Permashifting: What It Means, Is It Real, Can You Come Back?

Most shifters plan a visit to their desired reality (DR). Permashifting is the plan to move there for good instead of returning to your current reality (CR). It is a belief from the shifting community that nobody has shown to be real, and even many shifters say nothing in shifting is truly permanent, since you could always shift back. So we think of permashifting as an idea worth understanding rather than a goal to chase. Enjoy your DR as often as you want and hold on to your way home. And if the thought of never coming back feels like relief, please read the part of this guide written for that feeling first.

New to terms like DR and script? Our beginner’s guide to reality shifting covers them. For everything else that can go wrong with shifting, from lost sleep to feeling unreal after a session, our safety guide Is Reality Shifting Dangerous? goes through it all.

What Does Permashifting Mean?

To permashift is to move your awareness to a DR and settle there, with little or no plan to return. The word joins “permanent” and “shifting”, and you will also see it written as perma-shifting.

One of the most liked explanations on Reddit compares it to moving house.

Your CR is the old home and your DR is the new one. You unpack, paint the walls and make memories in the new place. But the old house is still standing, and you could drop by whenever you liked.

People plan to permashift to all sorts of places:

• a better CR, which is this same life with a few details rewritten (a family that gets along, an exam that went well)
• a year in the past, often one they remember as happier, before a choice they now regret
• a waiting room they treat as a new home base, visiting other DRs from there
• a fictional world, such as Hogwarts or a favorite anime

○ Permashifting vs Shifting

Ordinary shifting is a round trip. You go to your DR, and sooner or later you wake up in your own bed or say your safe word and come back.

Permashifting is the same trip, planned one way.

Many experienced shifters will tell you the gap is smaller than it sounds. In their view, every reality stays within reach, so a “permanent” shift is really a very long stay that you could end whenever you chose.

(If you found this page from a fictionkin community, you may know “permashift” as a lasting change in how someone relates to a fictional character. That meaning has nothing to do with reality shifting.)

○ Permashifting vs Respawning

These two words get mixed up all the time, and you can see why once you know their history.

Today, respawning usually means being reborn into your DR. Instead of waking up there as you are now, you would start that life from the very beginning, and many people who plan to respawn also plan to forget this life. Permashifting keeps you as you are, memories and all.

On older pages you may find the words used the other way round. Psychologists who wrote about shifting in 2021 used “respawning” for cutting ties with your CR for good and leaving a clone behind. Some of our own guides used it that way too, so if an older page says respawning, it usually means what this page calls permashifting.

Business Insider also reported in 2021 on a small fringe that links respawning to dying.

So, plainly: dying is not a shift, and nobody comes back from it to live in another reality, or anywhere else. If that thought has been on your mind, please go to the section for when staying forever sounds like relief now, or straight to free help that answers any hour.

How Shifters Believe Permashifting Works

Ask “how do I permashift?” in a shifting community and you will get the same answer almost every time. There is no special method.

Shifters use the same reality shifting methods they use for any other shift, with a script. The only difference is the intention they hold, which is to stay.

That is as far as this guide goes on the how. We do not share script lines for staying forever or for forgetting this life, and the safe word section below explains why.

○ Your CR Self and the Clone Idea

The first thing most people want to know is what happens to the “you” in this reality.

Clone believers say a copy of you carries on here. It goes to school, eats dinner and answers your messages, so, they say, nobody here notices any change.

Other shifters reject the clone idea altogether. In their view there is only one you, and your awareness can only be in one place at a time. Your life here keeps going while you are tuned in somewhere else, and if you ever shift back, your memory catches up on what happened.

Both are beliefs, and neither is something you or anyone else can test. But notice what the two camps agree on.

Your body never leaves your bed, and your life here carries on.

○ Safe Words, Time Ratios and Why We Keep the Way Back

Most shifters script a way home. The usual one is a safe word, a word or phrase that, once you say it, returns you to your CR straight away. Many also script how time passes, so that a long visit there passes quickly here.

Some permashifters do the opposite, as you may have seen online. They leave the safe word out, write that they can never come back, or plan to wipe their memories of this life.

