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Is there any point I should be concerned about how often I berserk shit if it isn’t causing me any harm? I tend to shift when stressed and my therapist hasn’t seemed concerned, but I’m shifting like that almost every other night now. I have normal mental shifts too but I guess I just shut down when stressed? I know it’s seen as unhealthy, and I’m not sure how to feel about it. It helps me stay collected and safe but if it is as bad as the community makes it out to be I don’t know how to stop it.

As asked on kin-assistance.

Let’s break this down a bit, because there’s a few things here. Under a readmore because it’s long and there is some violent details (mildly graphic? It isn’t too bad, but somewhat, I suppose.)

Firstly, why it’s seen as unhealthy. Part of this is the more ‘human’ members of the community, those who think losing control in any form is bad and wrong and makes you bad and wrong. These same members would probably frown upon any and all multiplicity. Their line of thought is that losing control and going berserk / animalistic is getting very scary, unreasonable, and violent, thus, losing control makes you automatically dangerous, and thus you should never lose a single bit of it.

Berserk shifts are usually defined as shifts where one completely ‘becomes’ their kintype temporarily: that is, someone may forget all traces of the rest of their identity. Polykin will usually suddenly not feel any sort of identification with their other kintypes, things that interest someone but may not while they’re in a mental shift will also not be interesting, etc, etc. They’re also called ‘feral shifts’, to make more sense.

However, that isn’t always how the term is used. I rarely, if ever, see it used when not referring to violent instincts. Now this could just be that it’s there and I haven’t seen it, but when I do see the term ‘berserk shift’, people are usually referring to the violent aspects.

But the point is not whether you’re violent. Thought crimes are not crimes. The point is whether you are actively harming others or yourself. You’ve stated that you’re not. Your therapist doesn’t seem too concerned about the matter. Thus, it isn’t harmful. You’ve also stated that it helps you stay collected and safe and keeps you from anxiety / panic attacks. Which means it’s actively helping you.

And if something is helping you at no expense to yourself or to others, damned be what anyone says about it. You’re not them. What you do is up to you. If you prefer to eat by snacking throughout the day instead of sitting through three rigorous meals a day, well, do it, nothing wrong with that.

People are usually concerned about others getting hurt. If you’re biting people and insisting later that it isn’t your fault, you couldn’t control yourself, etc etc, then that’s a problem. You’d be both hurting people and using the shift as a shield – the shift may explain the action, but it does not excuse it. If you are actively hurting people, you need to quit. But you’re not, so you’re fine.

But you also want to know how to stop it, in case you do hurt someone / know you are going to if pushed.

And this is why I’m answering here instead of on K-A. Because this gets personal a bit, and I don’t like going personal over there. I want to share an incident I had with a berserk shift. Probably the nastiest one I’ve ever had.

I was helping my qpp break up with his now-ex. This ex was not very kind. I won’t give details, but I didn’t like them very much, but had been lying to them and pretending I did to keep the peace so my qpp (who wasn’t then my qpp) didn’t feel torn between us. When he wanted to break up with them, I wanted to help.

The ex said some things that put me directly in a berserk shift. Now, when I go berserk, it isn’t feral as in animalistic. It’s feral as in I have all my reasoning and logical powers but zero morality or fucks to give. It’s feral as in if the ex had been in the room instead of over Discord, it would have taken three people to hold me back from ripping their throat out with my bare hands. Keep in mind, I’m 5′0″ and built like a stick. Literally. I have zero muscle and it would have taken three people to hold me back.

I knew right then and there when the anger hit me like a freight truck that if I didn’t do something to hold myself back, I was going to say some very vicious things. I am a writer, I know how to beat people over the head with their own emotions. I knew if I wasn’t stopped, I was going to try to drive them to suicide.

I told my qpp immediately. I know full well that no matter what happens, if he needs me to do something, I will ensure it happens. My loyalty to him comes before my loyalty to myself and my stupid-ass impulses.

