Like running sprints. And some situations, like dealing with people being mean to you, may have been something you had to push through as a child—or felt like you had no other choice at the time—that you can walk away from as an adult.

It reminded me of a scene in one of my favorite books, The Princess Bride—I am talking about the book, this scene is not in the movie—where Westly was being tortured for information, I believe they were setting his hands on fire, and he was able to easily withstand it by imagining Buttercup in detail. (Until they hooked him up to The Machine, of course, but you can go read the book for the rest.)

In short, I am happy to be able to heartily endorse bouts of healthy daydreaming if, for no other reason, than you might have valuable information someday that someone tries to torture out of you. Practice practice practice.

*wink*

Being Happy Inside Your Own Head