Switching Tips And Articles

Assorted things too small to be guides, but that were still helpful.

A Collection of Notes on Switching – Quandary

This is less of an article and more of a personal notepad that's meant to be publicly viewable. My apologies for the inevitable disorganization.

With the recent influx of questions regarding switching, and what it's like to switch, I thought I might begin gathering the notes we've compiled on the topic into one place, for ease of reading. I'd considered posting this to /r/Tulpas, but I'm not fond of the 6-month archival rule. This site has a much nicer format.

First, an account of what it's like to switch, from a multiple system we know. Falah wrote:

We got to chat with a multiple system (endogenic, have been switching since childhood—they prefer not to be named) about what switching feels like for them—that is to say, full-out switching, in which the person formerly at front disconnects from the body's senses and goes into their mindscape/headspace. There's still some parts we want to ask more detail on, but what we learned from them was already very interesting.

And, actually, very heartening—it seems like we're on the right track to switching.

First, starting with what they told us. (Hopefully we're remembering all of this right.) In order to initiate a switch, they alter their physical body's map to resemble the body of whoever is going to be switching in. (Essentially, a form of tactile/proprioceptive imposition that overlays the body.) At the same time that they do this, they pull forward the “essence” of the person switching in. For those who don't know what we mean by “essence”, we'll quote something we wrote earlier:

By “impression”, we don't mean first impressions. Rather, for lack of a better word, the color and shape of someone's presence. Their aura. Their essence. It's like a sort of synaesthesia, where instead of someone saying that the letter a is red, a person is red—is a bonfire, a tiger, a blazing midsummer noon. Or, in Rain's case, is light blue and white, is the ocean, is sunlight and city-light upon waves, is words dashed off in a quick but graceful hand. They are not literally these things, but they and all these things have a very distinctive feeling in common that's impossible to truly capture in plain words. That sort of feeling, that's the reason why poetry exists.

While pulling forward this essence, they feed it into the altered bodymap, basically infusing it with this feeling of that person. If done right, and if the person being called is willing to switch in, the person coming in will enter the body and sort of settle in, filling up the altered bodymap and displacing the previous fronter. The previous fronter will then fall back and away from the front. Their vision will sort of fade over, like entering an extremely vivid daydream that then transitions into a full-fledged dream, and they'll emerge in the mindscape/headspace.

They've also described what it's like to be inside their headspace. Headspaces can be extremely variable from system to system—some can incorporate all senses, while others might focus on a particular sense or a few. Theirs is extremely visual, with little tactile. When they're inside, they aren't first-person immersed. Instead, they see themselves from a third-person view, like if they were playing a video game, and they control what their “avatar” does without actually being physically immersed like they are when in the outer world. The only time in which they have a sense of being in a body is when they're at front.

The full thread can be found at this link, with a few additional notes on our personal experiences. To summarize them: what was described by that system aligns with much of what we, and a few tulpamancers and tulpas, have experienced. While there are differences across the plural spectrum, I think it's safe to say that what was relayed here can be applied to tulpamancy as well as endogenic multiplicity. Of course, it isn't the only way to switch, no more than there's only one way to make a tulpa, but hearing even one account can provide insight.

Much of what we've read, gathered, and experienced points to several common factors. First, the host must be willing to fall back, and in order for them to do that, they must trust their tulpa on a fundamental level. They must not only trust that their tulpa is non-malicious, but also that their tulpa is capable of doing things on their own without supervision, and thus lose the need to monitor and “correct” every action. Second, the tulpa themself must be confident, focused, with a clear sense of their own self and individuality, and personally interested in switching for their own reasons, rather than simply playing along for the sake of it. Third, tulpa and host must work together, with the tulpa taking the body and the host falling back. If those three conditions can be fulfilled, and control changing is practiced enough over time, then greater and greater degrees of dissociation will gradually result until finally the host first blacks out during switches, and finally begins awakening inside the mindscape.

There are numerous factors that influence switching, and plenty of ways to help it along—for instance, immersion exercises—but those are the most common and most important factors we have seen.

There's also a discussion on proprioceptive dissociation and the role we suspect it plays in switching. We're still discovering ways in which it can be induced, and exercises for honing it. We are still speculating on whether one's innate level of proprioception influences one's ability to switch. Namely, if those who have weak proprioception will find it easier to switch. We do know two cases of clumsy-bodied systems who can switch the entire way.

I am currently planning on making threads regarding common problems encountered during switching—and how to resolve them—and energy restoration/depletion in switching. Rain and Falah had wanted to collaborate on a piece defining trust, and Rain had wanted to write a “Your Rights as a Fronter” document. Falah is also currently working upon a guide for finding a systemmate's essence, and considering a guide on bodymap alteration.

