Published 03/02/2025
This is a collection of tools and methods that I or other members of my system find useful when we have difficulty switching intentionally. It is not a guide to switching for the first time. While some of it may be helpful to that end, if your system is not familiar with the experience of switching you may find what follows lacking in explanation. It also assumes some degree of cooperation between the person currently in front and the person trying to switch in, and probably won't help you if you're trying to contact someone who won't come near front or trying to displace someone who consciously refuses to leave it.
Please pick what you like out of this advice and ignore what doesn't work for you. It isn't a checklist of things that you ought to do all at once, it isn't exhaustive, and it certainly isn't all going to work for every person. Within my own system some of these things are helpful for some people and not for others, while others have become more or less helpful over time or under stress. That said, there are three suggestions I'd like to emphasize for anyone who has difficulty fronting:
Celebrate small victories. Ongoing problems are rarely solved instantly. Don't treat your end goal, whatever that is, as the only worthwhile outcome. If you weren't able to do what you wanted to do, but you were able to front longer than usual, celebrate that. If you weren't able to front, but you were able to talk to someone through dictation, you still accomplished something. These are learning experiences and achievements in their own right.
Don't overexert yourself. If you don't get a lot of time in front it may be tempting to cling to front as long as you can manage, or to try to do as many things as you can in the time that you have. I will not say you should not push yourself; we rarely understand our limits without testing them. I will, however, encourage you to test your limits carefully. Pay attention to how you're feeling in the moment, pay attention to how large expenditures of energy affect you in the long term, and pay attention to how they affect the rest of your system. Remember that rest is important to endurance.
Accept that your experience may change. Being in front may feel different during one stage of your life than it did during another. Being yourself may begin to feel different, sometimes significantly, as you grow and change as a person. If you find that you can front but that it doesn't feel "right," or that you can't focus on the things that once kept you in front, the reason may not be that something is wrong, but that something has changed. Rather than chasing after the exact experience you had before, focus on finding other positive experiences.
Among the most commonly discussed tools for controlling switches are triggers -- not in the sense of a thing that causes an unavoidable negative reaction, though there may be overlap with that definition, but a thing that causes a person to switch into or out of front. For systems with inconvenient and uncontrollable switches triggers are important to recognize so that they can be avoided. The same goes for people who are brought to front by triggers that distress them. However, triggers can also be neutral or positive; hearing a person's name spoken, hearing music they like, or seeing something of personal importance to them may trigger an appearance without a negative reaction.
Anchors are things that keep a person who is already in front from switching out. Like triggers, these can be positive, negative, or neutral. In my own system most people have a difficult time switching out if they're spending time with a friend, but my cohost is also anchored to front by the sensation of nausea. Anchors may include objects like clothing or toys, activities, music, or even specific locations -- if the presence or experience keeps a person firmly in front, it's worth recognizing as an anchor.
If something does not bring me to front or keep me in front but prevents me from fronting at all, I will refer to it as a block. Some blocks are fairly tangible, but others may be difficult to identify. It took our system years to understand and circumvent a very abstract one of ours -- think something along the lines of "only people who share this kintype can front." Most of ours have been more straightforward, though: the presence of certain people, an excess of clutter. In our case many of them are also anchors for specific people.
Not every trigger, anchor, or block will affect you in a consistent way, and not all of them will be things you can avoid or make use of. Even so, recognizing how things outside your control may affect you can make those things easier to work around or react to. A real instructional on keeping track of these things would have to be its own article, but I will touch on the manipulation of them in other sections of this article. Briefly and vaguely, if you are inconsistently able to front try to pay attention to what is happening around you when you are able or unable to front. Look for patterns. If you are unable to keep track of these things in your head -- lord knows the plural community is not known for high incidence of good memory -- try keeping a journal or a mood tracker, or even bitching about it in a private discord server. Anything that you can look back over in the future.
A final word on the overlap of fronting triggers and experiential triggers: although they can be both potent and controllable, I don't recommend using strong negative experiences to control switches. If you anchor yourself to front using something unpleasant, you'll come to associate that unpleasantness with fronting. Likewise, if you move somebody out of front by hurting them they will likely, and rightly, be resistant to repeating the experience.
