A Very Deep Dive Into Reality Shifting
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ต.ค. 2024
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Reading:
☼ Christopher Partridge -- The Re-Enchantment of the West Volume I & Volume II
☼ Esmé Lily Katherine Partridge -- Digital Spirituality: Technological Re-Enchantment in 2020/1? An exploration of Witchcraft and Reality Shifting on TikTok as (post)modern spiritualities existing in Wouter Hanegraaff’s ‘mirror of secular thought’
☼ Erik Davis -- TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, And Mysticism In The Age Of Information
☼ Eli Somer, Etzel Cardeña, Ramiro Figueiredo Catelan, Nirit Soffer‐Dudek -- Reality shifting: psychological features of an emergent online daydreaming culture
Outro Song: "Driving in The Rain" by Timecrawler 82
timecrawler82....
/ @timecrawler82
Thank you Helix for sponsoring! Visit helixsleep.com/strangeaeons to get 20% off your Helix mattress, plus two free pillows. Offers subject to change. #helixsleep
Hell yeah Helix!!! they the best!!!
Don't add the cooling cover strange! Bizingus is cold enough.
I don't think you should be encouraging people to manifest their own mental illnesses, it's explicitly harmful to some of the most vulnerable people out there, especially children. There are pretty well defined ways to deal with people actively suffering from delusions like this, largely based on verbally expressing empathy and understanding for the sufferer's feelings without playing into them or trying to attack them, then picking at smaller parts of the fantasy to do problem-solve your way through until you can bring them out of it.
It's a shame they still don't have any 2,10x1,00m mattresses (I guess about 83'' by 39'').
When are you going to start filming the movie and does it have a name yet?
everytime someone brings up reality shifting I think of that one post that said "when the shift was so bad you have to sit in silence for a couple minutes" and someone in the comments said "HOW DO YOU SHIFT?" and they responded with "no like a work shift, like a job"
LMFAO I remember that
Same, lmfao
Chronically online moment
that in the most online statement i've ever read-
i saw that one lmao
guys DO NOT shift into the backyardigas world, i met pablo and he called me a slur 😢
Never have I encountered such strong Tumblr energy not on Tumblr
NO PABLO
Did he tell you to fluck off in the sweetest way possible..?
I think he showed up when I went to 7-11 last night.
He thinks wearing clothes makes him hard... but he’s soft and puffy.
A hat and bow tie are basic.
I nearly spat out my coffee reading this how dare he omg
Chill out, dude, Pablo can reclaim most slurs.
why would anyone choose to shift to the regular ass harry potter universe when they could shift to my immortal instead?
Or A Very Potter Musical
If you are a prep, you might not like it at all.
Coz theyre preps :3
Make up always on point
Cool outfits that EVERYONE is supposed to notice down to the littlest detail
Basically no boring classes at all only dicking around and go on adventures where you always win
You'll probably be in a kickass MCR cover band with your cool vampy goffick friends
Everyone is undyingly in love with you no matter how much you actually suck ass
Flying cars instead of brooms
JK didn't write it so none of her stiff ass rules apply to that universe
Honestly, is the teenage dream...
just added my immortal to my list of drs to script later cause i don’t feel like doing that right now
I just realized that if someone had never dreamed or even heard of it and suddenly you explain dreaming, they would think you are insane too. Like, dreaming is in and of itself, completely bonkers.
there's a guy (probably on tiktok, i saw his reels on insta) who makes videos like "the first person to..." and one was exactly this thing you described and it was very funny
Plato's allegory of the cave applies to many things like this.
Wait omg that’s actually so smart
fr
It is completely bonkers. Our perspective limitations as mortal sapiens won't allow us to come close to understanding it. We can read Jung and gain a rudimentary foundation for exploring the symbolic reality of dreams and other altered states of consciousness; however, I believe it will take the revelation of death to understand the true function of dream reality.
I feel like this whole "reality shifting" thing also damaged the general understanding of maladaptive daydreaming. It isn't just "man I got really into that daydream" it's "my actual life is being impacted by excessive daydreaming, sometimes to the point of literal dissociation from my physical self." There are people on TikTok who genuinely think spacing out for a couple minutes is a disorder
I get anxiety going out in public because I could slip into a daydream and sit/stand there gesturing out the scene and mouthing/whispering lines like I'm rehearsing for a play. It's downright humiliating sometimes, I feel like I'm being caught playing make believe when I have little to no control over it
This is a great insight! TikTok really has done this with a lot of mental issues, it’s honestly nuts. And while people seem to think their helping others finding things out about themselves, I find its instead putting a lot more stigma onto em and making it harder for people to get help
@@emackenziethis is literally me wtf I mever heard of maladaptive daydreaming before but I always had oroblems with excessive daydreaming since I was young and I would spend ours daydreaming causing me so much problems in real life. I couldnt even hear people who are talking to me sometimes.
@@emackenzie God. I would do the "mouthing my parts" in class you just reminded me... For what it's worth I'm not sure if anyone would remember those incidents in public by now. I moved from what I would call maldaptive to immersive daydreams around 19 or 20 after I got a full time job. Something about exhaustion rebooted my focus, maybe???
Something about taking on more responsibilities gave me so much anxiety cuz I didn't know if I had it in me, but activities demanding more of my attention (driving for small amounts of time, then longer drives and work shifts) actually helped me be more present now in general than I ever was growing up. Idk if that is good or actionable advice at all but lol
There's people that think that thinking/having an inner voice is a sign of being schizophrenic.
Wait cos "Humans are humans, and we'll always find a way to make things sacred" is kind of a banger quote
Fr strange really knows how to talk lol
@@plumywadshe's an English major, isn't she?
Literally so good.
I mean its true, and rather fucking powerful... powerfully bad or powerfully good is up to you... but true IMHO...
Archaeology core
someone once asked me if she could shift into my life bc my life was her "dream life" but it was literally just bc im japanese no other reason
Some people don't give me hope for our future
I knew a guy who got dumped by his girlfriend because he wasn't "Korean" enough.
That is absolutely insane oh my god
Jfc…
@@useraccount333koreaboos are literally insane
The fact that nobody talks about the book whispers of manifestation on borlest speaks volumes about how people are stuck in a trance
"But if you fight in a war you will get traumatized, idiot" is my new favourite quote
i started reading this at that exact point in the video i think i shifted into eanrfruiwh;fueaahercvera idont care im not gonna try to finish this reply
what@@servvo
timestamp 6:48
I laughed at that line so much, brilliant 😂
Basically what Tolkien tried to say with LotR, but way more succinct 😁
The new military recruitment slogan lol
Strange’s dedication to exploring these sorts of topics with empathy, curiosity, and a complete lack of ridicule is so, so refreshing. I’m glad to hear that the maladaptive daydreaming has become less intrusive to their life; that was a very personal thing to share.
@UTubeTrollPolice298 nuh uh
i totally agree. it’s so, so easy to fall into a place of dismissing things because they don’t line up with your world view, but strange consistently makes me think and helps me break out of a mindset of looking down on something because it doesn’t make sense to me.
As someone who also struggled with maladaptive daydreaming growing up, I also agree with how dangerous this can be by telling younger people that this is just a reality you can escape to with no consequences.
The cults are gonna be booming later on down the road
@@Finn_01Yes which is why its especially concerning that its mostIy younggirIs who are buying into this type of sht...
Yeah it can lead to some disassociation disorders if it’s not treated properly
100%, as a preteen I used to imagine myself in the Poptropica world all the time, but I def treated it like a self-insert fanfiction and knew it wasn't real lmao
It’s not a problem if you just write down your fantasies and turn it into a writing career
A few years ago, I commented "brb shitfing into a world where twitter doesn't exist" on a shifting guide video as a funny haha joke and then twitter changed to X so like did I do it?? Help???
manifesting works
Coincidence. I think If youre enough It works sometimes and the brains automatically ignores and forgets the times It didnt work and focuses on the times It did work
@@Idonthaveone-ug6wj They were joking
the monkey's paw curled
You doomed the brazilians
That clone thing was an immediate red flag for me, because that's basically how I feel during a dissociative episode.
Dissociative* disorder not disassociative- that’s something totally different jsyk
@@shanmo92 yep I'm dumb and misread. That's what I get for commenting after taking my sleepy meds. Corrected it to dissociative episode.
it's funny because i almost did believe the whole shifting thing until they brought up the clones. why the fuck would i want a clone of myself running around. why is everyone just chill with the fact that we would have a clone of ourselves roaming around pretending to be us. i remember one time i dm'ed a shifting account who was open to questions about this and they got mad real fast and started giving my dry responses because i was asking too many questions about the clone thing
Came here looking for this. My experience as well.
Yeah lol it just sounds like when the mental is illing. Could be a fun way to spice up the ole brain even further though…
crazy how people will be like "guys i promise shifting is real" and then describe the heaviest dissociation i've ever heard. its honestly worrying (coming from someone who has problems with this sort of thing myself).
Came to the comments to say the same thing :(
@UTubeTrollPolice298 where?
Yeah, this is upsetting to hear about knowing I 100% would have engaged in this if it had been around when I was a traumatized child. I used to stare at the wall and imagine that it would open up and my favorite characters from fiction would come through and whisk me away to their world. I can’t imagine the damage it could have done to my brain if I got to the point where I believed it was true.
@@cleo42it’s a bot don’t engage
@@cleo42babes the account is called “UTubeTrollPolice298” 😭
my issue with shifting is WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO GO TO HOWARTS? TO SCHOOL AND TO A MAGICAL WAR? just go to a beautiful place with nice weather and where everyone is happy
@@fanrosefabrose9457😂 lighting a biff with the smoke wizard dumbledoor
Because a lot of people feel like real life problems are too complex so they will fantasize about struggling in shallow fantasy worlds.
@@fanrosefabrose9457If there really are infinite universes, couldn't you just go to a normal universe with Draco Malfoy in it and THEN hit the bong with him?
Nah, need backshots from Zaddy Draco in the Headmaster's office and then immediately break communication because I am scared of commitment@@korvidkillz
I've also dealt with maladaptive daydreaming, and most of my daydreams involved being in some kind of war or struggle. I think for me it comes out of a desire for success and to to "prove myself" and be a hero, desires which are harder to satisfy in a place of absolute peace. I wonder if it's for similar reasons -- but it's also possible it comes out of nostalgia for their favorite universe, or having a crush on a character.
i totally agree w what u said abt it being a genre of self insert fanfic. when i was super into shifting for awhile back in its prime i rarely actually tried to shift. id just spend hours 'scripting'. finding cute templates, writing out a very detailed idealistic version of myself, making playlists and pinterest boards, and just sitting there imagining the scenarios i wanted to play out. for a bit after whenever i stopped believing in shifting i still found myself doing the scripting just cuz i found it fun lmao
That’s cute and sounds like fun. ☺️
I do the same! I don't believe in shifting but I absolutely love doing the whole "script" thing
THANK LORDS I'M NOT ALONE. 😭😭
i moved on from shifting but im still gonna fill up them scripts 💪💪💪
Don't give up on shifting, you can do it!
