Susan's Place Transgender Resources

In the thread about 'not all androgynes look the part' https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,90655.new.html#new (https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,90655.new.html#new)

Me and Simone both discovered that we had a common past in detailing imaginary worlds. Did/do any of your guys do that?

You must define "Imaginary World" - 99% people live in Imaginary world created by television (and other media) and they even don't want to know what is really behind walls of their houses

Too true - the difference is an imaginary world of your creation.

I live in mine 100% of the time, I go about with the usual daily things, but none of this is real. There are so many things in my past that I can't remember, don't really want to remember. Some days i get up and get coffee and everything looks strange, but it feels like I've been here a lot.

It takes most of the day to let that feeling go. Then the anxiety starts up, but I just let the blue pills dissolve in my mouth, and that feeling of anxiety slows to a stop, and the I can't understand what people are saying on television, and fall asleep until morning.

I think this is what worries my therapist the most, that I haven't any real sense of reality. I know I used to, but it has eroded away into what it is now. I still retain an abnormally high IQ, can carry on an in depth conversation on most anything, but I just don' care about it.
I don't really care one way or the other, but reality seems to have so many problems attached to it. I'd get tired of that anymore. it's not a reasonable expectation of how a persons life should be. Reality is as if there is a constant flow of ->-bleeped-<- that you don't just step to the side of and say to yourself 'Now that was a flow of ->-bleeped-<-!'. Time flucuates a lot ,too. An hour can go by and it will seem like minutes and then just the opposite.

It's not like I don't know what reality is, I just can't find any use for it, anymore.

Oh yes. A very rich imaginary life. Always have. Started by "telling myself bedtime stories" but the stories became so real and important to me that I spent more and more time there than "here".
Still have that space. Sometimes it makes me cry. You'd think since "I'm in control" I wouldn't create situations that would make me cry but then again...sometimes I don't feel so in control of that space. It's been around for so long...it kinda controls itself...

I had one when I was little, I couldn't pick when I went into it, but there was only one place I could enter it -- our swingset. I'm told I would swing back and forth, completely unresponsive for a while. But when my cousins broke the swingset, the little world broke as well.

I have at least two fantasy stories, and in them there's an imaginary world for the characters to live in, but it's sort of a daydream world, there's no permanent politics/religions/species (except 1-3) because I keep imagining alternate realities for them.

I don't escape to them, though. I just watch the people of them, and write them sometimes.

I live within the abstract world made by different systems and rules-systems which have been invented for my enjoyment.
Computer Programming, for example. I can get lost in there, losing all notice of the physical world.

Quote from: ZaidaZadkiel on July 29, 2011, 02:53:44 PM
I live within the abstract world made by different systems and rules-systems which have been invented for my enjoyment.
Computer Programming, for example. I can get lost in there, losing all notice of the physical world.

Yes! I can get so "in the zone" that i have no concept of time. I totally exclude the outside world and build a 3d logic models of the problem i'm working on in my mind and then turn the model from side to side to figure out ways to solve the problem. If some outside event happens (phone rings, etc) i pop out of the zone, and it takes me about an hour to get back into it again. When i eventually pop out of the zone i'm physically exhausted. I do get a lot of stuff done while in that mode though.

I do tend to live a lot more in my head than i should... it's a happy, calm place far removed from the cares of the world. I like it there :)

It's really funny that you bring up that thread, Pica, as I was just reading through it earlier today since I started going back through older threads looking for info, lol.  Spooky.

I did this a lot as a kid, by myself and a lot with my little sister.  We played pretend a lot and wrote stories and built things, it was fun.

When I was a bit older, I'd get lost in books all the time, but when I couldn't have those my mind would drift to all kinds of imaginary things.  Whole worlds? Maybe not quite.  But unrealistic scenarios, sure.

Nowadays I do it with my friends.  We are in a free-form roleplay (think dungeons and dragons without the dice or strict character sheets).  I've created everything from people to races to houses.... my greatest accomplishment has been an island nation that I've created with my boyfriend.  It's got a rich culture to it, enough that others have been driven to play there too.  It's fun X3

I live inside my head.

Is my head an imaginary world?

Quote from: i on July 29, 2011, 10:33:37 AM
I live in mine 100% of the time, I go about with the usual daily things, but none of this is real. There are so many things in my past that I can't remember, don't really want to remember. Some days i get up and get coffee and everything looks strange, but it feels like I've been here a lot.

It takes most of the day to let that feeling go. Then the anxiety starts up, but I just let the blue pills dissolve in my mouth, and that feeling of anxiety slows to a stop, and the I can't understand what people are saying on television, and fall asleep until morning.

I think this is what worries my therapist the most, that I haven't any real sense of reality. I know I used to, but it has eroded away into what it is now. I still retain an abnormally high IQ, can carry on an in depth conversation on most anything, but I just don' care about it.
I don't really care one way or the other, but reality seems to have so many problems attached to it. I'd get tired of that anymore. it's not a reasonable expectation of how a persons life should be. Reality is as if there is a constant flow of ->-bleeped-<- that you don't just step to the side of and say to yourself 'Now that was a flow of ->-bleeped-<-!'. Time flucuates a lot ,too. An hour can go by and it will seem like minutes and then just the opposite.