Sometimes a difficulty fronting comes not from your own actions, feelings, or environment but from being crowded out by other people. The suggestions in this section may require a little more cooperation from other members of your system than the sections that follow.
If you have difficulty switching in but other people in your system are able to switch freely, then you have -- with their help -- the opportunity to control who is in front when you try to switch. If you find it easier to be coconscious with a certain person, or to stay in cofront with them, then having them in front may make it easier for you to avoid slipping out. If you find you blend very easily with someone and don't want that to happen, you might ask them not to be present. Even without these considerations, having somebody switch in immediately before you may help by "loosening up" front.
If this is something you intend to explore, know that these relationships may not be consistent or immediately obvious. For some people it's easier to switch with a system member who has a similar personality to their own because it makes for a smoother transition. For others this would make for a lot of blending and confusion -- in that case, switching with someone they don't have much in common with might be easier or more pleasant.
Some systems seem to find the idea of scheduling fronting time very daunting. This is entirely understandable -- many systems have a limited degree of control over switches, and many plurans have independent problems with time management or executive function that make strict schedules difficult to follow. However, for systems whose members have difficulty switching a little bit of scheduled fronting time can make it easier to build a habit of switching or to relax a habit of "waiting for the right moment."
If you're having trouble fronting, consider asking the people who front more frequently to set aside a little time once a day or once a week for you: to participate in a hobby of yours, to watch something you're interested in, or to visit a place that you like. When I was new to fronting this meant that my now-cohost went to a garden and opened my journal for me on most Tuesday and Thursday mornings.
If you can't actually get into front during a time designated for it, that's alright. This is why I suggest tying it to a hobby or piece of media: if you can at least maintain some degree of coconsciousness you can still enjoy the experience. You may even be able to direct the person in front in their participation. Practice with intentional coconsciousness, with cofronting, and with affecting things in the world indirectly (whether by directing someone in front or by blending with them) are all valuable both in their own right and in learning to control switches.
Some plurans are easily anchored into front by external stimuli. If you find you have a problem less with you getting into front than with someone else in particular getting out, try to pay attention to what circumstances, if any, make it more difficult for them to move out of the way. Many plurans have unique anchors of this sort, but some that we know we share with other systems are socializing, feeling very focused on a particular activity or train of thought, and to some extent being easily "startled" back into front on the way out.
If a fronter has difficulty moving out of the way -- especially if they find themself drifting out of front and then "snapping back" -- it may help for them to remove things that take a lot of their attention. This may mean ending ongoing conversations, muting phone notifications, or moving from a hobby or fixation of theirs to focus on something that you can both maintain some degree of interest in. Major sources of anxiety can have a similar effect, though they can also be much more difficult to identify and remove.
Clear external anchors are not the only reason that somebody may be frontstuck, but they are one of the easiest reasons to address. If a fronter is stuck for less identifiable reasons or for reasons with no clear solutions things may be more difficult -- but that doesn't necessarily mean you won't ever be able to get into front. Cultivating strong coconsciousness, cofronting, and potentially intentional blending may be especially valuable to you. Try to support one another as best you can; just as being locked out of front can be very limiting, being stuck there can be exhausting.
One of the most valuable tools for intentional switching is the positive trigger, this being anything that brings you into or toward front without distressing you or hurting any other member of your system. Common positive triggers include certain sounds or music, specific subjects of conversation, or the presence of friends. I highly recommend trying to identify positive triggers for yourself, but as you are reading this article (or having it read to you) I assume your positive triggers are either unidentified or insufficient to put you in front on their own. Below are several things that may help you move from coconsciousness to front, or from near-unconsciousness to coconsciousness.
Many plurans are used to being addressed only by the name of the body or the name of a host. If you can, ask someone outside your system to address you by your own name when you want to front. It may help for them to talk to you, too, if they have something to talk about. Being addressed in this way can appeal to your sense of personal identity, keep your attention from drifting, and signal to other system members or to whatever unconscious mechanisms guide your system that you are wanted in front. If you want to be a little dramatic about it, it can be considered a form of summoning.
