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Comment by zer0tonin | Hacker News Reader

I actually experienced this during my late childhood and teenage years. I would say between age 8-16.

I think the main cause was actually under-stimulation: I was both very socially reclusive, and bored to death by schoolwork. I would guess that my brain was trying to compensate for the lack of social life and things to do by making up people and scenarios were stuff actually happens.

This tendency to constantly daydream faded away as I gained independance and entered adulthood. Since I had more stuff to do and more people to talk to. It kinda re-appeared during the 2020-2021 lockdowns, since boredom came back. I think I had almost forgot how it felt to intensely daydream at that point.

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I actually feel like under-stimulation has caused me to lose the ability to daydream somewhat. I used to have moments in my imagination and I loved it, and then around ~17 or so it all went away. I've been trying to get it back ever since, but I haven't been able to pin down the how or why.

At this point I feel my imagination is very untrained, and since it is like a muscle, I need to practice somehow. But I believe the patterns I've instilled in my day-to-day, along with my anxieties around life have forced my imagination into a standstill. Unengaging forms of consumption, ADHD causing me to avoid stimulating tasks, anxiety guiding nearly all of my thoughts all come together to make me have no time or willingness to daydream anymore.

Try doing what Jung did, and keep a dream journal. Use it every morning. It helps form connections between your creative unconscious and your ability to perceive and verbalize it in waking life.

My dream journal would be blank. In my 50+ years of life, I have never woken up and remembered anything from the moment I fell asleep. As far as I can tell, I experience dreamless sleep.

Amazing! Hope it is not impolite to ask: I assume even nothing if you just doze away and something wakes you quickly again (I believe many have the mind wandering, crazy thoughts, but no visual dreams there)?

Can you doze at all, or is it always quick deep sleep? (would sound desirable)

Do you have or feel any impact, any disadvantages? Because sometimes a lot beyond the basic sleep is attributed to being able to dream?

I can doze off, but it's the same as sleeping - absolutely nothing. It is a complete blank from the moment I fall asleep or doze off until I'm conscious again.

I can't think of how it could be a disadvantage. I hear people have nightmares. I sure wouldn't want to experience those.

I also have zero emotional response to music. All music could cease to exist and I would be completely unaffected. I've always wondered if there is some connection between not dreaming and not having any sort of emotional response to music. Are the two in the same part of the brain?

Thanks, interesting!

This is going to be odd advice but please give it a try anyways.

Do the dream journal process regardless. It is totally fine to wake up, take out the dream journal, write "I had no dreams" and the date and call it an entry.

Try it, ideally two weeks, but give it at least ten days.

There's a really good (but not 100%) chance you do have dreams but just really don't recall them - but you may start to capture fragments by attempting to describe them first thing.

And it really does have to be first thing. Before you play with your phone or brush your teeth. As soon as you can move, grab and start writing.

Oh, I have tried. I know that other people dream, so I've been curious if I could somehow make myself remember, but there is nothing there to remember. It has always been a complete blank from the instant I fall asleep to the instant I wake up.

Do you snore? Since getting a mouth thingy to push the lower jaw forward, liberating the throat, I snore much less and I dream much more and wake up remembering the dreams! But the effects only lasted until my throat got a little more fat.

I didn't snore until I was in my mid-30s, then I snored for about 5 years until my wife made me go to the sleep clinic and I started using a cpap machine nightly. I didn't ever dream before snoring, while snoring, or after starting to use a cpap machine.

This is so weird to me: I've always had really good memories of my dreams. About 80% of nights I end up lucid dreaming too.

I'd love to be in contact with you, just because of this.

I also have dream continuity which I've gathered is fairly weird? Like there are consistent physical and 'multiversal' rules and I can visit the same places over and over + have impacts that last from one dream session to another.

I can also read which apparently isn't universal.

Maybe I'm out of the loop here, but why would this be a reason to want to be in contact with someone? You can read accounts of this and imagine it.

Proper sleep makes you a better you.

It's unclear if people getting proper sleep, but don't dream, exist.

It's very clear (to me) that people who dream all the time are getting proper sleep.

(joking) I thought you wanted to be in their dream.

My mum had the same dream every night with someone chasing her. She would wake up the moment they caught her. I asked her to describe the surroundings then told her at which point I would enter and scare them off.

The next day she put up a face that explained everything. I laughed so hard.

Dream journaling improves dream recall. You have to do it right away as you may forget you even dreamt within a few minutes.

