Your daydreams know something you don’t. Look closely

In this article, “Your Daydreams Know Something You Don’t. Look Closely”, Vardah Bharuchi, a lecturer and associate clinical psychologist at the Aga Khan University, argues that daydreams can provide valuable insight into unmet emotional needs and underlying psychological concerns. Drawing on her clinical experience as a child psychologist in Karachi, she suggests that recurring fantasies are often more than mere distractions; they can reveal important aspects of a person’s inner life. Bharuchi notes that people who experience maladaptive daydreaming often create elaborate imaginary worlds that compensate for feelings of loneliness, insecurity, lack of recognition or unmet emotional needs. Rather than viewing these fantasies solely as symptoms to be suppressed, she argues that their content can offer important clues about what is missing from a person’s real life.