We will not share lines like those.

A script is a set of instructions you give your own mind. A line saying you can never return does not lock any door in the multiverse. What it can do is leave you feeling trapped, in a session that turns frightening or on a day when life feels heavy.

So keep your safe word, keep your memories and keep your way back, however long you plan to stay. To write them into a script, follow the safety section of our reality shifting script template.

Is Permashifting Real?

Shifting itself has never been shown to happen, so permashifting has even less behind it. The psychologists who reviewed shifters’ posts in 2021 placed shifting among immersive daydreams, the vivid kind people get lost in, and compared its methods to self-hypnosis.

For what research has and has not found so far, read the science behind shifting realities.

Permashifting has one extra problem, and you may have spotted it already. Anyone who really stayed in their DR would never come back to tell you about it. So every permashifting story you read was written by someone who returned, or who has not left yet.

When one shifter asked whether they would ever know if a friend succeeded, the top reply was honest about it. Probably not.

So stories cannot settle it for you either way. You can hold the belief if it means something to you. Just do not let go of anything in this life because of it.

Can You Come Back From Permashifting?

Inside the belief, yes, and most shifters say so. When a newer shifter asked this on Reddit, the replies said people come back the same way they left, with intention, a safe word or their usual method.

Outside the belief, the answer is even simpler. Your body, your bed and your life never left.

Whatever you experience in a session, you wake in your own room, and this life is still here for you to pick up again.

If getting stuck is what worries you, write your safe word into every script. Shifters who plan very long stays keep theirs too. For every way shifters come home, and what to do if a word feels slow, see our guide to shifting back to your CR.

Will My Family Miss Me?

This question stops a lot of would-be permashifters, and it comes up on Reddit again and again. Will my family notice? Will I miss them? Am I selfish for wanting to go?

Most shifters believe your family will not notice anything, because your CR self carries on. Some plan to script their family, or their pet, into their DR so nobody is left behind.

Others say one person here, like a little sister, is the reason they stay.

We think that worry deserves to be listened to. If you love someone here enough to feel guilty about leaving, that love is real, and it is happening in this life.

Even permashifters tend to say you should look after this life while you wait. In a Reddit thread about living here in the meantime, one of the top answers said there is no sense in leaving a wrecked life behind for whichever version of you stays.

Another person in that thread had stopped looking after their health and their friends, because they were leaving anyway. They found it only left them stuck in a rut.

○ Is Permashifting Like Dying?

No. In the belief, permashifting changes where your awareness is, while your body and your life here carry on. Nothing about it is meant to end a life.

If part of what draws you to permashifting is the idea of not being here at all, that is not really a shifting question. It is a feeling, and it is one to talk about today, with a person who can help.

The free lines that answer at any hour are further down this page, whenever you need them.

Why Do People Want to Permashift?

You will hear every kind of reason. Some people love their DR so much that visits are not enough. Some want adventure, a fandom world, a partner they have scripted or a life with no fear of death.

Others want this life with the hard parts fixed, a second try at a year that went wrong, or a way out of exams, a hard home, illness, grief or the news.

When we read two of the biggest Reddit threads asking permashifters why, about two in three of the reasons people gave were about getting away from pain. About one in four named depression, anxiety, another mental illness or abuse at home. Treat that as a rough count from our own reading.

Saul Rosenthal, a psychologist in Boston, put the lesson kindly when he told Business Insider that “people who are trying to respawn are telling us something about what’s wrong with their lives”, and that we should listen and help them find what they need “in this life”.

None of this means that wanting to permashift makes someone ill. Many permashifters push back hard on that idea, especially people living with long-term illness, and they have a point.

Wanting a better life is human. What matters is whether you are running toward your DR or away from something here.

○ Running Toward or Running Away?

Researchers who study escapism describe two kinds. In one, you escape toward something, doing an activity because it adds joy and new experiences to your life. In the other, you escape away from something, doing it to push down thoughts and feelings that hurt.