It's not like I don't know what reality is, I just can't find any use for it, anymore.

Ativan

weird. This is very close to how I feel except I don't have a thing about time. It's space/dimension that fluctuates for me in odd little ways.

It's impossible for you to have any sense of reality because there is no reality.

I am rarely in the moment. Lately, my world revolves around the fact that people are animals and won't admit it. So I imagine everything happening in another era that has humans living in villages or even earlier, but mostly villages. Everyone contributes in their way and everyone is appreciated for who they are. Except maybe me because I insist on making jokes during council meetings.  But then again, I am the Trickster. So suck it up, you other council members!

i've lived most of my life in fantasy worlds. but suddenly one day i had a daughter who craved attention at all times, so i can't get enough continuous spare time to spend there any more

now i seek alternative worlds and friendships online

My imaginary world helps me stay sane. Reminds me of Dumbledore's line in Harry Potter DH2 -

Quote"Tell me one last thing," said Harry. "Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?"

"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

I have time issues. It has an effect on work.  Not always a bad one.

Absolutely.  I even did it professionally for a while, creating content for a fantasy MMO.

I wish I was better at writing things like dialog, plot, etc. but I'm not... so I have also tried to create worlds abstractly through music.

Quote from: riven1 on July 29, 2011, 05:28:37 PM
I totally exclude the outside world and build a 3d logic models of the problem i'm working on in my mind and then turn the model from side to side to figure out ways to solve the problem.When i eventually pop out of the zone i'm physically exhausted. I do get a lot of stuff done while in that mode though.

I function through most of what would seem normal, but the last decade or so it's always easier to have an asst., to keep me on the sidewalk so to speak.

Quote from: Rebis on July 29, 2011, 05:45:48 PM
I live inside my head.
Is my head an imaginary world?

It sounds like it hasn't any basis in reality

Quote from: Rebis on July 29, 2011, 05:55:21 PM
weird. This is very close to how I feel except I don't have a thing about time. It's space/dimension that fluctuates for me in odd little ways.
This is not anything like what I meant
It's impossible for you to have any sense of reality because there is no reality.
You may not have a reality and it sounds like you are nothing more than an escapist. I know what reality is, I just don't have very much use for what you or most would consider it to be
I am rarely in the moment. Lately, my world revolves around the fact that people are animals and won't admit it. So I imagine everything happening in another era that has humans living in villages or even earlier, but mostly villages. Everyone contributes in their way and everyone is appreciated for who they are. Except maybe me because I insist on making jokes during council meetings.  But then again, I am the Trickster. So suck it up, you other council members! Dungeons and Dragons...

I imagine that I live in a REAL world.

Barbie~~

I am an escapist but not an escape artist.  Nor am I a magician or I wouldn't be here.

The real world that my body survives being in is not the same world that I try to convince myself where I live but I also know that the world I wish was real isn't and this reality causes major emotional issues at times. but what is real at times everything feels wrong like i'm just part of someone else's Dream.

on that "what is real", i always have trouble figuring out what is real /for other people/ in a way so that I can talk about stuff in their language.
Because in my mind things are too twisted and strange that nobody could understand what is correct.

I feel like I'm living in another persons imaginary world and they're torturing me.

Quote from: LivingInGrey on August 01, 2011, 08:25:51 PM
I feel like I'm living in another persons imaginary world and they're torturing me.

In a way we all live in someones ideal world. Who decided the roles of men and women and  why is it so hard for some people to live outside them ? 

Oh, well this may be an awkward time for me to say that I feel I know which is real and which isn't, that in the real world I am enjoying the pleasures of connecting with other people and finding out about them, that with the aid of books I can also connect with people long since dead and also enter their imaginary worlds and with the medium of writing I can not only tap into my own imaginary world, but reflect and understand the real one better and hopefully share.

That the real world is a place of general pleasure and my imaginary ones of total contentment, that I am happy and alive and free.

Happy, alive, and free, eh?  Give me twenty minutes and I can change that.   :P

Well, I'm all for thread drift, but when the 'what interesting and fascinating imaginary worlds did you have as a child?' thread becomes obligatory woe is me...I gotta yank it back on course.

Living inside my head isn't too bad. It doesn't snow very often and it's quieter than it is outside.

It's generally much louder inside my head than outside.  Oh dear, lol.

Oh so much! my family tells me i had many imaginary friends as a child, all with their own backstories and personalities. My Auntie says I had several friends living behind her sofa. I remember being very disappointed on reaching secondary school and finding people believing they were now too old to do this, but I found a friend or two who were willing to play along with my game. I basically constructed this world hat was related to ours and yet separate from it, the magical world that sort of shaped and was shaped by our real world. I think this was largely so that we could play our imaginative games in a stealthy way, and integrate reality into our world.

