Maladaptive Daydreaming

I'm not sure if this is the right forum for my question, but I suppose the moderators can move it if need be...

I will start by saying I do NOT have a BPD diagnosis. I do have some BPD behaviors, but I don't believe I have the disorder. I will be speaking to my counselor about a personality screening to be sure, though. I do, however, have depression, social anxiety, and OCD. So here is my question: Is maladaptive daydreaming related to any of these or BPD?

I have had intense, vivid, and detailed fantasy daydreams for the past eight years. They are time-consuming, hard to resist, and very easy to slip into. I will start daydreaming without noticing in the middle of conversations with people. I get an urge to daydream about the same fantasy, with my made-up characters and plot. They all evolve over time and have elements of my real life, but are ultimately fantasy. I lose a lot of time and become detached from reality during my daydreams.

I am only aware of two triggers: emotional/tense music and dancing (as in watching other people dance). However, there must be other triggers because I slip into the daydreams without having experienced either of these. A lot of the time, I will pick at my skin or bite my lips, cheeks, or tongue during it. I find myself gesturing, mouthing/humming/mumbling the words, nodding, vaguely acting out motions/actions of my "characters," and looking in the direction of or turning my body towards where my "characters" are located in the story.

They are pleasurable, but seem almost compulsive, which can get in the way of my daily activities. I've also deliberately brought on my daydreams to ward off freaky OCD obsessions about seeing dead things. It works, but I'm not sure I should be... encouraging it? I do want to mention I can control whether or not I daydream, but it is hard to resist the urge, especially when I am alone.

Is this related to any of the disorders I mentioned? Should this be something I mention to my counselor? By the way, I put this in the BPD forum because it's sort of a dissociative activity (derealization). I've also got other, more characteristic, Borderline tendencies. I don't know if there are any connections to my diagnosed disorders, though. Thoughts?

I don't know if maladaptive daydreaming is typically linked with those disorders, but it doesn't mean that that they can't be. Every person's collection of symptoms and triggers is going to look a little different.

If it is something getting in the way of daily activities, and causing you concern or distress, then yes, I think you should definitely bring it up with your counsellor. They will be able to help you look at whether there are connections between them, and there might be far more than it would initially seem.

I was thinking about opening a thread the other day on various types of dissociation and how to distinguish between e.g. PTSD dissociation symptoms, BPD dissociation etc. I don't really know the difference.

I'm not so sure that the differences between each type is important, if they are able to be that distinguishable- the nature of dissociation generally being that you can't manage to distinguish things. My understanding is that dissociation can just be a symptom of both, I don't know that there's a specific type of dissociation that belongs to one or the other. There are different forms of dissociation- but those are usually named as depersonalisation, derealisation, dissociative amnesia and dissociative identity disorder (DID), but two people may go through similar traumas and end up with very different dissociative symptoms.

For many the symptoms of BPD and PTSD for example may overlap, and they might not be able to tell where one stops and the other starts. Sometimes even understanding that you are actually dissociating is a challenge. Maybe more important is how you go about dealing with the dissociation- can you and how do you ground yourself? What triggered it off to begin with? Is it a general state you've been in for days or is it a sudden episode?