By Jasdev Bhakar

Understanding how Maladaptive Daydreaming affects sleep and practical strategies for getting the rest you need

Sleep is one of the foundations of physical health, emotional regulation and cognitive functioning. Yet for many people with Maladaptive Daydreaming (MD), getting enough sleep can be difficult.

The quiet and privacy of nighttime can create the perfect conditions for entering an immersive inner world. Without external demands, distractions, or responsibilities, bedtime can become a space where daydreaming feels especially appealing.

For many maladaptive daydreamers, this creates a complicated relationship with sleep. The same inner world that can provide comfort and safety can also interfere with the rest needed to function well.

Improving sleep with MD is therefore not simply about following general sleep advice or trying to eliminate daydreaming. It requires understanding why MD and sleep become connected and developing strategies that acknowledge both the challenges of MD and the important role it may play in someone’s life.

This article explores how MD can affect sleep and practical strategies that can help maladaptive daydreamers build healthier sleep patterns while developing a more balanced relationship with their inner world.

How Maladaptive Daydreaming Can Affect Sleep

Many maladaptive daydreamers experience a strong connection between their inner world and their sleep environment. Several overlapping factors shape this relationship between MD and sleep.

MD Can Reduce Sleep Time
For many people with MD, late evenings and early mornings are prime times for daydreaming. These moments offer freedom from external demands and allow uninterrupted immersion in their fantasy world. As a result, bedtime may be delayed, or waking may occur earlier than intended to continue daydreaming.

The difficulty is not simply that time is spent daydreaming. It is that this time can come at the expense of a biological need that affects every area of functioning.

MD Can Keep the Mind and Body Activated
Falling asleep requires the body and mind to gradually transition into a calmer state. The nervous system needs to move away from alertness, thoughts need to slow down, and the body needs to prepare for rest.

MD often works in the opposite direction. Because MD is immersive, emotionally engaging, and mentally stimulating, it can make it difficult to disengage. The mind remains active when it needs to slow down, making it harder to fall asleep.

MD Can Become a Night-Time Coping Strategy
MD is often used as a coping strategy to manage challenging emotions such as loneliness, anxiety, stress and rumination. These feelings may intensify in the evening when other distractions fade, and MD may be heavily relied on to provide much needed comfort, safety or companionship.

MD Can Turn the Bedroom into a Trigger
When we repeatedly daydream in bed before trying to sleep, the brain can begin associating the bed with wakefulness, mental stimulation, and entering a fantasy world. Over time, getting into bed itself can become an automatic cue to start daydreaming.

MD and Comorbidity
MD frequently co-occurs with other conditions, including ADHD, anxiety, depression, and OCD. These conditions can independently affect sleep through difficulties with attention regulation, emotional regulation, racing thoughts, stress, low mood, or disrupted routines.

For some people, sleep difficulties may therefore result from several interacting factors: MD itself, the emotional role daydreaming plays, and other conditions that affect the ability to relax and rest. Understanding these different influences is important because improving sleep may require addressing multiple factors.

Why Standard Sleep Advice Can Feel Difficult for People with MD

Many people with MD already know what they are supposed to do:

The challenge is that MD is rarely just a habit. For many people, MD is a needed coping strategy to deal with difficult emotions and life experiences. Thus, changing sleep patterns can sometimes feel like losing something important.

The goal is not to eliminate daydreaming through willpower alone. The goal is to create a healthier relationship with both MD and sleep while developing other ways to meet the needs that daydreaming may fulfil.

Sleep Strategies Tailored for Maladaptive Daydreamers

Sleep does not begin when your head touches the pillow. Your body begins preparing for sleep hours earlier, and a consistent rhythm helps strengthen the biological processes that regulate sleep and wakefulness.

Try:

• ›Keeping consistent sleep and wake times, including weekends.
• ›Setting two alarms: one for waking and one approximately one hour before bedtime.
• ›Use these alarms as prompts to make small changes to your routine. When your bedtime alarm goes off, identify one behaviour that may be interfering with sleep and find a way to remove or change it. Do the same for the first 20 minutes after waking.
• ›This behaviour change does not have to involve MD; it could be something as simple as scrolling on social media, starting a stimulating task, replying to messages/emails or starting a new TV episode.
• ›Getting natural light exposure by going outside within the first hour after waking, ideally for 5–15 minutes.
• ›Combining morning light with movement, such as walking, stretching, squats, or another form of exercise.

A consistent sleep schedule does not eliminate MD, but it strengthens the body’s natural drive for sleep, making it easier to transition from wakefulness and daydreaming into rest.

Improving sleep is not only about creating positive habits. It is also about identifying factors that make it harder for the mind and body to transition into rest.

Manage Stimulants
Caffeine and other stimulants can remain active in the body for many hours and may interfere with the ability to feel naturally tired at night. Consider reducing your overall stimulant intake and avoiding caffeine in the 10 hours before bedtime.

Avoid Eating Too Close to Bedtime
Your body prepares for sleep by gradually reducing activity and shifting into a state of rest. Eating a large meal close to bedtime can interfere with this process by keeping the body active when it should be winding down. If possible, aim to finish eating two to three hours before sleep.