More will be added to this post later.

— Noctis

The Waiting Room – Watcher

I find that this exercise helps me stay present in back when another system mate is fronting, and like so many subtle things, can help improve parallel processing. It helps if you can immerse decently in the mindscape before attempting this and have a tulpa or system mate who can possess the body/front consistently.

While your system mate is in front, imagine you are in a waiting room. It can look however you like as long as there's something there you can focus on, and as long as the room remains relatively consistent every time you go to it (this is important, since it's hard to establish a sense of presence someplace that's constantly changing). Don't worry about what the fronter is doing for now, or what the body is up to; instead, just focus on your surroundings. Make use of as many senses as you can, and take note of all the things you see, hear, and feel.

Your attention will probably get pulled away from the mindscape the first time you attempt this, which is normal. When you notice this happening, direct your attention back to the waiting room while the person in front keeps doing their thing. It will probably be frustrating early on, especially if your tulpa is not used to doing things on their own, or doesn't have a strong grasp of parallel processing, but with enough time and practice, you should be able to focus stably and consistently on the mindscape while another individual fronts.

Best of luck!

On the Issue of Incorporiality – Mel

Strange title, no? Bear with me, I will elaborate.

There is an attitude I see in the tulpamancy community that, while not inherently bad, can lead to immense drawbacks where switching is concerned. I have dubbed it the “issue of incorporiality”, and what it describes is the tendency that hosts have to view themselves as having full reign of the body and its processes, while their tulpas are somehow paradoxically viewed as satellite, incorporeal entities lacking any sort of tangible form. The host is by default considered “more real”, “more corporeal” and the tulpa “more imaginary” and inherently intangible, despite both individuals sharing the same brain and body and having the same potential and capabilities.

Now, I am not going to police anyone's system. For some, switching may not be a main goal of theirs. In other cases, a tulpa may not associate with the body or view it as theirs for whatever reason. That is completely valid. However, for systems that have switching and possession as long term goals, this outlook can pose many drawbacks, especially on the part of the tulpa.

The success of switching is directly proportional to the tulpa or system mate's ability to view the body as being under their control. It may not literally be their body as it appears in the mindscape/wonderland, but it can still act as an interface between themselves and the outside world, just as much as it does for the host. When a host and tulpa view the body as something the tulpa is inherently lacking, or something they are not privy to, or the tulpa as inhrently incorporeal or removed from this world, this directly hinders the tulpa's ability to confidently associate with and exert control over the body.

So do keep this in mind if switching is a long term goal of yours: in order to effectively switch, a tulpa must first build their own sense of confidence in the body. They must recognize that they are just as incorporeal as the host, and that they are, in fact, just as capable of controlling the body and associating with it despite this, the very same way the host does on a regular basis.

Some Advice on In-World Immersion – Mel

Watcher and I have been experimenting with in-world immersion recently. Here is an approach we have found helpful, as outlined in one of his responses to a thread on the r/tulpas reddit:

Ahh yeah. Wonderlanding as we call it, and dissociation/removing yourself from the body in general, takes a lot of time and effort to accomplish. Think of it this way, you've spent years of your life attached to your five senses. You're not gonna detach from them over night. Heck, Mel and I are just now starting to get visual and audio dissociation while working on switching. Usually while I do it I'll have another system mate take hold of the body and senses and push me away from the front as well, hence the sensory dissociation we've been experiencing as of late.

One thing I've found that helps is imagining the wonderland as real, and reality as a dream. Sounds weird, but it really helps you orient yourself and get invested in the wonderland environment more. It becomes less like, “I'm imagining my body in this place” and more “I'm in this place and experiencing it.” Focusing on your wonderland body can also help to ground you, but again, it's a very hands-off kind of focus, less imagining what your wonderland body is like, and more experiencing being in it in the moment.

Lastly, as dissociation goes, it's a lot like the penguin problem, in which the more you tell yourself not to think about penguins, the more you think about penguins. Only in the case of wonderland immersion, the more you try not to focus on your meat space body, the more you'll end up focusing on it, even unconsciously. Wonderland immersion is all about letting go and going with the flow. So keep working at it and have patience. With enough practice you'll get it sooner or later. :)

As always, feel free to comment and pitch in with whatever has helped you immerse below.

What Switching Feels Like – Quandary

We got to chat with a multiple system (endogenic, have been switching since childhood—they prefer not to be named) about what switching feels like for them—that is to say, full-out switching, in which the person formerly at front disconnects from the body's senses and goes into their mindscape/headspace. There's still some parts we want to ask more detail on, but what we learned from them was already very interesting.

And, actually, very heartening—it seems like we're on the right track to switching.