@@-SarahRibeiro Sarah, please, shifting is not a thing. Is lucid dreaming. Yes, it feels very real but it isn't.
There's a lot of "reality checks" people say there are to distinguish lucid dreaming from shifting that I absolutely destroyed before I even knew about this thing. I read in my dreams a book of an oc of mine being a vampire, I have "characters" that somehow stay consistent in my dreams (like The Rock being my sports teacher, normally basketball), etc. That doesn't make it a "reality", it's dreaming and it's fun. That's all it is.
The popular understanding of multiverse theory is so frustrating. Yes, under the theory there are infinite realities, but that doesn't imply everything is possible. Some realities might not be in the set.
Think of it this way: there are infinite numbers between 1 and 2, but none of them are 3
This part. Without putting any kind of judgement on anyone, the basic premise of their thinking is absolutely flawed. It’s a false understanding with so much emotion built on top of it. Again no moral value on any of it, it’s just not based in the science they invoke.
also the people trying to prove it with quantum physics. Just because some particles' positions can't be precisely determined under certain circumstances doesn't mean it created a universe. and even if they did, our thoughts and actions aren't part of that because we're simply too large for quantum effects to happen
Yeah, this. Infinite parallel universes doesn’t mean that magic or human shapeshifters can suddenly exist.
It’s so divorced from the ‘science’ it invokes that It doesn’t even make sense to try to explain why it’s wrong.
Strongly agree, you can choose to eat a different lunch or even happen get some crazy random job opportunity in another universe but the fundamental ways the world works wouldn’t change to include magic and stuff the way the tiktokers try to claim
The least harmful thing with shifting that truly bothers me is that it's not how multiverse theory works like, at all. Infinity doesn't mean totality. There are an infinite amount of numbers between 3 and 4, and none of them are 5.
Also, multiverse theory implies that the laws of the universe are constant
good comment
I'm so confused
i’ve always felt this way as well, that the multiverse contains every universe that *could* happen, within the laws of physics, as well as what is probable for the people to decide. i don’t believe there exists universes where the people decide to do things that make no sense, just as i believe there don’t exist universes with magic. that’s why these shifting stories of going to hogwarts and dating draco malfoy are all fine if it’s for lucid dreaming or immersive daydreaming, until you argue that that is a REAL universe somewhere out there in the multiverse that you can enter. it’s just not. there aren’t universes in the infinite multiverse where you can live forever, because it’s just not probable. my opinion is that string theory contains all the possible decisions and events that Could happen, not just anything ever that humans can imagine in their heads.
@@deenaavers6946 I agree with this thread, but I wouldn't say that living forever is necessarily one of the impossible aspects. Even in this universe, one could argue that time is relative and literally on this earth there are people working on elongating the lifespan by slowing down cell decay. There are animals that live hundreds of years and with some, we're not even sure if they would die, were it not for natural predators and other detremental circumstances.
@LovelyLilian it's like how Pi has infinite decimal places but it's still not a whole number, infinity isn't a quantity meaning everything, it's just a word we use to describe when it's impossible to find the end. So there are infinite possible realities, and infinite impossible realities also. Only the possible ones exist in multiverse theory
As a person with very severe ADHD, this sounds exactly like maladaptive daydreaming. Wouldn't be surprised if a large amount of these people suffer from attention disorders to be able to fall into such vivid daydreams. Especially the girl that remembers taking notes from college but also remembering existing within a daydream "shift" the whole time. It's insanely relatable but not for good reasons
"It's insanely relatable but not for good reasons" is something I find myself thinking disturbingly often
I'm so happy to meet others who have struggled with this like me. I've never felt more normal as when I learned that other people actually do deal with maladaptive daydreaming. It's a lovely and terrible habit to fall into.
There's probably a lot of truth to that, but I don't think that's the exclusive reason. Personally, as a kid, I had great attention span but I was prone to falling into MAD if I got bored. And since i've had insomnia since I was 8 or so and my parents believed they could cure me of it by just forcing me to stay in bed in the dark, I spent a lot of time at night teaching myself how to get way too immersed in my own head.
@CaelanAegana yea my parents tried the same thing because I was afraid of the dark and prone to staying up really late. All it did was make me imagine all the bad things that could be hiding in the shadows.
And I was in a religious and very superstitious household so those things were often demons. And not the tempting kind, the exorcist kind.
I am CONSTANTLY day dreaming. My job is rather repetitive, so it's easy for me to imagine fanfics that I'll never write in my head for hours. I was worried at first, but I don't think it's hindering me. Yet.
I also have ADHD
Oh so when a tiktoker shifts into an alternate fictional world it's "spiritual" and "super cool" but when I dissociate for three weeks because I forgot to take my psychosis meds, suddenly it's "concerning" and I'm "putting myself through unescessary trauma". Wtf smh.
No on a real note this is so real 😩 I hear people talk about the weirdest shits but as soon as I say I live in a daydream constantly and I always have a “alternative reality” going on in my head to help me cope I get “ your crazy!” Mmk says the one who just said they are gunna THINK something and make it happen (manifestation) last time I told my therapist that same thing they said I had OCD and paranoia. But hey if you do it in a cute quirky Way.. it’s just “spiritual, religious!” Not .. mental illness?
@@Souls-at-zer0 as soon as I'M the clone, everyone gets upset
@@Souls-at-zer0I have severe OCD and I can assure you it has nothing to do with manifestation or shifting, so I would get myself a new therapist if I were you!
@@iwishtobesupernatural3212 I didn’t say it did? I was diagnosed with it ..but because I said I daydreamed… what I’m saying is they call people like us crazy and wack yet someone who says the “manifest things” isn’t crazy…
Not because I said I daydream**
As a maladaptive daydreamer developing psychosis or losing control over reality is my worst nightmare!
Same.
As a fellow maladaptive daydreamer I confirmed that's a very real thing that can happen
As someone with possible psychosis and maladaptive daydreams, same.
@@Eat_shit--die_mad Oh,fun!
Maladaptive Daydreaming is already a nightmare by itself too.
I was going through extreme abuse as a child, and whenever it was too much I would lie in bed and imagine I was the 6th Spice Girl. I’d hang out with them on their tour bus circa the Spice World movie, and they were my older siblings and caring family. It felt like I was going somewhere, not just lying down and imagining. I didn’t need elaborate rituals to do it, but I know now it was daydreaming and a severe trauma response.
Never thought I'd see anyone else who had the same experience. I always imagined I was the sixth spice girl as well.
cool but that’s not what shifting is
@beautifulgorgeousman They never said it was shifting. They said “daydreaming”, so I assume they’re referring to maladaptive daydreaming
@@worldwidefunnyguyThis video speaks of other experiences similar to shifting, I believe I should be welcome to comment as it’s relevant to the video. I invite you not to read my comments if they disturb you.
If you reread the comment, my experience came down to daydreaming and coping with severe trauma. I was physically on that bus, my interactions with the Spice Girls were not under my conscious control, and time was weird, similar to many people who claim to shift. I know what I was doing was not shifting, and never suggested such. Believe me, it would have been much nicer if I was scripting a world to go to for fun instead of subconsciously fleeing something very traumatic.
I hope you can find other comments to your liking.
Pretty sure thats like not the ideal response to people. If you have nothing nice or productive to say, im sure nothing could have sufficed. Especially to someone who was talking about trauma. Like if it were a comment with no experience, sure. But "cool" doesnt make this next bit of information even seem like a genuine want to give information. It just seems like a form of bullying. Id suggest trying to shift to a reality where you're just a bit nicer to people :) @@worldwidefunnyguy
my 11yo daydreaming disassociating self wouldve been obsessed with this concept but it wouldve been oh so damaging
actually same, i used to ~zone out~ so hard no one could get thru to me and god forbid i had headphones on you’d never speak to me again
I feel like the most damaging part is just going through all of this *in public*. I did my weird little preteen roleplaying offline with other kids my age who all grew out of it at basically the same time.
@@Nassifeh YES!!! like god forbid I had access to Tiktok at 12 to cosplay my OCs… TERRIBLE!!! 😭
@UTubeTrollPolice298 proof or you lyin
@@maximumkhaos2479 it's a bot don't bother
Old guy here. I have never heard of reality shifting but I used to be very much into lucid dreaming. BaCk iN mY dAy there was a schism in the lucid dreaming "community" on whether or not things occurring within lucid dreams are real, and whether or not the things you do have repercussions in a different reality than our own, and a lot of things you use to discredit the notion lucid dreaming and shifting are not the same things have already been discussed over and over. Which lead to the desire to lucid dream while relinquishing control and becoming emersed in the reality you're exploring, and we called it "Astral projection." With the end goal of being able to separate your spirit from your body at will whether or not you are asleep or awake.
Astral projection isn't dreaming. It's sleeping with your body but roaming with your soul.
@@VincoDesantis That's what dreaming is silly.
I don’t think some people understand how great our brains are at adapting to screw us over. I got really into lucid dreaming years ago, and I had a whole arsenal of reality checks to realize when I was dreaming. After a while, they stopped working. I started being able to read in my dreams, my reflection could look perfectly normal, and things felt more concrete and vivid. Sometimes, they seem more real than reality. I’ve struggled with some derealization and paranoia as a result of this. I also almost never have complete control over my lucid dreams. Many of my lucid dreams check all the boxes of a shifting experience. The human brain is incredibly powerful, and while shifting might not be entirely lucid dreaming, I think many people don’t give it enough credit. It can be terrifyingly close to reality.
I don’t really experience lucid dreams (I don’t think) but yeah certain dreams have allowed me to do things I never thought possible in a dream, such as reading and writing, walking while being completely conscious of the fact I was walking (usually sleep paralysis prevents or makes walking really difficult to prevent the irl body from moving), feeling the texture of things and seeing small details in objects that otherwise would become blurry if I concentrated on them, had memories my mind invented out of nowhere to accompany my dream self’s life, and experienced time pass the same way I would in reality. If all of those things were in the same dream I’d probably think it was a shift, but how I know it wasn’t was bc there would be aspects that confirmed it was a dream like time jumps etc. people need to be more open minded abt what they can experience in dreams and understand they don’t need to prove anything to anyone. If someone believes they’ve shifted then that’s enough, they shouldn’t feel obligated to convince anyone
I have a dairy allergy and last night i was in a dream where i was eating at a McDonalds and i whipped out my phone to google the allergy menu. Normally when i get on technology in dreams it is blank but last night there were search results and everything! When my dreams get like you describe sometimes i wake up and it takes me a few hours to put all the pieces together i was in fact dreaming.
Gosh I’m so glad that I was too lazy to fully get into lucid dreaming when I was younger. I keep hearing the negative sides, like a few years back someone saying it was actually exhausting. They weren’t ever really asleep, because their brain was so active in imagination.
