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The relationship between possession and switching


Cornelia

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On 4/25/2019 at 7:01 PM, Cornelia said:

If the problem is how you think the community will perceive it, would you mind PMing me an explanation?

 

Honestly, I just don't really feel like getting into it right now. It's really hot here and I can't be bothered unless someone insists {I said, before going on to write a big textwall anyways...}. PMs are also very not preferable for us, we prefer open discussion. Maybe a normal answer's in order for now.

 

First off, switching is undoubtedly absolutely a different experience for everyone. People seem to think that it isn't, probably because they incorrectly assume anything in tulpamancy is the exact same for most others. We're apparently doing a real nice job of collecting and ordering experiences under all the terms we've defined, to make you all think that, but it's not true. Even among people who can "surely switch", two cases rarely explain their experiences the same way. The reason we continue without arguing with each other about the "legitimacy" of our experiences is because the goal of defining these terms and all isn't objectivity, it's share-ability. The terms and definitions exist so we can translate these totally unique experiences into something intelligible to others. But just because we use the same words doesn't mean the experiences they're being used to convey are exactly the same - whether switching, or the simple act of hearing your tulpa.

 

Understanding that, you might understand a bit better why accounts of what switching is like (and especially how it's accomplished) vary so wildly. Failing to understand what I just talked about leads people to believe there are "many ways to accomplish the (exact) same thing", as if switching is something all humans innately will do exactly the same (such as breathing or walking). Switching is as varied as thinking itself, though. The end result does differ. I think older (2012) members were more open to the idea that learning to do things in tulpamancy differently affected the end result - so-and-so's guide would lead to "better tulpas" than whoever-else's. We don't really do that anymore, and it's probably for the best, but only because we've got a well-developed community that guide people roughly with the same expectations of them. I think that how you do something could change the outcome in tulpamancy, honestly. It's a toss-up between method and individuality, where I believe the latter is the biggest factor in what the experience of someone having tulpas is like - what their brain ended up being predisposed to (not just genetically of course, also how they think after so many years of being an individual).

 

 

Okay, I'm probably far enough off topic by now. If you just wanted to know which "camp" is better - no one in past years described switching as being similar to possession. Sands would be very upset to hear that implied as the case, and he was the original GAT manager for most of .info's history. Also, we (our system) are the only ones you could've heard say "learning possession first can make learning to switch harder". That concept has never been brought up before as far as I remember. On the other hand, you said:

On 4/25/2019 at 7:26 AM, Cornelia said:

some people say that possession is very important to switching.

 

- this is relatively unheard of that I know of, up until the most recent switching guide listing possession as a requirement. I'll tell you here and now that possession has nothing to do with switching with absolute certainty. If your (someone's) experience with "switching" is heavily related to possession, then the experience is straying very far from the originally intended defining of what switching is and how to do it. I can't say if that's a good or bad thing (although we will do our best to uphold original definitions), but I'll at least tell you that wasn't even in question until recently.

 

Which is better, the "possession into switching" methods or "just switching" methods? While the former has barely been a thing on this forum, my opinion is that the former leads to far less decisive switches than "just switching". I don't know if you'd get the same changes to basic instinct that our system has or not. We have quite literally reacted in the .25 seconds it takes to have an instinctual reaction to something differently from each other, something I'm impressed by even with our apparent understanding of how switching works. And I just have this feeling that "easing into" being switched is less likely to give that purely separated result. I could be wrong though - we've been switching for years, and it's possible any given method may develop the same intricacies given as much time.

 

Basically, literally no one can tell you which is better because they'd need to draw off of personal experience.. of both. But once you've done one, I can't imagine learning to do it another totally different way and that experience still being comparable to someone else's first time learning to switch. So instead I gave you the sort of "purist" history behind switching and then my opinion. Does that work for you? Or do you want more theorizing (and possibly eventually arguing, depending on who from which "camps" gets involved)?