Reduce Evening Stimulation
Many people with MD have specific environmental triggers that make entering a daydream easier. These may include:

• ›music;
• ›pacing;
• ›certain online content;
• ›scrolling;
• ›unstructured time alone.

Rather than relying only on willpower, change the environment around you.

When your bedtime alarm goes off:

• ›Dim your lights as much as possible;
• ›Reduce controllable sources of sound, e.g., music, podcasts;
• ›Reduce digital stimulation.

Around 30 minutes before bedtime, consider putting your phone on aeroplane mode or leaving it outside the bedroom. If you use your phone as a morning alarm, consider investing in a digital alarm clock.

The aim is not to remove everything enjoyable from your evening. It is intended to reduce cues that automatically lead to prolonged daydreaming and to create a smoother transition into sleep.

Many people with MD experience feeling “wired but tired”, meaning physically exhausted but mentally unable to slow down. This can happen when the nervous system remains activated throughout the day without enough opportunities to recover.

Downregulation involves intentionally creating moments where your body can move from stimulation into calm.

Practise Diaphragmatic Breathing
Take 10 diaphragmatic breaths after your morning and evening alarms. Breathe gently through your nose, and exhale through your mouth or pursed lips. The exhales should be longer than the inhales.

This practice can help reduce physiological arousal and anchor your attention to the present moment. For people with MD, these small moments of intentional grounding can help create a clearer transition between daydreaming, daily activity, and rest.

Take Two Short Walks Without Stimulation
Take two short walks each day (5–10 minutes each) without music, podcasts, or phone calls. During these walks, focus on breathing through your nose and noticing your surroundings.

These walks are not only about physical movement. They provide intentional periods when your brain is not constantly receiving external stimulation, allowing your nervous system an opportunity to settle.

These practices create grounding micro-moments throughout the day, which can make it easier to transition into rest at night.

For many people with MD, bedtime daydreaming is one of the hardest patterns to change because it is often connected to comfort, emotional regulation, and habit. Trying to suppress MD completely through willpower can increase frustration and make the urge feel stronger.

Instead, the aim is to replace the bedtime environment with activities that keep attention focused on the present moment while fostering a sense of calm.

Replace Rather Than Suppress
Before sleep, consider activities such as:

• ›reading a physical book;
• ›journaling;
• ›gentle stretching;
• ›breathing exercises;
• ›other calming activities that are grounding rather than immersive.

The goal is not to occupy your mind with something highly engaging. It is to provide enough structure that your attention does not automatically move into an extended daydream.

A Daydream Appointment
For some people, completely restricting MD creates a sense of deprivation, increasing the pressure to daydream when opportunities arise.

A daydream appointment involves intentionally setting aside time earlier in the day when daydreaming is allowed and encouraged. This approach may reduce the feeling that daydreaming must happen only at bedtime.

It is not about controlling or eliminating MD. It is about creating a healthier balance between enjoying your inner world and protecting your sleep.

Use Stimulus Control If You Wake During the Night
If you wake during the night and cannot return to sleep within around 20 minutes, leave your bedroom. Go somewhere dim and unstimulating. Avoid digital media and activities that increase alertness. Return to bed only when you begin to feel sleepy again. This helps rebuild the association between your bed and sleep rather than wakefulness and daydreaming.

For many people, MD fulfils important emotional needs. Creating a more fulfilling waking life does not mean replacing your inner world. It means creating more opportunities to experience engagement and satisfaction outside of it.

This is also an important part of preparing the mind and body for sleep. The brain benefits from challenge, curiosity, novelty, and meaningful activity. The body benefits from movement and physical engagement. Together, these experiences help regulate energy levels, reduce excess mental tension, and create the natural readiness for rest.

Engage Your Mind
Try introducing activities that are new, challenging, or require learning.

Examples include:

• ›learning a new skill;
• ›trying a new activity;
• ›cooking a new recipe;
• ›solving a puzzle;
• ›learning something unfamiliar;
• ›practising a new movement or dance step.

The aim is not productivity. It is to give your brain experiences of curiosity, growth, and engagement. Even a few minutes of creative exploration can be beneficial.

Engage Your Body
Physical activity throughout the day also supports sleep by helping regulate stress, energy levels, and the natural build-up of sleep pressure.

Physical activities can include:

• ›going for walks;
• ›taking the stairs instead of the lift;
• ›exercising;
• ›stretching;
• ›standing up and moving regularly during periods of sitting.

By engaging your mind, moving your body, and creating a life with more meaningful experiences, no matter how big or small, the need to escape may become less overwhelming, and your body becomes better prepared for rest.

Small Steps, Lasting Change

Changing the relationship between MD and sleep takes time, and it is completely normal for this process to feel challenging. The goal is not to remove your inner world, but to create a healthier balance where your imagination and your need for sleep can both exist.

You do not need to make several changes at once. Treat improving your sleep as an experiment. Introduce one new behaviour at a time, whether daily or every few days, and pay attention to what works, what feels difficult, and what your mind and body are telling you.