I’m 100% sure I had this in my childhood. Now I feel like everything has just been exasperated. Poor routine, sleeps horribly, social awkwardness, withdrawal, no accomplishment. But I am smart in terms of processes because as you said daydreaming of situations allows me to see how something should be done. But my ability to start and finish has been my demise 🙁
I found the description of the variety of thoughts of children with CDS and the comparison with maladaptive daydreaming particularly useful. Thank you!
😂 I made it to 1 minute on 1.5 speed before giving up and googling. I did not make it through the whole article. But this reply has taken about 5/10 minutes to write. More time well spent 👍. Now to not get on with the other five thousand things I need to do today. Hmm what to watch first 😅
In line with the earlier reply, might I suggest passively listening while going about your daily routine? While I miss out on the visuals I've found it easier to just play the vid as background audio when driving.
20:38 In my case, the mentioned environmental factors do not seem to apply. No prenatal alcohol, no TBIs, cancer in my mother appeared after I was born, no spina bifida. Also, middle class family, slightly at the higher end, no conflict in the family or with peers. Both of my parents were well respected (and my father still is, at age 85 - while my mother has passed long ago). Also, I don’t think that I fall into the subgroup of CDS people for whom it may be a copying mechanism. My internal distractibility was there as long as I can think. My mind could wander off at any time. I remember that as a young child, it would jump from any thought to any thought, related or unrelated. I found this distressing as a child, but I believed I just needed to use my mind right. So, I tried to stop my thoughts from jumping around, with limited success. Giving up on that, I next tried to nudge my jumping thoughts into connecting with my previous thoughts. (“No, don’t jump, let’s hold on to the current thought a bit more … aaand that makes it easier to glide into a related thought. Ah, good, thank you, mind. Come back now? No, need to run around a bit more? Ok. Let’s hold-and-glide into the next connected thought then. Ok to come back now? …” After a couple of seconds or so, I could bring myself back. And no, I did not have a complete internal monologue about this while it happened, it was more of a meta-thought / feeling thing that felt more like I was gently holding and nudging my thoughts.) I am currently being evaluated for ADHD (looks like I have it), and me and my wife believe that most of the CDS signs and symptoms apply to me as well. (Also, waiting for an autism assessment.) From my own introspection, I would say that this is another executive function problem. It gets worse when I have not had enough sleep, or am otherwise in a phase of low executive functioning. While I do not think that any of my relatives has CDS, my brother is dyslexic, and there are some signs of other neurodiversity amongst my relatives. One uncle shows some signs of autistic traits … he may or may not be diagnosable. And there is more, here and there. Therefore I suspect that the predisposition to CDS is heritable, and related to other neurodivergence. I also suspect that the neurodevelopmental triggers are more subtle than we know now.
As much as I deeply appreciate the presentation about CDS and what we know so far, I am afraid that several of the recommendations and strategies sound more like ABA for CDS to me. I.e., ignoring that there is an underlying neurological problem and trying to make the child act more “normal” anyway, without treating the problem itself (if that is possible). For example, giving the child more time, but then successively shortening the time allowed for an activity. This doesn’t make the mind wandering go away, because that happens automatically, without the child controlling it. I don’t think practice helps here. It just applies more pressure and creates stress for the child. Or forcing the child out of bed, even though it likely has only found sleep later at night. That doesn’t make the child fall asleep earlier the next night. The mind will still ruminate, and needs to be distracted. I have recently had the first part of my assessment for ADHD, it looks a lot like I have it, but we still may need to go over more details. I believe I have CDS as well. So, what I wrote above is based on my own lived experience, both in childhood and now. I believe Dr. Fredrick will find out a lot more about CDS. But it also seems to me that we need to understand the underlying mechanism to some extent, or get really lucky in finding a medication that helps (I understand that Atomoxetine shows some effect, albeit not a great one). Other than that, there seems to be only understanding, support and accommodations … similar to the situation for ASD. - Anyway, fingers crossed. 🤞
