My Tulpa Called Me Weird

[NoneFromHell]

November 8, 2015

It's weird that I can experience these things and still get paranoid that Arro isn't the real deal. It's frustrating as hell but mostly I just feel guilty, because no doubt Arro can read these emotions off of me as well and I really don't want him to think for a second that I'm worried that he isn't real. I keep talking about how I want him so bad and how I'm excited about coaxing him to life, but in the end I still can't shake the feeling that I'm just fooling myself into thinking that Arro is legitimate. I honestly just. Really fucking hate it.

 

Oh, i know that feeling exactly. Alice is capable of possession, touch imposition (if she likes to) and she will answer me in 99% of the time I'm asking if she is there. But still, yesterday I had one of these quiet days where you barely can feel or hear your tulpa at all. So what happens? I start to doubt her existence, i feel like I'm fooling myself, even when I know that she is here, she has proven that on many occasions. So I try to calm myself down, until it all blows over and things are getting more clear again.

[Nageki]

November 11, 2015

 

The other day one of my friends told me that one of their systemmates is a tulpa. We had a chat about them and they recommended that I use mindfulness and zen exercises as a means of forcing. I haven't looked into zen yet but I've since tried applying mindfulness to the act of forcing (more specifically observation), and I agree that it's pretty effective, though I can't say it'll be very exciting for Arro to hear me describe literally everything about a single object for like ten minutes straight lol.

 

In the end my friend told me that if I had any questions regarding tulpamancy, they'd be happy to help. I'm very grateful to them for that!

 

And on top of reading Homeland, I've also started playing Nier with Arro. It's... well. It's really god damn difficult to keep him in mind while I play, honestly. Which makes sense, but for some reason I'd assumed that reading a book with him would be more difficult. As it is, it's definitely much harder when playing a video game.

 

Right now whenever I realize I haven't been forcing Arro while I play, I catch him up on what's happened so far by sending him memories, then start chatting at him about things like how the plot's progressing, or what I think of certain characters, etc. Sometimes I ask what he thinks of something, and most of the time I'll feel a brief flash of emotion that definitely isn't mine.

 

I think he's pretty much nailed down sending me emotions, so much so that he prefers to communicate via emotions instead of trying to actually talk. I still would like for him to be vocal though so I'll try coaxing him into talking more.

[Nageki]

November 14, 2015

 

I'm starting to wonder if I'm misinterpreting Arro's "signals" as tulpish/raw thought when it might actually be mindvoice.

 

It's something I've been thinking about for a couple days. I mean, it's kind of a weird case I guess? The "signals" he sends me, when he's not just pinging me for attention or sending me a wave of emotion, get translated into words. And isn't that basically what our own brains do with mindvoice? We have thoughts, a jumble of information not unlike binary code, which our brains also translate into the voice(s) we hear inside our head. It takes somewhat of a conscious effort to do that, like decrypting a message; it's the same with Arro's "signals", though obviously they initially come from him and I'm the one intercepting and translating his thoughts.

 

If what I suspect turns out to be true, then that realization can pave the way for future progress, since for now things have more or less hit a wall. I'll probably try encouraging Arro to try harder at sending these "signals" that I can translate into words and see where things go from there. (You hear that, Arro? I know you can hear me!) In the meantime, I'll also think of things to try so that I can meet him halfway. Perhaps a game of sentence ping pong is in order.

[Nageki]

November 15, 2015

 

I wanna get this all down before I forget key details, so this entry might be a little sloppy.

 

Worked in the wine shop portion of the store today, which gets a hell of a lot less traffic than the main store. I used this opportunity to talk to Arro between customers. For a good portion of my shift I'd just say random things to him or sing to him, but about an hour and a half before the end of my shift things started getting deep.

 

The conversation ultimately started with my telling him about the fantasy world I've had for years, along with all the characters that had become a permanent fixture in it (in fact, Arro was based on one of those characters). I told him about the personas I'd roleplay as in that fantasy world, and before long I started analyzing them: their actions, their ambitions, their motivations, etc. The more I thought about it, the more my personas reflected parts of me, either directly or in ways I wish I could be like.