@@NotTooStraightlike everything in life, it can be negative if it consumes too much of your time. But it’s not an inherently negative thing. I’ve had lucid dreams a few times and it was just interesting and kind of fun. I think if you tried to lucid dream every night it would definitely become exhausting, but you’d have to dedicate a lot of time and effort to lucid dreaming every night if it didnt come naturally to you.
exactly! minds are really brilliant and creative if you train them, but that also can hurt you if you go to far
The whole part about maladaptive daydreaming reminded me of a game called What Happened To Edith Finch. There's a part in it where it tells the story what happened to Edith's Brother, who retreated into his own fantasy world where he lived hundreds of years going on adventure after adventure. It doesn't end well, but at that point in the game you realize that no ones story ends well.
I think it's particularly interesting to bring up Edith Finch, because to me the core of that story is how Edie's belief in the family curse and the way she pushes that belief onto the rest of the family is a key reason why all the problems that lead the family members to their individual deaths go unaddressed until it's too late.
Gregory dies because of a lack of supervision. Calvin dies because the swing was installed in an unsafe place. Molly dies because her food was withheld as punishment. Sven dies because of unsafe construction. Lewis dies because of his mental illness and maladaptive daydreaming. Edie dies by suicide.
These deaths were all preventable, but because of this fixation on the "curse", most of the family doesn't see that and doesn't do anything to fix the issues and prevent the deaths that follow. It seems Dawn is the only one who understands this and takes Edith away to try and protect her.
in omori the main character lives in a fantasy world too, it's possibly my favorite game of all time. he retreated from the world and started living in his dream world after a big traumatic event, and throughout the game you slowly learn more about what happened through the dream world, the real world (if you choose the main route) and memories. everything about the way the story is conveyed is just amazing.
This also reminds me of Yume Nikki and the protag Madotsuki living in her dream world with the various figment friends she makes along the way until the game eventually finds one of the endings (spoilers for a game from 2004:) where Madotsuki jumps from her high rise apartment's balcony. Undertale's style so intensely reminded me of Yume Nikki (no surprise as Toby said it was an inspiration), especially with the loneliness and discussions of suicide. I was half worried UT would turn out to be a fantasy/dream world like YN, and have a similar ending, but thankfully not, even if other terrible things can happen in UT various endings.
Yume Nikki never really had a true canon backstory, and instead is just whatever fans interpreted the story to be, which was later expanded on in fan sequels and semiofficial adaptions, but many people believed Madotsuki of the original game to be a maladaptive daydreamer who holed up in her home after some traumatic incident (many theories on what based on her dream world), and tried to retreat to her dreams, but eventually reality became too much and she committed suicide. I don't believe you ever run into another person when Madotsuki is in the waking world, so there's a lot of thoughts about what kind of family or friends she had and if she even had any. imo, it's a deeply lonely game.
That section from the game made me cry so hard- I did so much maladaptive daydreaming when I was younger to escape my life because I was really depressed and anxious. I’m doing really good now, but I think if ‘reality shifting’ had been around when I was a preteen I would definitely have believed in it
It’s such a good game but it made me cry
Add another entry to Strange's "why is it ALWAYS the Harry Potter fandom" playlist and anthropological study.
It's probably got to do with the trifecta of magical world, being a kid with few responsibilities, and there being a magical interest hobby/class for everyone. You like alchemy? potion making. Sports? They have quidditch. Love animals? There's a class for that. Plants? Hell yeah. Hogwarts kind of has something for everyone and a magic system that's so vaguely defined you can just do whatever you want and handwave it away. These are my opinions based on becoming a fan of the franchise in adulthood rather than as a kid. (f*ck Rowling, trans rights are human rights)
@@NikkiBudders I'm a former hp fan who was into the books as a kid, it really was more of an escapism because IRL school is incredibly boring and soul-crushing with boring subjects like math, the hp books was like "what if school was fun and jelly beans taste like poop!!". But in all honesty, the thing that got me to read the hp books was mainly because the swedish cover art is so amazing that you wanted the books just for that. I absolutely judged the hp books by the cover lmao.
@@Foervraengd omg i remember the swedish book covers they were really good haha. they made the books look so much more edgy than the books actually were, i loved the phoenix order cover especially.
@@Foervraengd
Why tf would you want jelly beans to taste like poop!?! Lmao, I burst out laughing after reading that!
“Why is it that whenever anything happens, it is always you three?” -McGonnagall
TW: suicidal thoughts
I disassociated heavily as a child. After years of going into my brain's fantasies, I DID NOT WANT TO GO BACK. I started wondering why I came back at all. I started wondering why I went to school. I started wondering why I kept eating in this world. Why should I ever go back to a gloomy, colourless, painful world when I could just stay in the "other place"? I started getting confused as to which one was "real". I thought about killing my physical body so that I don't ever have to come back here. It was hell. And to see a bunch of teenagers doing the exact same thing terrifies me because nobody deserves to go through the confusion of being stuck between fantasy and reality.
My brother actually did kill himself and left behind a detailed script into his desired reality. That’s how I got here. This stuff is so bad for the already struggling. We had no idea he was into this stuff until I went through his phone after his passing. I’m quite a bit older then him and didn’t even know this stuff existed…
As someone who is a chronic lucid dreamer - being aware you are dreaming doesn't always give you full control, if any. Worst nightmare I've ever had was being aware I was dreaming but stuck in a void with nothing to do for what felt like forever with adhd boredom (and I have trauma nightmares)
YES and if you're talking to yourself? it's like you're processing the event in real-time
This is the first time someone has come close to describing my nightmares as a kid. I was treated for night terrors because I woke up screaming, and I remember explaining it to the doctor pretty much exactly the way that you just did. This feels oddly validating.
But also: so sorry you’re going through that now. I can’t really imagine. My issues happened when I was a very young child and then never again. I hope your lucid nightmares aren’t frequent.
yeah! i dont really have the same issue of being stuck in a void forever, though. my issue is that i realize im dreaming, and bad shit happens. i get ridiculed, i start getting chased, stuff like that.
sometimes it reflects whats happening in my life, sometimes not. though, the latter is preferred over the former...
THIS! Every lucid dream I have ends up being either really fucking weird (although really vivid, but I can't control it) or THEE WORST nightmare I've ever had. A lot of the times it's the latter.
Does anyone ever end up in screaming spirals, I have an imaginary argument with somebody who else think is real until I realize oh I'm imagining this entire conversation and then I'll start explaining that I'm talking in imaginary conversation which in itself is imaginary and it'll just loop like that. Weather judgmental gaze and like screaming thoughts of people I feel hate me just goes in circles endlessly
I'd never wanna shift to Hogwarts I'd be living out my childhood fantasy of being Thunderclan's medicine cat and living in the woods
God I was so obsessed with Warriors as a kid, if this was an option I'd be fucked lmao.
i definitely had warrior cats dreams, ig i was shifting in elementary school in the 2000s
i dont wanna go to thunderclan i wanna go to starclan immediately, fuck that noise id rather not be sliced by tigerclaw or some shit, just let me already be dead and guide the others
I remember trying to wish myself so hard into the warrior cats universe when i was 11. It was like a reality so close i could touch but would move just out of reach if i tried to grab ahold of it. I mean what is that if not trying to shift? Did i invent shifting back in 2012?!?! /j
Bro you’d have to watch 1/4 of the Clan die of greencough between arcs
Thank you for the reminder that mocking people who aren't hurting anyone isn't a sign of intelligence, it's just cruelty for no reason. You can take a critical stance on an idea without being disrespectful. I know I need that reminder now and then. The internet is really good at desensitizing us.
What you typed IS a good reminder, but is not what goth mom said. She made a disingenuous jab at Chad Chad.
Nah you just can't take the piss. If you are so incapable of having your beliefs challenged, I question whether you actually believe them.
The internet has been desensitizing us in some aspects and sensitizing us in others the real world is not shown on the internet at this point I get in arguments with people on the internet who I feel like haven’t lived in this society like actually lived 1 minute off the internet the internet is starting to feel like fantasy land and real world things and problems aren’t seen as they should be
My concern in more on spiritual psychosis and tiktok influencers encouraging people to enter a spiritual psychosis. People say that just believing something couldn't possibly hurt someone, but it hurts the person affected. They lose a sense of reality and are unable to ground themselves in reality. It seems harmless until you watch someone that was totally normal before go down a rabbit hole and take on symptoms of schizophrenia and completely lose touch with what is and isn't real.
I consider myself a witch (someone who practices witchcraft, not someone who can shoot fire out of their fingers) and believe in spirits (as energy, not ghosts) and magic (like interpersonal connections, moments shared with another living being, not anime-esque superpowers). I don't have superpowers, I'm just a human person and I don't try and make myself think I'm anything more.
I think a lot of the crap being shared on tiktok by witch communities is so bizarre. They dismiss "normies" (people who don't have supernatural powers/ claim to be able to read auras, be able to see your future, etc) you basically have to have "powers" to be "special"... so people that desperately want to fit in and feel important fall for spiritual psychosis. They are validated by others in the community to stay in psychosis. And it is actually VERY DANGEROUS, just nobody wants to talk about it.
@@grant.5345challenging beliefs isn’t the same as disrespecting and criticizing, you can be respectful while challenging it
I remember when I learned about this as a teen I wanted to shift to live one year as a tall man. Who would have guessed I was trans?
congrats
I had a super transphobic friend who tried to get into shifting in order to "be a girl without being a tr****". You'll never guess what happened to her!
Advanced reality shifters can also gain the abilities of their alternate selves, like martial art skills. Or hot dog fingers.
EEAAO MENTIONED
Yeah but to do that you have to do something crazy and unlikely in order shift.
Good movie!
@@SkaeisNOTdrowningi know what you meant but when i read that acronym i just imagined someone yelling "YEEAAOW"
@@missycat7598 I didn't think of that but that's funny xD
I once knew a girl who was wrapped up in the whole "shifting" thing when it was popular on Tiktok. She was laden with a lot of health problems and on top of it had a shitty family, and it was crazy that she had lived as long as she did. It was sad to see how passionately she depended on shifting to escape her real life.
Yeah “shifting” gets really sad when you look at it from a phycological perspective
It's sad when people forget that they can make their own reality less awful even though it takes more effort.
"It's crazy she lived as long as she did" implies she's no longer alive. Is she okay now?
@UTubeTrollPolice298source???
@@LunaWitcherArt Some people, especially kids, just have very little control over their own realities. I know when I was younger and spending all my time either disassociating or maladaptive daydreaming it was because of an abusive home life.
It was a way of surviving without actually having to live life, because at the time it felt like nothing I could have done short of calling the cops would have made any kind of change, which I don't blame younger me for not doing.
Unfortunately it also stopped me from making any real friends or connections with other people, which was the true positive change that made my life worth living again, but I can see how easy it is to fall into the trap of "shifting" being your only outlet
Maladaptive daydreaming almost ruined my school life academically, and only didn't ruin it socially bc all my friends were weirdos like me too.
Same! I was already struggling academically, and it was a way to cope, but it made it so much worse.
