Mental wandering doesn’t have a good reputation. Daydreams can awaken great potential in us – if we take the time for them.
Humans are not very good at doing nothing. In 2014, US researcher Timothy Wilson left people alone in a barren room for between six and 15 minutes, using only a stun gun. About two-thirds of the men and a quarter of the women electrocuted themselves. Better pain than boredom. It would do people good to just let them in.
We are all good daydreamers: we spend about 50 percent of our waking hours daydreaming, broken up into up to 2000 thought units, according to a study by two psychologists from the US elite university Harvard. And that’s mostly a good thing.
In boredom, the brain becomes creative
The fact that we daydream probably has something to do with the fact that our brain cannot do nothing. According to an article in the science magazine Spektrum, the brain has no pause function. “Either it associates – or it’s dead.”
For people to be able to daydream, you need boredom or mental idling: If we don’t occupy our brain with tasks, a network of four brain areas becomes active, the so-called Default Mode Network (DMN), i.e. idle mode network.
Some studies show that people whose brain areas are better connected are also more creative and imaginative. This can also be promoted in a targeted manner – for example with boring breaks, as scientists from the University of California discovered in 2012.
Researcher: Daydreams are actually always there
The researchers had subjects do the so-called brick test several times. The aim is to come up with as many uses for a brick as possible in a short period of time. In a break between two tests, one group was given more difficult memory tasks. The other group had to do a simple reaction test – so simple that you could daydream on the side. In the next test round, the second group performed much better. Creativity increased.
Creativity can also be trained. Researcher Simone Ritter put virtual reality glasses on test subjects at the University of Nijmegen and transported them to a dream world. If they approached a suitcase, it got smaller, if a bottle fell off the table, it floated upwards. The result: people from this test scenario would have thought in more different directions afterwards, said Ritter. Meanwhile, the psychologist and dream researcher Brigitte Holzinger puts forward the thesis that people “are always surrounded by inner images, but depending on their condition they can be called up.” The daydreams are always there, but we repress them with many small distractions such as the smartphone or permanent appointments.
This does not only affect creativity. “Daydreams give space to feelings and sensations,” says Holzinger. Not only do we daydream about good things, we also daydream about anger, fear, and shame. You can allow that, otherwise you’re repressing something, says Holzinger, who offers dream and sleep workshops at the Vienna Institute for Consciousness and Dream Research.
Anger, fear and shame also appear
Holzinger’s conclusion: “We take far too few breaks. But we need them to stay healthy,” she says. “You don’t always have to daydream, but we should appreciate daydreams more.”
Daydreaming can also be morbid
Maladaptive daydreaming
So-called maladaptive daydreaming is also an excessive form of daydreaming, in which those affected often escape into an inner world for hours and are impaired in their everyday life.
illness
Experts often see this as a result of trauma or mental illness. Israeli psychologist Eli Somer advocates viewing maladaptive daydreaming as a distinct mental disorder.