Possession

In tradmancy, switching is considered an advanced skill as explained here. Possession is another skill that lets the tulpa “control our body”.

What’s possession?

Possession is an ability to dissociate body movement from our current identity. During possession, we still think from perspective of the host while movements of our body (whole or part of it) are associated with our tulpa’s agency. In other words, movement of our body is dissociated from our current thinking identity and associated with a different one.

In case of switching, there is no separation of “thinking” and “controlling” identity.

As a fancy exercise one can do a reverse possession – thinking from perspective of tulpa’s identity, associate the host with “controlling the body”.

Why isn’t it included in the guide?

As tradmancers struggle with achieving switching the direct way, they tend to learn possession first and use it as indirect way to learning switching. And when they do, possession often becomes obsolete for them.

There is no advantages possession has over switching when it comes to letting tulpas “control our bodies”. Switching can be easily sustained as long as you need it, the real “problems” you might have with sustaining it are connected to you not needing it atm. As in interacting with people who only the host as a relationship with or doing stuff that doesn’t require thinking about our identity distracts us and we revert to the host by default.

Possession can be interpreted as a form of depersonalization¹. In this state we disconnect from our control over body, associating it with another character instead. While thinking from perspective of different identity can become our second nature, depersonalization will likely remain an abnormal dissociative state for most of us. While there is no basis for such form of depersonalization being harmful, it requires effort to sustain even if we “need” it continuously, e.g. for a tulpa being able to chat with their friends by themself.

Summary

From point of view of tradmancy, possession might be easier to learn than switching (as seeing the tulpa as independent mind ins’t an obstacle here) and it might lead to switching indirectly.

From point of view of pragmatic tulpamancy, possession is obsolete even before its learned, there is no practical application of possession where switching isn’t just better.