Nowadays, I definitely still do this. I'm imagining stuff all the time, building stories, talking to people from the books I'm currently reading or writing. Writing stories and lots of RPGs and theatre style LARPs is great, it offers a pleasing congruity between my outer and inner world. I don't think there's anything wrong with this; something about needing my feet on the ground to keep my head in the air, I think.

I'm comfortable with reality as subjective, experienced only at a remove and as my mind's interpretation of data. While exploring my universe, I find that large bits of it coincide with other peoples, both in interpretation of reality and also of self, and other bits differ. I can use those points of congruence to explore a new world, through talking to someone else about theirs, or for example, watching a programme or reading a book based on the worlds inside someone else's head. And the world is full of other people exploring, too, so we can do it together. It helps that now I can choose where I spend time, I can ensure I spend it with people I have something in common with. I still get a strange feeling of disconnect when I'm with, for example, people at work, and a conversation starts up about something I either disagree with or don't care about. This happens a lot with non-geeks. I suddenly turn back into awkward teenaged me, who has no idea how to hold a conversation and is too shy to talk to all these people who just wouldn't 'get' me as much as I don't get them.

I do get some funny looks though when I forget myself and start muttering imaginary conversations under my breath.

I detach or drift off, not thinking much, which worries my family. Just do your job body and come back for me later!

Or I start thinking of how if I said something different, that something else would have happened, therefore another alternate dimension is created.

But mostly, it's imagining that I'm someone else or what I want to happen. Or RPing on a Captain America Avengers tumblr blog.

I had an island called Igren.

Now I'm making do with a fictional version of eighteenth century London.

I'm very imaginative. My mind isn't comfortable unless it's in the process of creating something. I always had imaginary worlds in my head (often several at a time). As an adult, I channeled that into novel writing (though alas, inspiration has been sparse during the period where I'm dealing with my transgender).

Quote from: DrillQuip on January 22, 2013, 07:36:42 PM
Now it's the creative fuel behind my art.

What kind of art do you do? Willing to post pics?

What a fascinating topic!

I feel like I spend 80% of my waking life living in worlds I've built in my head. It's a coping mechanism and a reliable escape when I feel like I can't handle the real world. I'm also an artist and the daydreaming goes hand-in-hand with my drawing. Over the past few years I've developed a sophisticated enough world and characters and plot that I'm slowly fleshing them out into a full-blown graphic novel. It's a fiction set in interwar Europe, and at any given time during the day I'll be making up and playing out and revising scenes in my head.

I've found it to be a helpful way to deal temporarily with bad dysphoria, because in my head, in that imaginary world, I'm basically detached from my body and I can take any form I like. It sounds pathetic but I feel that all this 'imaginary' stuff is a pretty significant part of who I am...

I do have an imaginary world, or several if I was to be honest.  They're complex with their own unique species, sets of morals, politics, religions, etc.  I have lived in them quite a bit since 6th grade, when I started to write.  They were an escape from the real world and they still are.  It's nice to be able to get away and be me even if it is just for an hour or so.  The majority is done through "day-dreaming" and writing with the occasionally drawing. 

I have, over time, incorporated a world into my mind into what I call an "inner world".  It is governed by it's own rules and it's where I'll usually escape to when "day-dreaming".  But I acknowledge it's not real and I function just fine in the real world though sometimes I wish things were a little more like my stories.

My reality is almost a complete derealization.
Most of the time, things seem surreal, like being in a movie, sort of.
It's not that uncommon with people who have bipolar, borderline personality, and anxiety disorders.
It's been pretty constant for over 3 yrs now. I think it was made worse by an ECT that was done.
The ECT was an attempt to quiet, I suppose, the anger that seemed to be a constant at the time.
I don't remember it, another effect from ECT's. In fact I don't remember a lot of things.
It's weird, I know that I can't remember stuff, because I can remember other things that revolve around them.
That and I'm always gaining more memories.
Some relate to the anger issues, but I'm at least having a much better understanding of them.
Deja Vu is always tripping, as is it's opposite.
But I can tell that it's just that, so it really isn't that bothersome.
It's the constantness of the surrealism that's the worst, really.
It's like being high when you don't want to be.
Although it doesn't have the lack of coherence that goes with that.
I function just fine from others point of view.
It doesn't have that sort of dumbness to it, like getting high or drunk.
It's about 3/4 of the time that it goes on, leaves on it's own.
It does have a side effect of anxiety that goes with it when it is really strong.
So, its not really an imaginary world, but it does feel like being in one.
On the other hand, I do have a very active imagination, but it's more of a visualization of complex systems.
I find simple puzzles to be annoying, and it's probably because they usually have a trick thing to them.
I do imagine mechanism's that couldn't possibly exist, and those lead to fantastical worlds of them.
But then, the stuff I used to imagine as a child does exist in todays world, but never like I imagined it.
Horribly bad Sci-Fi is pretty much how I look at it.
So my world feels imaginary while it is actually reality.
I do love movies and some shows based entirely on imaginary worlds.
Ones that have an amount of possibility that could be true or maybe could be in the future some day.
Ativan