@@imjustroleplayingExactly, it really made it SUCH a struggle, when I was already struggling. Also, ur pfp
@@SomeplaceScary thank you :>
It reminds me a little of daydreaming with ADHD which did ruin my school life. My teachers would have to have conferences with my mom because I was “distracted” and had a “strong imagination” throughout my younger years and then in middle/high school I was just completely zoned out thinking about the book world that I desperately wanted to get back to once class was over or imagining different scenarios involving both fiction and real life.. I couldn’t help it, I wouldn’t even realize that my attention was slipping until the bell rang and my notes were blank:/ I ended up having to do a lot of credit recovery in order to graduate because I just couldn’t focus in classes I actually had to try to pass and not just get by without studying or paying attention. I didn’t really learn or retain anything from math especially in school so I flunked every math class in college and eventually took a “break” that’s lasted several years now.
same i also found out about shifting when i was in high school and extremely stressed, made me dissociate badly and caused psychosis
As someone who was VERY into shifting in 2020-2021, one thing I can absolutely tell you is that it is most likely contributed to me having absolutely god-awful derealization issues. It was NOT good for me dsjkfnkndsnfkjds
What makes maladaptive daydreaming so scary is that (at least for me) it feels like you’re not in control of your own mind. A lot of times I don’t even realize that’s what I’m doing until I finally snap back to reality. Thinking you’re doing all these amazing things, having all this fun just to realize you’ve just been sitting around with a lead paint stare for HOURS is kind of wild.
Damn I have MD. and didn't even know that kind of dissociation was possible with MD, for me personally I think my dissociation of self is so extreme than most people with MD, so my fantasy tend to be totally fantasy stories that I'm writing where my identity as a person just totally dissolve and I take one of many personas, I honestly don't know who is the real me and I don't know how to exist without hating my own existence
@@Eat_shit--die_madI have Maladaptive Daydreaming too, but it took me a second to realize you meant "Maladaptive daydreaming" and not "medical doctor".
I’m so sorry but lead. Paint. Stare. Fucking took me out ilysm
I was daydreaming about being a streamer reacting to this video and reading from the comment section (thats a common maladaptive daydream for me), until your comment made me snap back to reality and remember I'm laying in bed this whole entire time and that I was supposed to be sleeping two hours ago
@@Eat_shit--die_mad same.
One thing about the whole situation I don’t hear people discuss is the ability of this trend to set off people who have schizophrenia or are prone to delusions when the content isn’t properly tagged or doesn’t have warnings on it. When this first trend started I was in a very weak mental state and seeing stuff about reality shifting and stuff started freaking me the hell out and I belive it was one of the factors that led to a few month long spout of dearilzation. I know we are all responsible for our own internet experiences but I do belive unreality content should still be tagged for its uniquely triggering nature
That’s actually a good point
I mean they wouldnt mark as unreality because they think its real... so hard to fix in that case
you are correct. this also ties into the larger issue of internet censorship making it increasingly difficult for people to curate their experiences, because accurate tagging is punished by being buried by the algorithm or even removed from the platform. I avoid Tiktok precisely because I have a couple anxiety disorders, including OCD, and the lack of tagging coupled with my specific mental shit would make that site absolute hell for me. I could not tailor my homepage like I can tailor my tumblr dash. Tiktok and censorship in general are actively dangerous to those of us with mental illnesses.
@@eric_the_egggremlin Yes i would also recommend for you just deleting Tik tok and likr also instagram with reels.
i don't have any mental illness but even for me it gets overwhelming and honestly since i stay off most internet pages that I cant curate how i want to, i am way less annoyed in my everyday life.
@@eric_the_egggremlin Defiantly agree that the tagging systems on other sites is lacking. One thing I love about Tumblr is the ability to curate your feed and to block certain tags
5:21 including a method of shifting that was "drink 17 gallons of water and try not to itch or move while counting to 5 million" had me rolling, thank you Strange
Reality shifting may not be real, but subjective emotional experiences sure are. I’ve definitely had emotional hangover to a very vivid dream a few times. I’m not surprised that lucid dreaming/intense daydreaming/etc creates real emotions
Bingo
I once had a dream where a person from another dream I had asked me if I remembered what happened in the dream they were in and it made me feel this very deep nostalgia and longing for this other dream and it lasted a while after i woke up. Having intense dreams is so weird.
Had a dream where I was really mean to ny two siblings and I spent all day feeling like I needed to call and apologize.
I once had a dream covering years of life, and when I woke up I couldn't stop crying for an hour. Not because it was over, I just couldn't reconcile the kindness I had experienced.
Wrecked me for a week or more, and I still feel very strongly about it years later.
my theory is that reality shifting is not one thing, but a mix of many things. some people experience it more like lucid dreaming (hence the people who say that its just lucid dreaming) and some people experience it more like immersive daydreaming
I think it’s all related to lucidity it goes back centuries Druid’s used to do this all the time with our native mushroom even Native American shamans have a history of lucidity seen as spirituality
Just a note: I use lucidity to describe the process of what dreams are
As a shifter, for me it's literally just lucid dreaming. I know some people think it's real and honestly if people are allowed to believe in a book written hundreds of years ago by some old dudes, then people can believe in this. When I first heard of "shifting" I thought it was common knowledge that we were lucid dreaming and just working up the skills to "escape" our reality through dreaming. Sometimes these alternative "realities" are the only thing keeping us sane.
I fully believe that the woman in the video fully believes that she's shifting, and to that all I'll say is that my dreams have felt so real I get false memories. It's to the point where sometimes I can taste, think, etc. For example, in reality, I peeled some of my nail off because it was bugging me (OCD), and in my dream that night I had ripped it off completely to wear it bleed and it hurt so freaking bad. I went to the bathroom and got a bandaid and continued. When I woke up I was genuinely so confused because it all felt so real it took a HOURS to realize my thumb wasn't even hurting anymore much less bleeding and of course no bandaid. In reality we didn't even have any. I've had times where I missed school because of having dreams so vivid I genuinely believed I got up, dressed and headed out to school. I don't judge anyone for believing in this because sometimes it genuinely does feel like you're in another reality, even feeling pain doesn't wake you up.
@UTubeTrollPolice298 bot
@@blueismylove3128 yeah but, unfortunately, if people really believe this, it can lead to serious MH issues if they ACTUALLY believe they're in another reality
imo not immersive daydreaming but maladaptive daydreaming or dissociation
the quote “humans will always find a way to make something sacred” is just so. profound. youd think it had come from a classic book/film but rly it came from a youtuve video abt shifting. well. maybe this vid will be considered a classic.
Agreed, that line hit me hard. Being human in itself is sacred. Consciousness is sacred, in any form. Humans will always bring things back to that, to the pure essence of being aware and how we see magic and sacredness in that.
And on the first day, man created god. We look for meaning, for purpose, for a reason in anything. And once we find that thing, we hold onto it so strongly that reality sometimes needs to be ignored or reexplained to keep that sense of purpose and belonging. It helped us in the earliest stages, as hominids living in small groups. But with 8 billion people and the Internet connecting us near instantaneously, it becomes very simple to find a thousand people to agree with you wholeheartedly and suddenly add a feeling of unearned legitimacy to your beliefs.
i've had to attend some sort of religion interpretation course in my high school and one of the earliest lessons were that humans have 3 base instincts-- the instinct of self-preservation (something like freud's description of the id), the instinct of preserving one's bloodline, and the instinct to deify or find something sacred. although i don't completely subscribe to the ideologies i was taught i do believe there is truth to those three instincts-- apart from the preserving bloodline one, which i from what i understood has more to do with the instinct to confide closely with someone and the need to be understood by another. idk i might be onto nothing here but time and time again i've found that, to quote strange here, people will find a way to make something sacred. whether it's the new age spirituality people or the reddit atheist who in some way deify like, neil degrasse tyson or something.
999th like, noice
"reality shifting" is so bizarre as someone who is a maladaptive daydreamer. these ppl describe maladaptive daydreaming in the most exact terms but then they. they say. that they're actually going into an alternative reality where rose quartz steven universe is real and their friend. okay.
LITERALLY
@@wriggleby nice pfp
@@Dave_Davies HOLY SHIT I LOVE THE KINKS
@@Goatythegoat lmaooo hi queen ✨ and i love you xx Dave davies kinks
@@Dave_Davies you SLAY oh my god lyt xxx 💅
it’s times like these when i like to remember how easy it is to trick the brain
it’s like SO EASY
also, sometimes your body will produce the hallucinogens for you. it’s all natural! like glob intended!
also, there’s a specific part of the brain that does a sort of ‘reality check’ that can give false positives sometimes. like when you’re in a dream. or on some drugs.
brains are fun.
I find it super interesting how people like your guest construct themselves as experts. Like the social capital involved there and the influencer of it all is super fascinating. Especially hearing her says things like “it’s metaphysical, it’s like consciousness, it can’t really be concretely disproved” (which I agree with to an extent!) and then to follow up a few minutes later with something like “yeah sometimes I have to tell people that they’re experiences definitely aren’t real shifting”. Like ok it’s something that can’t rly be proven true or untrue but there are concrete definitions for true and not true shifting. It’s a little paradoxical
I dont think that necessarily excludes good intentions. Lots of more accepting and less hierarchical religions believe we are all teachers
The other thing that gets me is just because you can't disprove it, doesn't mean it is real. This can be applied to literally any unprovable claim. Patton Oswalt has a great bit about this.
@@rubytherookie Exactly, when you have an unfalsifiable claim, the burden of proof is on the claimant. We can't prove that Saturn's orbit isn't controlled by a sentient teacup. That doesn't mean that we should treat claims of such as reasonable unless someone brings forward evidence. Anecdotes about how it's totally real guys and I saw it with my own eyes aren't good enough.
@tastyhaze2058 Proving a negative (i.e "Prove that Saturn ISNT controlled by a teapot") are hard, if not complelty impossible, which is why whenever someone formats a question like that its a red flag
In actual science the questions are alwaus formated in a way that allows proof of existence
"Do Black Holes exist?" and we look for proof they exist
"What causes weather phenomena?"
etc. questions can't be formated as a negative becauze finding proof of the unexistence of something is way more difficult, and if you fail it becomes the assumption that it DOES exist because you havent proven it doesn't which.. isnt how things work
@@tastyhaze2058How did you know about the teacup? That's supposed to be a Level 17 classification.
I think TikTok is very special in regards to how fast and hard you get hit with brainrot after initial exposure
Honestly if someone told me TikTok was just phycological warfare I’d believe it without a second thought
i used to try shifting almost every night and day around two years ago. (obviously,) i never succeeded, but believing it was possible really made me get through the deepest depressive time of my life. i used to want nothing more than to get out of this life, and if i hadn't had shifting, i probably would've kms. so finding spirituality in any form, doesn't matter if it's believing in faith or god or shifting, can really help. since then, life has gotten a lot better, not because i continue believing in reality shifting, but it did help me to stay alive to see this day. your life, whoever is reading this, will also get so much better.