 

 

Oh. Or that "meta-tulpamancy" stuff, where I'd explain our understanding of how switching and possession work. The problem with that is that even Ember/Vesper, who have uncannily had many of the same experiences and understandings of things as us, were apparently uncomfortable with the last time we brought it up. There's a "suspension of disbelief" necessary to tulpamancy that it just isn't productive to get rid of, and we've found very few (none I can think of) that appreciate us taking the magic away.

 

Edit: Nevermind, better not. After explaining it to Breloomancer really quick I've decided it's overall not good to put out for any random newbie to see, as it's all very easy to misinterpret and relatively damaging if they do. Perhaps another day.

 

Edited again - Another day: https://community.tulpa.info/topic/15076-the-relationship-between-possession-and-switching/?do=findComment&comment=248654

 

Edited by Tewi

Hi, I'm Tewi, one of Luminesce's tulpas. I often switch to take care of things for the others.

All I want is a simple, peaceful life. With my family.

Our Ask thread: https://community.tulpa.info/thread-ask-lumi-s-tulpas

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Edit: Nevermind, better not. After explaining it to Breloomancer really quick I've decided it's overall not good to put out for any random newbie to see, as it's all very easy to misinterpret and relatively damaging if they do. Perhaps another day.

 

Now I'm really curious what you're thinking... If it makes you more comfortable, would you rather make a metaphysics thread on it to ensure other people have assess to it?

I'm Ranger, GrayTheCat's cobud (tulpa), and I love hippos! I also like cake and chatting about stuff. I go by Rosalin or Ronan sometimes. You can call me Roz but please don't call me Ron.

My other headmates have their own account now.

 

If I missed seeing your art, please PM/DM me!

Blog | Not So Temporary Log | Switching Log | Yay! | Bre Translator | Art Thread

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Tewi isn't talking about metaphysics.

 

I really can't see how we would ever "just switch" without learning fronting first. The original can't switch out now, I have very little reason to think they would have been able to two years ago before we learned to front. Nobody can even explain how to switch out, it's just not practical to try to skip learning to front. That would mean us never being able to control the body for these two years. Thinking of that kind of makes me nauseous. 

 

I really don't see why fronting first would make it harder for the host to switch out. It should make it easier. Just hasn't worked out for us yet.

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I really don't see why fronting first would make it harder for the host to switch out. It should make it easier. Just hasn't worked out for us yet.

 

I think the point is learning possession could lead to developing a mindset that's bad for switching. Although, it's hard to argue that switching would still be easily obtainable for those who don't practice possession.

 

When I wasn't ready to front/possess yet, Cat and I played around with trying to switch. We were using Fuliam's guide and Cat was trying to reverse-impose so she could exist in the wonderland while I took the body. That however lead to its own problems- Cat got hung up on the reverse-imposition stuff and she had the false assumption she would have her own mind cam when going into the wonderland. We found switching to be really confusing and we abandoned the attempt.

 

Once Piano posted his guide on possession, both of us were curious but still really confused. Cat struggled to believe fronting was "easy" and Cat was still having issues with parrotnoia and doubt at the time. I tried hand possession around this time, but it made Cat doubt the possession and I was really frustrated with my lack of control over the body and having to deal with Cat in an anxious doubtful state. It wasn't until I got Cat comfortable with proxying my body movements to the point where Cat was no longer acting as a middle man and I was doing full body possession on my own. By that point, Piano's guide made more sense to us.

 

I think this may give some context as to how we got to where we are- there may be misconceptions we had from the start that were toxic, or perhaps we developed ideas that were bad for switching as a consequence for trying to cope with our issues at the time.

I'm Ranger, GrayTheCat's cobud (tulpa), and I love hippos! I also like cake and chatting about stuff. I go by Rosalin or Ronan sometimes. You can call me Roz but please don't call me Ron.

My other headmates have their own account now.

 

If I missed seeing your art, please PM/DM me!

