# Daydreaming and Cognitive Functions



## Aha (Mar 6, 2014)

How much time you daydream per day?

What is your dom, aux, tert. 

How do you _see_ your DD? (Images, sounds, others things...)

Do you have a trouble of being trapped in the daydreams?


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## Raichu (Aug 24, 2012)

I'm pretty much never not daydreaming. It could be my introverted thinking. It could also be my predominantly inattentive ADHD.


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## laura palmer (Feb 10, 2014)

i am very deep into my thoughts


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## feeg1 (Feb 12, 2014)

I could day dream, or I could succumb to my inner nihilism and cynicism. 
I prefer the first option.
Obviously Ti-Ne-Si
No idea what you mean
I have the trouble of not wanting to leave, I never feel trapped persay.


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## Psychopomp (Oct 3, 2012)

I don't really daydream. Not in a typical sense. 

I imagine. It's very conscious, very purposeful, very constructive. To me, this is work. I don't think Tolkien daydreamed, I think he worked and imagined. I think my Ne is very central and conscious. I replace daydreaming with fretting, lol. I am not a person in reality that daydreams. I am person in my imagination that occasionally dayfrets.


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## ScientiaOmnisEst (Oct 2, 2013)

Ti-Ne-Si

I daydream constantly, to the point where I've seriously considered that I may have maladaptive daydreaming. My daydreams are mostly scenarios, but a lot of "purposeful", and "constructive" (a la arkigos' post) thoughts and working things out mentally as well.


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## Aelthwyn (Oct 27, 2010)

arkigos said:


> I don't really daydream. Not in a typical sense.
> 
> I imagine. It's very conscious, very purposeful, very constructive. To me, this is work. I don't think Tolkien daydreamed, I think he worked and imagined. I think my Ne is very central and conscious. I replace daydreaming with fretting, lol. I am not a person in reality that daydreams. I am person in my imagination that occasionally dayfrets.


couldn't have put it better myself. 

I suppose it does depend a bit on how one defines day dreaming, I'm sure many people see that I'm often lost in thought and would consider it daydreaming. 

My focus is mainly on my thoughts, not my environment or my actions in it, though I peek out the door of my mind just enough to not run into things most of the time. When I am in my mind I'm usually contemplating something along the lines of why things are the way they are - like personality, or I'm developing story ideas/scenes that I intend to write (though I realize I'll never actually complete even half of them). What I don't really do is 'daydream' about where I hope to be in ten years or imaginary interactions with actual people (unless I'm rehearsing what I'll say for some event or kicking myself for not thinking of what I should have said in a previous conversation). I don't 'daydream' about a dream holiday to Switzerland for more than a brief mental image of the alps and thinking I'd like to see them myself, but I DO spend a great deal of time imagining various characters on adventures in places I've made up. Sometimes I will really try to immerse myself in the imagine experience, taking time to fill in details and mentally feel the air and smell the forest and hear the birds and get into the shoes of the character feeling the aches of travel and the camaraderie with companions etc. etc. Other times I may be more focused on figuring out what will happen next as an outside entity rather than 'being' the characters. I'll often replay the same scene over and over but with slight tweaks to dialogue or the wording of a description, both refining it and trying to imprint it in my memory so I can actually write it once I'm back at my computer. When thinking about theories instead of stories it's still similar, I mentally work on rewording my thoughts and composing them, but of course also try to recall instances of evidence to work from when forming the ideas. Personally I would not call that 'daydreaming' since that word to me has a connotation of unfocusedness or having little point, and theorizing is not pointless to me, even if it's not like it'll go anywhere aside from my head and a few other people I talk/write to, but... it's just... vital to _being_ for me.

I also like how you mention fretting... yes... when I'm thinking about my life and wasting time on pointless thoughts it's worrying about things like 'did I make her mad' ' or 'if I go to the party am I going to regret it? but if I don't go will people be offended? or will they be more offended if I go and am not in a happy mood?....' that kind of thing.


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## GENIUSandVIOLENCE (Oct 6, 2012)

I daydream when I don't have things that I have to focus on 100%, so even though I put option "60-80%" it's probably 80-100% of my day if I can. Fortunately I don't zone out and get trapped in my daydreams because otherwise I would get into so much trouble for being unproductive at uni, with a patient (dental student here).

Ne-Ti-Fe-Si: pretty standard ENTP stacking.

I don't really "see" things, I just kind of... imagine them. I don't know... I don't really create visual details in my mind's eye probably because my Sensory function is so low?