I totally agree. The hope that there's a universe where I'm living a better life and there's a chance that you can go there?? That shit kept me sane during covid when i was having mental breakdowns every day. And also strangely enough it helped me start meditation (which I still do), so I am quite thankfuk to the shifting community in one way or another.
this got a lil kick in it
Same. I was in a tough spot in my life last year where I thought I could shift.
I just wanted to get out of my reality and the struggles I faced.
I hope you are feeling better.
@@rusnepuzinaite294yeah I sometimes do meditation to help with my mental health.
I personally think the whole shifting trend is just romanticized/misunderstood/untreated maladaptive daydreaming/lucid dreaming and it's so sad to see it being such a trend. Our world is so uncomfortable and painful for people to live in that it's literally a trend for children to dissociate for fun.
I did what sounds like the exact same thing as "shifting" when i was in school. I was incredibly unhealthy and in a really bad place and it was one of my many unhealthy coping mechanisms for it.
I just hope everyone can find healthier coping mechanisms/ get to a better environment eventually :(
I don't blame them this world is shit. Who wouldn't pick a cool Hogwarts world over this boring one?
It’s not. Most shifters have done lucid dreaming and daydreaming before, they can tell the difference. Shifting is the same thing as manifesting, where you change your assumptions which changes the physical reality you are aware of.
as someone who very intensely knows the feeling of nothing being real and feeling like I'm in another universe. It's a tool, you use it right and you can play fun games in your head, you use it wrong and you become a husk in bed feeling like nothing is real and there's nothing worth doing.
I worry that reality shifting is going to lead to a lot of that second one
Depersonalization/derealization?
I love watching a deep dive where being skeptical doesn't stop the narrative from being empathetic. I'm not a shifter or into spiritually, but this video was such a breath of fresh air compared to Anthony Padilla's. It's good to see people treating other's serious beliefs with respect. Hell yeah to that.
I think it's dangerous to state that any belief can be beyond ridicule, it leads back around to secular blasphemy laws, like that Professor who got sued and fired because she correctly identified the prophet Muhammad's sexual relationship with Aisha (at ~10yrs old) as paedophilic.
This is a great comment and it totally captures how I feel about this video too.
Barely 10 minutes in and this video and the comment section is one of the most interesting things I've come across in forever. Gonna take me days to sift through it all.
As a student of theology I really appreciate how you address the intersection of spirituality and online spaces with so much nuance and empathy! Taking these things seriously, even when they seem pretty cringe on the surface, can help us learn a lot about humanity and how we’re adapting to new developments in our world. Thank you!
Exactly!!
To me, reality shifting gives of a similar (but probably insanely less harmful) thing to spiritualists calling autistic and ADHD children ‘indigo children’
They’re not the same, but naming something something different due to it being experienced/seen as a spiritual thing
It’s definitely a mix of all possibilities mentioned in this video- some of it is just people telling stories/fanfiction, some of it is people calling their lucid dreams ‘shifting’, some of it is people trying to hypnotise themselves, some of it is people immersive/maladaptive daydreaming and calling it ‘shifting’, though it’s probably mostly fanfiction or for fun (or lucid dreaming and exaggerating for views)
Some of it is almost definitely immersive/maladaptive daydreaming with a spiritual coat of paint to help cope with needing a cope (in the kindest way)
(Also to give the tiniest defend to Anthony, he has said that he thinks his older videos like his ISADW reality shifter/furries/flat earthers/abductees/Jake Paul fans definitely weren’t very good and he definitely came in with assumptions and with the idea of essentially interviewing these people to make fun of them like a commentary youtuber in a different font, and that he now doesn’t like how he dealt with those topics and tries to be more respectful and kind to his guests (this isn’t to excuse him or say anyone needs to get over it or whatever- just sharing information if you want it :) ))
Yeah to be fair to Antony he makes the new assumption format to because of that reason he definitely didn’t mean any harm
As someone who was heavily involved in mid-2010s fictionkin tumblr (specifically the spiritual subsection), I’m really struck by how similar shifting as a concept is to what we would do in order to access “past life memories.” Although we didn’t actually call it shifting, it seems like the concept has stuck around with teenagers in a fairly similar way.
I really appreciate how you’re able to approach these topics with empathy. I would love to one day see a kin/fictionkin tumblr video, and would love to talk to you about the intricacies of it as a “I was there” person!
id love a fictionkin video too, i used to be in the community as well. now people more often use "kinnie" as "relate" but i remember being in groups where we would think we have past memories and some people would get very upset if another person was near them/interacted who kinned the same character. idk just interesting stuff.
This 100%. Right when they were explaining Shifting my brain said "ah, it's star-children with extra steps" as the jumping off point
I almost was like that some time ago it was kinda cringe but also comforting. I think it's some kinda escapism. Very obscure character and NGL I felt pretty lonely that nobody else cared about Cobalt from Astro Boy 1963 but like. What was I expecting.
Also he's a slapstick/comedic relief character who exists to get beaten up/screw up things so I had irrational hate for the other characters. It was dumb.
Wow this stuff is really bringing me back to stuff i saw in passing and was just confused about on tumblr and shit lmao. Interesting to actually hear the details
I can't take it, the overwhelming drive to write an entire PhD level thesis on this concept of "reality shifting" from the perspective of noetics and Jean Gebser's theories of evolving consciousness structures is at significant odds with my body's actual ability to do so. Times be wild, man.
You’re telling me that I could have gotten reality shifting toxic mold poisoning but I got chronic illness toxic mold poisoning instead??? I was robbed
I feel the same, I get very mild hallucinations, but it's never anything cool like people or environments, just faint mechanical sounds, stuff that looks like out of focus insects flying at the edges of my vision, and perceiving patterns of movement on static surfaces. I don't tend to mistake them as really, just annoying symptoms of a neurological condition not worth treating.
@@jazzy4830yeah from my own personal experience with a psychotic episode the hallucinations definitely were more annoying than they were scary
@@phoenixfritzinger9185 Even more annoyingly, my house has an actual moth problem so I get up to check every time I perceive something that looks like an insect.
I just can't stop thinking of that person who was talking about a shift at their job, and these kids in the comments were asking them how to shift...
Me too 😭
I thought the content of this video would be much different because what I’ve seen of shifting is a LOT scarier than some kids wanting to believe they are dating Draco Malfoy. I’ve seen more “altered reality” shifting along the lines of creating your ideal life with a meticulously described “ideal body”, lots of friends, relationships, nice house, expensive clothes, etc… as if to make up for your current life. I have seen people with truly terrible lives totally lose themselves in this shifting thing instead. Even getting as dire as “if you die while shifting you wake up in your desired reality”, like this one girl was essentially wasting away and not eating or getting out of bed because she wanted so badly to live in the other world where she was pretty and popular and her parents weren’t abusing her. Somewhere further down the rabbit hole than the “shifting techniques and tips” stuff there is someone telling these girls that if they simply refuse to take part in reality their other reality will grow larger and larger and consume this one, and their spirit won’t die with their body but rather they will be fully manifested in their “true life” that they were always supposed to lead. Like if they pass away at just the right time it’ll happen for them. Like some kind of messed up reincarnation or something. I knew about the Harry Potter and fandom shifting stuff, but I figured the real juice was this essentially death cult thing that’s going on. Wonder if I’ll ever see it talked about because it sure is CONCERNING.
Whoa, that's really scary. More people need to talk about this.
My brother became obsessed with this the last 2 years and died by suicide a month ago. His note was a shifting journal entry. We had no idea he was even doing this shit. Manipulative and evil is what this stuff is.
Not a personal believer in shifting, but I really appreciate the level-headed approach to it in this video. It feels anthropological -- observing rather than judging and talking about relevant contexts. Though dunking on random young women on the internet is way easier than reading a bunch of books, so I understand why this video is an outlier on TH-cam lol
45:50 the comment about escapism reminded about the Tolkien quote in response to some criticism that his fantasy was escapism: "Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!"
I was actually into reality shifting when I was like 17... tried it and (shockingly) it didn't work and eventually I stopped trying. 5/10 made my depression worse but I made a cool journal
When I was a kid I spent all my time either disassociating or maladaptive daydreaming because of my abusive family. It felt like the only way to keep staying alive without actually having to live life, and I think these coping mechanisms are good at keeping things in stasis when it feels like there are no ways to make things better but plenty of ways things can become worse.
I think this is why these things are double-edged swords, like you said it in the video. The wall I built around myself kept me alive but it also stopped me from making any meaningful connections with other people, which was the true positive change that made my life worth living again
how did you learn to break down that wall so to say? i’m in a very very similar situation
@@beeswax5 I'm not OP but I found that my maladaptive daydreaming broke down somewhat naturally when I escaped from the abusive situation. It can still be triggered by stressful events but as soon as "normal life" became something I wanted to be a part of, the daydreaming started to ebb away. I now find it difficult to daydream unless I am depressed, stressed, or very close to sleep.
@@beeswax5 Agreed with the reply above mine, the sheer relief of finally being safe and having peace of mind will do most of the legwork for you. But if you can't escape right now and you're looking for specific advice when it comes to making connections with others, then being aware of my own self esteem issues is what helped me out. It might not help you, but even if it doesn't just know you won't be stuck in this situation forever.
So self esteem is something that gets developed through receiving unconditional love as a child (Maslow's hierarchy of needs and all that) which is why kids with abusive families tend to not have any. In my case, because of self esteem issues, I used to think I was boring and useless and a bad person and that all my classmates could tell I was awful.
I wasn't awful, no kid is, but because I thought I was I hid my own personality as much as possible and made myself as small as possible. I put others on a pedestal they didn't deserve, or one I deserved just as much, because I thought there was something that made me inherently lesser (there wasn't, again this was the self esteem issues).
As cliche as it might sound, don't be afraid of being yourself. Don't be scared or ashamed of taking up space, because you deserve that space as much as anyone else. If you have a thought or an opinion, try say it out loud. Having an adult on your side is also a huge deal, so if you don't have any estranged grandparents/aunts/uncles/older cousins you can get in touch with you might wanna try a teacher or a school guidance counselor.
Again, sorry if this is all gibberish to you, hopefully other people in the comments can also weigh in with their own experiences
Growing up i experienced CSA at a very young age and i withdrew from my entire family because they sided with the person who abused me. I found a picture a teacher took of me in elementary school and she wrote on it that i was always reading. Reading was way more fun than interacting with my trash family, ngl. I also got into drawing as well and i have all these comics like thousands of comics probably (drawn poorly lol) but the storyline was very deep and i planned out every character, etc. This was a big part of my personality for a long time (from 6th grade until a few months after i left high school) i had friends that loved reading the comics, i drew for my high school boyfriend, etc. I always had issues with teachers because i was either reading, writing, or drawing. Teachers constantly telling my parents "shes smart but she's not paying attention" but of course my parents never told the teachers about my past CSA (i think they thought that if it came out everybody was going to jail 😂) teachers would take the comics during class (i'll steal them off the teacher's desk after class lol) my grades were great though (learning has always been a passion of mine, another escape from the trash reality i was living in). I was never a big fan of "self insert" unless i drew the comics with me and my friends in them, so i dont see the appeal of that BUT i can see the appeal of the escapism; life is getting worse and worse for young women and girls: CSA is up, domestic violence is increasing, underage girls are becoming targets of male violence at younger and younger ages; it doesnt surprise me that young girls want to live in a daydream instead of dealing with the terrible existence they are facing. This movement does make women look crazy though and in a world where we are losing more rights every day and still so many women are oppressed globally, if women are to improve our lives, we have to publicly come across as capable, mentally stable, and in reality. Enjoy the disney, harry potter, etc in your free time, but in life, you must be present. I expect in the future female separatism is going to increase because then women will be able to enjoy life without having to resort to daydreaming and escaping the terrible state of their lives.
