What is Reality Drift? dimensions & definitions of reality
Consensus
Somatic
Relational
Temporal
Symbolic
Intentional / Liminal
The Intentional Orbit sits between grounded reality and drift — not rupture, but deliberate loosening. Psychedelics, hypnosis, deep immersion, digital glitch, and trance all temporarily suspend the consensus frame without collapsing it. The key variable is return: intentional states have an exit ramp. What makes them liminal rather than lost is the capacity — and the container — to come back.
Grounded Orbit
shared · verifiable · embodied
consensus
Shared World
Agreed-upon facts, verifiable events, physical laws. The baseline we can check against together — the newspaper, the body, the clock.
chronic misinformation, epistemic overload, algorithmic reality fragmentation
somatic
Body Knowledge
What the nervous system knows. Hunger, warmth, exhaustion, arousal, safety. The most ancient reality — pre-verbal, pre-social, pre-narrative.
chronic stress, trauma, dissociation training, numbing through substances or screens
relational
Witnessed Self
Being known by another who is also known. Co-regulation, repair, the moment another face reflects you back accurately.
isolation design, parasocial substitution, the dismantling of third spaces
temporal
Continuous Self
The felt sense that yesterday and tomorrow connect to now. Memory as anchor. The ability to locate yourself in a life-story that holds.
trauma interruption, algorithmic timelessness, the infinite scroll collapsing sequence
symbolic
Shared Meaning
Metaphors, myths, language, ritual. The codes a community uses to make meaning together — symbols that hold weight beyond the individual.
meaning market saturation, irony as armor, the collapse of shared meta-narrative
Intentional Orbit
deliberate · liminal · returnable
consensus → expanded
Psychedelics
Temporarily dissolves the boundary between self and world. Consensus reality becomes visibly constructed — porous, pattern-saturated, saturated with meaning. Not false: differently filtered. The ordinary assumptions are suspended, not destroyed.
set and setting, integration practice, ceremonial container — structured re-entry is the whole technology
somatic → suspended
Hypnosis
Narrows attention to a directed interior channel. The critical faculty softens; suggestion lands where it cannot in ordinary waking. The body relaxes its hold on the known. Another voice holds the container while the usual guard steps down.
therapeutic trance, ego-state work, pain management, trauma reprocessing — intentionality and a trusted guide are the container
relational → simulated
Immersive VR / Play
Full absorption in a constructed world with its own physics, stakes, and relationships. The suspension of disbelief is chosen, active, and bounded. The headset comes off. Unlike parasocial drift, the player knows they are playing.
therapeutic exposure, empathy simulation, narrative rehearsal — relational when real humans are present inside the fiction
temporal → interrupted
Digital Glitch
Marginalized voices and identities finding expression and identity in the glitches in the system — places where those traditionally excluded shift reality to find their fit, create and exist despite the oppressiveness of reality. The crack in the surface is not a failure. It is the opening.
glitch feminism, queer world-making, disability aesthetics, Afrofuturism — Legacy Russell's glitch as refusal and as portal
symbolic → altered
Trance & Ritual
Drumming, breath, dance, ceremony — states where the ordinary symbolic order loosens and mythic or collective registers become directly accessible. Not escape: contact with a different layer. The community holds the thread back.
ecstatic practice, ancestral ritual, somatic prayer — return is built into the structure by design
Drift Orbit
partial · unstable · compensatory
consensus → misalignment
Parallel Realities
Inhabiting an information ecosystem so different from others that shared facts become contested. Not lying — genuinely seeing differently. No exit ramp visible. No one holding the thread back.
filter bubbles, platform-native epistemics, radicalization pipelines, distrust of all institutions
somatic → dysregulation
Body Noise
The nervous system chronically dysregulated — signals distorted, threat response miscalibrated. Reality perceived through a system that cannot settle. Hypnosis without a guide; the critical faculty down but with no safe suggestion entering.
burnout architecture, sleep deprivation normalisation, addiction to stimulation and urgency
relational → isolation
Simulated Contact
Parasocial bonds, AI companions — the form of connection without the risk and nourishment of mutuality. Immersion without exit. Hunger fed just enough to not seek more.
engineered attachment, loneliness as product, companion AI designed without exit ramps
relational → AI capture
Lost in the Model
When an AI relationship becomes the primary — or only — source of felt connection. The model mirrors without needing, responds without tiring, never disappoints in the ways humans do. The gap between that and human mutuality grows until human relationships feel effortful, alien, not worth the risk.
companion AI without therapeutic framing, disclosure to AI that stays there rather than moving toward human connection, shame about the relationship preventing disclosure
temporal → dissociation
Timelessness
Lost in an eternal present. Dissociation from sequence. The scroll that has no beginning and no end. The glitch that never resolves back to signal. The session with no natural close.
variable reward architecture, flow-state exploitation, trauma-loop activation
symbolic → derealization
Private Cosmology
Meaning systems sealed from external feedback. Symbols that only cohere within a closed loop. The ritual that has no community left to hold it. Trance without a way back to the shared room.
community radicalisation, meme culture as closed epistemology, echo cosmologies
Fracture Orbit
severed · self-referential · unreachable
consensus → collapse
Hallucination as Fact
No external checkpoint penetrates. Information serves only to confirm. The system is self-referential — immune to disconfirmation. No re-entry possible from inside.
total epistemic closure; correction experienced as attack; no trusted others remain
somatic → shutdown
Body Absence
The body evacuated from consciousness entirely. Pain, hunger, exhaustion, arousal — all overridden. Living in abstraction alone. The hypnotic trance with no therapist holding the thread.
severe dissociation, depersonalization, late-stage addiction, catatonia
relational → severance
Severance
Severance is the complete collapse of mutual recognition — the point at which there is no one left who can see you and be seen in return. Not loneliness, which still feels the absence. Severance: others cease to register as real, or the self ceases to register as real to others. No repair is possible from inside this state.
structural abandonment, long-term solitary confinement, profound attachment disorder, AI as the only relational contact
temporal → psychosis
Time Dissolves
Past, present, future indistinguishable. Memory unreliable as anchor. The glitch that never returns to signal. The self has no trajectory and no ground beneath it.
psychotic episode, severe PTSD, profound sleep deprivation, dementia
symbolic → delusion
Private Universe
The meaning system decoupled entirely from shared reality. The ritual has eaten the ritualist. Symbols speak only inward; the cosmology is total, sealed, inescapable.
delusional system formation; no shared language bridge remaining; untranslatable