Aches and Pressures: A Result of Tulpaforcing?

[MonarKay]

So common knowledge around the community seems to be that getting headaches, pressures, or generally strange/warm feelings is a sign that you're tulpa is growing and you are making progress.

However, despite the fact that I've been at this for nearly a month and have been able to frequently talk with and even proxy Kay, I've yet to feel anything out of the ordinary.

 

So here's a poll. I'm wondering what sorts of feelings most people on the forum get as a result of forcing. NOTE: If you are already further along in the process and no longer feel these things, just report on what you felt while still early.

[Guest Fillyfooler]

Other than when she possesed me for the first time and the occasional emotional response I haven't felt anything. No headaches or pressure or anything like that.

[Lolimancer]

Constant located headpressure. Can pressure the shit out of my forehead at will if i close my eyes. Anxiety attack healing. Occasional emotional response. Ear ringing/"pops"/auditory hallucinations. Unexpected possession attempts by loli. Feeling my harem touching me in weird places. Ass pinching. Finger in ass. Uuh...

[Guest Cheb]

Slight headaches, nothing major. I can tell when she's feeling anxious, and when I force I get that feeling that you get when you've got a crush on someone your sitting close to, but don't know if you should tell them how you feel.

[GGMethos]

If you're head actually starts hurting, it means you should take a break from forcing for at least a little while. I've never had anything major, a few headaches now and then but nothing that has actually cause severe pain.

[mr insano]

I sometimes get headaches, but I just thought that was because forcing requires a lot of sustained mental effort.

 

Other than that, nothing else.

[SSaint]

I get feelings of warmth/slight pressure whenever my tulpa is present.

I get head pressure occasionally, but not often. A very strong pressure on my temple.

[magentaMarrow]

I usually get forehead pressures, that's all. Sometimes quite strong, but I've never felt pain, even after long forcing sessions.

[Virgil]

First off, let me tell you what these symptoms are. They are, for the most part, hallucinations.

 

There are two kinds of these hallucinations:

* lasting mild effects characterised by noisiness: tinnitus, visual noise

* transient, often abrupt, clear and noticeable and sometimes intense

the latter are listed bellow:

nociceptive: bursts of intense but benign localised pain, pinches, dull cranial aches

thermoceptive: regions of warmth or heat (may move), chilly pins and needles, patches of cold feelings

tactile: vibrations, tingling, poking, sensations of pressure that may move, pins and needles

proprioceptive: hard to describe — the body or individual limbs start to feel disproportionate — usually bigger (this is erroneously listed as a mental symptom in the wiki article below), absent, as if they were in a different possition than they really are

equillibrioceptive: vertigo, often occur along with proprioceptive hallucinations, resulting in pretty trippy sensations

auditory: low noises with more complex patterns, short sound bursts (20-500ms), which may vary in volume

visual: specks and spots, plasma-like effects, shadows, lights, sudden size changes in a part of the visual field

The advanced portion of the visual system is divided into four subprocessing systems that process position, motion, colour, and shape respectively. I know only of one symptom affecting this system, and that's shape distortion.

 

there is another classification, but these effects (or symptoms) can't be called hallucinations, because a symptom like muscle twitches manifests outside the mind

• efferent: muscle twitches, sudden minor involuntary movements
  
• another type of efferent: These are really hard for me to believe, because they affect the autonomic NS, but evidence suggests it may be possible: abnormal body temperature (I think there are some groups of monks who can change/increase their body temperature at will — that would confirm the possibility of affecting thermoregulation), abnormal heart rate, and arrhythmia
  
• seeming afferent: all of the symptoms (hallucination types) listed above
  
• purely internal: alien thoughts and emotional responses, for instance — this is an interesting class, which I'll discuss further
  

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This article on The Kundalini syndrome is very interesting. In it, there are three tables listing symptoms occurring due to a certain kind of meditation. The similarity is striking, but the symptoms are less intense and frequent in tulpaforcers. That's a good sign, since I consider them useless or even detrimental. If you are interested in this topic, I suggest that you read the whole article… because I haven't yet.

 

What causes these symptoms? I'd say stray or leaked signals and general noisiness, but that would be somewhat inaccurate. I don't have enough data yet to determine that.

Substantially strong neural activity unrecognised by your processing pathways is interpreted as noise. Let's talk about this kind of 'neural' noise more. The process, when awry, doesn't cause only tinnitus or visual noise; it can also be the source of tremor — yes, tulpaforcing can impair your ability to perform very fine movements.

I mentioned purely internal effects resulting from bad tulpaforcing, and now I'd like to expound that. So, what can noise do to your mind? It's not so noticeable, unlike ringing in the ears, and the effects are subtler; they include slowing down the thought process, making it prone to faults and if they are severe enough, general mild confusion, and finally, they can manifest as an inability to concentrate or even think coherently.

 

Then there is superfluous actity that is not pure noise. The signals it produces are interpreted as semi-meaningful. Examples are emotional responses and other unrecognised feelings, thought process disruptions, acute confusion, deja vu-like feelings, doubting reality or the perception thereof; it's fairly hard to describe and also interpret, the person whose findings I'm drawing on said (translated by me— the person's actual wording is much less crappy), "… I kept narrating to my tulpa about [the AV receiver (or something, doesn't matter)], and I suddenly felt a very strong feeling of nonsensicality about it. I looked at the vase next to the TV stand and felt the same about it as well. At first, I thought it was an emotional response or something, but it was something I'd never felt before, totally alien. For a moment, I was dead sure the vase couldn't exist in this universe. It just seemed utterly impossible to me. The wave lasted for several seconds and then altogether disappeared." — generally speaking, it was just a wave of confusion.

Emotional responses are definitely suspicious when there's no actual recognisable emotional content to them— when they are mere weird feelings.

 

All of this may sound scary, but tulpaforcing seldom causes such problems. The effects are usually mild at most. Moreover, there are worse, yet mundane ways to screw up your mind, for instance doing nothing but watching crap on television every day. It won't have the same effects, but it can reduce you to a gibbering fool, which is way worse than, say, tinnitus. This may seem like a joke, but I'm serious. Be careful about what you put in your mind. It learns from and adapts to what you're exposed to, whether you want or not; although, you can ignore certain things to some extent. Fortunately, people can control what they expose themselves to. Well, those with a mind of sufficient willpower can, anyway.

.

 

Yet another way of classifying, or rather identifying, these effects is by their intentionality.

If your tulpa can consistently use, for example, head pressure to communicate, it shouldn't be looked on as a negative symptom; on the contrary, conscious control is an ability which both the host and his or her tulpa should strive for. However, if it is not consistent, and (not or) your tulpa can't willingly control it, then I don't believe it's beneficial. Keep in mind that the line between these two states is not always very clear, and hosts tend to deceive themselves into thinking that certain sensations are produced intentionally.

 

 

Well, well, I'm not happy at all with what I've just spewed out, regarding both its form and its content; it's too incoherent and too incomplete for my liking and some of the ideas don't even reflect my current views. Too bad I'm not going to do anything about that, so there.

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[Guest Exiled Eagle]

I must be different from everyone else, because all my aches and pressures are in the back of my head.