The difference between autistic and neurotypical daydreams?
So what is the difference really? I've been reading a bunch on daydreaming and autism but it never really found a side by side comparison... I was wondering what everyone spends most of their time daydreaming about?
I know that those sites and people said that neurotypicals mostly daydreamed about what they were going to do later, or what they had to remember. I daydream of dragons and made up characters and different scenarios for books, and the feeling of rummaging through someone's chest cavity (:P) and I do it ALL THE TIME. Unless I find something else I interesting to focus on, you'll find me daydreaming. (Even if it is interesting, I still day dream a bit).
My question is, is that still a neurotypical way of daydreaming, because I could never really figure it out.
Thanks.
I have no idea what NT daydreams are or what they are like but when I day dream I am usually playing out imaginary stories with characters including myself in my head or reliving old situations or imagining different outcomes to situations that happened.
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"I'm bad and that's good. I'll never be good and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me."
Wreck It Ralph
Last edited by skibum on 08 Jun 2014, 7:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I always have really, really out there daydreams (and regular dreams). I have dreams about cannibalism and giant two headed talking spiders and space creatures quite often. I was talking to my friend who has aspergers (I'm NT), and he told me that he rarely remembers his dreams, and when he does they are about everyday events, like cleaning or running errands. Which is interesting, because this seems to be the opposite response in the other posters replies.
For me personally, dreams and daydreams are roughly the same, the only difference being that dreams are controlled by my subconscious and daydreams by what I actually want to dream about. Other than that, they are very similar. Sometimes they are about everyday events, but dreams generally have more of a "fantasy" feel to them, where, for example, I may be able to glide (like this recent XKCD comic), while it feels entirely natural doing so, but don't do that in daydreams.
As far as content goes, it can be anything as ridiculous as my front lawn turning to water as I stir the grass with alpacas riding bicycles on top of it without sinking somehow and finding a zombie octopus thing in a dock house that used to be my garage (which I actually dreamed once -- I have a writeup about it somewhere I made the morning after ) or something as mundane as how I'm going to plan a conversation with my boss prior to me actually talking to him.
Autinger
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Age: 36
Gender: Male
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Location: Valkenswaard, Noord Brabant, The Netherlands.
I was hoping for a dream related topic to be around
Earlier today I fell asleep on my bed while watching tv and had a dream about living in a post apocalyptical version of my neighbourhood and as I was looting my own house, which was in perfect condition, and walking around the dinner table, a big zombie appeared on the other side of the table and I dropped to one knee and started shooting it, this zombiemonster "felt" different, like my dream was going to become a nightmare so I pressed my "dream stop button". So I woke up, walked downstairs and when I got to the dinner table, I saw a dog coming from behind it. I dropped to one knee and started petting it and I was thinking about the dream and a little confused about the dog since we don't have one when I looked up and saw the zombiemonster on the other side of the table. I realized it was a dream so I cast my "wake up spell", woke up and went downstairs. When I got to the dinner table I saw a dog come from behind it and I thought oh wow this is what I just dreamed, so I dropped to one knee to pet the dog and looked up to see the monster, but it wasn't there, I laughed and picked up the dog and walked to the kitchen trying to figure out if I was dreaming or not but came to the conclusion I must have heard the dog bark in my sleep, which explains the dream but not what the dog was doing there. Then my mom walks downstairs holding another dog. And she starts explaining I don't even know what exactly anymore but it made sense to me as to why there were dogs in the house, so I start explaining what happened with my dreams, and as we're both laughing about it, another dog runs down the stairs, and I look confused at my mom and she says "don't worry", so I say, wow that made me think I was dreaming again, and pop another dog comes running down the stairs, and my mom looks at me with a really serious face and again says "don't worry", but my mind starts thinking it's a dream and I want to press my "dream stop button" but the whole situation with the earlier dreams and my mom saying not to worry and what she explained about the dogs makes me hesitate, and the more I doubt the more dogs come running down the stairs and as the room slowly fills with more and more dogs and I'm now swimming in dogs with my head almost to the ceiling I'm still thinking it's not a dream and try to make sense of the situation. Then I turn around and see the head of the zombie also bobbing around in the sea of puppies and I say "aaah right, this -is- a dream" and as I start to focus to wake up the zombie looks at me like this: while also eyeing all the puppies and he says "really, -I'm- what made you realize this was a dream"?
I woke up laughing.
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Openly autistic.
i ususally think about these Sonic fan characters
Emily
Thunder
Despair
Mystery
Suzie
and a official character but i rendered to my liking, Mephiles.
i make up my own stories for them, Thunder is married to Emily and Despair is married to Mystery, Suzie and Mephiles are usually off again on again. Emily is a Samurai incharge of a clan of Cannibals, thunder is a Demi-god with the powers of Nature and weather. Despair is half robotic and Mystery and suzie are normal. Mephiles is a Demon whos powers are usually at bay, most of the time hes an ego-tistical as*hole who acts like hes all that.
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Obsessing over Sonic the Hedgehog since 2009
Diagnosed with Aspergers' syndrome in 2012.
Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder Level 1 severity without intellectual disability and without language impairment in 2015.
DA: http://mephilesdark123.deviantart.com
lostonearth35
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Location: Lost on Earth, waddya think?
So basically NT people (at my age, anyway) have really boring daydreams about normal stuff and not things like having your own cartoons or video games, or being able to speak telepathically with cats, or being transformed into a dolphin, or traveling across the country riding on a dinosaur , like I normally do? My NT mother has described some very unusual dreams she has had to me, like recently she keeps dreaming that my grandmother, who's in her 90's, has just adopted a couple of little kids and my mother is freaking out at her because... well, it's obvious. but I never thought about what she daydreams about. It's funny imagining my mother daydreaming about anything at all because she normally just does everything instead of dreaming about them.
I have daydreams where each of the 4 members of my immediate family members are members of the original Kinks line-up. I look at a picture of them and each of them represents a family member. Ray represents my mum, Pete represents my dad, Dave represents my kid sister and Mick represents myself.
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My mind often drifts off into thought when I'm riding the bus. When I'm walking along, I usually have conversations in my head, usually about daily life. When I daydream, I sometimes think of things that happened in the past, whether it was good or bad. Or usually I daydream of something that is making me anxious and how I'm going to deal with it, or I make decisions in my daydreaming like what I'm going to do later or tomorrow, and other times I daydream about my special interests. Well, my special interests are on my mind a lot, so it's obvious that I will daydream about them (my special interests are bus-drivers in a particular bus company).
I don't daydream about fantasies, like other Aspies here appear to. Maybe I'm NT after all....
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