In a 2022 study of recreational runners, the first kind went with higher satisfaction with life and the second kind with lower. The researchers also point out that pushing bad feelings down tends to dull the good ones too.

Your shifting can be either kind, so try this private check, with nobody watching.

Picture your DR and notice the first thing you feel. If it is excitement about what you will do there (the people, the places, the adventures), you are mostly running toward something.

That is a hobby, and a lovely one.

If it is relief about what you will stop feeling here, like the pressure, the loneliness or the pain, you are mostly running away. That does not make your DR wrong. It means the hurt needs care here, from people who can actually help.

You may find it is a bit of both. Be honest with yourself about which one is louder.

○ When You Are Grieving

Some of the saddest permashifting posts you will find are about a person. Shifters write about a reality where a brother, a mother or a partner is still alive, or about going back to a year before everything went wrong.

If you have felt that, it is grief.

The NHS describes bargaining as one of the stages people often go through, when guilt brings up questions like “If only I had done more”. It also says grief can follow other losses, such as a breakup or leaving the place you called home.

Your DR can be a place to feel close to someone you have lost. It cannot be the only place.

Talk about the person you miss with a friend, someone in your family or a counselor. If your low mood lasts more than two weeks, or keeps getting worse, see a doctor, as the NHS advises.

○ When You Live With Illness or Pain

You may want to permashift because your body hurts every day, or because an illness has taken the life you used to have. If so, the wish makes complete sense, and nobody has the right to judge you for it.

We would only ask one thing.

Pain that has become too much to bear, physical or emotional, is one of the recognized warning signs of suicide. Samaritans also names painful or disabling illness among the common reasons people contact them.

So tell your doctor or care team how heavy it has become. That is part of your care, not a failure, and they cannot help with what they do not know about.

If Staying Forever Sounds Like Relief

For some people, “I want to permashift” is the only way they have found to say “I do not want to be here.” If that is you, you are not in trouble and you are not alone.

Please keep reading. Or, if you would rather talk to someone right now, skip straight to the free lines.

Wishing you could disappear, or not wake up in this life again, matters even if you have no plan to act on it. Researchers call the wish to be dead “passive” suicidal thoughts. A review of 86 studies found them common, and tied to many of the same risks as active thoughts of suicide.

So if you have had them, they deserve a real conversation.

Wanting a DR is not a warning sign. These are, and here is how they can sound in shifting talk:

• saying goodbye before a planned permashift, sending a “last message” to a friend or living a day as if it were your final one here
• handing out belongings you love, since you will not need them where you are going
• feeling like a burden, or that everyone would be better off if you left
• feeling trapped or empty, or that there is no reason left to stay in this life
• letting your health, school or friends slide because they are your CR self’s problem now
• taking dangerous risks to force a shift, or turning to alcohol or drugs more than before

The US National Institute of Mental Health says to get help as soon as possible when signs like these appear, especially if they are new or getting stronger. That goes for you, and for a friend.

○ What to Say When You Reach Out

The word permashifting can stay out of it completely. You do not have to explain shifting or defend it.

One honest sentence is enough to start: “I have been wishing I could leave my life and never come back.” Say it out loud, type it, or write it on a note and hand it over.

Tell someone who can do something with it, like a parent, a favorite teacher, the school counselor, your doctor or one of the lines below. If the first person does not react well, try another.

The NHS puts it kindly: there is no right or wrong way to talk about suicidal feelings, and starting the conversation is what matters.

If phoning feels too scary, you still have options. Childline suggests dialing and saying nothing at first, just to see what calling is like, or using its online chat instead. Shout works entirely by text, and you only share what you feel comfortable sharing. In the US, 988 answers texts as well as calls.

○ Free Help, Any Hour

If anyone, you included, is in danger at this moment, phone your emergency number first. In the US that number is 911. In the UK it is 999, or you can go straight to A&E. In India it is 112.

Every line below is free and confidential. As Find A Helpline says, you do not need to be in a crisis to reach out, and you can get in touch simply because you need to talk.