My ADHD assessment is not finalized yet (there will be another appointment), but assuming that I have CDS, here is a description of my experience and some of the strategies that I use to handle it better. My first memories of CDS are that as a young child, in elementary school, my mind was wandering off, by itself (!), and I was either lost in thoughts, or it interrupted me with thoughts while trying to focus on something else, like listening to someone talking. And especially when these thoughts would interrupt my focus, these were more or less random thoughts. Not necessarily related to what I was focussing on. When I was not trying to focus on something else, then this was not a huge problem. And I could even enjoy the mind wandering. But it also left me less engaged to whatever else was going on. I believe that made it harder for me to engage with potential friends. The best friend I had was a kid my age with whom I would construct his model railway. I could engage or just watch and dream. - One of the biggest problems with this was that I lost track of things that I needed to keep track of. For example, for a while I was doing some Judo, and my parents arranged that another mom of a child would take me along to a Judo tournament. But when I was done, I was lost in thoughts so much, that I missed keeping track of where they are. They did not find me and left without me. And one of the last persons who was there ended up driving me home. A scary incident. Also, when I tried to focus on something, especially on someone talking to me, then I remember that I realized how disruptive my interrupting thoughts were. I tried to focus more, and not to get interrupted by my thoughts. But that helped very little, if at all. The next thing I tried was to hold on to whatever I was focussing on more, not to stop the interrupting thoughts from happening (which I learned I could not), but to direct the interrupting thoughts, to make them relate to what I was focussing on. This is somewhat like a meta-thought / mindfulness technique (I did not know these words as a child, of course). I would not only try to focus, but also try to imagine what the thing I was focussing on was about, and immerse my imagination in it more. And when an interrupting thought came along, I could let it jump more easily to one of the things that I was immersed in. So, my interrupting thoughts would be more guided, and make associations with my current thinking more easily. This made it much more useful to the task at hand, less disruptive and less confusing. It did not always work (and it still does not always work), because thinking like this is more effortful, and I can still be interrupted by seemingly random thoughts, especially when I am more tired. But it definitely improved the situation. Yet, my interrupting thoughts still made me miss important bits of the conversations I was trying to focus on. This became more and more a problem in early secondary school. So, another thing that I did was to apply a technique that I learned in choir practice. The teacher told us to listen to the other kids singing while singing ourselves, so that we adjust our pitch to match theirs, and that we also stay in step with the lyrics. And I applied this kind of constant split attention when I listened to someone talking to me. I was constantly listening to the person, both with my main focus and with my “choir focus” (the split attention). And when my main focus wandered off, my split focus could still “record” what the other person was saying, like listening to a song in the background, and just for a few seconds. And when I was able to bring my main attention back, after a few seconds, then I could quickly replay this “song” in my mind and process it and catch up. (While still also listening to what else the other person was saying, and also catching up with that. I would quickly resolve.) This worked remarkably well, and I was proud of having found this solution (and I still am). But it is also an effortful and exhausting technique, and it does not work well when I am tired. Anyway, I hope someone will find this helpful.
Webinar starts at 3:14. I will continue from there tomorrow (or the next time, or in 8 months), hopefully. I know those long introductions are primarily aimed at parents and health care professionals , but it makes it really difficult to stay focused.
I’m 20 minutes in and I want to know how I can sign up to be apart of studies that are done. I have so much to say but I’ll sum it up… this information is amazing so far and I’m eager to learn more..
This whole CDS thing sounds frightening close, but I really am not a fan of overinterpreting things. It´s probably just my brain searching reasons again.
Wow…daydreaming IS NOT a disorder or a mental health condition. Have a goal! Imagination is key to a successful life. If you’re a parent worried about your child, there are some shocking truths you need to know before just blindly believing this information.