 

That got me thinking about how I acted in the real world, how I set unrealistic expectations for myself despite being really adamant about how other people can make mistakes and aren't perfect. Before long I was talking to him about how this also applied to tulpamancy, how I keep believing that other new tulpamancers could succeed if they could let go of their doubts and trust in themselves and their tulpas, but for some reason I couldn't apply that to myself. The doubt's always there with me -- how I keep doubting my own experiences, how I doubt that Arro's responses are just me shoving words and opinions down his throat, how I doubt that I can actually pull this off. My monologue turned self deprecative real quick, and it probably would have continued going downhill had Arro not stopped me.

 

"Audrey," he said. "Listen." I listened.

 

Then, slowly, as if he was having trouble pushing the words into my brain: "Do... not... doubt."

 

Of course, I doubted that this was actually him.

 

"Don't. Don't."

 

He repeated that word a few times before I asked him what the hell he was trying to say. There was a pause, then:

 

"It is me."

 

God. Oh my god. That was such a weird experience. After a little deliberation and talking to him, I decided to believe it was him trying to comfort me. It seems like my suspicions about him actually having a mindvoice was correct: he was talking to me, albeit faintly and brokenly.

 

A little while after that I started thinking about my unrealistic expectations again, though in a more general sense. I remember telling Arro something along the lines of "People make mistakes all the time. We're not perfect; that's what makes us human. But, well, I guess I'm not really human."

 

"NO!" (Oh my god Arro indoor voice please) "You are human! You are human!"

 

He sounded angry, almost, that I'd even think for a moment that I wasn't a human being like everyone else. If not angry, then passionate. It caught me off guard because I wasn't actually being serious. It was dry humor, but I can see how Arro could misread my intentions due to the nature of our prior conversation.

 

We chatted a bit about other things, but it was mostly small talk and a few minutes of a word association game. All of the heavier stuff happened within about an hour and fifteen minutes -- Arro didn't actually say a lot during that time, but what he did say meant a lot to me. It was comforting despite the doubt that still gnaws at me. I feel like progress has been made tonight. Here's to hoping things continue to progress.

[Nageki]

November 16, 2015

 

Tried a bit of proxying with Arro tonight. My friend asked him a couple questions and while he didn't give too much by way of answer, he did indeed answer. After that I continued chatting with my friend as usual and found that Arro would sometimes interrupt and chip in with a word or a phrase, which I would then proxy to my friend. It was a good time, and the nervousness that I admittedly felt towards having anybody besides me interact with Arro fell away.

 

[i had fun.]

 

^ You heard it from the man himself, folks.

[Nageki]

November 17, 2015

 

Not too much happened today, and usually I wouldn't bother making a post but I thought this would be a fun little thing for anybody reading to see!

 

Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon comes out in a couple days, and of course as an avid PMD fan I'll be getting it on release. Today I had an idea: since I always project myself onto the hero Pokemon, name and all, why not let Arro choose the partner Pokemon which I would then name after him? Then we could play the game together and be that much more invested in it (oh god I'm gonna be a mess at the end of the game I just know it).

 

So I looked up a list of all the Pokemon you can choose from at the beginning of the game, then proceeded to show him each Pokemon individually, along with their evolutionary lines. I'd then wait for a response from him before moving on to the next one. The process took about 20 minutes in total.

 

He had the most immediate response to Fennekin. At first I'd only showed him the starter Pokemon and not their evolutions, and it was only after going through the list, asking him which one he liked, and getting an excited "Fennekin!" did I start over, WITH the evolutions this time. He still liked Fennekin the best, but also liked Chespin, Pikachu, and Chimchar (and maybe Turtwig). I told him to pick a Pokemon that wasn't fire type as a backup just in case I ended up with a fire type, and in the end he decided on Fennekin and Chespin.

 

Side note: his choices were honestly pretty surprising, seeing as to how I'm apathetic at best to Fennekin and Chespin and just straight up dislike Chimchar.

