shifting can be harmful, let’s talk about that!
i’m back and thought i’d talk about this. so disclaimers, obviously shifting doesn’t have to impact everyone the same, therefore the ‚can’ and not ‚is’ in the caption. this is not just my experience but also the experience i have seen a couple shifters share recently and i think this topic is worth attention.
this post is in no means a debate on topics of the limitlessness of shifting, but the limitlessness shifting inevitably advertises causes a lot of shifters to get lost in their DRs, even when they aren’t there. you obsess over your script and fantasise about your DR with every passing hour and try and try and try and fail. so then you obsess over the failure and your high school years pass you by, opportunities and goals pass you by, help passes you by, all because in your mind it doesn’t matter.
why? because sooner or later you will shift.
and so days, weeks, months and years pass you by and you still use that same excuse. you don’t even notice that that excuse is what makes you feel worse. that if you step away for a moment, and look at where you are, you’ll realise all this is manageable in baby steps and that you can’t hide behind the „inevitable success of shifting” forever. or you will just miss out on more.
what starts out innocent and fun turns into torture and a chore that bores into you restlessly. it starts as a side hustle, a practise you do when you have the time and it slowly becomes your life, so much that you put this life away. but it’s hard to quit. it’s hard to quit because this — shifting — has been your only hope for too long, it was meant to be your way out. your way to enter a world where you’re loved and you love yourself and things are different in so many ways.
shifting turns into escapism, you turn to it for answers any time life hurts or gets hard and you chose to ignore everything until you can’t. oh, well, you’ll just shift the next time and the next time and the next time. at some point it stopped being about fun and your dr and those fun worlds and started to be about distraction and distance from this one, without even needing to leave your CR, because you immerse yourself in your DR through other’s experiences and scripting and actually, you stopped trying long ago — or if you do try, you try like 10 times during one day and feel more drained and more like a failure with each attempt.
the thing is you have a life here, even if you plan to permashift, you still have a life here. you have family, friends and if you don’t then you have you. this version of you still deserves to be loved and taken care of. shifting isn’t an escape from hardship — there’s hardship everywhere. and using shifting to escape your problems or feelings doesnt help, it doesn’t solve anything, it just stomps them down for a moment, until they bubble up again, triggering you once more.
shifting realities isn’t a way to cope with life, it won’t fix this reality and it won’t fix how you feel. you turning away from bad moments or stress and turning to shifting isn’t coping — it’s unhealthy escapism that often masks other underlying issues like mental health issues or low self esteem. if you ignore your feelings and don’t process them, neglect your duties and withdraw socially when feeling bad and go to shift (because it doesn’t matter you can just shift away) and this becomes a pattern then shifting has already turned into something unhealthy for you.
now not to leave anyone hanging, i’d recommend: stepping away from shifting, try once a week or two weeks and then lessen the amount to none, focus on your life, focus on your work, school, friends, go see a therapist or start a hobby, when coming back to shifting after a while (like a couple months+ i’d say, because your life won’t change overnight) set ground rules: if scripting a body claim makes you insecure and makes you hate yourself more don’t do that, if trying more than once a week, with the way you live your life, makes you exhausted then don’t try more than once a week. don’t let shifting and lives you haven’t lived overshadow the one you have. even if you end up permashifting — it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be taken care of and loved properly in the process of getting to your DR.