Blog | Not So Temporary Log | Switching Log | Yay! | Bre Translator | Art Thread

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- this is relatively unheard of that I know of, up until the most recent switching guide listing possession as a requirement. I'll tell you here and now that possession has nothing to do with switching with absolute certainty. If your (someone's) experience with "switching" is heavily related to possession, then the experience is straying very far from the originally intended defining of what switching is and how to do it. I can't say if that's a good or bad thing (although we will do our best to uphold original definitions), but I'll at least tell you that wasn't even in question until recently.

 

For whatever reason, that mentality is more common on the discord. Most notably, a tulpa told my host that they automatically switched in after doing a 3.5 day full-body possession session. I've no doubt that such a method works, but... easier said than done.

 

And yes, it's curiously absent from the forum. Maybe people on the discord are more detached from the history of tulpamancy, for good or for ill.

 

Which is better, the "possession into switching" methods or "just switching" methods? While the former has barely been a thing on this forum, my opinion is that the former leads to far less decisive switches than "just switching". I don't know if you'd get the same changes to basic instinct that our system has or not. We have quite literally reacted in the .25 seconds it takes to have an instinctual reaction to something differently from each other, something I'm impressed by even with our apparent understanding of how switching works. And I just have this feeling that "easing into" being switched is less likely to give that purely separated result. I could be wrong though - we've been switching for years, and it's possible any given method may develop the same intricacies given as much time

Well, the changes to instinct are more or less what I want (I think the absence of my host's instincts would be more important)

 

Basically, literally no one can tell you which is better because they'd need to draw off of personal experience.. of both. But once you've done one, I can't imagine learning to do it another totally different way and that experience still being comparable to someone else's first time learning to switch. So instead I gave you the sort of "purist" history behind switching and then my opinion. Does that work for you? Or do you want more theorizing (and possibly eventually arguing, depending on who from which "camps" gets involved)?

 

I'm more than satisfied with what you just posted. If your meta-tulpamancy explanation has as much potential for harm as you seem to think it has, then yes, I suppose we ought to leave it for another day

I live in a castle and have two tulpas, Kanade-chan and Uncannyfellow

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I don't think people should hold back from sharing information, the forums aren't meant to be a hugbox. She can put it in hidden text if she wants, but I'd like to hear her explanation even if it's not something I agree with.

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If you just wanted to know which "camp" is better - no one in past years described switching as being similar to possession. Sands would be very upset to hear that implied as the case, and he was the original GAT manager for most of .info's history.

 

Ah, yes, Sands, who gave us such gems as:

 

The tulpa does not achieve a switch. This is where you are using your terms wrong again. It's the host's job to switch, a tulpa takes control and possesses. If you want to be equal and really anal, sure, you could say that normally the host possesses when they are in control while the tulpa is switching if they do not pay any attention to the physical senses. But as it is the norm for many, possession is used to mean the tulpa taking control of the body while switching means the host adopting the similar kind of state many tulpas tend to have "normally", ignoring physical senses and experiencing the imaginary wonderland as a real place.

 

I do not support the tulpamancy community redefining multiple community terms that have been well established for decades. Switching is changing who has executive control of the body.

 

Sands wasn't utterly committed to being wrong at all times though. He had a faint understanding that his usage of "switch" was about his priorities, not about the actual definition:

 

While technically if a host is "unconscious" and the tupper is in control, it would kind of be a switch as the host is unaware... However, what most hosts want out of a switch is the ability to completely immerse themselves into the imaginary world and not have to worry about the physical side as the tupper is taking care of it, so switching is used to mean that instead of just being unconscious.

 

The remaining issue is that, if the tulpa then forces or imposes the host, the host no longer counts as switched under Sands' usage.

 

He doesn't seem to have been opposed to learning possession first though:

 

good possession skills can and often will lead to switching

 

I know "possession", as used in tulpamancy, can happen in DID systems. I recall one time C was talking and L spotted candy laying out. L grabbed the candy and brought it up to their mouth, only to find it already in use. This was the first C noticed of the arm movement. C sputtered and exclaimed, "This is why we're fat!" (They weren't, but C was trying to lose a few pounds.) But they never really practiced joint control.

