Micro Shift Experience

[wolfdaughter]

I know that the Therian community is already inundated with terms, but micro shift popped into my head after having a sudden, intense, and very short shift that lasted only a few seconds. Of course, no one is obligated to use this term in the larger community. It’s more for describing my own personal experiences, but I thought I would share in case others have experienced similar shifts.

I guess I have been experiencing these for a while, perhaps for years, but the shifts have never affected me the way that this one did today. I was kind of taken off guard, because I had just started my shift at work. It made the interaction with my first customer a bit awkward. I consider myself to be a Vacillant Therian. The human and wolf parts of myself are fairly well integrated, but the wolf parts of me can definitely, without a doubt, become more pronounced as I’ve experienced today.

What brought on this micro shift? A bee. I noticed a bee on the driver’s side door in the delivery van as I pulled up to the first destination of the day. I opened the door, stepped out, and began trying to encourage this bee to take flight with gentle nudges from a pen. The bee buzzed up and down the glass, causing me to flinch and jump back a bit. It didn’t fly away. I needed to move forward in order to give it another gentle nudge. The bee began to fly again, and I needed to hop back again to get out of its path of flight as it finally flew away from the door and the van. This back and forth jumping motion and the interaction with the bee was interpreted by my mind as the playful hops and snaps you might see a canine make at a bug. As I walked towards the residence, I felt very light and playful, but quickly needed to get my brain back into human mode. This sudden change requirement left me feeling a bit foggy-headed for a while afterwards, and I really had to force myself to concentrate on the job. Thankfully, after about 20-30 minutes the fogginess lifted and my focus returned to normal.

I’m very good at hiding my wolfishness, but the types of jobs that I’ve had over the years has meant that wolf gets suppressed more than is really advisable for myself. So, these micro shifts seem to be how I am adjusting. When I have a spare moment between driving and dropping of packages during the current job, wolf is jumping out to play when possible.

Has anyone else experienced something similar to this?

[wolfvanzandt]

It's been so long since I've shifted......y'know.

But the "mind interpreting a motion" thing reminded me that, anytime I'm in pain or sick, my mind evidently reads that as an attack and my body wants to be aggressive and I start musking heavily. I went on a long grueling hike yesterday - I went to work with one of my House brothers and I started walking from his workplace. I got back to the trailhead with a lot of time to spare so I just recuperated for a while. While there, I overheard a woman who was training for an Iron-Man triathlon describe one of the trails I had taken as "brutal". That made me feel better for feeling brutalized. I hope my House brother was not as put off by my smell on the trip home as I was. I felt like my clothes were glued to me.

[Lunar Flare]

I experience micro shifts all the time. Its not a bad term.

On the topic about having too many terms, I somewhat agree. I think the issues with our terminology is not the amount of terms, but the semantics used to describe the terms, especially when it comes to shifting. In my perspective, there is only one shift, but many possible symptoms (for a lack of better terms) of shifting. I think the term micro shift works fine, as it just describes shifting measured in volume, and could be lumped into the same category of berserker shift which is more based on intensity. But things like shadow shifting, dream shifting, astral shifting, phantom shifting and so on... those are just different facets of shifting rather than a completely different type of shift. I would love to see the community consolidate these terms to just Shifting, and then sub categories of shifting phenomena.

I also have another theory about shifting, its a bit complicated and I dont want to go all into it right now, but its the basic concept of how domestication by family and society makes us fracture our "wolf" mind and human mind into separate things. We try to suppress it as to not scare people and loose our jobs and stuff, but the more you suppress it, the more the need for it to come out, and not always in pleasant ways. However, the older wolf therians in particular get (other animal types dont seem to be hit as hard as pack type animals in my experience), the more acceptance of this side of themselves they become, and the more intergrated the wolf and human mind become. The more integrated, the less one shifts because you are now reaching homeostasis to how our minds are supposed to work.

So in short, I see shifting as a symptom of a fragmented mind due to social domestication.

[wolfvanzandt]

Frankly, I agree with you about why we shift. A little research might clarify that.

I do believe that there are at least two kinds of shift. It seems to me that some things we call Therian shifts are not Therian at all, because other people have the same altered states in pretty much the same way. For instance, a berserker shift isn't specific to therianthropy. It's an extreme form of the flight-or-fight syndrome. Mix it with therianthropy and it might look different but it's the same mechanisms. But a shift into a Wereside doesn't happen to everyone.

[wolfdaughter]

I like the idea of consolidating shifts and creating sub-categories. I would like to see the community moving more in that kind of direction. But very few of the younger generations seem to care about really moving the community forward. I haven't seen a good serious discussion like this one in quite some time. Although, I can kind of see the other side. Would sub-categories just be over-thinking it? Would that complicate things even more?

I also agree that the social domestication could be a cause for why we shift. Probably not the only cause. Maybe I will have more on this later. Need to head to work soon.

[wolfvanzandt]

This site tends to be a little different from the typical Were site. I've noticed that most of them are places for Weres to talk about their particular situations in an anonymous environment. This site started out as a place to build the Were community, and especially the off-line community, so there tends to be more discussion about "us" instead of "me". That might be why there's so much less traffic here than, for instance, the Werelist. Weres can't start focusing on "us" until they see themselves as a part of the bigger picture and so many Weres are isolated from the larger community.