How does it feel when you guys switch?

[ChrysalisM]

Hi everyone! I've been experimenting with switching, and so far, it feels like my Tulpas and I are making what seems to be incredible progress by the tulpa community's standards. When I conduct it, it always feels like my thoughts go quiet for a moment, and when they do resume, the thought patterns are in line of that of the Tulpa, with my primary state reduced to mentally imposed imagery & a voice in the back of the head. 

 

I was wondering, for those of you who shift, how does it feel for you all?

[Ranger]

Oh, interesting.

 

We do have "feels like cobud" vibes when headmates are in the back, but we only noticed recently because uh... let's just say Gray, my host, switched out for simplicity!

 

Gray also said he "felt like a program" when he first switched out. Given our switching style, he suddenly realized all of the body's sensations and stream of consciousness quirks are shared resources and not his.

 

Come to think of it, we have a ritual (because we have self-awareness issues 😅), so we wouldn't notice a pause. After consent, the headmate switching in gets all of the time.

 

However, Stars' clones skip the ritual since consent apllies to all of him. I don't think that will happen anytime soon but if it does I'll try to pay more attention if I remember? Although maybe I still wouldn't catch it, his clone's thoughts tend to blend together.

 

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Also for anyone reading this trying to learn to switch: YOU MAY NOT ACHIEVE THIS EXPERIENCE AND THAT'S OKAY. I like to call my switching experience sensory switching, and my assumptions about switching greatly influence our experience. That being said, I don't know how ChrysalisM switches, so I can't assume their switching style is similar to mine.

Edited May 7, 2025 by Ranger

[Lucilyn]

not saying "shift" on accident

 

when we switch it's really as simple as switching tulpa<->host positions, so Lumi is basically the same as us tulpas when he switches out, and we are the same as as-if we were always the host

 

we personally switch by visualizing moving our forms out of overlapping with the body, emphasizing on our sense of presence moving with our head, and then the other person switches in the opposite way, by moving their visualized form to overlap with the body, and their head lining up with the body's to snap the switch into place (esp. when opening the body's eyes after)

[Lenore]

Yeah, switching is pretty much the same for our system. We usually have to take some time to quiet Bee's thoughts, then we visualize her stepping out of the body. Whoever is switching in takes a moment to focus on the body's senses, then takes over the stream of consciousness.

 

Honestly though, I try to keep my host as quiet as possible when I'm switched in. Our brain just loves to slip back into her thought patterns and push me out of the front. That's been getting better with practice.

[The Incans]

I think we have always had this ability so we concluded we must have already had a dissociative condition on some level given the ease we created imaginery companions as a child and also how we were able to split off ‘social masks’ to cope with stuff like school and our brain be able to see them as seperate identities from a very young age. 

 

When we discovered the word Tulpa and created them from scratch it was easier to let a past host/part that already had the ability to front …blend with the internal Tulpa character using that as ‘their inner body’ and giving the ‘Tulpa’ the ability to front instantly. (though only IF we wanted that Tulpa to have that ability)…this helps the Tulpa develop at a faster rate ….. the original ‘alter’ (past version of host)  then can choose to re-split and the Tulpa is then developed enough as a personality to be able to continue to function without the alter integrated within them..that’s how Jess and Kitty were created. they are now their own seperate identities and our brain see’s them as ‘not a version of me’ (therefore they are a Tulpa rather than an ‘alter’).

 

Angelo and Bear were created from scratch specifically to be ‘Internal family’ for Kitty & Luna as they felt they really needed to recreate the family (from childhood) inside. Nixy & Bobby temporarlly blended with them to speed up initial creation process then seperated before they started to take on their personalities… they also never fronted during the time they were helping them develop so that skill wasn't passed on. Angelo and Bear will stay as ‘Insiders’ who never front. 