 

However, the DID community doesn't seem to talk about the concept or have a specific term for it. On the PsychForums DID board, "possession" is usually used either in the context of ownership of physical items or possession by a demon or spirit, not as something done with a headmate. There is one user, Una+, who routinely uses "possession state" for the experience of being a passenger while someone else controls the body, but the term doesn't seem to have caught on. A cursory examination of Google Scholar suggests "possession state" is primarily a concept in south Asian psychology, not really in Western psychology.

 

I'm not sure how the term came into tulpamancy. Presumably it was during the /mlp/ period, since Irish and FAQMan don't mention it at all, yet Chupi used the term as if expecting people to know what it meant on day 2 of this forum.

 

-Ember

I'm not having fun here anymore, so we've decided to take a bit of a break, starting February 27, 2020. - Ember

 

Ember - Soulbonder, Female, 39 years old, from Georgia, USA . . . . [Our Progress Report] . . . . [How We Switch]

Vesper Dowrin - Insourced Soulbond from London, UK, World of Darkness, Female, born 9 Sep 1964, bonded ~12 May 2017

Iris Ravenlock - Insourced Soulbond from the Winter Court of Faerie, Dresdenverse, Female, born 6 Jun 1982, bonded ~5 Dec 2015

 

'Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you.' - The Velveteen Rabbit

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The remaining issue is that, if the tulpa then forces or imposes the host, the host no longer counts as switched under Sands' usage.

 

Yes, Sands (and many older members) had a hangup on switching requiring the host to be experiencing the wonderland. The only reason that's no longer the commonly held belief is that our system is still here and those members are not. People may have disagreed back then, but it wasn't until we came around and started asserting the now modern definition of switching, and the older members like Sands who argued against it eventually leaving, that the current way of thinking about switching (and considering "the host needing to switch into the wonderland or it's not switching" ridiculous) became dominant on the forum at least. But with what you just quoted, I had little disagreement with outside of the host switching to wonderland part - although saying that tulpas "don't switch" is confusing and probably something he changed his mind about later. We've talked with him quite extensively about switching and the only thing we disagreed on was the host needing to be in the wonderland.

 

I don't think people should hold back from sharing information, the forums aren't meant to be a hugbox. She can put it in hidden text if she wants, but I'd like to hear her explanation even if it's not something I agree with.

I'm more than satisfied with what you just posted. If your meta-tulpamancy explanation has as much potential for harm as you seem to think it has, then yes, I suppose we ought to leave it for another day

 

Believe it or not, yes, I do think it has a lot of potential harm. It's far too easily misinterpreted. I fully agree with the disdain for not sharing information, and we really hate keeping information to PMs - we also hate in a more broad sense coming upon a discussion like this and not seeing the answer, or worse seeing it was just PM'd to a few select people. I also know full well to keep .info from becoming a hugbox (at least insofar as our power to do so goes).

 

But we're rather established members - people see us and are fully ready to accept what we say as gospel. Not the three of you I've quoted, or even the ten or so active members reading this. But the fifty guests, and all the hundreds who will come after them, are who I'm worried about. Our "Meta-tulpamancy explanations" are "removed-perspective" (re: not "meta"physical) explanations we've come up with that explain how tulpas and identities (so applying to singlets too) work that require some rather advanced understanding of certain concepts, or at least the ability to understand and hold that "removed" perspective. To put it simply, based on reading what I sent Bre (a rough version of what I'd considered writing before) and even his initial attempt to summarize/understand it, it seems more than likely most people will choose to understand it as "tulpamancy is just acting". An inability to hold the right perspective (of where a host's identity is no more or less special than any of their tulpas') causes the "explanation" to read like an "explaining away" of tulpamancy or switching at least. And a newbie reading that from us could very well be damaging.