If there is nobody outside your system to address you, you might see yourself addressed in other ways. Having a system member or friend write notes or letters for you to read when you want to situate yourself in front may help. Having a member of your own system speak to you from front or cofront may help, too -- though in my personal experience this on its own tends to lead me solidly into coconsciousness rather than into front.
If you don't want to speak to anyone, lack the kind internal communication necessary for conversations, or don't want to rely so much on cooperation, consider playing a game that uses a player-input name. RPGs and dating sims both often address the player by name.
One of the more difficult aspects of plurality, at least for some systems, is the unchanging nature of a shared body. While you can't swap bodies when you switch, you can break that continuity.
The most obvious -- and, in my experience, most commonly discussed -- execution of this idea is to have certain clothes, accessories, or fashions that belong to certain members of the system. If only one person in your system likes to braid their hair at front, then braiding the body's hair as they come into front may help them feel comfortable and establish themself. The same can be said of changing pins or name badges, putting on or taking off jewelry, or restyling clothes.
The most dramatic and personal examples of this method can be difficult or impossible for systems living in stealth, large systems, systems with expensive tastes, or systems where everyone has very similar taste (and cannot agree on what belongs to whom). It can also present issues with switching on the go: most systems will not find it feasible to carry jewelry or garments for everyone who might switch in when they leave the house, much less entire wardrobes. Even in these cases the same broad principle can be roughly applied: even if nobody has accessories or styles that belong to them personally, taking off a coat, letting the hair down, or changing shirts will make the body feel different than it did before the switch, which can make for an easier, stronger transition.
If you can't change yourself, you may be able to change your surroundings. This is another method that may be very dramatic or very subtle.
If you are able to do so, move to an entirely different venue, ideally one that is comfortable or enjoyable to you moreso than anyone trying to move out of your way. For me, this is almost always a garden. Nobody else in my system cares much for the kind of curated flower gardens that I like, so when we live near one it's always the first place I think to go when I want some time to myself -- and when we travel, stopping by a garden is always a good way to make sure I don't get drowned out of front in my cohost's excitement about gift shops and visitations.
Going to a garden, however, is rarely a feasible solution to not being able to switch in the moment. What is often much more doable is walking through a door. Moving to another room or taking a short walk outside may not be very extreme, but it's still a visible change in environment.
If you don't have the freedom or the inclination to move even that far, consider the space you're in. If you have access to a computer or phone that allows it, immersing yourself in a game with a well-developed setting may have a similar effect to going to a new place. You can also change the space itself. While redecorating is generally a fairly long-term commitment, the lighting, the scentscape, and where in the room you spend your time are all things that can change how a room feels without requiring a massive expenditure of energy. Change your sheets and light a candle and the room may look a little different.
I touched on above that being involved in something personally important can be entrapping to some plurans. Being involved in anything at all can be much the same. Sometimes someone won't be able to get fully out of front until they finish or stop what they're doing; sometimes you won't be able to get in until you're doing something.
Like changing something about your appearance or environment, changing what you're doing can be a clear indicator of change to ease a switch -- and, under many circumstances, a very accessible one. Sometimes this goes with changing other things; applying makeup is itself a new activity, as is getting up and going for a walk. Sometimes it's a choice in itself. In any case the idea is that if it is difficult to go from one system member playing solitaire to another system member playing solitaire, then it may be easier to go from one system playing solitaire to another drawing pictures.
These kinds of changes don't have to be outwardly significant. In the arbitrary example of playing solitaire you may not need to get up and do something as different as arts and crafts or taking a walk; simply starting a new solitaire game for yourself may work just the same. In my case I have forced switches in the middle of cleaning by turning around and picking up something that my cohost didn't intend to. My cohost often forces switches by shouting. Simply doing something that the other person was not doing can be a very significant way to anchor yourself.
If you are in cocon or cofront with someone who has noticeably different habits or mannerisms than you, making a point of dropping their mannerisms and adopting your own, or of asking them to, may ease your transition or even trigger a switch on its own. This is often referred to in plural communities -- at least in the circles I lurk in -- as "faking it 'til you make it," though I'm not especially fond of the phrase.