I've literally never woken up and remembered anything, even within seconds of waking up. I've even tried because I know that other people experience dreams. It's just a complete blank from the moment I fall asleep till the moment I wake up. Just nothing.

People typically remember their dreams when they wake up in the middle of one, and usually then the REM sleep stage. I remember some guy studying this, got his assistant to wake him during REM and found the dreams were pretty vivid when this happened.

Maybe you're just enjoying a sound sleep and waking at the "right" time.

I don't think that is it. I'm in my 50s and have multiple kids. I've been woken up many times.

Do you have any conditions that disrupt sleep?

I'm in a similar state to what you describe, I can only recall two dreams my entire life. I suspect my apnea disrupts dreaming.

I'm literally in the same shoe, I can't recall when last I dreamed

The ideal conditions to stimulate daydreaming seems pretty obvious to me - sit me down in any class lecture.

Imagine that my mind like a glider. Glider is connected to a Cessna by a tether, but it's a magical tether that can disappear. In fact, it takes me active work to keep it connected, like I'm holding on to the end of the rope with my hands. The plane takes off and I'm following in lockstep about the main subject matter... looking down at the landscape below, to the left, to the right. After a quick climb, and at velocity, I've forgotten about keeping tethered, holy crud, I'm in the air! I want to bank, dive, maybe loop! What's over here? I can catch a thermal and go on forever depending on the landscape, but still often see more appealing currents and need to switch over. Oh wait, where did the plane go?

Conventional wisdom is that it's good to allow kids to be bored (by which this generally means: not intervening as a parent with an activity) as this will compel them to take action, creatively or otherwise. It just might not be the actions parents expect. You can take away the tv, but that doesn't automatically mean your kid will color or build a fort.

I think "spontaneity" is informed in large part by habit. If you teach a kid to build things, how to draw, read, etc, they might be more inclined to explore this out of their own volition.

I mostly daydreamed. I had crayons and paper, but was not compelled to use them that often. The Legos collected dust after I followed along with the schematics.

As someone miserably bored a lot, I think the habit really is more important then forced boredom. Also having someone to work with will always likely make you more creative, I don't think being bored has ever really made me more creative but having freetime to burn has. If you are so bored you sleep through a lecture it's pointless, at least I could draw through a lot of the ones I was in.

There's surely a balance. "Forced boredom" is just tantamount to excess unstructured time. Structure is good, but overscheduling your kids with predetermined activity can also exhaust them and maybe leave them resentful later as they don't get to decide what to do with their time. If every night is sports alternating with piano recital and then homework, their lives are on rails.

It's intriguing to hear how you connected this phenomenon to under-stimulation, where your social reclusiveness and lack of engaging activities at school may have led your brain to compensate by creating vivid imaginary scenarios and people.

Daydreaming, to some extent, is a natural and common human experience, and it can serve various functions, such as providing an escape from the mundane or offering a way to process emotions and desires. Your account sheds light on how changes in our environment and daily life can impact the frequency and intensity of daydreaming.

It's also a common defense against some other actual circumstance going on that is too difficult to handle, as is pulling away from people in general.

Interestingly, as we move out, we often change the set of people we interact with. Healthier or not, it does change the stimulus and environment in meaningful ways.

I also believe that MD is the result of under-stimulation in childhood among other factors for those whose mind has a greater need for stimulation but i don’t believe there is a cure once it manifests. Getting more other stimuli to prevent the typical episodes is somehow akin to a drug user in need for the next high to “function” - it can get easily out of control. It is for sure one of the most fascinating disorders - and also one of the best hidden.

As a kid board outta my mind watching my sisters ballet class, long car/bus rides, I agree with under stimulus from personal experience.

Similar experience here. Daydreaming happens more often as I spend extended periods alone, sometimes to a point I would also call "maladaptive". I'm looking for ways to deal with that. It often prevents me to make any meaningful advance on hobbies or any other activity for whose outcome there's nobody waiting -- hence, I have a number of unfinished stuff laying around and getting dust.

I agree with your thesis of under-stimulation. I wouldn't say I'm too reclusive, but social activities in general have been not particularly engaging, sometimes even a bit tiring.

The author is describing something different. He breaks into day dreaming in the middle of changing clothes. Or in the middle of eating medicine.

It's a neurological condition. I find it hard to believe this is learned.

Daydreaming when you're bored is normal.

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