Effectively, I knew what would override the vicious tendencies. What comes first. I wanted to kill a few people and laugh like a damn maniac, but if he told me to stop, I would.

I told him and I said ‘when I say ‘clear skies’ I’m okay, but until then, I will not make a single decision without your input. You tell me what to do, I will do nothing unless you say I will.’

“Clear skies” was what we call a safeword. It was something I wouldn’t say just as we were talking. In this post, for example, ‘override’ isn’t a safeword I can use, because I used it up there for its actual purpose. I wouldn’t be describing the skies for the next few hours, so it would be a viable safeword.

And I sent every message his ex sent me to him and asked him what I should answer. He’d give me a rough idea, I’d type it out, send it to him, ask if it was okay. If he agreed it was, I’d reply to his ex. If he didn’t like it, we’d work on it until it was okay.

It worked. I mean, I was luckily home alone. If my family had come home and asked me to come out to talk to them, I wouldn’t have gone without asking. It would’ve taken a few people to move me from my desk, because he hadn’t said I could move.

It is not something I would trust anyone else to do. One, because I wouldn’t listen to them, two, because he could’ve told me to stab myself in the throat and I would have. (He wouldn’t do that, because he likes my company, but theoretically speaking, if he asked I would’ve. No reason not to, according to the mentality I was stuck with.)

He did eventually tell me to take a nap and let him handle it. Which I dutifully did, and only asked he send me a selfie so I could go to sleep pretending he was there. He did, and I actually still have the photo saved on every device I own. Eventually he said when I was awake I could come talk again, and I did. Not long after that, his ex stopped speaking to both of us, and I calmed down enough to use the safeword and apologize for the incredibly inconvenient and stressful berserk shift.

So effectively, what happened?

I recognized the shift before it happened. This comes with knowing your shifts and how to detect them. You get that with practice trying, and as you said you’ve got plenty of them, that won’t be too hard. Then I recognized the effect it would have on me, and the possible effect it would have on others. I would lose my ability to tell between right and wrong as well as gain a very vicious mindset, so anyone who annoyed me for any reason could potentially be in danger. After that, I figured out what would stop me from that happening. If I was only prone to biting people, I’d either have found a mouth gag or started eating something. If I had any dangerous objects in reach (usually my pocketknife), I would’ve put them away before the shift fully dragged me in. Then, since there was someone to take care of me and keep an eye on me, and I trusted them with that responsibility, I told them what was happening and used a safeword to keep them in the loop in case I rendered myself incapable of coherent speech / text. You may want multiple, if your shifts have ‘stages’ or otherwise vary. If you need to be restrained, you really should have one for when it’s okay to let you go, because when you are, you’re probably coherent enough to be trusted on that. “Let me go now” is a terrible one. It’s basic words, if you need to be restrained but know you won’t want to be during the shift, you might be wailing it but still should not be unrestrained quite yet. Then I rode it through, tried to keep calm and focus on something that didn’t make it worse. Distractions help a ton a lot of the time, so if that works for you, do it. Finally, when I was okay, I let all involved parties know, and did what I needed to do to clean up and make sure everyone was okay. (You might recognize this as aftercare. Same idea.)

So yeah. Your only problem here seems to be managing your stress so you don’t have to go into extreme shifts, if indeed yours are more than “I’m a dog and I want that beef jerky right now”. I would ask your therapist about handling that – it’s what they’re there for. You’re not hurting anyone. You’re fine. You don’t need to worry about that.

Just analyze your behaviour and know what does hurt and what doesn’t. Handle what needs to be, and ask yourself why. Knowing the reasons makes it a whole lot easier to fix. If tape won’t hold it together because one part’s too heavy, you need to either make it lighter or use a stronger adhesive that’ll take the weight. If tape won’t hold it together because tape just physically can’t reach, try glue. You see what I mean?

Keep introspecting. Keep asking why things are the way they are. Run things through your therapist, sometimes you just need a second (or trained!) pair of eyes on the problem. You’ll be just fine.