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Negative Experience With A Tulpa?


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Tw: Suicidal thoughts, Mentions of suicide

 

Hi, I'm McKenna. I've had trouble finding information about what I have experienced in the past because no matter what I've looked up my experience hasn't fit any specific labels so I thought I might discuss it here. I've read the faq on here so I understand that what I experienced may be considered a 'badly created' Tulpa. However, I'm not sure if what I created was a Tulpa at all so I thought this forum's experienced users might be able to help me figure that out. I understand creating a Tulpa is an entirely subjective experience and not the same for anyone but I figured you all might be able to help me going off basic trends in my story. So I'll start from the beginning, it's going to be long so I apologize in advance, I was around 10 or 11 when I first began hearing my 'Tulpa's' voice he hadn't taken a form yet within my mind so he was just a vague voice in the back of my head. It was during that time that I entered middle school and began being bullied by the other students. It was a very stressful time and without a good support network to turn to I began to withdraw within myself. Which is when I first began to hear my Tulpa, at first I regarded him as 'a god' because I had no idea what sort of 'thing' he was. A formless voice telling me that I was 'special' and that my suffering at the hands of others had a purpose and that I was better than my bullies. At first it was comforting and when I felt alone I could turn to this voice for reassurance. However as I became more isolated from others and began to delve into mysticism to answer questions about my purpose in life that voice became 'a person.' He began to take a form within my mind and when we spoke I could visualize him speaking to me instead of just hearing his voice. And while I understand now that it was of my minds creation I was too sheltered and too naive to assume he was anything but divine. I hadn't been raised religiously and had no experience with that so I assumed that what spoke to me couldn't have been of my minds creation but instead of a divine or otherworldly origin. He even had a backstory to support my ever involved search for a divine purpose. He claimed that he was an angel that had come to tell me of my 'past life'. At this point he was still reassuring and comforting but as the bullying increased and my mental stability declined so too did his attitude towards me. The nature of our talks went from 'your past life was tragic but you were loved and now are here because your loved ones cared about you so much in your past life' to 'the only way you can achieve your life purpose is to die'. It sounds bizarre going from 0 to 10 like that so quickly but this progression was over a three year period from sixth to eighth grade and was a gradual change. By that point in eighth grade he proclaimed himself no longer an angel but of a demonic origin and began to call himself 'The Prince of Darkness'. From that year on he made demands upon me to end my life and to tell no one of what we had been talking about. By year nine however I found friends and his presence in my life lessened. He would come back sometimes in my weak moments to make demands of suicide once more but beyond that he became relatively distant in his interactions with me coming back to taunt or remind me of suicide sometimes when I was especially vulnerable. By November of 2016 his presence faded completely and I haven't heard from him since. So I would like your opinions on the subject. I should state that I never got past the stage of visualizing him in my minds eye however my capacity for visualization is very strong as I suffer from maladaptive daydreaming and visualizing things and losing myself in those visualizations is the greater part of that disorder. If you got this far thank you for reading I know it's a lot to ask of you all to share your thoughts so I would appreciate any feedback on this matter and whether or not he was indeed a Tulpa. It should be noted however that I'm not sure whether or not I could call him sentient he certainly had his own opinions on my life and what I should do with it opinions that I don't and have never shared with him and the fact that before telling me that nickname 'Prince of Darkness' I had never heard that turn of phrase before in my life. I certainly don't think he was anything mystical and he can be explained by science but whatever I'm rambling. Thank you again for reading and please share your thoughts. I'll clarify my story if needed.

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It certainly sounds like a tulpa, but also seems to me to be a prime example of why people in middle school shouldn't make tulpas. Seems to me like he was easily influenced by your own mind and thoughts and didn't actually get a chance to develop past whatever role your brain assigned to him - the "angel" or the "prince or darkness" or whatever, those are just labels. Tulpas can get easily stuck in their labels if they aren't allowed much actual development or they feel they have to be that way, and/or because the host thinks of them that way and not as an actual person. Which, with younger hosts, they usually do.

