Quote Originally Posted by JoannaB View Post
Welcome to DV, Frightlight! I can totally relate with a lot of what you write. I too have a vivid imagination, and have often throughout my life since childhood used it to escape waking life including issues such as depression. When I am depressed, the waking world does not appear vivid at all, and I personally like to call that "brain fog." However, this year I have started to actively work on an alternate strategy: instead of using daydreams and dreams to escape issues and depression, I am working on combatting depression by increasing my self awareness in waking life and changing my outlook to see waking life in a more positive light. I am combining lucid dream preparation practices with depression combat, hoping that the result will be more and better lucid dreams in addition to a better waking life. I am also using dream interpretation to better understand my subconscious and observe change over time - to get more of a meta awareness, awareness of my awareness and of cause and effect and how I get worse and how I improve. Instead of escaping into a separate better world, I want to build on success in both/all worlds to improve my experience no matter whether I am waking or dreaming.

When I was a kid, I once told my mum that I live in three worlds: reality, my own imagination, and other people's imagination (books, movies, etc), and that of the three I frankly was least interested in reality. This has been my attitude for most of my life. Now at 40 years of age, I am finally starting to dream of what if I could improve reality and especially my perception of reality, so that it lives up to being an enjoyable world in its own right. Instead of living in several separate worlds, one of which is clearly more dysfunctional and less satisfying to me, I want to live in a combination of worlds that I enjoy no matter whether I am waking or dreaming. That is the goal that brought me to this site in February of this year, and I am still working toward it.
That sounds great-- and it's pretty admirable that you are able to think so optimistically and creatively about depression. Unfortunately, I'm not yet in that place. I've recently have had the absolute WORST experiences and traumas. I hope one day I can get past it like the way you are getting past your depression now, though. It's a good goal, I think.

The simple life isn't for everybody And it isn't very appealing, either. I'm a strong believer in the saying, "bad things happen to good people."
Thanks for your reply




Unrelated, but is there a synesthesia thread?