Daydreaming is an altered state of consciousness in which there is a world of fantasies. The word daydreaming was coined by Julien Varendonck in 1921 in his book “ The Psychology of daydreams”. (Most work on dreams had been done by Sigmund Freud in his book “The Interpretation of Dreams”).
Mostly young children’s and adolescent daydreams but this natural phenomenon is not limited to particular age because our development of cognition is throughout life. The difference is in the content where the developing brain can only think to a boundary but the developed brain can think beyond the boundaries. During the cognitive development of young children, they only daydream about eating chocolate, candies, and sweet items and about playing but as age increases there is also an increase in the content like adolescents dream about getting rich, heroic acts, fame, love and marriages.
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This is a lifelong phenomenon for all age groups and is considered normal if the content is more realistic. Daydreams have a spectrum disorder in which at a particular point everything is considered normal but if things go beyond that point then it becomes abnormal. At a certain point day, dreaming is also normal, and healthy and produces a positive impact on our mental health.
1. Daydreaming is natural
After the birth of an infant, as there is cognitive development, daydreaming starts and the contents also increase. It’s not wrong until it hinders your socio-occupational functioning. Every human being daydreams and it is natural. There should be no shame or guilt for daydreaming. It is a natural process or we can say involuntary flow of ideas that are related to your wishes.
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2. Releasing of pleasure neurotransmitter
In daydreaming we dream about some impossible events or things which we know will never happen, still we think and feel pleasure. Our brain can’t differentiate between thought and reality, if we are thinking and it’s not real, our brain will act the same way as this is happening. Then our brain releases some pleasure neurotransmitters ( Mainly dopamine ).
3. Decreases anxiety and stress
Relaxation is as important as work. While relaxing we freely think about anything we love, we wander in our thoughts and create fantasies for the other side of the world which is not connected to the real world. It helps us to feel calm and relaxed. During daydreaming, we are in an alpha state which is a state of meditation. Feeling happy and wandering in fantasies makes us forgetful of our worries and live freely in our world.
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4. Daydreaming enhances creativity
Thinking is the base of creativity and novel ideas demand divergent thinking. This type of thinking is only possible when we wander and roam here and there in our thoughts without any resistance. Daydreaming makes this thinking possible which enhances and creates novel ideas. Conventional thinking hinders creative thinking, almost all the time our world wants us to think in a particular direction, so daydreams are the only way to be creative which makes our life more lovable and happier.
5. Helps us to Striving for our goals
The fantasies we create make us feel pleasurable. Daydreaming shows us the pleasure path and how we feel after achieving certain goals makes us more motivated to strive and reach our goals. Visualising tendencies through dreams shows us a more clear picture of the achieved goal.
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6. Exploring the world beyond us
Normal consciousness helps in our awareness of our surroundings but what if we want to experience what we cannot experience in our consciousness? Daydreaming takes us to that state of mind which is beyond our thinking and we can accurately feel like our fantasy is reality. We create our internal world which runs on our principles. We can manipulate it as per our needs. There is no external interference that disrupts our world.
7. Increase Resiliency
In adverse situations of our life we sometimes think about giving up or becoming hopeless but if we can feel how we feel when we get what we want, increases our resiliency power and to stand straight in difficult times. If we give up after exhausting from chronic distress, daydreams also helps in post-traumatic growth by visualising good things after trauma.
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8. Developing brain functions
In normal day-to-day work our brain is conditioned through the same work and our brain functioning also gets limited. Daydreaming helps our brain to think out of the box. Simultaneously many parts of the brain start functioning during daydreaming which creates a positive impact on our mental health. Unattended neurons also get to start working and neuroplasticity is possible through this.
As age increases the complexity and range also increases through which our brain can function effectively and efficiently in different aspects of our life. Overall we can say that it’s a healthy phenomenon if done more realistically otherwise it will create problems in daily life functioning. It is also a part of development that continues till death. In different societies, conventional thinking can be broken through daydreaming and makes our human species more developed in terms of thinking which is the prime feature of human beings.
References +
- https://www.psychologytoday.com/us
- https://www.verywellmind.com
- https://www.jstor.org
- https://time.com