• 988, in the United States. Text or call 988, or chat online at 988lifeline.org. The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline has counselors there 24/7, every day of the year.
• 116 123, in the UK and in Ireland. Calls to Samaritans are free from any phone, even with no credit left, the number does not appear on your phone bill, and someone is there to answer day or night.
• 0800 1111, in the UK if you are under 19. Childline is there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by phone or 1-2-1 online chat.
• 85258, in the UK by text. Text the word SHOUT to start a conversation with a trained Shout volunteer, any time of day or night.
• 14416 or 1-800 891 4416, in India. The government’s toll-free mental health line is called Tele MANAS. After an automated menu, the line calls you back and a trained counselor talks to you first, so do not worry if your phone rings. It runs 24/7 and offers help in 20 Indian languages. The call itself is not recorded.
• Outside these countries, Find A Helpline can point you to more than 1,700 helplines in over 175 countries, whether you would rather call, text or chat.

When you are ready for something gentler to read, our guide to finding strength and hope when life gets hard is a good next step.

If a Friend Says They’re Permashifting

People on Reddit ask whether they would ever know if a friend succeeded. Inside the belief, your friend’s life here carries on, so you would still see them at school or online.

The more useful question is whether your friend is okay.

Plenty of people talk about permashifting the way others talk about moving to Japan one day, and many of them are fine. But if your friend talks about it alongside any of the warning signs above, such as goodbyes, giving things away or saying nothing here matters, take it seriously.

You do not need to believe in shifting, or argue against it, to help. The 988 Lifeline’s advice is to be direct, listen, accept the feelings you hear, and never debate whether those feelings are right or lecture about the value of life.

For a shifting friend, that means leaving the question of whether DRs are real alone. Ask about the feeling instead.

It is okay to ask straight out: “When you talk about permashifting, are you having thoughts of suicide?” It feels scary to say. But a review of the research found no sign that asking about suicide puts the idea in someone’s head, and some sign that talking about it may ease those thoughts.

Then listen. BeThe1To, the campaign behind the 988 Lifeline’s five action steps, suggests asking “How do you hurt?” and “How can I help?”, and helping your friend find their own reasons for living rather than pushing yours.

If your friend mentions a plan to hurt themselves, the 988 Lifeline is clear that you should not keep it secret, even if you promised. Today, bring in an adult you can rely on, like a parent or the school counselor, and help your friend reach one of the lines above, or the emergency number if they are in danger at this moment.

Then check in the next day, and the day after. Following up is one of BeThe1To’s five steps for a reason.

Look after yourself too. Supporting a friend through this is heavy, and the 988 Lifeline encourages you to get support of your own if it brings up hard feelings.

Staying Safe Around Permashifting Talk Online

Permashifting talk draws in a few people you should never trust.

• Strangers asking for your details. Shifters on Reddit once warned each other about an account that messaged people planning to permashift and asked for their full name and address. Never share those, or your school, with anyone you met online. Block and report anyone who asks.
• Anyone selling a shift. Now and then an account offers to “pull” you into your DR for money, even with a special price for permashifting. Nobody can shift you, and charging for it is a scam.
• “Forever” and respawn subliminals. Skip any track that promises a one-way trip or says you will forget this life. Our guide to shifting subliminals lists the kinds of subs we steer clear of, and why.
• Substance shortcuts. Now and then a post suggests taking supplements or other substances to force a lucid dream and permashift through it. Please leave them alone. If dream shifting interests you, our guide to the lucid dream method covers how shifters try it with nothing but sleep and practice.

Should You Permashift? Our Honest Answer

We would say no to forever, and yes to long visits.

Nobody has shown that permashifting works, and it makes little sense to decide “forever” about something that may never happen. Long visits with a way back give you everything a permashift promises (the DR, the people, the adventure) without betting this life on it.

If your main reason is getting away from pain, the pain deserves care here first. Our safety guide explains when to step back from shifting, and the free lines in the help section are there for the heavier days.

If what you really want is this life with some things going right, our guide to choosing your desired reality has ideas for that too.

So visit your DR as often as you like. Then come back, eat something good and message a friend.

This life is the one you get to keep coming back to.

Permashifting FAQ