Dang, I'm learning new terms right and left today. Again ended up on a wikipedia article about Maladaptive Daydreaming
Link Removed
Which describes me to a tee! Having entire novels or movies in my head, many times multiple each with it's own characters.
It is how I go to sleep and often what I do when I float away. I do it in therapy often. My therapist's words start to float away, getting more quiet and muffled the further I go or he says my words start to trail off. He says there is more gaps in my words and the slower i say them.
At times I do it on purpose, like at night or if I want to excape a very stressful situation. But other times, like in therapy, I do it automatically. I think, at that point, it's a type of disassociation, or that's what my therapist says.
I have my "world" that I made up as a child but also as a child I made up characters and families and plots in that world.
Anyway, my therapist catches it now. He can see in my body language that I'm starting to drift away.
I call the automatic kind disassociation but the kind that I do on purpose I always just call playing a movie in my head. Had no idea it had a name.