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I found the following in a piece of writing about DID, but I thought it might be relevant to the switching conversations here. 

 

 

 

For anyone with D.I.D., there are four different levels of awareness. At any given time, you will be on just one level. Although some people switch from one level to another often, you might almost always remain on one level of awareness. Even so, it will help you to know about the other possibilities because you might unexpectedly experience them. Your other alters can also move from one level to another. Since such changes can be bewildering, let me list the possibilities.


  • "1. You are fully in control of the body and are uninfluenced by any other alter. If you have D.I.D., things could suddenly change, but if, other than when the body is sleeping, you almost always have this level of consciousness (and especially if other alters rarely, if ever, take over the body when you sleep), you will find it difficult to believe you have D.I.D. Even if you are aware of other alters or of having symptoms associated with D.I.D., you might have an alter who has no such awareness and is often in charge of the body. If that alter were the only one to interact with a therapist, it is unlikely that even a skilled therapist would detect D.I.D. This can make diagnosis problematical.


  • 2. You are fully in control of the body but are being fed information and/or skills and/or feelings by one or more other alters. You might realize that other alters are contributing, or you might presume that it is all your own doing. If you are in the latter situation, you might be puzzled as to why your feelings sometimes do not match your circumstances. You might also have become so accustomed to being fed a particular ability that you are shocked when you suddenly lose that ability when that alter sleeps or goes deeper inside. All that you might know about it is that you no longer have that ability. A common reason for an alter suddenly withdrawing is that something frightens the alter (it might not be upsetting to you) because what happened bears superficial similarities to something unpleasant that the alter experienced years ago. Usually, the alter does not remain in hiding for very long, but it can be very disconcerting when it happens, and you can be left floundering without that alters knowledge and/or skills.


  • 3. You retain awareness of the outside world and of what is happening to your body, but you have no control over the body because another alter has exclusive control over it. In this case, you will be acutely conscious that something unusual is happening.


  • 4. You have lost any awareness of the outside world, and may or may not have any awareness of alters in the inside world."

source: http://www.net-burst.net/counselor-therapist/DID-explained.htm 

 

How would your definitions of switching fit in with these levels? Recognizing, of course, that tulpas and tulpa hosts are different from alters... tulpas will almost certainly not cause black-outs, but I think level 4 can still be reached- it's just that, when the host wakes back up, they'll nearly instantly be caught up to date, not dissociated from what has happened. -J

The world is far, the world is wide; the man needs someone by his side. 

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Uhm. 1 and 4, 3 if we're currently active maybe, but 3 seems like it carries the context of you still being attached to the body/senses as opposed to detached-but-able-to-observe them. It does sound related, but I don't think this is helpful for purely-tulpamancy systems at all compared to normal Switching defining and instruction. For non-tulpamancy systems (even if "converted") it could be more relevant though, maybe.

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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Our situations tend to be most analogous to 2 and 3, with decreasing amounts of 1 and 4 as we continue to improve co-consciousness and co-fronting. But all four states seem to assume that just one alter is in control, as opposed to the frequent routine spot possession we do. If we convert the four states to a continuum of awareness/control (which are different things, but we'll ignore that for the moment) we all like to stay between 2.2 and 2.8 at any given time.

 

The first few months of switching, the immediate result of a switch was more:

 

Outgoing partner: 2->4

Incoming partner: 3->1

 

The states themselves are very recognizable and familiar to us, once you filter out the trauma, communication difficulties, involuntary switching, and memory problems of DID. These descriptions probably aren't very useful for tulpamancy instruction though, because they have too many distracting elements that aren't tailored to tulpamantic systems.

 

still being attached to the body/senses as opposed to detached-but-able-to-observe them

 

I'm not following. If we're conscious in any way, we're attached to the senses. How would you observe while being detached?

 

-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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If the body experiences sudden pain, a non-fronter doesn't react accordingly. I don't know, this is simultaneously not something that can be explained without having experienced it yourself and also incredibly obvious to me... Yes, my tulpas know all of the sensory information going on when I'm fronting, but no they're not "attached" to it. The example that always comes to mind is when I was having my wisdom teeth out and wasn't really numbed (longish story), which is technically the most pain I've ever been in, Flandre was there with me very upset (more than me by far), but only out of sympathy for me/being upset I was experiencing this pain. It's not like she was experiencing it herself, she was just aware of/had the immediate knowledge of said experience. You could liken it to being able to access each others' memories naturally, but in present/real-time.

