Do you ever catch your mind wandering? How often do you find that you shake your head “awake” when you should be doing something but you’ve realized you’ve just been staring into space for the last hour on some train of thought that just ran away with you? Do you ever find that you need to snap yourself out of some rogue mental adventure you’ve been on for an indiscriminate amount of time?
You don’t need to study a Master in Mental Health Counseling online to know that everyone daydreams, though the capacity and depth of our daydreams from person to person, and is largely affected by whether we are neurotypical or neurodiverse, as well as what stressors or significant events are happening in our lives at the time. Some people have very minor daydream states, experiencing them only as divergent thought paths that they can recall and control with relative ease. For some, like people with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), daydreaming can be frequent, chronic, and even detrimental to a “proper” work schedule. Yet evidence shows that when engaged properly and controlled, daydreaming actually has significant mental and physical health benefits.
The Stigma Against Daydreaming
We generally see daydreaming as a negative thing. In a society obsessed with productivity and acquisition, the act of simply sitting and enjoying your headspace is seen as a “waste” of time. This leads many people who experience chronic and difficult-to-control daydream states to experience a significant amount of guilt and shame around their daydreams.
Daydreaming (also called mind-wandering) is incredibly common, with a study suggesting that we spend, on average, up to half our day in a daydream. Daydreaming excessively does have some negative connotations, and people who spend a lot of time daydreaming have been tested as having lower working memory capacity, and worse IQ scores. Studies have also shown that for a vast majority of people, daydreaming is an unhappy experience, though whether this is a culturally ingrained bias or a universal phenomenon is unexplored.
Yet, despite the negativity, Daydreams appear to not only have beneficial aspects but appear to be necessary to our health as well.
What Daydreaming Does
When we Daydream, we are accessing a part of ourselves that neuroscientists refer to as the “default network” or “default mode network.” The default network is the network of synapses and neurological connections that activate when we are resting. Throughout our waking hours, we typically have to suppress this network to remain focused on our domestic obligations, social interactions, or work.
However, when we are locked in a daydream our default network is shown to be incredibly active, suggesting that daydreaming is a form of waking rest, a mental state where there is little conscious effort spent, and we are free to flow in whatever direction our imaginations take us.
Sound familiar?
Evidence suggests that small, frequent daydream “breaks” in tasks can greatly enhance productivity and quality of work, equating it to small rests when interest and motivation are waning and coming back with renewed focus and intent.
Additionally, the study that correlated frequent daydreaming to lower IQ scores and lesser working memory capacity has been criticized as having left major factors unanalysed, and a similar study conducted in the same year found opposing results. The explanation is that the former study was only paying attention to results based on the participant’s ability to engage with their immediate surroundings, while the latter study was more comprehensive. Jonathan Smallwood, a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Queen’s University at Kingston in Ontario, Canada, said in a press release that the reason people daydream frequently during a task may be due to an excessive working memory capacity to the point where the brain attempts to find further sources of stimulation through daydreaming.
The Physical Effects of Daydreaming
It also appears that daydreaming has significant positive ramifications for a person’s physical health as well.
A study published in the Journal of Pain in 2008 showed that pleasurable daydreams (in the context of the study, centered around the consumption of a favored meal) lessened the perceived pain from the pain associated with exposure to ice water. Daydreaming has been shown to create new neurological pathways, so people with chronic pain can theoretically practice frequent intentional daydreaming to realign their neural pathways and establish a change in perception at the level of pain they suffer.
Similarly, daydreaming has been linked to more success in meeting goals, and the creative process. It has also been shown to help people effectively manage stress and fatigue, mitigating the body’s negative responses to them.
When we think about it, this fact isn’t all that surprising. People have known for hundreds of years that rest is integral to maintaining a healthy life and healthy body, and the positive influence of rest on mental illness is well documented. So if daydreaming is like resting during our waking hours, then it stands to reason that these small rest breaks would be beneficial for our minds and bodies.
The Reality
There is one instance in which daydreaming becomes a serious health concern, and that is with a condition called Maladaptive Daydreaming. This condition is characterized by excessive daydreaming, with periods of mental wandering lasting for hours, with the person becoming “lost” in their daydream with little or no ability to control the daydream. The condition overlaps with several major mental illnesses and neurological conditions, but there is significant evidence for it to be classified as its condition.
However, if you’re not finding that you’re regularly spending hours in a mental fantasy to the detriment of your life, you’re probably just daydreaming like normal people do, and that’s a good thing. Research shows that daydreaming helps us regulate our emotions, meet tasks with renewed vigor, meet our goals, manage stress, and enhance our creativity.
So the next time someone approaches you while you’re stuck in a reverie and snaps their fingers in front of your eyes shouting “wakey, wakey!” you can feel entirely justified in responding to that with the requisite pettiness.