Maladaptive Daydreaming

(A visual meditation on escape, imagination, and psychological drift)

Maladaptive Daydreaming is a psychological condition marked by immersive, highly structured fantasy activity that can dominate one’s conscious experience. Unlike ordinary daydreams, these vivid inner worlds are often triggered by stimuli such as music, solitude, or rhythmic movement.

But Maladaptive Daydreaming is not mere distraction it is the mind’s refusal to be confined by reality. When the world becomes too dull, too loud, or too difficult, the psyche retreats and creates a realm of its own. This space evolves into a portal one where the self fractures, multiplies, or expands.

This work stems from such a threshold. A quiet poolside, once a familiar place, now transforms into a dreamscape. Captured at night using long exposure, the scene blurs into abstraction. Light trails stretch across the frame, echoing the psychological drift between waking life and imagined possibility.

A translucent female figure glows faintly in the frame not quite here, not quite gone. She embodies the dreamer untethered, representing the moment we disconnect from present time and slip into infinite imagined versions of ourselves.

"The Otherworld Within" asks not only what we’re escaping from but what we long to reach. It speaks to the subtle friction between presence and desire, between what is and what could be.

And finally, it leaves us with a quiet challenge:
What if you didn’t just visit your inner worlds but made them real?

Stepping outside your comfort zone can be hard, but I want you to remember you are safe, even there.