I have seen people hesitate to use this method because they feel it is too close to "faking it." I think of it more as weaponizing the sense of dysphoria many of us feel when we have to pretend to be someone else. If you have ever had difficulty staying in front because it was so awkward pretending to be the host or frontsona, that is the effect we are trying to induce in the person currently in front -- with their consent and cooperation. Ideally, it will become easier to be you than to pretend to be you.
If you are coconscious, cofronting, or blending with another member of your system and would rather be alone, these methods may help you get there.
If you know something you like or tolerate but which your companion does not, you may be able to shock them out. When I suggest this I mean things like bitter foods or country music; I am not suggesting you trigger other members of your system to get them out of front. Negative triggers may at times be effective, but they will build an entirely understandable sense of resentment between you and the person you've triggered, and even if you use them with consent you will likely build an association in their mind between the trigger and your presence. (This is the same reason I do not suggest using your own negative triggers to bring yourself forward: you do not want to associate being in front with something overwhelmingly negative.)
If you can communicate with the person currently in front, you can dictate. Ask them to open a journal, document, or chatroom where they can transcribe what you ask them to write. It doesn't especially matter what you write, except that it should be something you can focus on; my own journal was mainly descriptions of the things around me at first. The person transcribing has a lot less to think about than the person dictating, and if you are lucky, or if your system functions in a similar manner to my own, the internal mechanism of your system will eventually cut out the middle man and you will be in front, putting your thoughts down yourself.
A clear and verbal internal voice is not strictly necessary for this method. If your dictation is not coming through as words because of an issue with intra-system communication, your transcriber's efforts to sort your words out of your thoughts -- to think like you -- may well hurry along the process of putting you in front. If you are nonverbal, you may be able to "dictate" a visual or auditory medium instead, or glyphs like emojis or webdings.
One thing to note about transcription (and backseat gaming, below) as a method of switching is that it uses a somewhat different mechanism than I understand many people use when switching intentionally: it essentially aims to reduce one person's presence in front to a kind of writing mechanism that can then be skipped over entirely more easily than it can be kept in place. As a result it can be useful for overcoming psychological blocks to switching -- whatever unconscious mechanism stops you switching may not recognize it as switching. However, it may be uniquely unpleasant for a transcriber who reacts poorly to hyperfocus, and may be ineffective with one who can easily keep multiple trains of thought going simultaneously.
Close sibling to transcription above, backseat gaming refers (in this article) to the practice of telling the person in front how to play a game -- generally video games, but anything that allows some degree of individual choice and preference ought to work. (A "solved game" with a single effective strategy is a bad choice here, as there is nothing for you to suggest to the person in front that they aren't already doing if they know how to play the game.)
Backseat gaming can at first feel like a very detached way to engage with front, as there are more moving parts than in transcription, and if you are fully outside front you won't exactly be getting the immediate feedback from your choices that many games offer...but it can also be a lot more engaging for both parties than transcription, and generally requires a very different kind of thought on your part.
Spiritual practice can be helpful in switching for two reasons -- probably for more than two, if you get into specific forms of practice, but I am speaking extremely broadly, and I have two reasons.
First, spiritual practice involving focusing exercises or ritual gives a pluran in cocon or cofront something to focus on and a framework in which to focus on it, often without interruption. If that practice belongs solely to the individual trying to front, all the better -- but for some people, and some practices, the nature of the action, and being allowed to take the lead in it, will offer plenty of weight in the right direction even if the practice in general is shared within the system.
Second, within practices which offer means of affecting oneself and one's world -- perhaps most popularly witchcraft and prayer -- a system can try to induce a switch through methods somewhat more direct than focusing. It is perhaps not particularly efficient to depend on elaborate spells or formal petitions to higher powers to switch, but not all spiritual practice is elaborate or formal, and not all of it is meant to be repeated ad infinitum. One might pray or make charms for ease in switching; one might utilize rituals and meditations that offer strength of mind; one might (gently and temporarily) banish a host from front.
Sometimes, though, the problem is simply that you don't have anything keeping you in front. "Being in front" is not necessarily a neutral or default state, after all, especially if your system has a host for whom it is.
