When a character suffers emotional pain, the brain’s response is to stop the discomfort, and often this results in a coping mechanism being deployed. Whether it’s an automatic response or a learned go-to strategy, a mechanism helps them cope with the stress of the moment or escape the hurt of it.
But if the character develops an unhealthy reliance on that mechanism, problems will arise. Long-term, certain coping behaviors will impair their connections with others, their ability to achieve goals and dreams, and their resiliency in handling life’s pressures.
At some point, they must have an Aha! moment where they realize their coping method is holding them back and they need to seek other ways to deal with stress. Namely, they’ll have to adopt healthier mechanisms that enable them to manage difficulties and ultimately have a happier future.
To help you write your character’s growth (or regression) journey, we’ve created The Coping Mechanism Thesaurus, which contains a range of coping methods. The one we’re highlighting today can be damaging, and we hope this partial entry will help you show your character’s struggle in a way readers can relate to.
Maladaptive Fantasy
Definition
Habitually (excessively) retreating into imagination to escape real-world problems
What It May Look Like
Making up things that didn’t actually happen (and believing them)
Not being present enough to deal with issues as they arise
Ignoring uncomfortable realities like mounting bills or a health issue
Being clumsy (not noticing the physical world)
Regularly mishearing or misunderstanding things
Basic Human Needs It Could Compromise
Love and Connection: Escaping into a fantasy world makes both love and connection hard to achieve, since both require focused attention to people in the here and now.
Safety and Security: Not focusing on the present moment could put the character in serious danger if they’re doing something that requires intense focus such as walking alone at night or driving a vehicle.
Fallout (and Possible Turning Points)
Having aclose call—e.g., forgetting to turn off the stove—that makes them realize they need to change
Being responsible for someone else’s care and not paying attention at a crucial moment
Sitting at the deathbed of a loved one and listening to their regrets, realizing they’re missing out on life
Being placed on probation by their employer for doing a poor job
Commitment to Change
Attending a mindfulness class
Confiding in a friend and asking them to hold them accountable
Taking a creative writing class and putting their active imagination to good use
To help you brainstorm your character’s responses to stress, visit our master list of healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms.
Need More Descriptive Help?
While this thesaurus is still being developed and expanded, the rest of our descriptive collection (18 unique thesauri and growing) is accessible through the One Stop for Writers THESAURUS database.
If you like, swing by and check out the video walkthrough for this site, then give our Free Trial a spin.
Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.
It’s kind of funny that you would do an entry on living in fantasies when the whole purpose of this site is to help people do a better job of writing their fantasies so they can share them with others. I just finished reading a very interesting book called “Dopamine Nation” in which the psychiatrist author admits to having become addicted to reading romance novels and explains how people can literally get addicted fairly ordinary things (without drugs) and how to deal with it. If you are interested in the science that shows what makes people tick, the book is a pretty easy read without much technical jargon.
Maybe list some avenues people use to immerse themselves in fantasy. Like television shows and movies. I’ve found my escape that way at times, but it’s relatively harmless if not abused. Another one to consider is online gaming. There are a lot of gamers who give up their lives to the fantasy world provided by interactive computer games. There is a wide variety of games available that are free or inexpensive to play, and though it’s usually teenagers playing them, I know a lot of older adults who do it as well. It can be addictive and incredibly harmful, depending on how involved the gamer gets and how much time they spend online.
Addictive is more right than you might think. I’ve been reading neuroscience pretty avidly for the past 25 years, and it’s been pretty well proven that people literally become addicted to things other than drugs or alcohol. The quick explanation is that drugs don’t actually make you feel anything, they just make the chemicals in your brain that make all your normal feelings go into overdrive. The one we hear the most about is dopamine. Dopamine is what makes you crave things like chocolate, hamburgers, and sex. When someone uses cocaine, it massively intensifies the dopamine that is normally in there. But people can get addicted to more ordinary things, like games, TV, winning, or money. The more of these things you get, the more you crave. It’s why rich people act like crack heads.
I just finished reading a book called “Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence” by Anna Lembke. If you are interested, it’s a very non-technical book for ordinary people, both an easy and fascinating read.