Natasha Romanoff Edits On YouTube That Honor Her More Than The Movies Ever Did

Natasha Romanoff edits on YouTube that honor her more than the movies ever did

The Dark Side of Maladaptive Daydreaming

TW: I don’t talk about specific violent topics(just mainly say “i have violent daydreams”), but if you don’t want to read anything about the dark side of daydreams just go ahead and skip this one.

I’m feely kinda shitty and anxious, and to actually be a little more proactive this time I pushed myself to write this overdue post instead of daydreaming. I mean either way I’ll end up daydreaming before I go to bed…moving on.

A couple of weeks ago The Daydreamers was released. And it was a good dip-a-toe-in-the-water introduction about maladaptive daydreaming. Afterwards I read a few tumblr posts about it, and I remember there was one post where anon expressed their frustration with the doc presenting MaDDing as this escape to a happy wonderland. This is a criticism I’ve heard before, and one I’ve had myself. 

When I first got involved in the MaDD community online I was frustrated to see -what appeared to me - MaDDers not taking it seriously. They were sharing art of their paras, paracosms, writing about their wonder fantasies, and posting memes. To me this came across as almost “lacking a depth”, I knew that humor is a coping mechanism, but I was upset that there seemed to be so so few posts with in depth dives into the negatives of MaDD. To me it looked like everyone else was peachy with it, while I withering with it’s burden. That’s why I started this blog, to create the content I wanted to see(no shame to those who rather post light hearted stuff).

To start off, I always dislike that the word “daydreaming” is included in the name of this condition, because “daydreaming” has a very “cute” and “innocuous” connation in our language.  And to be frank, cute and innocuous are probably the last words I’d use to describe my daydreams.

My daydreams can contain incredibly dark, morbid, and violent things. There is a common theme of isolation, loneliness, being misunderstood, and martyr complexes. My parame suffering, all the while being criticized and hated by those around them.  That’s a very common theme, being hated because I’m misunderstood and I am going through some struggle unbeknownst to those around me. I would best title it as “Look at how everyone misjudges and hates me, but I am really a good person whose made sacrifices for others but has been wronged many times but I refuse to open up about it because I am afraid and because I don’t think I deserve to seek help and I am socially anxious”. 

And while there is this common underlying theme, it tends to manifest in disturbing and/or violent ways. 

*by manifest I mean what the content of the paracosm is.

And if I were to be honest, alot and I mean alot of my paracosms are straight up depressing, and their frequency tends to increase in quantity and disturbance level the more unhappy I am in real life.

But why do I/we do it? My best answer is that it’s a way to live out and externalize negative emotions I/we struggle to express and explore in our actual lives. The daydreaming gives a filter, a “safe place” to externalize, feel, and express these bad feelings. I wonder too if it acts as a disconnecting mechanism, you can experience your emotions through the paras you created, that way you don’t have to feel them as your own emotions that have occurred due to your life circumstances. Can I say it’s bit like a disassociating mechanism? Personally for me I’ve always tended to feel invalidated in my negative feelings. I felt (and still do) that I did not/have not earned sadness. That its stupid for me to be upset so much by something when there are so many other people with so much worse, so I create a fictional world where my parame experiences traumatic events that then make me feel justified to express my negative emotions through my parame. Because obviously those negative emotions make sense in the context of my parame’s life, but my actual life? Absolutely not.

TBH, I was gonna write a few examples of these dark paracosms but I backed out because honestly I’m still too nervous and scared to share the details. Sure I’m anonymous on this platform, but I know once somethings out on the internet it stays there forever. And I am afraid of the wrong people finding my post detailing my horrific daydreams and then somehow finding out who I am and they think i’m fucked up and so on….So this is all for now. These thoughts are from my personal experiences and I don’t speak for every MaDDer. 

A genuinely friendly reminder that this is how the books end: them together, living their lives happily. Villanelle doesn't die and gets a linguistics degree.

Me in a nutshell

List of MaDD Things I do

I feel like I'm constantly invalidating me and my MaDD. It feels like my experience with daydreaming inherently differentiates from the experiences of other maladaptive daydreamers. I hate that I'm doubting myself so much so in order to fix that I will write about specific things regarding my MaDD that I haven't really seen anywhere else here on Tumblr or other social media platforms.

First of all, I do suspect that I might be neurodivergent. I currently have no way of getting a diagnosis but I have done a lot of research which lead me to the conclusion that it is highly possible I have ADHD. I felt the need to say this because I think some things I'll mention will correspond to my neurodivergent tendencies.

Here's my list of unusual things I do in order to daydream/while daydreaming:

I can't focus enough to properly daydream in my everyday life because of noises or people talking in the background

because of that I prefer to daydream right before sleeping

the room or space that I'm daydreaming in has to either be completely silent or play music without lyrics (preferably classical music)

I lie completely still most of the time to be able to fully concentrate on my scenario or paracosm

since I practically cannot daydream throughout the day I often distract myself with literally anything

that is mostly tiktok, tumblr, youtube, netflix, homework, or any type of media/activity I can indulge in to forget my need to daydream

I get quite a lot of intrusive daydreams where a possible outcome of the situation or event I'm currently in just starts sort of manifesting in my head and I have to stop myself from continuing that daydream (these scenarios are often very unlike to actually happen and mostly consist of me getting hurt, accidents or other unpleasant stuff)

I have exactly one (1) distinct memory of me daydreaming similarly to maladaptive daydreaming as a child leading me to believe that it had just recently started developing (probably during the pandemic)

I'm aroace and had a lot of difficulties coming to terms with me being aromantic, so most of my daydreams/scenarios/paracoms include a lot romance with f.e. a parame to cope with that

All in all Maladaptive Daydreaming is my biggest comfort and NO.1 coping mechanism •°. *࿐

this show is fucking incredible

MaDD, the non-romanticized version, part 1.

when your brain is so burnt out that your daydreams stop and you suddenly are taken back to reality and feel completely empty and unfulfilled.