 

To commemorate the event, I drew me and Arro as a PMD team! I do plan to take the quiz in the game to decide my Pokemon, but I chose Totodile to represent me here because, quite frankly, I love Totodile and its evolutionary line.

 

 

We still haven't decided on a team name, or even started thinking of one yet lol. I'll talk to him about it later!

 

(Also, formally announcing that I've decided to stop letting doubt swallow me up and just go with the flow. Assuming Arro really said what he says has really lowered my anxiety over the matter and I feel that things are progressing faster because of it.)

[Nageki]

November 18, 2015

 

I think things are progressing really fast right now. Consciously removing the doubt seems to have unstuck a communication channel between us, and I'm starting to hear Arro easier. His broken sentences are more fluent now, but still pretty short, and translating his raw thought is easier than ever. In fact, communication has improved so much that right now we're striving more towards raising the volume of his mindvoice than anything else.

 

I'd like to make a note that one of the ways I got myself to stop doubting was to use a symbolism technique that I found in the murky depths of the forums. The technique involves going into wonderland and running your hands over your tulpa, while imagining long strands of string connecting your hands and your tulpa's body together materialize in the places you touch. That string symbolizes your ability to puppet/parrot your tulpa; once you've finished, you cut the strings. This way you're unable to parrot or puppet your tulpa anymore, and they are their own free being.

 

I found this really helpful to me, though after the first time I found it easier and less tedious to not do the "run your hands along your tulpa" bit and just go straight to the strings. And I say "the first time" because I've found that my doubts would start to come back after some time, and completing that exercise puts the doubt back in its place. So far I've done it twice on the first day and then once every day after that.

 

Also, I talked it over with Arro and we're debating over calling our PSMD team either Team Chimera or Team Manticore. He's trying to tell me to just go with whatever I want since it's my game but to be honest, I'd feel bad if I chose a name that he doesn't like! So we'll keep talking about it. Who knows? Maybe once the game comes out and my starter Pokemon is set in stone we'll want to name the team something completely different!

[Nageki]

November 21, 2015

 

Been slacking lately in the forcing front. This post is mostly a wake-up call to myself to pick up the slack.

 

Also, Arro and I have decided on the team name Firefly! I also got a Turtwig in the quiz, so Arro got to be a Fennekin. His in-game self is wildly different from his actual self, much to his chagrin.

[Nageki]

November 24, 2015

 

Arro had been pretty quiet since the 18th, I suspect because making such rapid progress in the span of one day left him spent. He's starting to "wake up" now and talk to me more.

 

I've noticed throughout today that he'd gone back to sending me raw thought. A marked difference between his messages now and his messages before are that it's much easier for me to translate them now, and any messages that get translated into words are longer and more eloquent. I also suspect he may have fronted or co-fronted for me a couple times during work this week when my exhaustion and shoulder pain started to overwhelm me (but it could also just be me mildly dissociating). I'd get a distinct feeling of suddenly feeling like I'd taken the backseat and that my movements were being guided by another, so they were not completely my own. My fatigue and pain also dimmed down during that time. I still knew where I was and what I was doing (mostly), but as a whole I felt pretty disconnected from reality.

 

Every time that happened it only lasted a minute or two, but I'd come out of it feeling a little better than before. I did ask Arro if that was him each time and he kept answering "Yes."

 

[Of course I kept answering yes. I did it.]

 

I of course did thank him each time and I do feel grateful, but there's the doubt knocking at my door again. This time though it's more concern over whether I'm mixing an actual (co-)fronting experience with a symptom of one of my mental illnesses. Arro just sighed.

[Nageki]

November 24, 2015 (yeah same day)

 

I expressed how much I regretted going with Turtwig in PSMD and not Totodile to Arro, and by "expressed" i mean "whined". Arro told me to start over. I whined that that would mean redoing like 8 hours worth of progress. Arro called me childish. He also told me I should have just gone with what I'd wanted in the first place. I whined some more.

 

In the end he won and I restarted PSMD. I've never done something like this before, at least not with a game that I've logged over an hour of playtime into. God damn it Arro