So I'm a 13 year old female and I have imaginary friends. I know they are not real but I find myself talking to them. I also imagine myself as one of them and have a whole imaginary world with them in it. I sometimes just drift off into my head and then realize I was daydreaming for over an hour. One time in detention (Please don't ask, the reason I was in there has nothing to do with this) I was in there for an hour and a half , and I just talked to them in my head for the whole time. Is this normal, or am I just going insane. :(
[ Answer this question ] Want to answer more questions in the Health & Fitness category? Maybe give some free advice about: Mental health? rainhorse68 answered Thursday June 4 2015, 3:48 am: You're not going insane, at least not based on what you've said. It's not unusual for a minds to sometimes 'dissociate reality'. That just means we reject the real stuff and kind of drift off into an imaginary/fantasy scenario for a while. It's a bit of an 'escape capsule' which is cut-off from the real world, with it's occasional stresses and worries. Being in detention is not a great place to be, for example. Much nicer to project yourself into a nicer place for while, eh? Even if you know full well that the place is purely imaginary. In some measure, we all dissociate when we really engage with a movie, tv show, book, or maybe a piece of music and so on. It's nothing to worry about. The fantasy worlds seem more appealing when life isn't going the way we want it to as well. It's a bit of a 'coping mechanism'. Meaning it provides a bit of a relief so we can re-group before we tackle things for real. While you're perfectly happy to acknowledge the fantasy-nature of the friends and scenaria (which you have done in your post just by saying "I know they are not real but...") there's nothing to worry about at all. Do you find that in your 'conversations' you discuss and argue-out things? You put your feelings/opinion out and then see if your friends agree or disagree, approve or maybe not approve, and so on? If so these imaginary conversations are actually having a pretty good effect on the whole. That's exactly the process we use to weigh-up our evaluative decision making. We ask ourselves questions like; 'Is this a good plan? What are the consequences likely to be? Would this be an acceptable path to most people' etc. You have some fully-formed 'friends' at the moment that you're reasonning with, that's all. No worries! [ rainhorse68's advice column | Ask rainhorse68 A Question ]
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