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## monemi (Jun 24, 2013)

When I'm running or swimming or doing work around the house, I get lost in my thoughts. Not really day dreaming per se. Anything repetitive or doesn't take much brain power, I'm not all there. Still, it seems to be a choice. It's not like it just happens. I'm choosing this time to think about something. I'm not just driving down the road and not paying attention. If I'm doing something that requires my active attention, I give it my active attention.


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## Lemxn (Aug 17, 2013)

I daydream almost all the time. Everything is very vivid. Big worlds inside my head. Sometimes I can't control it and I get lost in there. My dreams live by themselves.


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## Kathy Kane (Dec 3, 2013)

"*Daydreaming is a short-term detachment from one's immediate surroundings*, during which a person's contact with reality is blurred and partially substituted by a visionary fantasy, especially one of happy, pleasant thoughts, hopes or ambitions, imagined as coming to pass, and experienced while awake."

From that definition the only part I relate to is the bold section. I do that probably 80% of the time. The rest of it I rarely do. My detachment isn't visionary fantasy of future pleasantry. It's just working out my perception and looking for things to make my overall understanding as accurate as possible.


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## Octavian (Nov 24, 2013)

Lemxn said:


> I daydream almost all the time. Everything is very vivid. Big worlds inside my head. Sometimes I can't control it and I get lost in there. My dreams live by themselves.


There is quite literally an entire universe within my mind, forever shifting and changing, self perpetuating, offering both refuge and sanctuary. The structures are herculean, their meaning obfuscated, revealing their secrets to me when, and only when, they see fit.


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## LadyO.W.BernieBro (Sep 4, 2010)

My natural thing was always to drift off and start rewriting sitcom scenes l'd scene, so it's partially based in reality but can extend so far out of it that it could be called daydreaming.

Sometimes storing one scene and coming back to revisit it, make alterations. l also had stand-up like acts stored.


What l have trouble with about gauging my most natural behavior/functions is separating what was natural and what changed when l was put on Ritalin, l'm pretty sure the Ritalin and later Adderall drastically reduced this.

When l don't have my usual massive dose of caffeine now, it tends to start again. 

lt's fun but l can hardly function and take between two and three times as long to complete normal activity so l'd say l feel slightly trapped.


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## PaladinX (Feb 20, 2013)

Every 7 seconds...


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

Pretty much never. I think I avoid doing it as a part of ego defense in relation to trauma.


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## Aha (Mar 6, 2014)

Octavian said:


> The structures are herculean, their meaning obfuscated, revealing their secrets to me when, and only when, they see fit.


Could you please elaborate?


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## Grandmaster Yoda (Jan 18, 2014)

Ti-Ne-Si
Best results when I'm moving my body around like if I'm running I can create an entire storyline. Other than that I do it often but it's scattered and less consistent.


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## Aha (Mar 6, 2014)

Why I started this thread: I have a suspicion that Ne and Ni users daydream differently. And to see how much influence has the position of N.


Now about my daydreams:

I had problems in school because of my daydreaming. I learned to concentrate approximately the same time when my J functions began to develop (I am not sure about that connection). Before that, I often mixed the real and what was a thought. Hell, I still do. Emotions experienced in daydreams are real. Conversations are quite entertaining and jokes are good. Buhahahaha
No, I will not part with them, especially, since I do not deem our world worth so much of my attention. But at the same time, I cannot be alone or without external information. I once decided to write my dd-scenarios into stories and it feels like I have found a conversationalist on the "paper". It is extremely fruitful and exciting. 

Daydreams are represented as worlds (situations, etc) where you are the architect (and the main character), but at the same time it is semi-automatic - other characters can act on their _own. 
_For the most part it is like seeing a 3-d film with always changing colors, but without any real details (and not so much on sounds, smells, etc). It is about what, how, why, where, emotions, reasoning, responses.

Ne-Ti-Fe

I have trouble coming back from them. Very reluctant. The only time I have a _clear_ head is in the morning after actual dream.


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## Psychopomp (Oct 3, 2012)

ephemereality said:


> Pretty much never. I think I avoid doing it as a part of ego defense in relation to trauma.


Yeah, I also avoid daydreaming, I suppose, to avoid it pulling up negative or obsessive or traumatic thoughts. I say 'dayfretting' all whimsically, but the reality is that my conscious mind is vibrant, while my subconscious is rather dark and obsessive. In a sense, it is all backwards. So long as I don't drift off, my imagination soars... but if I do drift off, it is usually drifting back to niggling reality ... to all the cares and worries that I can't easily approach.

And also to traumas that insist on visiting me again and again. I have to snap myself out of it and get back into my imagination or my ideas... get back to normal. 

I don't think I'm anywhere near an actual ego defense, though. That is serious stuff.


