Is there anything wrong with an adult having imaginary friends?

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mommyof4 said:
Start writing some short stories, or heck, a novel! Maybe you’re the next JK Rowling or someone like that!
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Well…perhaps some day! It’s a pipedream. For now, they’re just entertainment, and something that helps with some loneliness…and laziness!
 
TeraMitchel said:
Well…perhaps some day! It’s a pipedream. For now, they’re just entertainment, and something that helps with some loneliness…and laziness!
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Well, have fun with it, then. And let us know when the books start coming out someday- I’ll buy one!👍
 
Julia_Mae said:
I sounds to me like you are having trouble making and maintaining close relationships. You aren’t sinning, I don’t think, but if this goes on, my concern is you will never push yourself to learn how to have true intimacy with others because it’s easy and safe to substitute your imaginary friends.

OTOH, coming from a troubled background myself, as an adult, when I would see parents treating a child in loving ways, I used to stop and imagine I was the child, in this way I tried to get the positive messages that were denied to me.

So, you’ll have to decide when this is useful, when it might become a hindrance and what you’d like to do instead.
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In addition, though…I did that too. And it use to incite such jealousy in me. I figured it was better to just…make my own, than seethe green.
 
TeraMitchel said:
…I said in my first post, that I DO have friends. Close friends. I don’t know why everyones telling me to go make real friends…I have them.
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I don’t know. I suppose I’m having a little trouble reconciling the ‘I’ve got lots of close friends’ with the ‘I am so lonely (implying starved for conversation and company) that I make friends up’. Doesn’t the former kinda negate the latter?

I’ll say right here that I really enjoy my own company, and don’t have what you’d call a huge circle of friends. But at the same time I know that if I really want someone to talk to (and it’s happened a few times), it wouldn’t be so difficult to contact one of em that I’d be having to imagine a friend.

But quite possibly it’s not that you NEED to imagine friends for yourself. Perhaps it is just an outlet for a fertile imagination. In which case you’re not actually lonely at all.
 
Have you tried professional counseling?

I will say a prayer you have a more balanced lifestyle and find a few friends that are real.
 
Dear OP,
maybe it’s just me, but this raises red flags for me – probably just because of my history. I used to live in my imagination a lot. I had friends, got married, etc, but preferred the company of my imaginary friends. It took over my life . . .I would be having a conversation with someone, and they would seem so boring, when I could be talking to someone interesting that I invented, that I would zone out.
I was delivered after several years, by the grace of God. It was hard to come back to reality, but I did it.
You are actually never alone. We are all surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, our guardian angels, the saints, and our Lord. I would suggest you consider choosing a patron saint and develop a relationship with that person. Talk to him or her as a friend. I like talking to St Joseph, or St Monica or St Philomena. Or talk to your guardian angel.
My fear is that the enemy could insinuate himself into your fantasies and draw you away from God through them.
There is a wonderful article about our guardian angel here.
 
LilyM said:
I don’t know. I suppose I’m having a little trouble reconciling the ‘I’ve got lots of close friends’ with the ‘I am so lonely (implying starved for conversation and company) that I make friends up’. Doesn’t the former kinda negate the latter?

I’ll say right here that I really enjoy my own company, and don’t have what you’d call a huge circle of friends. But at the same time I know that if I really want someone to talk to (and it’s happened a few times), it wouldn’t be so difficult to contact one of em that I’d be having to imagine a friend.

But quite possibly it’s not that you NEED to imagine friends for yourself. Perhaps it is just an outlet for a fertile imagination. In which case you’re not actually lonely at all.
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But your friends don’t do everything with you, do they? they don’t enjoy everything you enjoy. I have some hobbies, some amusements and pasttimes that I don’t have anyone to share with, as well as some cultural and world views I have no one to share with. I do’t expect my real friends to be with me all day, not when they have their own jobs, lives, families. And I don’t have a family at all; real friends, real people, can’t fill that. You get one shot at parents. If it doesn’t work out, tough luck, too bad. You can’t “meet” parents. So I made some up, for when I’m lonely for that. It doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the real company I’m blessed with too.

All i was concerned about was if this was somehow wrong. Not wierd, just wrong. I already knew it was wierd. 😦
 
Viki63 said:
Dear OP,
maybe it’s just me, but this raises red flags for me – probably just because of my history. I used to live in my imagination a lot. I had friends, got married, etc, but preferred the company of my imaginary friends. It took over my life . . .I would be having a conversation with someone, and they would seem so boring, when I could be talking to someone interesting that I invented, that I would zone out.
I was delivered after several years, by the grace of God. It was hard to come back to reality, but I did it.
You are actually never alone. We are all surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, our guardian angels, the saints, and our Lord. I would suggest you consider choosing a patron saint and develop a relationship with that person. Talk to him or her as a friend. I like talking to St Joseph, or St Monica or St Philomena. Or talk to your guardian angel.
My fear is that the enemy could insinuate himself into your fantasies and draw you away from God through them.
There is a wonderful article about our guardian angel here.
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I just told someone else, NO. it’s not the same thing. It isn’t. It’s not. I’m sorry that you feel like I need to be “delivered” from something.