Haven't watched the video yet but going in my only knowledge of this topic is that one tumblr post that was like:
"just got done with a 12 hour shift and that was exhausting"
"please tell me how to shift, i've been looking everywhere trying to figure out"
"my shift as in WORK... at my JOB"
Was it a tumblr post or a tiktok comment. I remember it being a tiktok lol
I think I saw it on Twitter, followed by "You unemployed idiot!". It's honestly funnier to think several people on several websites had the same conversation.
This is so fucking funny pleaseeeee
Honestly shifting sounds like a type of meditation therapy imo. But I think where it gets toxic is and down right unhealthy is when fandom gets involved (mostly because fandoms tend to be toxic and gatekeepy with how you engage the media) and people start using it to avoid reality to the point where they're pretty much cut off from human connection.
Actual ppl who claim to shift always say that u can’t and shouldn’t use it to escape. And for most ppl it just doesn’t work if ur gonna use it to escape (according to every adult shifter I have heard speak about this). I say, we don’t rlly know what’s out there, so if you’re in a healthy state of mind there’s no harm in trying to see what ur brain can do. And if ur too scared that’s fine but ppl who want to try it should be alllwed to without having a bunch of bitter ppl calling them crazy.
so i was like- really into reality shifting when i was younger. but honestly? nowadays i believe it’s a practice that’s super harmful.
when i got into the reality shifting community i was in a really bad place, both physically and mentally; and the whole thing really appealed to me because i was desperate for an escape. why would i have to worry about the current horrors of my reality when i could just dream up a new one, you know?
but because i spent all my time trying to create and access these other worlds, i ended up neglecting my own.
my dissociative disorder quickly began to worsen, i stopped caring about the things and the people around me because nothing in this world felt real. my mental health fell into pieces that i couldn’t even bother fixing because i was just constantly chasing that escape.
but after was said and done, this was the conclusion i came to:
the first step to bettering your current reality is accepting it. and i know that can be really hard, especially if you have a reason to escape it like i did- but trust me. nothing improves when all you do is try and run from it.
i stopped trying to make new worlds and started focusing on fixing the one i was stuck in. i got the help i needed, i cut ties with some really awful people and i went through a lot of trauma therapy to finally address what i had been running from. i know this world isn’t perfect, it’s far from it- but it’s ours. all we can really do is make the best of it, and i promise that it really does get better.
Thank you for sharing this, and I hope that you feel proud of your growth. That kind of acknowledgement and effort in healing is far from easy work.
Finally accepting that things are bad and need to change is tough!!! Best wishes for you and your future ❤
I highly recommend getting into lucid dreaming and/or dream incubation. All the same experiences without the risk of mental health issues
youre amazing friend and so strong, i hope your healing continues and that you find peace and happiness in this reality
Do you personally feel that you were actually reality shifting, or do you consider it to have been something else, like lucid dreaming, looking back? Did you ever exaggerate your experiences to others or do you know anyone who admits that they did? Genuinely no judgment, just curious. Feel free to ignore
Kristen talking about how she feels shifting is different from lucid dreaming made me pause because like... That's just my normal dreams. I do lucid dream sometimes naturally, but even in my dreams that AREN'T fully lucid I experience full body tactile sensations. And I often have a running internal monologue while dreaming that's pretty complex, sometimes even questioning the logic of the dreams or commentating on events that are playing out, but it doesn't make me wake up. A few weeks ago I experienced my first reality check with a dream clock that turned me lucid, and I had a very distinct internal monologue about it that went something like, "Wait why is time weird?? Like. It was 11:11 a second ago and then I looked back at the clock and it was 11:14 and then I looked away and back and it's 11:12. That's not normal. WAIT OMG. I'M DREAMING! THIS IS A DREAM CLOCKS ARE FUCKED UP IN DREAMS! I'm lucid I can do anything now! It's weird though that the clocks are still reading normal times. I expected them to be More fucked up but they're normal numbers just Wrong in the progression of time. That's weird." And then I just carried on dreaming.
yeah there are levels to lucid dreams. for example I've only had them spontaneously and can never control the world or environment - I just end up stuck somewhere where everyone is going about their normal life and no one believes me when I tell them we are all in a dream LOL. Advanced lucid dreamers can control the environment and fly etc. It sounds to me like 'reality shifting' is the basic level of lucid dreaming, however they were able to direct the appearance of the world prior to sleep but not actually control the actions of others within the world
Any dream I remember, it's semi-lucid and intense.
One I was living a horror movie, each time becoming the protagonist of the scene, an array of characters. I kept dying, and I could feel it, but it was fun, in the way a game is fun. It wasn't me, it was the characters. I could check the channel and did often. It was a three-character alphanumeric code that kept changing, which clued me off. I had the thought, "I'll have to tell my friends about this."
Another time I was actually me. I kept waking up with my roommates in a burning barn under attack. "This is a nightmare," I thought on the third time waking up, and got less cautious in my actions, but kept dying and resetting. I did falsely "wake" and go to work before it ended. I felt disquieted in bed that morning, but was okay that day. That one felt like a thriller -- tense but engaging.
In another, my sister was terminally sick and died, but came back to unlife as we viewed her body. It looked so unnatural, the way she moved, that I knew it wasn't real. That one bothered me. Happened after another death in the family.
It's funny how your dreams pull up your struggles. I guess it's just what's on your mind.
I remember one time suspecting that I was in a dream while dreaming and I was like, so what do I do? And my dream self comes up with the watch thing and thinks they're very clever, like look a few times and if it's a dream it won't be able to consistently show the time, so I look at my wrist watch and the hands are spinning around out of control and my dream self is just like "wow what does that mean" hahaha
@@anonymousposter6461 The leading theory for why we dream is that dreams help us organize memories and run emotional simulations to help us deal with the emotions of waking life, so it makes sense that they're often related to what you're struggling with! This is likely why there are some themes and symbolism in dreams that tend to have similar meanings for people, since the narrative-loving brain pulls from the cultural zeitgeist we're familiar with to create these simulations. Grief dreams are especially common, with a lot of people reporting similar types of dreams after the death of loved one (or sometimes before, if they're preempting it). They help a lot with being able to process those difficult emotions and cope with them. That's why it's especially important to get plenty of sleep when you're stressed!
I never understood how people so vividly lose themselves in these seemingly mentally constructed realities... Then i recently found out i have aphantasia LOL. Being able to literally visualize things must put so much more weight to these shifters perceptions of an alternate reality. It's so fascinating for me since i will definitely never be able to experience such a strong level of "delusion" (for lack of better word) when i cant even remember peoples faces cuz theres no images in my head.
I also have aphantasia and I feel the same!! I can completely understand being fully immersed in a story-the best plays, books, and even things I write myself do that for me-but I don’t understand really “being there!”
Same! I have a degree of aphantasia like I can picture things for a second and then they’re gone, and it’s crazy to me how thoroughly involved people get when they can see things. On the other hand, I can imagine touch really vividly which makes some dreams while asleep really strange
This is the first im hearing of this. When you think of things is it mostly about texture and sound like with blind people or is it just a lack of visual stimulus flatly
@@sisyphus7931 Best way I can say that it works is that it's like an unopened jpg on your computer. You know, the image on a computer isn't the same thing as a drawing on paper; it's just code, but that code will still produce an image when it's sent to a printer [describing, drawing, other forms of expression], even if the image isn't visible on your screen [in your head]. It's different for different people, but in my case, I tend to be able to imagine sound sometimes, mostly on the end of voices or music I'm well aquainted with. Texture [like images] tend to be something I more describe to myself rather than actually "experience" in my imagination.
@@DogMechanic that's fascinating, its like when I learned not everyone has an internal monolog
I have been an immersive or maladaptive daydreamer for my whole life (depending on what year and my overall mood and how much my mental health has been under controll, it slips one way or another) as an adult I found a forum for maladaptive daydreamers and it was the first time i saw people speaking openly about it. Literally made me feel SO UNDERSTOOD as it was always something I hid from others.
It started as a way to drown out my thoughts and help me sleep (had major insomnia and anxiety as a kid, the only way I coped was to imagine stories and live through them) then growing up to be an adult diagnosed with other illnesses, it became a whole part of my life. I often had a few stories going at any given time. While I could control aspects, it always feels more like I'm arranging a scenario and holding on lightly. It's not even always me in the world's, sometimes my main character is a totally different person with w different name and personality.
As an adult, I got layed off from my job around 2019 and was DEVISTATED. That year I spent hours daydreaming as I walked dogs for money or layed face down and just imagined.
I'm not saying that shifting is the same but I can definitely understand how experiences like this can take over, especially if you have a creative brain and a less than ideal mental state
…Is that what maladaptive daydreaming is? Oh no.
@@RoseKonekoJust as an aside, yes this all counts as maladaptive daydreaming but it’s important to remember that if it’s not negatively impacting some aspect or aspects your life (socially, professionally, financially, internally, etc.) then there’s really no reason to worry.
If you’re slipping into fully acted and imagined daydreams when you’re bored or tired, but are able to “turn it off” or “come back to it later” when you need to focus or are hanging out with others, it’s fine.
It only really becomes a problem if you can’t separate yourself and your dreams from reality, it happens without your control, you have difficulty “turning it off” or engaging in things happening in reality, etc. Then it may be helpful to speak with someone.
Otherwise, enjoy your fantasy worlds of “what would happen if I was in my favorite show” or “how would this fantasy play out if XYZ happened” on your downtime, even if you do get more “into it” than people think you should.
@@ijustwanttocomment21 that's why I made the distinction that at times it has only been immersive, good go call out though. There have been times in my life that it has caused issues and times I could keep things in check. For me personally, when I'm off of meds (for my other diagnoses) that is when my daydreaming gets it's worse and becomes maladaptive rather than just a thing I do that takes up hours of my day
@@RoseKoneko I didn't explain it very well in this comment but it's not JUST immersive daydreaming. At my worse I struggled to hold conversations, would rather daydream than do... Literally anything, would lose track of time, ect. I remember I started setting timers just to have a sense of reality.