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## WinterFox (Sep 19, 2013)

I am unknown personality type and I enjoy daydreaming a lot. Daydreaming is like a daily routine for me.

Whenever people are speaking to me, I am always spacing out all the time. If you ever need someone to listen to your problems, please don't ever come find me, because I am not a good listener and I always spaced out halfway through conversations

My ExFP friends always said I am a good listener, and I was like, "huh, are you kidding me?!"
I noticed that they interpret my silence as listening to their problems, but I am silent because I was actually daydreaming away when they are talking to me. Oops did I just leak out a secret of mine...Please don't tell them this though!


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

arkigos said:


> Yeah, I also avoid daydreaming, I suppose, to avoid it pulling up negative or obsessive or traumatic thoughts. I say 'dayfretting' all whimsically, but the reality is that my conscious mind is vibrant, while my subconscious is rather dark and obsessive. In a sense, it is all backwards. So long as I don't drift off, my imagination soars... but if I do drift off, it is usually drifting back to niggling reality ... to all the cares and worries that I can't easily approach.
> 
> And also to traumas that insist on visiting me again and again. I have to snap myself out of it and get back into my imagination or my ideas... get back to normal.
> 
> I don't think I'm anywhere near an actual ego defense, though. That is serious stuff.


I am not even sure it's something I consciously avoid, but it just doesn't occur to me or comes very naturally to think about things in such a way. I can think of other things and I have a very easy time spacing out but to do what others describe here... I don't understand it at all and don't relate. I don't understand what people mean having some vibrant imagination or active inner life or people who say they love daydreaming and they do it a lot all the time. Even when I do something that's akin to daydreaming e.g. imagining my future or such, it's always something realistic that I am striving to achieve. 

I realized how bad I was at this as a cognitive action when I was reading some test to help me "feel out" some things about myself and it said something like "imagine yourself 10 years from now" and I was like wtf. I don't even know what I'm like 1 year from now. Even if I were to describe my sense of mental content I would say that it's a pretty darn dark, desolate and isolated place. I have described it as a black hole in the past and I would say that's still fairly apt as a whole.


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## DeadlyRefridgerator (Jun 4, 2013)

I usually daydream when i'm bored, which is pretty much all the time. I walk into walls and shit because of it.


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## Kingdom Crusader (Jan 4, 2012)

I voted 20% to 40% of the day, but it's really variable from day to day, depending on what I'm doing. 

Ti-Ne-Si

Flashes of images and sometimes associated feelings/reactions that accompanied event experienced.

I guess I can get trapped in my DDs when there's not much for me to do (rare for me now a days), or when I've had to extrovert too much on the job. That's when I go into a daze, even.


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## d e c a d e n t (Apr 21, 2013)

I'd say I daydream a fair bit, though not as much as when I was younger. Sometimes it almost feels like I lost the ability to daydream, which is kind of sad. My daydreams aren't that... advanced, though, and their purpose is typically to intensify my emotions, since reality in and of itself rarely does much for me. So I'll make up scenarios involving intense feels or whatever (about made-up characters, and often about some tragic shit). Then I guess at times I feel lonely, so I might imagine that I have someone to watch movies and talk with, or I'll just converse with someone in my head in order to make sense of my thoughts.

I wouldn't say I have a very rich inner world, since most of my daydreams are just recycled ideas from childhood, with some modifications here and there. 

I also don't think about my future much, unless you count stuff like "oh, I have to go downstairs... but what if I FALL and BREAK MY NECK?? Shit... I'm never going to go down the stairs again." Or "it would be nice to visit my friends overseas... one day..." and then not really plan it out to do it. I guess since I don't think I'll ever be satisfied no matter what, I don't care to think much about how I'd like my life to be. Even when I experience something exciting in real life, it mainly ends up being used as new fuel/inspiration for my daydreams, rather than something I'm interested in for its own sake.

Not sure if that was the kind of answer the OP's looking for, but there you go.


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## Potne Theron (Nov 10, 2013)

“daydreaming” : “absent-minded dreaming while awake” (wordnet)

Daydreaming occurs while being in various degrees of unconsciousness. As nobody is fully aware 100% of the awaken time (unless you are fully “awakened”, like the Buddha himself and able to not think at all when you do not want to think…). Then, everybody daydreams to some level. 

That being said, to me, daydreaming is an ego defense mechanism used either to soften our relationship to reality (/escape from the present moment) or to validate our unconscious belief systems about reality (i.e. checking pre-recorded scenarii against reality barely knowing it, e.g. the world is evil or the world is abundance - I am beautiful or I am ugly, etc.). 