I’m also sorry I posted this, because everyone decided to turn a “is this immoral?” question into a reason to tell me I’m crazy and have no friends, and apparently that I’m somehow still in need os salvation. I DON’T zone. out. I’m NOT ignoring real people.
 
Anything ‘wrong’ with it, as in sinful or against God? I don’t believe so. As someone who also came from an abusive childhood I can tell you that my mind developed much LESS healthy ways of coping with said abuse. I have entertained thoughts and fantasies of doing harm against both those that abused me, wished them harm.

I also entertained very vivid fantasies at one point of doing serious harm to child molesters. No one specific, no specific plans, but elaborate fantasies of torturing child molesters. That started happening after I entered into counseling with a psychologist whose approach was to have me remember an incident of abuse from a very early age and then ‘sit with’ the memory and then rate them on a scale of severity of 1-10. Prior to this, over the years, I had developed my own means of coping with the past abuse, part of which was repression of the memories. After beginning with this treatment I started having vivid nightmares of being attacked in various ways by various people and animals and also lashing out in my dreams, knocking over lamps by throwing punches while in a dream state. I could no longer safely sleep in the same bed with my wife because of this physical acting out while dreaming. I saw a neurologist after that who diagnosed me with a rem sleep disorder (people stay still/paralized while dreaming). I started sweating profusely during my sleep, waking with my clothes litterally soaking wet, and my bed linnens also soaking wet. I stopped the treatment but the fantasies (which were like intrusive thoughts, but long lasting) didn’t stop for months after I stopped treatment.

From now on I think I will stick with my repression of the memories, distracting myself and putting them out of my mind if and when they occasionally emerge rather than entertaining them and sitting with them and ‘re-living’ them, be it on a psychologists couch or anywhere else for that matter. This treatment set me back signficantly, essentially I ‘relapsed’ back into pretty much full blown active PTSD. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t focus. I almost lost my job because of those things.

So immaginary friends who are nice to you? Certainly preferable to what I had going on at different points in my life as my minds way of dealing with past abuse issues…

God Bless
 
Beware of trying to fit into the parameters of those with cookie cutter ideals of normalcy.

Life is vast and varied.

And so are you.

This is a good thing.
 
LilyM said:
Imagining, as you say, something like a father who was more loving than your real one was, or friends when you are alone - even vividly imagining such things - is one thing, and probably quite harmless.

My question would be how far do your imaginings go. Do you do a Clint Eastwood and talk to a chair or empty space as if there is someone there? Set an extra place at supper like Jews do at their Seder (for the prophet Elijah)? Do you ever hear voices from your imaginary friends that come out of thin air and seem not to be anything you would make up yourself, nor related to anything you have previously heard?
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👍 Eastwooding.

On topic: I was/am in a similar situation as a young adult and for similar reasons, to compensate for loneliness. But I’m learning more and more to replace Christ, as my loving brother, with my imaginary significant other. It was difficult at first, but it’s definitely helping me grow closer to God. 🙂
 
I don’t think its weird. 🤷 I talk to myself all the time…my kids and family like to make fun of me. Really, things like this are quite normal. Just active imaginations.
 
I do hope I didn’t come across as sounding like I was tryong to fill a religious void; on tha contrary, not having ANY Catholic influence in my life, my imaginiatives have helped me to draw closer to God. The little push that says, come read Scripture with me. You rarely read at all. Perhaps if you weren’t reading alone, you’d enjoy it more. And it worked. My family is caffeteria Catholic, my husbands…his spirituality is nosediving since marriage, and he doesn’t have the interest in Bible study he use to. I try and encourage him to read with me, but when he doesn’t feel like it, my “brother” or “father” does.

Gods gentle voice is there too, telling me where he wants me, what he wants form me. But so is a nice, imaginary voice, someone else who’s just as interested in 19th century bed linens as I am, and doesn’t mind hearing me complain during a movie that NO respectable 1850’s drawing room would still be painted in such colors
 
TeraMitchel said:
But your friends don’t do everything with you, do they? they don’t enjoy everything you enjoy. I have some hobbies, some amusements and pasttimes that I don’t have anyone to share with, as well as some cultural and world views I have no one to share with. I do’t expect my real friends to be with me all day, not when they have their own jobs, lives, families. And I don’t have a family at all; real friends, real people, can’t fill that. You get one shot at parents. If it doesn’t work out, tough luck, too bad. You can’t “meet” parents. So I made some up, for when I’m lonely for that. It doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the real company I’m blessed with too.