Imagining stories in your head is cool, it can be used go cope in damaging ways, but is not always maladaptive. When I mention finding the forums as an adult, if felt seen because I knew what I was doing was hurting my life but did not know there was even a name for it. Daydreaming is super common and does not usually take over your life in this way, I have mine mostly under control now but have had a lot of therapy and meds to get me there.
@@xKeyWolfxI hope I didn’t come off as dismissive of you or your experience in my comment! I was more focusing on the way that it can be easy to say “Oh I do (some) of that!” and go down the rabbit hole of “do I have a disorder? is there something wrong with me?” when topics like this get brought up.
As someone with anxiety, when I learned about maladaptive daydreaming I got really anxious because I get really into daydreams and worried myself into panic attacks thinking that I was experiencing derealization or hallucinations when I was just a bored teenager with an overactive mind.
Obviously maladaptive daydreaming is a real problem for some people and can be really distressing and harmful and I hope my comment didn’t come across as minimizing any of that in your own experience!
LOVED this video. I'm not one to comment usually, but the nuance you gave to the topic was incredibly helpful and interesting compared to the people I've seen fearmonger, and point and laugh at. I personally dont even believe in reality shifting but I still respect how thats a deeply personal and intimate subject for many shifters. This video was chefs kiss
people forget not all coping mechanisms are good and not all coping mechanisms should be endorsed. this is not a good coping mechanism and letting people live in an echochamber where their every delusion is validated is detrimental to their health
This!
I totally get that part about maldaptive daydreaming I was very similar. Fun and then soul-crushingly lonely is spot on true to what I experienced also.
I love how Teya always approaches these topics that seem bizarre in a non-judgmental way and is genuinely curious about learning about them
Omg. Mrs. Preminger
"Attempted targeted dreaming" seems like another way to describe this phenomenon
When I was kid, 30 years ago, it was called lucid dreaming
Aka dream incubation
@@DuBstep115 lucid dreaming & shifting aren't the same. If you did any research you would know that
@@klmxcc They are, Tiktok wasn't a thing 30 years ago is the only difference. Rest of them are just lying
@DuBstep115 shifting isn't something that became in 2020. For decades, people have been shifting, and it's actually a practice in some cultures/religions.
A bit of an aside to the videos topic, but I really liked your point about how each social media platform is conducive to a certain kind of storytelling, and tiktok’s design for more personalized and showing-your-face kind of content is the reason that content is popular and creates content that is unique, like personal experiences of shifting. A really great point
Every time you talk about modern popular culture in tandem with belief, mythology, religion, etc., you handle it so well!
Literally makes me want to go to grad school to study media.
Even if you tell “shifters” about maladaptive daydreaming, some suffer from a degree of a delusion if grandeur as well. One once told me that, you would know if you’re shifting and that it’s not the same as lucid dreaming. It is. I’ve done it, I’ve had extremely immersive daydreams. The description for the “methods” are exactly the same as those to induce lucid dreams.
yeah it's literally the same methods lucid dreaming people talk about, that made me double take when I saw it
Its literally "a bunch of women in their 20s rediscover the concept of lucid dreaming but then when someone tells them its the same it's irrelevant because it's a man saying it"
The thing is this is dont think they lucid dream because some people shift completely awake? A lot of the people i have seen said they have done it awake.
@@kajamatousek247 i am also a woman in my 20’s, so they can’t even claim that, thankfully 😂 they just want something special for them, i guess.
@@akio5250 that’s immersive daydreaming.
I used to be a shifter back in 2020, I've known about it since 2017 but never really felt compelled to try it until then. I never succeeded but I was able to lucid dream and stuff.
I did fail an important exam once because I believed deeply that I would shift before the date lol.
I'm always a bit embarrassed to even talk about this online and would never say it irl because of those same reactions people have. I no longer believe in it but at the same time I would never ever be mean to anyone about it. I get the feeling.
I'm glad you're being so nice and understanding while covering the topic. This video is a nice watch tbh
ever since i started to shift, i was able to lucid dream, never shift but lucid was easier, i still have lucids to this day.
the bread at 11:44 specifically is bread from an austrian convenience store. this is a very unimportant fun fact
thanks bro, i love bread facts 😎 keep talking about bread
@@jamesHemlock sourdough is objectively the best bread and if you disagree you are factually incorrect
@@dusaprukiyathan1613 fr
thank u for this very important bread fact
@@dusaprukiyathan1613 focaccia bread has entered the chat
To add onto the "reality shifting is fanfiction" part, I believe there is a very large overlap between reality shifting and manifestation (listening to subliminals and affirmations come to mind as things both communities do, and some manifesters I've seen online believe that manifesting is a form of reality shifting--just to a slightly better reality rather than a fantasy one). When I see reality shifting content online (specifically success stories), it can be difficult to tell whether or not some of these creators were telling the truth or if they were posting these stories as a way to manifest that they will shift. So, in a way, some of the tiktoks might as well just be the creators' written fanfiction and not even their experience :'D
Oooh thats actually really interesting!! Id forgotten abt this but i do remember this narrative from back when i was... into shifting... but yeah the link between manifestation and shifting and their respective communities honestly should be studied
Edit for clarification: i mean purely cultural impact not the science behind if anyone is actually dating draco malfoy in some alternate universe
THIS
Ive often wondered that manifest theory too!!!! That’s what I chalk it up to a lot of the time
Ive often wondered that manifest theory too!!!! That’s what I chalk it up to a lot of the time
Ive often wondered that manifest theory too!!!! That’s what I chalk it up to a lot of the time
strange this was SUCH a good video. so sympathetic to those involved in the community, very well-researched, and makes such good hypotheses about modern storytelling and spirituality and the ways we cope with shit. i really resonated with your maladaptive daydreaming history and would also 100% have become a reality shifter if i grew up in this generation. i think anyone should be able to resonate with the idea that young people are struggling and looking for answers, or at least temporarily relief, and hope that the internet as a whole gets better at the whole “empathy for other human beings” thing
i was deep in the fictionkin community for years. i was an unmedicated psychotic in crisis and was surrounded by people who enabled me because my delusions made them feel validated. it was hell. it felt basically the roundup gang scene from toy story 2
that ain't their fault also being fictionkin doesnt have shit to do with shifting
Roundup gang in Toy Story 😂😂❤
@@purebones they're both internet-borne fandom-related spiritual movements based around the idea that fictional universes are to some degree real, with more hardline fictionkin specifically invoking multiverse theory. they're super similar.
@@TekSoda ok they both involve fictional things.. that has nothing to do with shifting itself because not every single shifting related thing has to do with fiction 💀
@@purebones you say "shifting itself" like the hypothetical concept of shifting is what's important, but like any spiritual movement how people actually practice is what's worth looking at imo
+ at the same time, not every otherkin-related thing has to do with fiction, but the fictional elements of both movements became quite popular, which itself is another distinct point of similarity.
they're also *specifically* similar in their capacity to cause that sort of harm. hugboxy environments built on those sorts of premises are dangerous to those with mental illness, & it's the community's responsibility to ensure that those people aren't sucked in. even in the video Kristeau themself mentions as such wrt dissociative disorders
CIA: spending millions of dollars researching brain power and how to consistently disassociate
Me: disassociating from childhood trauma for free
Beautifully researched, well-presented, and engaging as always. I'm also a old school maladaptive daydreamer, and this video provided me with context that I've been needing for over (I kid you not) four decades. Thank you very much for this!
thank you for the lovely video, strange! i actually have dissociation issues, primarily depersonalization and derealization. reality shifting is a very dangerous topic for me because of that. because even just the thought of my reality being wrong or nonexistent can become risky and leave me dissociated and unable to connect, reality shifting as an idea seems really... unhealthy. as someone who developed dissociative tendencies in young childhood to cope, i have to say, these aren't things you want to build structures for as a mechanism for coping. it isn't fun when you find it impossible to reconnect properly
I remember coming across something called "respawning subliminals", from what I understand these promote the idea that you can shift to your desired reality permanently by dying in this reality
It’s so sickening to think that some might be so desperate for an escape that they’d try this. I’m trying to be as empathetic as Strange was in her video, but you can’t deny that literally making yourself die to escape to another world is the dangerous extreme Strange was worried about.
reminds me of sol pais--she was a columbine fangirl who was into reality shifting and committed suicide in order to "shift" into her desired reality where she believed she belonged and could be with the shooter she was in love with. of course this is the extreme, but it just shows what it could lead to for some people.
The people in the shifting community also say you don't have to die to respawn.
Eh the dying part is actually misinfo u can leave a "fill in" which is just a clone, u dont have to die
@@helloamanda04That was one heck of a sentence. I have so many questions.
Not to try an invalidate Kristen, but you can feel the breeze in a lucid dream. I've actually done it before to check if I was dreaming. I'd already figured out I was dreaming and as a test decided to go outside of the store I was in and see if I could feel the breeze on my face. I did, and proceeded to think I wasn't dreaming, I even had a conversation with my best friend about it in the dream, only to wake up. It was definitely not a reality shift, I was actively able to control it when I was engaging with the lucid part and I remember using that ability to put a bunch of cats at the cheese stand in the store.
as a depressed someone who has a lot of vivid dreams that can feel like they last years...i think this is mostly just sad people dressing up the fact that sometimes the sleeping fantasy is better than reality. maybe pretending what they imagine exists somewhere is more comforting than acknowledging its just wishful thinking.
I used to be really into Shifting back when it gained this much popularity and I'm gonna be honest, it damaged me... a lot.
I was very unhappy with myself and how things were going at that time and was desperate to escape my current life through this practice. The only things I got out of it were just very vivid dreams and my depression got much much worse.
I put whole days, weeks, if not months into trying to succeed and my life only centered around Shifting. I was very detached from reality and myself.
After getting therapeutic help two years ago, I finally came to terms with who I am. I'm doing a lot better now and am quite happy with how life is atm. But I still suffer from heavy derealisation episodes from time to time that started when I obsessed over Shifting.
I don't want to say that it's an overall dangerous practice but it can get unhealthy for people like me, who see it as a solution to not have to deal with their current life anymore.
I highly recommend getting into lucid dreaming if you haven't yet. All the same experiences and it's healthy
Lucidity practices can also help with the derealization
I had the same experience but didn’t realize I was depressed until after I stopped. I recently came across the “scripts” I wrote and nearly lost my mind, because it illustrated who I would lose myself to become. I agree that this practice is not inherently bad, but it is a questionable form of escapism and not a good idea for people with depressive tendencies.
I remember being so desperate to escape reality I started making up reality in my head when I was a child around 10. Specifically my legal guardians at the time would make me sit on the floor like a dog as punishment for sometimes hours. They had this glass sliding door and I would stare at my reflection sitting on the floor, almost go into a trance and imagine myself getting up and walking through the glass to the other side of it. Then my brain could just block out everything around me for hours on end. I actually remember when my gaurdians figured out I was doing it, it didn't concern them but pissed them off because punishment just no longer had any effect on me. Thankfully I escaped that house as a teenager. The daydreaming thing never truly went away but I didn't really have to use it like a reality blocker ever again. It took me something like 10-15 years after having that happened to get a diagnosis for PTSD and I never ever even anticipated that I had it. I thought I was just insane.
