The Duality of Dreaming
I am a compulsive dreamer. When I was in first grade, I moved mid-year from a private international school in Tokyo to a public school in Portland, Oregon. A few months after the move, my mom sat down for a parent-teacher conference. My mother was told that I "daydreamed too much." My mother brushed it off—she saw daydreaming as positive trait that should be nurtured. Years later, when she'd tell me the story about how she proudly refuted my teacher's analysis, I'd appreciate it. This is a significant story in my life. This interaction between my mom and teacher is one I think about often in respect to my identity. I'm a daydreamer, it's what I am. I have always felt that my ability to drown myself in whimsical thought is one of my finest accomplishments as a human person. Until last week. Last Wednesday, I was listening to a podcast (The One You Feed), when the guest started bagging on The Secret.
Sidenote: I can't thank my friend, Greg, enough for recommending this podcast to me and highly recommend it to you, too.
If you don't know The Secret (who are you and where have you been hiding?), the theory behind the book is basically that if you VISUALIZE hard enough, whatever you want will come true. Simple law of attraction. I've always been big on visualization because, duh, I'm an incredible daydreamer and my visualization game is strong. The PROBLEM with it—as discussed in the show—is that it can ENABLE INACTION. Visualization can't take you to the finish line. Real talk: I've always known dreaming alone wouldn't actualize everything for me. But I'd never thought of it as enabling inaction. I never thought it could actually KEEP me from achieving my goals. I spiraled VERY quickly after hearing this. This was me for approximately 24 hours straight: It was like OH MY GOD IS THIS WHY NONE OF MY BIG DREAMS HAVE COME TRUE?!? IS THIS WHY I FEEL LIKE I CAN NEVER FOLLOW THROUGH ON A GOAL? As it turns out, daydreaming is not all rainbows and sunshine for the brain. Wandering daydreams, which I always thought were joyous little moments of mental zen, may simply be the brain's way of avoiding real life issues. Focused daydreaming (aka visualization), can be used as a way to evade action and hinder your brain's motivational drive. Let's quickly travel back to the little kid who daydreamed too much: Turns out, the move from Tokyo to Portland was pretty traumatic for me:
my parents were separating
my father lived full-time across the Pacific Ocean and visited sporadically at best
I was in a brand new country and trying to adapt to an entirely different set of culture values
I was living in a city where my family knew zero people
my entire concept of "structure" had burst at the seams and disintegrated beneath my feet. (Dramatic enough? I hope so.)
Adding to this, I was 6 years-old, so I had no idea how to process everything that was going on in my world. So, I turned inward. I looked outside the window of my first-grade class and dreamt up all sorts of weird scenarios that my imaginary German Shepard, Flash (I never said I was original), could get into as he waited for me to get out of school. Using daydreaming for avoidance much?!
If I couldn't keep my external reality from being painful, at least I could create an internal reality that looked like a Lisa Frank poster.
My deflection technique grew so powerful that just two years after moving to Portland, when my parents sat my brother and I down to say, "kids, we're getting divorced," I looked my dad straight in the eyes and said, "okay, can I go out and play now?" like I was one of those creepy children of the corn. No reaction at all! Meanwhile, my older brother is breaking down into tears like a normal child. I shake my head at my former self. In all honestly, my temporary spiral was—at first—very sad for me. The realization that I wasn't just a kid with a wild imagination, but a child who was hurting, hit hard. I had to, in my way, grieve for the little girl who didn't know how to ask for help. I embraced a new sense of gratitude for the teacher who tried and failed to flag that something was off. And I had to forgive my mom for brushing it off—after all, I can't speak to the context in which my teacher framed the critique and I probably would have done the same. (maybe there's a lesson here in that there's often something lurking under our surface observations). But after confronting that—which included talking it out with a partner who was able to empathize in a constructive, supportive way—I was able to uncover a powerful, important lesson:
As with everything in life, there is a duality in daydreaming.
Daydreaming can be used to strengthen our reality OR to avoid it. I don't believe daydreaming is inherently bad. If I am intentionally wanting my mind wander to let it relax into its imagination, great. But mindless daydreaming can be harmful if using it as a tool to avoid feeling or action. The key is to be self-aware about which type of daydreaming you're engaging—when it's the good kind, enjoy, and when it's the harmful kind, take note of what it is you're trying to avoid as it likely deserves your attention. Be kind to yourself as you explore it. I still believe very strongly in visualization, by the way, as I think it can lead to huge successes in life. But there's a duality to that, too, and in an effort to protect your eyes from glazing over at the word count on this post, I'm going to dive into the difference between proactive and counteractive visualization tomorrow, so hopefully you'll join me for that post. :)
As a side: We all have significant stories in our lives that we feel define us, like this one did me. I'm realizing that sometimes we connect to these stories for a MUCH BIGGER REASON than we expect. In my case, it's almost like my subconscious kept pushing this story to the surface in an attempt to get me to examine it a little bit deeper. It's not just "yep, I'm a daydreamer." It's "oh, wow, I've never fully acknowledged all that hurt I was feeling at that time." Once I did, I was able to focus on healing that part of myself that had been injured for so long without treatment.