All i was concerned about was if this was somehow wrong. Not wierd, just wrong. I already knew it was wierd. 😦
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Well of course my friends don’t do or think all the same things as me. And I certainly don’t want ANYONE to be with me all day - it’d be a bit crowded in the ol’ lavatory if they were 🙂

And you know what? If I searched among all the other 7 billion people on this planet - heck, among all the billions who have ever existed - there would STILL be bits ‘left over’ - things that I think or do or say that no-one else ever has or ever will think or say or do. Things I don’t and can’t share with anyone else.

It’s a good thing, it’s what makes us individuals. That individuality brings progress for us as a species - it is what enables inventors to invent, explorers to explore and people to come up with new ideas. It’s probably the part of us that is most precious to God too - if anyone has parts of themselves that they can share with no-one else, He does, surely!

I also get a sense that you may have a somewhat limited idea of what friendship involves.

I don’t have children, many of the people I know do. Yet they still share the joys and tribulations of being a parent with me - and because I can sympathise, help with things like childminding when needed, and even on occasion offer helpful advice or counsel from a different perspective, they don’t (as far as I can tell) feel like anything is lacking in our friendship because of our differences. Certainly they still share. 🤷

Likewise that I work in a different profession from some of them - that very fact means I often find it helpful to talk work matters over with them, as it gets me out of the blinkered thinking that I might have were I only to discuss my work with people who had the same job.

And I don’t feel, as you seem to, that I am ‘weird’ or have no one to share things with. This is the internet age - whatever you’re thinking or feeling or doing you can share, and whatever you’re thinking or feeling or doing there’ll be your kind of folks out there somewhere for sure.
 
TeraMitchel said:
Ok, I feel beyond stupid for asking this question, becasuse it’s embarassing…but yeah. I’m a college age woman, with a nice job, plenty of fiends, a loving husband…and a half dozen or so imaginary friends. I know they aren’t real…but they’re a nice stem against loneliness sometimes. I don’t like being by myself, you see. So sometimes it’s nice to imagine a friend over to cook with, or sew with, or any of the other activities none of my friends enjoy. I don’t come from the best family. my parents weren’t really around, and I don’t have a relationship with either. My dad…I know he loved me, but he was emotionally neglectful and abusive, and rarely showed any affection. We don’t speak much now. It’s nice to imagine a fatherly figure, a loving, devoutly Catholic one, encouraging me to wake up for Mass even when I’m tired, someone to pray with when I have no one around who shares my faith…it’s comforting, a way to cope…I don’t know why I would think it is somehow sinful or disrespectful, but I guess somehow in my mind, odd equals, somehow, wrong…
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I think you’re fine. You were obviously an intelligent and creative child and you devised an intelligent and creative solution to an all-too-familliar childhood problem: Loneliness. If this coping mechanism continues to work and BENEFIT your life, there is no issue. If it were to impede you in some way or you felt it hindered you from doing things you wanted to do or go places you wanted to go, or if it interfered with your daily functioning, then you may have a problem. However, based on what you wrote in your original post above and subsequently, I don’t think that is the case. You sound like another creative person to me, thats all. I devised the same mechanism to cope with my lonely childhood and it is still with me today. I do have social issues but it is not down to this (I also have good friends that I have had for years and can rely on when I need them), rather general issues with anxiety. I find most people will admit that they talk to themselves or use their imagination to cope with loneliness, if they are honest and secure with who they are and don’t fear judgement of others. BTW, I am a bit of a writer too!👍
 
I’m sorry, Lily, but I don’t feel I have a limited idea of what friendship is. My closest friends, of course we’ share at least a polite interest in what our friend slike, or is important to them, even if we don’t always enjoy it. But that’s not the same as lacking in someone who shares a genuine love, and passion for what your genuine loves and passions are.
 
Seems very problematic, when we have illusions of friends it leads to other abnormal behaviors and many of those may not be within catholic lifestyle. I highly suggest professional help.
 
TeraMitchel said:
I don’t have trouble maintaining close relationships. I don’t know why everyones assuming that. I have a loving husband, and very good friends.
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Sorry. Then why are you asking? You must think there’s some sort of issue or you wouldn’t be here, so help us understand.
 
Julia_Mae said:
Sorry. Then why are you asking? You must think there’s some sort of issue or you wouldn’t be here, so help us understand.
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I tend to think that everything that makes me happy is wrong or sinful in one way or another.
 
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