 

Well, yeah. You just have to understand it already to understand, but also it should be incredibly obvious what I mean. Not that this is everyone's experience by any means, surely some systems (though usually not purely tulpamancy ones) experience more blending or co-fronting sorts of things, but you should still be able to understand what I'm talking about here.

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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I'll have to take your account on faith, Lumi. We all feel pain like it’s happening to us, though I feel it a little less on average, fronting or not, because I tend to be preoccupied and not trying to pay attention to the physical world.

 

For us, it isn't the person controlling the body that reacts most strongly to pain, it's the one articulating thought/using mindvoice. Since the thought stream is strictly serial, the fronter may be momentarily locked out of thinking by another headmate during brief sharp pains, placing the primary burden of mental reaction on the unlucky headmate. (Cue Vesper cursing at me and telling me to be more careful.)

 

For brief but expected pains, we may attempt to turn away from one another for the duration, so that only the fronter is bothered by it in real-time. For more protracted pains, we each are the most tuned in and affected, one after another, as conversation moves between us.

 

-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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I'll have to take your account on faith, Lumi. We all feel pain like it’s happening to us

 

Interesting, that was the other possibility I accounted for but didn't specifically consider in detail. I don't think this is the majority of systems' experience, but it's probably common enough that I did mention it at the end of my previous post

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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I typically experience 1 and 2. There was only one time I experienced a 3 after one of our switching attempts. When we blend/co-front, we are experiencing a 2. I usually stay at a 1 however unless I'm talking to Ranger.

 

My possession ranges from a 2.8 to a 2.5. I can associate with the body's pain and control the body, but I can't quite get to 2 yet.

 

It would be exciting for me to achieve a 2 and for Cat to achieve a 3 again and have that stay consistent, but our switching goal is for me to achieve a 1 and for Cat to achieve a 4.

Meow. You may see my headmates call me Gray or sometimes Cat.

I used to speak in pink and Ranger used to speak in blue (if it's unmarked and colored assume it's Ranger). She loves to chat.

 

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there are also sort of 4 stages of awareness in tulpamancy. switching, possession, active, dormant. the tulpamancy things don't seem map 1:1 with the DID things, the parts that they leave out in the definitions seem are some of the most important parts of the definitions for tulpamancy states. for instance, it is left ambiguous whether communication is possible in state 1 and state 2 seems to cover everything from merging with another systemmate to being switched in and also being able to talk to systemmates. so it could be 1. switching 2. merging, blending, possessing 3. active 4. dormant. or it could be 1. nothing 2. switching 3. active 4. dormant

I have a tulpa named Miela who I love very much.

 

 
"People put quotes in their signatures, right?"

-Me

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it is left ambiguous whether communication is possible in state 1

 

My initial reading was that "uninfluenced by any other alter" included "not in communication". However, another part of the article says:

 

The final problem with being content to remain at level 1 is that no matter how good you are at suppressing things, some emotional pain (or emotional numbness) will leak through to you.

 

So they aren't maintaining that there even is an utterly uninfluenced state. I can attest to the truth of this quote based on the reports of my ex, where for decades the rage & hate-focused alter, who remembered the original traumas, would radiate her pain at the more dominant sorrow & failure-focused alter.

 

state 2 seems to cover everything from merging with another systemmate to being switched in and also being able to talk to systemmates.

 

The levels may be attempting to describing the default untrained states of a DID system, before the alters learn to work together. In which case there would be very little intentional communication at any level and there would just be a complex shifting web of uncontrolled switching, blending, merging, splitting, dissociation, confusion, and memory shuffling.

 

-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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it is left ambiguous whether communication is possible in state 1

This is probably because to some degree it varies across systems.

Yo, my name is Sean and I'm the host of 2 tulpas: Sente and Mae. You'll know when they're talking because Sente talks in yellow text and Mae talks in blue text.

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