Extremely Vivid Fantasy: What Is A Paracosm?

Paracosm is an invented place or world where anything may reside: characters, locations, ideas, and adjustments to reality. This action takes place in a person’s mind, where the ability to portray a new reality or a version of reality takes place.

‍This is another way to understand why certain people may be looking at the same spot but seeing different things – each individual has their personal ability to draw together the line between reality and fiction.

Paracosm is a state of mind that can affect how one thinks, acts, makes decisions, and feels the surrounding environment, things, and other people. It also refers to having an ability of above-average improvisation and visualization skills, a forefront element for any creative job.

Our ability to visualize things and create fictional worlds is the most powerful mental capacity that we all have. If we create something, no matter if it is a piece of art, some new scientific concept, architectural object, book, we launch our imagination to some extent. Specific individuals have more substantial imagination power and can come up with innovative and original ideas quickly. Using your imagination to its fullest and coming up with entirely new things most likely means that you are a paracosmist.

In other words, it means that having a precise invented world with vivid details or fictional elements in your mind is an effortless task for your brain. Usually, kids can be quite inventive with new worlds, characters, and concepts. Although, having a deep connection with the unreal world, which appears with the help of imaginary skills, can be a reason for losing bits of reality. The definition of paracosm, its mechanism, how it can be helpful, and the possibility of paracosm causing any threat to our perception of reality will be explored in more detail below.

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‍Interesting Facts About Paracosm

No fiction movie, book, or piece of art can be created without activating our imagination. New characters, unreal creatures, invented worlds, or even new planets in the Sci-Fi movies that don’t exist in reality are examples of a powerful paracosm. Most children tend to build such imaginary things spontaneously. However, some adults also strive not to limit elaborate fantasies, as they can be a foundation of the literature job, music, or painting. Moreover, if an individual suffers from a lack of original thoughts and poor visualization skills, paracosm designing can become a mental tool for growing imagination. Another example of such a tool can be a memory palace available in a gamified and digitalized memoryOS option. However, while a mind map requires intense focus and expanded memory storage, being a powerful paracosmist means having freedom of thoughts without any barriers.

Mentally developing paracosm also requires strong focus, a fast generation of an idea, and speedy information processing. Consequently, practicing your imagination gives you a great chance to enhance intelligence and memory. Visualizing is a lot like creating paracosm. Fantasy-prone people have vivid visualization abilities. Thus, for those who are beset with the trouble of intentionally creating a highly detailed imaginative world, it would be an excellent choice to nurture creativity through a set of exercises or training apps. Of course, it is impossible to design your own paracosm with poor imagination. But practicing its development has a potentially beneficial effect on your cognitive function, brain processes, mental capacity, and ability to retain tons of new and complex information. In such a way, it is possible to ensure stable mental progress and growth. Moreover, for some individuals, it can become a creative outlet for anxiety lowering, greater self-esteem, and minimizing stress for some individuals.

The Symptoms Of Paracosm

Paracosm is a state of mind that can affect how one thinks, acts, makes decisions, and feels the surrounding environment, things, and other people. Sometimes, it can get out of control, and you may get stuck in the fictional unreal world. Such imaginary worlds can thwart critical thinking, making reasonable choices, and perceiving the world with a cool head. It also may provoke disconnection with the surrounding world and problems with continuity of memories. Then thoughts become unbalanced; it is hard to analyze situations clearly and logically.

Of course, paracosm means great improvisation and visualization skills. It is a forefront element for any type of creative job. At the same time, it can be a sort of brain reaction to stress and anxiety, a psychological protective mechanism that the human mind might rely on in stressful and intensive events. It may be confusing, bring disharmony into daily life, and significantly disrupt your performance. The dissociative reality may be the main symptom of paracosm disorder that some people find hard to control.

However, while in some people, it is a response to difficulties and emotional troubles in some people, it cannot always be a result of trauma or emotional issues or an attempt to hide and escape from cruel reality. Sometimes, it is an intentional and well-managed mental process. It can be stimulative and evoking for your mind. Thus, for example, one of the well-known illustrators and authors, Lewis Carroll, would not have been able to create his works without having the ability to dive into different imaginary worlds. Another example of paracosm is a fictional language designed by Tolkien. He used it in his books to make the stories more exciting and catchy.

While your imaginative mental experiences are not out of control, it is normal to have paracosms, primarily if you are engaged in creative artwork or have a hobby inspired by creativity. Employing the imagination also allows coming up with all probable avenues of the thinking processes and releasing solutions to complex manners and situations. Thus, unrestrained imagination can lead to lots of new ideas and creations, and inventions. Although no matter how deep you can dive into your imaginative universe, don’t allow it to dominate your balanced emotional and mental state. The purpose is to evoke your mind, reduce stress levels, or train your visualization and not just escape and avoid real life.

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‍Paracosm Circle: How to Build And Use It

If struggling with concentration issues when dealing with demanding academic tasks or any other tasks that require mental effort, a memory palace used in combination with your fictional characters can be helpful, especially for your ability to absorb, encode, and retrieve lots of new data. Just take the information you need to remember and mentally associate it with your characters created by fantasy. Then, after placing it in your mind storage, you can revisit it anytime you need to retrieve the stored information. Such a memorization system is quite efficient and brain stimulative, so try the tactic to put more details, concepts, long lists, dates, numbers into your long-term storage.

Quick Guide:

Step 1. Choose a familiar location, like your home or workplace, and combine it with fictional characters from your imagination.

Step 2. Visualize the location and characters with clear and vivid details, creating a strong sense of spatial relationships and character traits.

Step 3. Establish a logical path through the location, visiting objects in a specific order while mentally associating the information you need to remember with your fictional characters.

Step 4. Transform the information into fun and unusual mental images, associating them with the objects in the location and your fictional characters.

Step 5. Revisit the location and characters in your mind, using sensory triggers and associations you’ve created to easily retrieve the stored information whenever needed.

Paracosm In Adulthood

Obviously, for a child, building fictional scenes and characters would be a much more straightforward mind task than for adults. Most kids have the capability of immersing themselves in fictional universes, making-up fictional characters. However, they limit their thinking and have more standard thought patterns when growing up, turning off their imagination. Thus, with age, such a skill can fade. But still, most individuals strive to keep that ability sharp since artists, writers, architects, filmmakers, and an array of other creative job types may use their paracosms as the inspiration and motivation to design, create, and generate ideas.

‍FAQ

‍Is Paracosm caused by trauma?

Imaginary episodes that the mind may unintentionally create maybe a mental protective tool with the aim of self-caring. Sometimes, it is a way our brain defends us against painful feelings and unpleasant sensations caused by distressing situations and scary events or emotional trauma.

Is Paracosm a coping mechanism?

Some scientists believe that paracosm lies in the robust creative processes in our mind and can be a source of original thoughts. At the same time, it can be a psychological defensive strategy to escape from the stress, emotional strain, and pressure resulting from unfavorable or harsh circumstances.

What percentage of people have a Paracosm?

This is usually typical for children, and children most successfully cope with the task of inventing new worlds. So one in four kids are considered to have a very vivid imagination. As for adults, most people continue to grow their visualization abilities.