I said in my description of triggers, anchors, and blocks that I was not going to get into the weeds of finding them for yourself, but I'm going to make a partial exception for anchors. Experimenting with the methods under "Getting Into Front" can sometimes give you enough information to extrapolate usable anchors. Whatever gets you into front in the moment, consider how that can be turned into an ongoing state.
Sometimes this is so obvious that it is not useful advice. If playing country music gets you into front, you have probably already tried playing country music in the background to stay in front. If talking to a friend gets you into front, continuing to talk to them while you are in front is a very short leap. If what gets you into front is a momentary or unrepeatable action, though, extrapolating a potential anchor from that takes a little more thought.
If the act of putting on a piece of jewelry gets you into front but doesn't keep you there, you may be able to turn that action into a constant presence by using a piece of jewelry weighty enough to be noticeable as long as it's on, or something highly visible in your peripheral vision. If you can front in the garden but need to work elsewhere, try bringing something from the garden into your workspace: flowers at the table where you want to write, a potpourri that smells familiar, a photo or png in the corner of your computer screen. If you can front to vacuum but lose your grip afterward, try expanding outward from the vacuuming -- can you vacuum and then do another cleaning chore? Can you vacuum and then do something else loud?
Not every thing that gets you into front is going to correspond to a usable anchor. The example of "doing something else loud" if you always front to vacuum the floor is intentionally a bit of a stretch; if you somehow group together everyone who can easily front to vacuum and ask them why, you'll probably mostly hear "I always front to do chores" or "I like to see how the room cleans up" or "the noise drives everyone else out, I'm the only one who tolerates it." In one of these cases a noise machine might block other people from front, but it won't be a very useful anchor if the fronter wants to enjoy fronting and not tolerate it. However, for the outlier who says "I find pleasant what the rest of my system considers an overwhelming sensory experience," noticing that they always switch in to vacuum and never stick around after can lead in entirely different directions. Even things that sound incredibly silly can be worth at least thinking about.
I am starting to consider this the first line of troubleshooting when someone says without elaboration that they can't stick in front. When you front, what are you doing? If you switch in and immediately resume watching Cutthroat Kitchen or lurking on Discord, you are making yourself fairly well interchangeable with the person who preceded you. Of course your mind will slip back into the rut that it was in, especially if you don't front often enough to have a rut of your own. Give yourself a task. If you have something to focus on, your mind may be too occupied to wander into someone else's.
When I say "task," I am speaking fairly broadly. "Clean the bathroom" is a task, but so is "start a conversation on Discord." So is "take notes on this Cutthroat Kitchen episode." So is "meditate for ten minutes," and so is "research the history of meditation." The idea is not to get something done, the idea is to be in a state of actively choosing to do something. While something physically engaging may at times be more effective, the task can be purely internal: think about what you would make if you were one of the contestants on this episode. Form your own opinion about the current subject of conversation and consider how you would communicate it. Examine how your experience as an individual affects how you feel about the things you are reading or watching. Anything at all that requires you to engage with the world you've switched into rather than simply witnessing it.
If you are not capable of staying in front in boring or unpleasant situations, but you would like to be, you're probably going to have to practice that. I do not recommend practicing by clinging to front as long as possible. In my experience that just leads to burnout, or even to greater difficulty staying in front afterward -- a bit like trying to strength-train by going straight to the heaviest weight you can find. Even if you can manage to lift it once, you'll just injure yourself in the process.
If you are unsteady in front when nothing is actively keeping you there but aren't immediately booted out -- for example, if you start losing focus when you start doing chores but it takes several minutes for you to actually fall out of front -- try setting brief, boring tasks between or immediately around things that you know you can front for. You might take a break from your favorite game and wash just a few dishes, or go to the ATM before or after watching your source material. Ideally with practice your boring tasks will stop immediately destabilizing you and it will start to feel normal to stop what was keeping you in front and do something else for a few minutes. Then you can incrementally increase the length of your tasks.
If you can't do that because you are immediately lost to front when you start to do something that doesn't interest you, see if you can stay (or become) engaged in coconsciousness or cofront instead. If you have good internal communication, it may help for the person now in front to talk with you. The idea is to reduce the degree to which you become detached from front in these situations; if it doesn't help you stay in front, it may at least make it easier for you to switch back in when the person who is in front switches tasks again.