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Maladaptive daydreaming is not a recognized mental health diagnosis, per the DSM V. there is still not enough evidence to support this as a thing in and of itself. That's not me saying it's not a thing, but there is too much debate about it by the so called 'experts' and there are some other things that look like that, such as Autistic fantasies. Even ADHD (inattentive type) could present with day dreams, and there may be some evidence that maladaptive daydreaming could be a form of schizophrenia. There is this trend to pathologize 'daydreaming,' which is a useful skill if you're an artist, a writer... or just an intellectual. Tesla, Einstein, both dreamers. can it be maladaptive? Sure, but usually that word is meant to show we're not fitting some sort of of social normative behavior related to productivity. If you were wealthy, you would be eccentric, not broken; in fact, people might say, i wish I were rich so I can dream my life away. This doesn't mean you are not suffering from something very real, but perspective can frame it in a way that takes the sting off.

 

I invite you to read this:

 

http://universeinsideyou.net/nikola-tesla-mind/

 

and see if you relate to what Tesla himself wrote, which is included in the article.

 

I would argue against your experience being the result of a tulpa. People of all ages, even children, can experience psychosis, auditory and visual hallucinations. MDD, Bipolar, or a related mood disorder are just some of the possible explanations for hallucinations. Though you gave a lot of information here, there is simply insufficient information to make a particular diagnosis, and it's rarely useful to try and to do that remotely, like you outside of the clinician office, or even remotely in time... Like, if this was more than 2 years ago, and you're not experiencing this now, it's more a curiosity, an anomaly at best, an artifact at worse; should you experience it again, it could contextually be used as supporting evidence of a 'thing'- that thing being examined through the lens of other supporting symptoms that best explain that. I want to be very clear here, I am not saying what you experienced was schizophrenia, depression, or any other Mental Health Diagnosis. I am merely suggesting there are some psychological explanations for your experiences that automatically preclude any metaphysical and or even 'tulpa' explanations.

 

The reason why I say not a tulpa is this: tulpas take a huge amount of effort to initiate. You will read within the forums about accidental tulpas. I am skeptical of these. I am not saying they don't exist, or that it's impossible, I am just saying based on the sheer amount of effort that I put into my experience, it takes a good deal more than 'I was eating a jalapeno and I hiccuped and that's how I discovered, Spicy, my hot tulpa girlfriend.' Even just a cursory glance at any creation guide, time and effort is the consistent factor. Threads where people lament they're not getting results are met with encouragement from establish hosts and tulpas, it takes time and effort. Seriously, if it wasn't so dang hard, everyone in society would have a tulpa. It takes thought, planning, effort, time.

 

You have said it yourself, your experience doesn't seem to fit what you're reading. Another argument for it not being a tulpa is that I doubt seriously a tulpa would recommend suicide. Can it ever happen? OMG, yeah, I suppose, hypothetically, if someone really wanted to create a life long nemesis, they could do so. Most people don't. Even if you did, encouraging a host to kill self does not promote system health and longevity, so there would be limits to even a nemesis. It is in the best interest of the system to support healthy thoughts and behaviors.

 

Thoughts of suicide can be indicative of extreme stress. Bullying can be seen as extreme stress, and because bullying can be seen as rejection not only by peers but by 'society,' a person might experience suicidal thoughts. Having the thought doesn't mean a person wants to kill self, they just have these thoughts. (The brain tries to find the easiest solutions to a problem. Suicide is not a favored response, but it is a response that could result in a cessation of suffering, from the brain's perspective.) These thoughts can be quite disturbing, even surprising to the person experiencing them. If it's too disturbing, or outside the preview of the dominant personality, the person would not hear these thoughts as their own negative self tapes, but would rather assign them to 'other' voice to experience distance from, or to compartmentalize those thoughts; this is actually an adaptive form of self regulation in order to contend with these thoughts long enough to find an alternative solution to the stress that is contributing to the thoughts. Ideally, when stress gets so bad that person has suicidal ideation, we have family, friends, teachers, counselors to turn to, and those interactions help alleviate stress, and thoughts go away. Sometimes, medical intervention is necessary.