 

‘Bobby’ (originaly a child alter part)  then created another changeling Tulpa body for themselves to integrate with and renamed themself ‘Star’ so they could live inside with Nixy and have fun transforming and trying to outrun each other as dragons or just snuggling up together as bears to hibernate or whatever. Occasionally they ask for ‘new material’ ie a new open world video game ..they come out and explore it then recreate it on the inside in a ‘holodeck’  which is seperate from the central living space that is kept the same where everyone’s inner houses/bedrooms are..(for those that can’t cope with the inner world constantly changing based on the latest obsession!) 😀

[TB]

our switching is very similar to lucilyn's though when we first did it, based on my understanding of the self, it is similar to what i'd describe as experiencing what it is like to be my tulpa and the tulpa being me instead. it's still kind of hard to understand how it isnt that other than how one chooses to see it i guess and how one defines things. 

 

i also do a different but similar thing as well as switching i like to call channeling, as i don't know what else to call it and didnt have a name for it for a very long time. for me it is basically switching with an oc instead of a tulpa. also my tulpas are based on my ocs. the experience of channelling is quite different than that of switching though, even though idk how to describe it other than i become my character and go through either real life as them, or a paracosm as them. i have done this since being a child to cope with school and things and i think having such developed characters i'd channel and frequently use for roleplay and that i was very close to was both a blessing and curse for tulpamancy because it deeply confused me about what i should be experiencing when practicing tulpamancy as i basically didnt know i had already been extremely close to it for a long time and thought i was supposed to be experiencing something else. 

 

i still use channeling often and also switch often. they are experientially different but on paper sound the same and seem like they should be the same. i'm not sure

 

the bizarrest thing is i used to frequently channel my character byakko, who later ended up becoming a tulpa of her own accord (i guess people call those walk ins or soul bonds or something idk) and we do switching, but recently i have experimented with specifically trying to channel her as well anyway, which i didnt think was something i could do anymore and missed doing, but decided to try it. and it does seem possible to still channel them without it being the same as switching with them somehow, but i still need more data as i've only done it twice while going to bed.

[mattx]

I wanted to make a thread about this mostly to point people towards a very good piece of media I found that quickly became one of my favorite: Severance (you can watch the Intro here)

It's always interesting how what a "switch" is has shifted over the years (almost decades I would say) from something closely depicted in that show (full 1:1 swap, host becoming the "secondary entity" and either blanking out or "living elsewhere in the mind" using mental imagery) to the more DID-oriented version of nowadays where the switch is more of a "personality" one and the host remains in the background, fully aware, although inhibited - and the tulpa just "imposes" their mannerism and personalities into the body's movements.

 

Nowadays possession doesn't even seem to be a requirement anymore, as people just fluidly use "fronting" and the "new switching" to symbolize a more "straightforward" approach to "switching out" between host and tulpa (lots of quotation marks here).

In order to avoid sounding like a gatekeeper, I'd say there's no stopping what has happened in the community - so it is what it is.
Regarding us, over the years we've had a taste of pretty much everything related to this subject, mostly because of me getting way too involved into it - Around a decade ago the focus was full body possession, even for days at a time, which meant Cheryl was steadily getting stronger and more imposing in her "presence" - pair that with a few hours a day of proper meditation and mental imagery training (method of loci and visualization/wonderland immersion) eventually unlocked the key to what was once called the "true switch" (similar to the Severance elevator effect)

 

But as time goes on and as you grow up you realize it's a cool trick and nothing more - if you train visualization enough you can still achieve a similar effect in wonderland immersion and the best part of having a tulpa (imho) is the constant unannounced feedback you get in real time by another party - so we spent a good amount of years "dialing it back" to regular full body possession (mostly in the evenings, where we would "dine" together while watching a TV Show or two) - and as I grew older and my life became just working working working we eventually stopped doing that too, but she remains with me all day every day and helps me out with stuff.

 

I suggest the "youngsters" and the people that recently approached tulpamancy to eventually do some research (in this very forum) and re-discover the depth of what the brain can achieve given enough intent and dedication.