First, starting with what they told us. (Hopefully we're remembering all of this right.) In order to initiate a switch, they alter their physical body's map to resemble the body of whoever is going to be switching in. (Essentially, a form of tactile/proprioceptive imposition that overlays the body.) At the same time that they do this, they pull forward the “essence” of the person switching in. For those who don't know what we mean by “essence”, we'll quote something we wrote earlier:

By “impression”, we don't mean first impressions. Rather, for lack of a better word, the color and shape of someone's presence. Their aura. Their essence. It's like a sort of synaesthesia, where instead of someone saying that the letter a is red, a person is red—is a bonfire, a tiger, a blazing midsummer noon. Or, in Rain's case, is light blue and white, is the ocean, is sunlight and city-light upon waves, is words dashed off in a quick but graceful hand. They are not literally these things, but they and all these things have a very distinctive feeling in common that's impossible to truly capture in plain words. That sort of feeling, that's the reason why poetry exists.

While pulling forward this essence, they feed it into the altered bodymap, basically infusing it with this feeling of that person. If done right, and if the person being called is willing to switch in, the person coming in will enter the body and sort of settle in, filling up the altered bodymap and displacing the previous fronter. The previous fronter will then fall back and away from the front. Their vision will sort of fade over, like entering an extremely vivid daydream that then transitions into a full-fledged dream, and they'll emerge in the mindscape/headspace.

They've also described what it's like to be inside their headspace. Headspaces can be extremely variable from system to system—some can incorporate all senses, while others might focus on a particular sense or a few. Theirs is extremely visual, with little tactile. When they're inside, they aren't first-person immersed. Instead, they see themselves from a third-person view, like if they were playing a video game, and they control what their “avatar” does without actually being physically immersed like they are when in the outer world. The only time in which they have a sense of being in a body is when they're at front.

Some thoughts we had on our personal experiences while listening to this:

How they initiate a switch sounds practically exactly like what we're doing. Right down to the bodymap alteration and the pulling forward of someone's essence.

A note is that no one here can be forced to come in by someone else. I can alter the bodymap and pull on someone's essence, but if they're unwilling to front or out of contact, either my connection to their essence will break (often with a message back along the lines of “I'm busy/sleeping/not interested, stop bothering me” followed by a slamming door feeling) or it'll be like shouting into the void. The altered bodymap and the essence in it just sits awkwardly before dissipating.

Unintentional control changes, however, have been a thing for us. There's a few flavors of them. Truly unintentional changes, where neither side was thinking about changing who's in control, seem to happen only within the trauma half of the system, in response to exhaustion or stressors. The process executes automatically, sucking in someone else and spitting me out.

Also, while no one can be pushed in if they're uninterested, I can be pushed out if someone's really interested in getting control, even if I'm not particularly thinking about passing it over. In this case, they execute the process without my input. Lark, Steven, Rain, and Noctis all have taken control before in this way in the wake of severe breakdowns, where I've been too exhausted and apathetic to care about having or not having control, much less feeding the body or getting it cleaned up and going to sleep. The trauma half of the system have also taken control this way, though their process tends to be faster and more forceful. The first time they did it, it was out of frustration, to prove that they existed. Nowadays, they drop in for more mundane reasons—to help with dissociative episodes, or, much to my annoyance, to plop me back at my desk if I wander off to take a nap. (Their defense is that I complain a lot about wanting to do work, but not being able to get back up, and after a while that sort of thing gets annoying.)

As you might have guessed, the process isn't one-sided. Even with the intentional changes, whoever's coming in tends to help with the bodymap shifting and the essence infusing, not to mention that the final step of them actually coming in and pushing me back is on them. The process can be sort of like a door knocker, where if I'm doing something interesting and someone else notices and wants in, I'll feel a tugging on the bodymap and their presence-essence hanging around, and then I'll sort of scoot aside and let them come in.

Partial control passing is a thing, and it usually isn't as involved. Bodymap alteration tends not to happen, and essence isn't as distinct. It's more a feeling of “oh my hands are moving on their own now”.

Mental state matters a LOT. I'll probably write a whole new topic on this matter, but generally speaking:

So in our case, it seems like most of our issues are linked to me always being anxious and having trouble letting go of the front.

Finally, I can confirm VERY emphatically that this is something very different from pretending to be someone else. I have done the bodymap alteration and the essence-infusing to make myself feel like someone else, whether for fun or to serve a particular purpose like placeboing myself into being more confident. The key difference is that it's still me controlling the body—I don't fall back, I don't feel distant or otherwise experience someone else handling things. It's still me at the wheel, only that I feel somewhat different about myself.

Will probably add more observations as we can think of them. For now, we gotta sleep.