You have no idea wtf you are talking about ! You clearly don't understand the trouble of excessive day dreaming and losing hours,days,months,years of your life in fog and wonderland
It depends on how much control you can exert on this, and when it happens. For me, it happens all the time, but often also in the middle of a conversation, and not only once. My mind wanders off by itself, and I did not ask it to. And if I didn’t develop my own coping mechanisms in childhood, then I would constantly miss out and lose track of what I am being told. People did complain about this (“are you paying attention?” - or “sorry, what did you say?”), and I wanted to prevent this. (I can kind of “record” what the other person is saying in my head while my mind wanders off, and when I am able to bring myself back a couple of seconds later, I can “replay” it in my head, process it and catch up with the conversation. I basically constantly monitor and record what is going on in the back of my head, for a few seconds of back log. I adapted this technique as a child by myself from something that I learned in choir practice. We learned to monitor the singing of the others, so that we sing at the same pitch and in step with the lyrics that the others are singing. It is incredibly helpful for catching up with conversations … but also exhausting. And as I get older, I do not always have the capacity to do it.) My mind can wander off at any other time as well. It can be “dreamy” or just “thoughtful”, but at times it can also be rather haunting. I need to have something else to force my focus on so that I am more or less able to stop my mind from wandering further. So, in short, this IS NOT just “daydreaming”. This is reduced ability to control the direction of my own thoughts. Btw, others find my thoughts logical, and I make sense to them. I have not been accused of not making sense. On the contrary, others have found me insightful, helpful, and even “deep”. For some people, my ideas have helped them in their careers, and they have received public sustained recognition for them. (I have problems executing my ideas, so this tends to fall to others.) So, this is also different from schizophrenia.
There’s a whole lot more going on than just “daydreaming” I also don’t just watch UA-cam videos and blindly believe what I’m watching. We went through years of getting evaluations done through the school and more than one QUALIFIED doctor evaluating my child through multiple appointments. I’m not about to watch one video and self-diagnose him with something else all by myself.
I’m 100% sure I had this in my childhood. Now I feel like everything has just been exasperated. Poor routine, sleeps horribly, social awkwardness, withdrawal, no accomplishment. But I am smart in terms of processes because as you said daydreaming of situations allows me to see how something should be done. But my ability to start and finish has been my demise 🙁
I have never felt so many things accurately describe myself in one diagnosis.
I found the description of the variety of thoughts of children with CDS and the comparison with maladaptive daydreaming particularly useful. Thank you!
“Non judgmental awareness” and a Day Dream Journal. Love the idea but hate writing so many a day dream sketch book.
So grateful for this information.
Fantastic presentation. Look forward to what research finds in the coming years
Unfortunately with my ADHD there's no way i can sit through this entirely
😂 I made it to 1 minute on 1.5 speed before giving up and googling. I did not make it through the whole article. But this reply has taken about 5/10 minutes to write. More time well spent 👍. Now to not get on with the other five thousand things I need to do today. Hmm what to watch first 😅
Felt the need to reply again. Please know I’m not making light of your struggles ❤
Watched 1.5 speed. I am lucky that learning sparks my interest.
Put ear buds in and listen while doing something else. I'm listening while painting 2 rooms in my house.
In line with the earlier reply, might I suggest passively listening while going about your daily routine? While I miss out on the visuals I've found it easier to just play the vid as background audio when driving.
20:38 In my case, the mentioned environmental factors do not seem to apply. No prenatal alcohol, no TBIs, cancer in my mother appeared after I was born, no spina bifida. Also, middle class family, slightly at the higher end, no conflict in the family or with peers. Both of my parents were well respected (and my father still is, at age 85 - while my mother has passed long ago).
Also, I don’t think that I fall into the subgroup of CDS people for whom it may be a copying mechanism. My internal distractibility was there as long as I can think. My mind could wander off at any time. I remember that as a young child, it would jump from any thought to any thought, related or unrelated. I found this distressing as a child, but I believed I just needed to use my mind right. So, I tried to stop my thoughts from jumping around, with limited success. Giving up on that, I next tried to nudge my jumping thoughts into connecting with my previous thoughts. (“No, don’t jump, let’s hold on to the current thought a bit more … aaand that makes it easier to glide into a related thought. Ah, good, thank you, mind. Come back now? No, need to run around a bit more? Ok. Let’s hold-and-glide into the next connected thought then. Ok to come back now? …” After a couple of seconds or so, I could bring myself back. And no, I did not have a complete internal monologue about this while it happened, it was more of a meta-thought / feeling thing that felt more like I was gently holding and nudging my thoughts.)