Both of these methods can also be useful if you have trouble fronting in the absence of a specific anchor. If you need a certain genre of music to feel stable in front, try pausing it for just five minutes at a time and getting around in the silence, or hanging about while somebody else does.
Be aware that while it is in many cases possible for a pluran to learn to front in situations that were at one point difficult or impossible for them, it is also true that some people simply cannot tolerate certain stimuli (or lack thereof). One of the blessings of plurality is that if you can't tolerate something you don't necessarily have to be directly exposed to it. Try to teach yourself to front in unpleasant situations if you want to, yes -- but if it doesn't work for you, don't hurt yourself in the interest of bypassing one of the most common functions of plurality.
You can get into front, given the time to plan or the right circumstances -- but it's still difficult, or tedious, or a simple pain in the ass. You've already found the right combination of things to make it happen, but is there anything that will make it easier?
For many people, the ability to switch on command is a bit like a muscle: the more you exercise it, the stronger -- and more controllable -- it gets. Like exercising a muscle, positive results often require some consistency.
You can't always pick your triggers or the things that lock you out of front, but you may be able to pick your anchors. Find an accessory, or a piece of jewelry, or an article of clothing. We prefer jewelry because it's generally very easy to carry around and take on and off, but it is unfortunately also very easy to lose -- if you are very prone to losing track of small things (as we are) you may want to use something large or something replaceable.
Our process for creating an anchor is as follows: you put your accessory on whenever you enter front, and take it off whenever you leave -- or ask other members of your system to take it off if they notice you're no longer in front. It tends to take a while, but we find that over time we begin to associate the fronter and the accessory, and it becomes easier for the fronter and harder for others to front while wearing it. If you are spiritually inclined you might charm the accessory or pray over it, but this is at its core a mundane method.
It's also simple enough to be applied to other anchors like scents or sounds; perhaps you want to make an anchor of a nosegay or a white noise machine. I will, however, warn that anchors other than physical objects can be somewhat harder to control or reproduce. If you anchor yourself with white noise, ambient white noise may muddle things for you. If you anchor yourself with a particular scent, you may have trouble reproducing it.
This is in a sense a combination of "Scheduling" and "Doing Something." It can be hard to front if you do not front regularly, and it can be hard to front regularly if the body's free time is being shared among thirty other people. It may be necessary to carve out some kind of routine.
The simplest way -- not the easiest way, but the simplest way -- to give yourself some regularity is to take the suggestion of scheduling front time from "Making Room" and maintain it in the long term. Give yourself an hour every weekday, or two hours every Tuesday, or an evening every full moon. Make fronting a habit. Make habits for your time in front. Tuesdays aren't just fronting days, they are boba tea days, or letter writing days, or jogging days. Create a rut for yourself so that you aren't constantly trying to avoid falling into someone else's rut.
If time is a commodity your system is short on, the easiest way to get this time for yourself may be to adopt a chore -- one that nobody else wants to do, or one that just doesn't get done. You will have to resign yourself to being "the dishes guy," but as long as your system can remember to make time for your chore you'll get regular practice fronting. Hard or irritating work is also a useful bargaining tool when there are arguments over free time.
If you want to front regularly in the long term, you need something to front for -- probably something beyond being "the dishes guy," if you took the above advice. What is the reason that you want to front more easily or more often? Look for ways to engage with that. If there is no reason, find one. Try new things; join interest groups; accept invitations; make a bucket list. Take advice directed at singlets who are trying to get out more or develop a sense of identity. You want to have things that make other members of your system think of you. You want to find things in the world that you gravitate toward.
Your reasons for fronting do not need to be things that other people would consider meaningful -- they just need to interest you. If you just want to front to stare at the sky, then stare at the sky. The important thing is that there is something to plan around and to weight decisions about who fronts when -- and that when the novelty of fronting itself wears off you will still have something to do besides being. It is, after all, hard to get regular practice fronting if your answer to "when do you want to front?" or "what do you want to do?" is always a shrug.