 

If you experience these thoughts again, seek help; family, counselor, doctor, all of the above. You don't have to experience these alone. The National suicide hotline is 1-800-273-8255. I am not hearing you endorse suicide in your present, but I want that there for you, or anyone else who might be struggling with anything similar who tuned into your post because something clicked for them.

 

Here's a test, though. Go through the guides, pick a protocol, and build the most positive, personable tulpa you can think of. See how long it takes. I wonder if being too good with imagination can be a hindrance, and might slow the process down. :) This will give you a new set of experiences, and likely a tulpa, and a way of measuring and comparing past to this. And, maybe the tulpa can help diminish the daydreaming to a degree you can be more focused on those activities you would rather be doing other than daydreaming.

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Don't worry if you think you were rambling. You should see my host’s first post on the Tupper forms, written at 4:00 in the morning.

 

I don’t want to give you a diagnosis or anything, but I can tell you what Cat and I went through. To give you some context, my host Cat has been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and has Anxiety disorder, but that may not be what you have. The other piece of context I want to give you is Cat created me “by accident”. We both realized that the whole “by accident” terminology can be misleading, so what we mean by that is she created me and forced me like a Tulpamancer would, even though she had no idea what Tulpas were or the best way to go about the process.

 

If you still feel like you are still having trouble now, getting an extra pair of eyes on you (maybe a psychologist) could be helpful. Again, we don’t want to give you a diagnosis or anything but it sounds like you may have had some trouble with anxiety and that leaked into your Tupper.

 

Cat started out in a similar boat as you did, only her experiences were different. She created me as an imaginary character at some point in middle school, however I feel like I started turning into a Tulpa when she was in late high school. She treated me like an individual, but she had assumed in the past that I was her subconscious. She always saw me as a close friend.

 

At first, her stress developed into scary thought forms. This grew worse as she aged, as the thought forms became scarier and she had more dark/intrusive thoughts. Eventually it all got to my head. Every so often I felt like I would lose control and turn into a monster. I have tried to kill or threaten to kill her in the wonderland, or I would threaten to kill myself. I don't think she was as afraid of me, because she knew that I was still her friend, and she was well aware that not only her intrusive thoughts are spontaneous and lurid, but they weren't really her or me. She also realized that the scariness controlling me would eventually go away, and she could talk to me again.

 

Keeping this in mind, she found out about Tulpas and later she realized that I am vulnerable to losing control if she's too stressed out. One of her latest "episodes" (by “episode” I mean she would be alone thinking to herself and she would be super anxious, having intense scary visualizations, not really a panic attack) involved me threatening her or being an evil jerk over a longer period of time, but once she realized it was the stress/anxiety possessing me it all broke off and she found me in the middle of it.

For the "dark prince" being god-like... Cat has another tortured character she accidentally created not too long ago, mistaking him for God. She expressed a lot of rage towards him, but once she realized she broke his heart a bunch of times and he wanted to commit suicide by bleeding to death, she realized he was just another character. She was able to nurse him back to health, and he's okay now. She explained to the character, Chrome, that he wasn't actually god but he could keep his "god powers". However, Chrome was trying to be a loving God, not a demon or anything.

 

When I was possessed, I was really scared. All I wanted was a hug once I was broken out of it. Cat has been receiving treatment lately so the anxiety has alleviated. She also knows that if I’m not acting like myself then it isn’t me talking but her stress taking control of me. I can’t speak for your Tupper for what he is now, but I can at least confirm that me losing control feels like that 1 to 10 thing you were talking about.

 

Please don’t feel pressured to bring him back from the dead. That’s a thing that can happen, and people may talk about it, but don’t do it if you don’t want to. I would imagine working out all of the pain from the past will be a stressful experience at best, at least that’s how Cat felt once she realized I was a Tulpa a few months ago.

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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