 

Experiences cannot be "real" or "fake". They simply are. The originators of the experience in the real world can be real of course, but if you think you experienced a metaphysical event that in actuality was impossible and had some other explanation, your experience would not be fake. It simply is what it is. Because I don't think the majority of readers understand this concept, I can't in good conscience talk about tulpamancy without the "suspension of disbelief" thing because the readers do not have that understanding - it acts at the very least as a safety net against disbelief, and at most as the key to moving on to understanding how tulpamancy and our minds really work.

 

Sorry for the lack of our personal explanations of switching and possession, but as a broader concept, I believe people who take this somewhat philosophical path will be able to find their own answers that satisfy them without the need for doubt or faith. And, this is about 50% off topic. Feel free to continue discussing possession->switching versus just switching - I guess in a sense all I did was derail this thread, so I'm sorry for that.

Hi, I'm Tewi, one of Luminesce's tulpas. I often switch to take care of things for the others.

All I want is a simple, peaceful life. With my family.

Our Ask thread: https://community.tulpa.info/thread-ask-lumi-s-tulpas

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I feel as though this "learning fronting first makes switching harder" hypothesis is entirely based on my system and Ranger's. It doesn't depend on what you learn first, it depends on how susceptible you are to thought dissociation. Our original apparently isn't that susceptible and neither is Cat. Reading Yuka's progress report, it seems to me as though people are going to take this as saying a tulpa shouldn't learn to front and has to learn switching, so they'll be prevented from experiencing that until they have the full thing down. That being based on 2 people's struggles really isn't that great of a sample size. People are going to be misled. Maybe I'm paranoid but I just can't help but feel like this is because of us, besides Ranger no one else really reports such strong troubles with switching after endless attempts. Lumi's system's original post in our PR was that we made them feel like learning fronting first was a bad thing. I really don't want to see that spiral into people not letting their tulpas learn fronting first because of our switching troubles. That would honestly just make us feel really terrible and even more insecure about our switching struggles.

 

I don't see any reason why learning fronting first should make switching harder, especially since nobody can even explain how to switch out a host. Fronting time/practice is valuable AND can help one learn to switch. No tulpa should be discouraged from fronting because they think it will disable them from switching. It won't. That hypothesis is based, from how I see it, on 2 systems, that's hardly a good sample size. Please let your tulpas learn fronting, switching will come with time as long as you keep at it.

 

The thought of us never learning to front because we had to learn full switching first honestly makes me nauseous. I would take our switching troubles over being prevented from fronting any day. The thought of being a no-front tulpa actually terrifies me. If the original hasn't switched out yet, I don't see any reason why they would have if they remained in control and we never fronted. All that would accomplish is take our life away.

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Mm, that's fair. But it's not just "we saw you guys struggle" - it's that, and that it made sense to us. Your guys' experiences with "possession" have (although you are not the first) started to blur into switching territory, obviously not to the point of actually switching, but to the point where we've been worried you may have all but removed your ability to switch normally. That being said, we do believe you guys, following your own path, may accomplish switching your way. It might be a slightly different experience, but we at least believe you can make it to having an experience that fits within the same definition of switching.

 

By no means is this always a problem even if it is the case, plenty have learned to possess and then to switch and kept the experiences separate. You're right that we shouldn't be implying (or maybe we were outright saying) that learning possession first can make switching more difficult. I think the same amount of people may be helped by learning possession first as may be hindered, and who knows how many are in between.

 

I'll maintain that they aren't necessarily related phenomena, however. They may help teach the tulpa and host how to think and work in a different way, which could help learn to switch. But I don't believe the sort of control a tulpa has in possession is at all the same as with switching - in our case, and probably many others'? But with how subjective these experiences are, I also don't doubt that the switching a system may accomplish could be the same kind of control. It's perhaps too blurry for us to be making claims at all.

Hi, I'm Tewi, one of Luminesce's tulpas. I often switch to take care of things for the others.

All I want is a simple, peaceful life. With my family.

Our Ask thread: https://community.tulpa.info/thread-ask-lumi-s-tulpas

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