Daydreaming levels depend on maturity, age, circumstances (daydreaming is more likely to occur if you fall in love, for instance), and if you use more of an introverted function than an extraverted one. Some people suffering from trauma may also repress their introverted dominant function in favour of their extraverted ones (or the other way round).


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## Raichu (Aug 24, 2012)

monemi said:


> I'm not just driving down the road and not paying attention.


guilty. though after almost dying three or four times, i learned how to watch the road and lose myself in thought at the same time.


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## Raichu (Aug 24, 2012)

DeadlyRefridgerator said:


> I usually daydream when i'm bored, which is pretty much all the time. I walk into walls and shit because of it.


I notice your signature says "IxTP." Not that I'm trying to tell you what type you are or anything-- only you can figure that our for sure-- but I just think I should point out that daydreaming and walking into walls aren't generally attributes associated with Se. Just a thought.


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## candiemerald (Jan 26, 2014)

Yikes, I'm almost always daydreaming. I probably should do something about that...

Ni, Fe, Ti. 

Vivid images, sounds, scents, tastes...it depends on what I'm daydreaming about, and the depth of the thought.

I don't have trouble getting trapped in my daydreams, exactly, but I do spend too much time at it.


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## Potne Theron (Nov 10, 2013)

For an interesting and humorous example of daydreamer, watch the movie: "the secret life of Walter Mitty" ;-)


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## candiemerald (Jan 26, 2014)

Paralax2000 said:


> For an interesting and humorous example of daydreamer, watch the movie: "the secret life of Walter Mitty" ;-)


I've read the story - that's so me, unfortunately :laughing:


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## Octavian (Nov 24, 2013)

Aha said:


> Could you please elaborate?


I did try but I'm unable to fathom this into something understandable.


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## Hidden from Sight (Jan 3, 2014)

Ti-Ne-Si

I don't daydream every waking minute; however, when I do have daydreams, it's complexity causes me to consider maladaptive daydreaming as a possibility. I don't feel like elaborating much.


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## braided pain (Jul 6, 2012)

Ni, Te, Fi

I went with 40-60%, but that's only because work and reading keep my mind occupied. It's 80%+ on my days off.

I dream about what I want to do, in an ideal world; what I will do, in this world; think about how to make those things happen. I have an idea for a fantasy novel in my head; I work on the mechanics of the magic system, the characters, the plot, etc.

Haven't had trouble with them since grade school. I used to have trouble focusing on my work for daydreaming, because it was all boring stuff. I don't have to do boring stuff as much anymore-- being a grown-up has to have some perks, right?


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## Darkbloom (Aug 11, 2013)

I do it all the time except when I'm with people and I hate it because most of my daydreams are about creating characters that represent who I want to be and at times I convince myself I really am one of them,but then I realise I kinda am,but nowhere close to being as good as them.
Sometimes it's nice though,it makes everyday tasks a little less dull.I can't imagine never daydreaming,what would I be thinking about if I NEVER daydreamed.I mean,even if I spent 99% if the day talking to people,I'd still have to go to the bathroom or something by myself and I'd automatically daydream then,in a way.


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## Superfluous (Jan 28, 2014)

Ne-Fi-Te

Maladaptive Daydreamer here.


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## Faunae (Mar 14, 2014)

i think my personality type still says INFJ, but i'm sort of detaching from MBTI and don't find that it's applicable to me.
my preferred functions are along the lines of Ni first, Si second, Fi third, and Fe fourth, in order of how naturally i use them.

i daydream frequently when i'm in high spirits, and not at all when i'm depressed. it's usually stories i make up that i can see and hear as though they were right in front of me. but oftentimes, it feels more like i'm being led by my daydreams than they're leading me, like the stories are writing themselves.


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## Lacuna (Oct 17, 2014)

TIL what maladaptive daydreaming is. I definitely do that a lot, but I have PTSD, so... Most of the time my daydreams are just fantasizing, which takes up about 1/2 of the day. 



Raichu said:


> guilty. though after almost dying three or four times, i learned how to watch the road and lose myself in thought at the same time.


High five! Same XD


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## Lacuna (Oct 17, 2014)

Faunae said:


> i daydream frequently when i'm in high spirits, and not at all when i'm depressed. it's usually stories i make up that i can see and hear as though they were right in front of me. but oftentimes, it feels more like i'm being led by my daydreams than they're leading me, like the stories are writing themselves.


Same, exactly!


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## koalaroo (Nov 25, 2011)

Te-Ni.

I sometimes get lost in thought, and when I do, it's because I'm playing connect-the-dots (Ni) with thoughts and concepts.


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## Ghostsoul (May 10, 2014)

Fi-Se-Ni

I day dream almost all the time.


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