I am currently being evaluated for ADHD (looks like I have it), and me and my wife believe that most of the CDS signs and symptoms apply to me as well. (Also, waiting for an autism assessment.)
From my own introspection, I would say that this is another executive function problem. It gets worse when I have not had enough sleep, or am otherwise in a phase of low executive functioning.
While I do not think that any of my relatives has CDS, my brother is dyslexic, and there are some signs of other neurodiversity amongst my relatives. One uncle shows some signs of autistic traits … he may or may not be diagnosable. And there is more, here and there. Therefore I suspect that the predisposition to CDS is heritable, and related to other neurodivergence. I also suspect that the neurodevelopmental triggers are more subtle than we know now.
As much as I deeply appreciate the presentation about CDS and what we know so far, I am afraid that several of the recommendations and strategies sound more like ABA for CDS to me. I.e., ignoring that there is an underlying neurological problem and trying to make the child act more “normal” anyway, without treating the problem itself (if that is possible). For example, giving the child more time, but then successively shortening the time allowed for an activity. This doesn’t make the mind wandering go away, because that happens automatically, without the child controlling it. I don’t think practice helps here. It just applies more pressure and creates stress for the child. Or forcing the child out of bed, even though it likely has only found sleep later at night. That doesn’t make the child fall asleep earlier the next night. The mind will still ruminate, and needs to be distracted.
I have recently had the first part of my assessment for ADHD, it looks a lot like I have it, but we still may need to go over more details. I believe I have CDS as well. So, what I wrote above is based on my own lived experience, both in childhood and now.
I believe Dr. Fredrick will find out a lot more about CDS. But it also seems to me that we need to understand the underlying mechanism to some extent, or get really lucky in finding a medication that helps (I understand that Atomoxetine shows some effect, albeit not a great one). Other than that, there seems to be only understanding, support and accommodations … similar to the situation for ASD. - Anyway, fingers crossed. 🤞
My ADHD assessment is not finalized yet (there will be another appointment), but assuming that I have CDS, here is a description of my experience and some of the strategies that I use to handle it better.
My first memories of CDS are that as a young child, in elementary school, my mind was wandering off, by itself (!), and I was either lost in thoughts, or it interrupted me with thoughts while trying to focus on something else, like listening to someone talking. And especially when these thoughts would interrupt my focus, these were more or less random thoughts. Not necessarily related to what I was focussing on.
When I was not trying to focus on something else, then this was not a huge problem. And I could even enjoy the mind wandering. But it also left me less engaged to whatever else was going on. I believe that made it harder for me to engage with potential friends. The best friend I had was a kid my age with whom I would construct his model railway. I could engage or just watch and dream. - One of the biggest problems with this was that I lost track of things that I needed to keep track of. For example, for a while I was doing some Judo, and my parents arranged that another mom of a child would take me along to a Judo tournament. But when I was done, I was lost in thoughts so much, that I missed keeping track of where they are. They did not find me and left without me. And one of the last persons who was there ended up driving me home. A scary incident.
Also, when I tried to focus on something, especially on someone talking to me, then I remember that I realized how disruptive my interrupting thoughts were. I tried to focus more, and not to get interrupted by my thoughts. But that helped very little, if at all.
The next thing I tried was to hold on to whatever I was focussing on more, not to stop the interrupting thoughts from happening (which I learned I could not), but to direct the interrupting thoughts, to make them relate to what I was focussing on. This is somewhat like a meta-thought / mindfulness technique (I did not know these words as a child, of course). I would not only try to focus, but also try to imagine what the thing I was focussing on was about, and immerse my imagination in it more. And when an interrupting thought came along, I could let it jump more easily to one of the things that I was immersed in. So, my interrupting thoughts would be more guided, and make associations with my current thinking more easily. This made it much more useful to the task at hand, less disruptive and less confusing. It did not always work (and it still does not always work), because thinking like this is more effortful, and I can still be interrupted by seemingly random thoughts, especially when I am more tired. But it definitely improved the situation.