@piperm24, did you also write the most depressing backstory so it would justify your intense numbness and desolation?
My was so over-the-top I kinda laughed looking back, but still very worried for 13y me
So, I don't tend to comment a lot on TH-cam, but this subject really got to me and I remember having similar thoughts when I was first made aware of shifting a few years ago. (Long text, tldr at the end, but I genuinely feel like this is important to talk about in depth)
I used to daydream a lot, turns out it was what you and others have already mentioned; maladaptive daydreaming (which as far as I know isn't an actual diagnosis, but the term does describe something some people experience). And by daydreaming, I mean, A LOT, like 8 hours in a row, for multiple days, every free moment I got, a lot. It was a coping mechanism (huh, imagining yourself as a man for hours every day isn't a very cis woman thing to do, woops), and actually impacted my life for the worst as I dissociated more and more from actual reality and lost touch with the world. (I'm much better now, btw, transitioning will do that to a guy.)
My point is, this shifting business feels very much like that to me, down to the tendency to do it before bed. From my short interaction with maladaptive daydreaming and the surrounding community, mostly on Reddit, a lot of people base these daydreams around fiction like it is for shifting, and it's often some form of self-insert fan fiction type deal, where you're a ''better'' version of yourself. Harry Potter was one I personally indulged in a lot, so the JK stuff really hurt, and is what poked my curiosity for shifting.
Anyway, the state of mind you find yourself in while daydreaming for a long time reminds me of the way shifters describe their experience, everything feels so real, time passes at a strange ratio and so much more. For a long time daydreaming was the only way I could allow myself to feel my own emotions, so this ''world'' I created in my mind felt more real than actual physical reality, where I felt I wasn't allowed to feel my own emotions. I would await the moment I finally got to daydream and treated reality as the wait time between sessions.
To me, the only difference between maladaptive daydreaming and shifting is the metaphysical explanation that claims these daydreams are real (tho alternate realities). I always knew none of my daydreams were real, I knew it was me making up shit, despite how deeply I felt it, and that's exactly what worries me.
It's so damn easy to lose yourself in that, these daydreams are whatever you want them to, from sweet and comforting, to dark and just straight up fucked up. It's a world of your own making where you are free to explore ideas and feelings you would never in the real world, it's a place where you are safe and in control, which could be good, in moderation. I lost hours, every day, for YEARS, doing it, hours I could have spent improving my actual life, but it felt good, I loved it, and I couldn't stop. The knowledge it was all made up was the only thing tethering me to reality; I can't daydream if my life is fucked, I need my education and a job to survive, I still needed to put effort into physical reality. But the idea that these are alternate realities, and if you bring these ''clones'' into it, holy shit does that scare me. You could spend your entire life on automatic, only waiting for your time to ''shift'' and never truly connecting with the real world and improving your life, because it doesn't matter, because you can shift into ''another reality", one with as much value as the one you're physically in.
And it scares me because if I was a few years younger and had the same experiences in this new time, I know I would fall for it. I would believe these are real, that I'm actually seeing another reality, and as fucked up as this reality was, I loved it. I would keep ignoring my actual problems and keep living in the delusions.
I understand the belief, and just like religion, I don't care what people believe and what they do, but it worries me that it's become a trend, because it's an open door for people with a genuine disorder to justify it.
TL;DR: Shifting is just immersive daydreaming with extra steps, and that's worrying me because holy fuck.
**Btw, daydreaming in general is totally normal and healthy, it's very much a human thing to do, it becomes "maladaptive" when it is detrimental to your life like any other coping mechanism that is healthy until you abuse it.
I’m really glad you’re doing better now and congrats on transitioning
Honestly this is too long. I’m glad you are doing better. 😊
Thank you for taking the time to write this comment and for sharing your experience, it really made me think and I can understand why you're worried for others when it comes to reality shifting. I'm really glad you're doing better now and congratulations on transitioning, that's awesome! 🙂
"Trying to read a clock or trying to read anything, you typically can't do that in a dream"
"Internal monologues that I normally have, I just can't think to that higher degree while lucid dreaming"
I can both read and think in my dreams what do you mean others can't?? Is it not common?
Just in case you misunderstood, it's not that most people lose the ability to understand words or clocks in dreams, but often in dreams if you look at a clock once and then immediately look back, it'll change time dramatically because your brain doesn't create good continuity in dreams. Same with reading, you can look at a page in a dream and read the words but if you look back often it'll be completely different and not make any sense. That's what people mean when they say you can't read words or clocks in a dream.
i can read in my dreams too, but often it can be a bit wibbly and hard to remember when i make up. really its just that dreaming is very, hm, fluid? hard to hold onto, so complex behaviors like reading or telling time where you need to pin down exact facts can be tricky
@@alexanderreynolds6018I can read words/sentences in a dream the same way I do in reality. Just last night I had a dream in which I was reading an ad for an apartment on a computer. Then I read it again on paper.
It’s strange to think others can’t.
I've never been given the opportunity to read in my dreams. And my dreams are almost always in 3rd person so I don't hear any thoughts. And clocks are a nightmare, I learned about clocks not working in dreams and my brain has consistently shown me clocks and the time just keeps moving on them and I can't pinpoint the time so I get frustrated. The other night, I had a dream and I needed to text someone and couldn't figure out how to text them or work a phone camera but I could write my message in a notes app and have someone else tell that person for me.
@@byrdalish half the time my dreams are third person, and I swear to god I always run like a little roblox guy, like I have no control and I constantly fall off stairs and stuff.
ive been a maladaptive daydreamer since i was a kid-- as young as i can remember, i was doing it. i grew up really lonely, and being in my head 24/7 in my own world didn't help my socializing skills. now, in my mid-20s, it's still such a huge part of my life to help combat the crippling loneliness i still feel. i can't imagine a future where i don't do it.
Well, know that you aren’t alone in having these feelings. ‘Cause I thought the same and still think the same too.
It’s better than talking to an AI pretending to be your friend while It scrapes data off of your via conversation to seem more human
it's actually really healing watching people experience the same weird self-discovery process that i did. i was a very isolated teen with no access to mental health care, and i still cringe at all of the weird justifications i found for what turned out to be anxiety induced maladaptive daydreaming. it helps me feel a little less alone when i see others talk about their own experiences.
I actually permanently damaged my hearing bc of maladaptive daydreaming. All throughout middle school (age 11 to 13) I would go outside, go to the swingset in our yard and swing while daydreaming to extremely loud undertale remixes on cheap earbuds. I did this almost everyday for 3 years, until the swingset literally caved in on itself. (Thankfully I wasnt on it when it did) I didnt go deaf or anything like that, but my hearing has noticeably suffered since and my ears hurt like hell sometimes too. Technically it was the music, but I would pretty much disassociate for hours so... yeah. Listen to music at a reasonable volume while maladaptive daydreaming, and maybe do it inside your house. Keep yourself safe lmao
Thanks. Hope it recovers over time. Good advice ; take care of your ears, folks
have i never had a unique experience in my life
I did literally the same thing but to Evanescence and on the occasional, more joyful day, pocket full of sunshine on repeat.
oh god I've always thought to be the only one doing this :o it lasted for years for me and became an addiction (I think it was almost pathological, I was mistreated and needed to escape reality). I could swing under rain, snow, thunder, extreme heat and it lasted sometimes for 2 to 3 hours. Always with loud music to daydream.
Same...Jesus.
the hardest part of maladaptive daydreaming is coming to terms with the fact that what you are dreaming of will never be real, it can never be true. And that fact is often time incredibly crushing. I see shifting as just deluding yourself into believing it really did happen, so you will never have to come to that realization
first time hearing about this, it seems like a wonderful way to self induce depression and foster a deep dissatisfaction with life
Wow holy shit
You can believe whatever you want, and if you think something Is bad for you that's absolutely fine and you shouldn't do It, but its like saying people shouldn't listen to sad music cause they're gonna get depressed💀 its all about how you handle It, its about each person and knowing if something Is going to be healthy for you or not. For example my friend absolutely loves extremely saturated clothes and has a very very colorful bedroom. I like It, but i know i couldnt live there cause id feel like i can't breathe cause there's Just too much going on. I find It actually quite interesting how most people that dislike shifting also seem to perceive shifters as a bunch of stupid people and its actually pretty annoying, cause most of them dont even try to talk to someone in the community and figure shit out. We do our thing and have already collectively agreed on most things like the idea of a clone being bs but for you to know that, there would be need for communication and there clearly isn't any.
@Rehtomruoy How can someone type so much but say nothing at all.
@@beemomma4641 idk did you read It? Cause like letters are usually meant to kinda fuse together when you read them and that's when they start to make sense. Try again let me know if you get It 🌼🦋🧚♂️
@@Rehtomruoythey never implied that shifters are stupid, they just said that shifting sounds like it could become a destructive coping mechanism by making someone dissatisfied with their life and encouraging them to escape into a better reality instead of learning to cope with the reality they actually live in
I thought shifting was just a fancy version of dreaming. Like. It was just a way to control your dreams
TBH I think it largely is.
it is, people think that Iucid dreams means that they can control everything. No, most lucid dreams are uncontrolable. We are aware we are dreaming but cant control most of whats happening. Its literally just Iucid dreaming
it is they just don't know that😭😭
@@botanicalitus4194yeah it can be incredibly hard to control. On the rare occasions I lucid dream I can only slightly influence it. Though oddly I can wake myself up when I want to
yeah, i'm not convinced that lucid dreaming isn't at least partially involved. Sometimes I have lucid dreams, and i can't suddenly make things appear or control things, but i can think like in real life and make decisions. Like, I'll have recurring dreams where I decide to take different actions because I remember what happened the previous time. It feels like I'm a natural resident in the dream's "world," but at the same time I'm aware on some level that it's a dream.
I saw an amazing post that put all my questions about shifting to rest and it went something like this:
If teenagers on the internet have found a way to prove the multiverse theory, and to go outside of our solar system from the comfort of your own home, then scientists and the government would care. But they do not.
That's so true. Just like something I read about someone who said we can't have a flat earth bc if we did they'd try to make money off of it. They'd find the edges and make an attraction out of it lol.
@@MissesPeanutButter imagine bungee jumping off the edge of the earth
hi strange my youtube recommended is no where near your type of content but your content has a special spot in my heart because you are one of the most grounded, open-minded, kind people I’ve ever heard speak publicly.
i study the psychology of rationality, and i really liked your comments about how mystical the world of technology is to most people.
human brains weren’t meant to live in a world this big, so a lot of crazy things happen when we are this overloaded with information.
beyond this video, i like that you take concepts that people would normally compartmentalize away as a silly trend and show us the benefits of giving the small things a little more thought.
it’s not a veritasium video that baits you in with a specific topic to teach you a general idea; it’s a strange video about reality shifting. you’re just really good at critical thinking and it’s so so so so so so valuable.