Yet, my interrupting thoughts still made me miss important bits of the conversations I was trying to focus on. This became more and more a problem in early secondary school. So, another thing that I did was to apply a technique that I learned in choir practice. The teacher told us to listen to the other kids singing while singing ourselves, so that we adjust our pitch to match theirs, and that we also stay in step with the lyrics. And I applied this kind of constant split attention when I listened to someone talking to me. I was constantly listening to the person, both with my main focus and with my “choir focus” (the split attention). And when my main focus wandered off, my split focus could still “record” what the other person was saying, like listening to a song in the background, and just for a few seconds. And when I was able to bring my main attention back, after a few seconds, then I could quickly replay this “song” in my mind and process it and catch up. (While still also listening to what else the other person was saying, and also catching up with that. I would quickly resolve.) This worked remarkably well, and I was proud of having found this solution (and I still am). But it is also an effortful and exhausting technique, and it does not work well when I am tired.
Anyway, I hope someone will find this helpful.
Webinar starts at 3:14. I will continue from there tomorrow (or the next time, or in 8 months), hopefully. I know those long introductions are primarily aimed at parents and health care professionals , but it makes it really difficult to stay focused.
I’m 20 minutes in and I want to know how I can sign up to be apart of studies that are done. I have so much to say but I’ll sum it up… this information is amazing so far and I’m eager to learn more..
This whole CDS thing sounds frightening close, but I really am not a fan of overinterpreting things. It´s probably just my brain searching reasons again.
AD/HDers are likely on the earlier side for this one 🤣🥳
Wow…daydreaming IS NOT a disorder or a mental health condition. Have a goal! Imagination is key to a successful life. If you’re a parent worried about your child, there are some shocking truths you need to know before just blindly believing this information.
If you literally forget to eat and drink because of it, yeah. It can be.
You have no idea wtf you are talking about ! You clearly don't understand the trouble of excessive day dreaming and losing hours,days,months,years of your life in fog and wonderland
It depends on how much control you can exert on this, and when it happens. For me, it happens all the time, but often also in the middle of a conversation, and not only once. My mind wanders off by itself, and I did not ask it to. And if I didn’t develop my own coping mechanisms in childhood, then I would constantly miss out and lose track of what I am being told. People did complain about this (“are you paying attention?” - or “sorry, what did you say?”), and I wanted to prevent this.
(I can kind of “record” what the other person is saying in my head while my mind wanders off, and when I am able to bring myself back a couple of seconds later, I can “replay” it in my head, process it and catch up with the conversation. I basically constantly monitor and record what is going on in the back of my head, for a few seconds of back log. I adapted this technique as a child by myself from something that I learned in choir practice. We learned to monitor the singing of the others, so that we sing at the same pitch and in step with the lyrics that the others are singing. It is incredibly helpful for catching up with conversations … but also exhausting. And as I get older, I do not always have the capacity to do it.)
My mind can wander off at any other time as well. It can be “dreamy” or just “thoughtful”, but at times it can also be rather haunting. I need to have something else to force my focus on so that I am more or less able to stop my mind from wandering further.
So, in short, this IS NOT just “daydreaming”. This is reduced ability to control the direction of my own thoughts.
Btw, others find my thoughts logical, and I make sense to them. I have not been accused of not making sense. On the contrary, others have found me insightful, helpful, and even “deep”. For some people, my ideas have helped them in their careers, and they have received public sustained recognition for them. (I have problems executing my ideas, so this tends to fall to others.) So, this is also different from schizophrenia.
There’s a whole lot more going on than just “daydreaming” I also don’t just watch UA-cam videos and blindly believe what I’m watching. We went through years of getting evaluations done through the school and more than one QUALIFIED doctor evaluating my child through multiple appointments. I’m not about to watch one video and self-diagnose him with something else all by myself.