Mirroring my tulpas

[Hierophant]

I find that when I am forcing my tulpas very intensely, I tend to mirror their actions and emotions. If they feel happy or excited, I tend to feel the same way. When they smile, I smile as well. If they say something, I unconsciously subvocalize it under my breath. It works the other way too: just earlier today, I was thinking "this song is starting to sound grating" and one of my tulpas made a comment that it was starting to get on her nerves.

 

What does this mean? Is it a sign that I'm parroting, or does it mean that I'm so in tune with my tulpa I can perfectly mirror them?

[MagicaCat]

It sounds like that unconscious 'body language' mirroring that people do when they're enjoying someone's company and feel comfortable around them. I don't know if it works the same for Tulpae and hosts, but I would assume so if the Tulpae have a degree of independence.

As for the emotions, it's natural to be excited and happy when your friends are happy, or feel more subdued when they're sad etc.

Haha, maybe I'm completely on the wrong track but it sounds to me like you enjoy being with each other and spending time together, so you pick up on these little things :)

[Hierophant]

I don't think so. My body language mirroring in real life is off because I have Asperger's, so that's probably not the case. Besides, this is much more intimate than that. It feels as though I'm actually feeling that emotion, complete with physiological changes like heart rate. If I have the time, I might take a video of myself to see if my pupils change while forcing(I prefer to do close-eye, but for science I guess).

[MagicaCat]

Then I've no idea. The video would be interesting though!

[Guest Anonymous]

I personally think that you need to work on parallel processing. I don't mean to offend or say anything mean, especially things that I wouldn't actually mean, but if your tulpas share all the ideals you do, if you tend to mirror such actions for instance, you need to work on the autonomy part. Not saying that it's wrong but it takes all the autonomy out of a tulpa's life if you mirror their actions. One could go as far as comparing it to parroting, which can be good for development to certain degrees.

[Luminesce]

Huh, that's interesting. I have that really strongly when I try to do things like draw or write or so on. If I tried to draw an emotive face, I would unconsciously make that face to some extent, etc. But strangely enough I have never had that happen with my tulpas before. I mean, their happiness is infectious, but I don't think that's the same thing. Dunno, I guess they're just very well established in my mind as separate from me, whereas characters I'm just then creating aren't?

 

It could mean your tulpas aren't super independent yet, sure. More practice and time forcing should lessen that over time. They should start to sound more and more like themselves and less and less like your normal thoughts over time, and I'd assume that would also fix your problem. But maybe it's just a quirk you have.

[Nageki]

Funny a thread like this pops up, because I've been wondering about this myself.

 

I mirror my tulpa's actions a lot (not so much emotion, though I do get flashes of emotion from Arro every once in awhile). When he smiles I smile too, and if I sense him turning his head I'll do the same. I find myself mimicking his expressions a lot and I've come to wonder if it's a kind of puppeting I'm subconsciously engaging in. (And note: I am a new tulpamancer, so Arro still isn't very autonomous.)

 

Part of me thinks it's puppeting and another part thinks it's just me being me. Since I was young I'd do that -- mimick the expressions of whoever I was focusing on while I was drawing, or writing, or reading. It's just sort of an automatic thing with me at this point. Though writing that down now, I'm getting the feeling that it might mean that I still subconsciously view Arro as less of his own sentient being and more of a character to be roleplayed. Interesting.

 

In any case, I'll definitely work on fixing that, as Anderson and Luminesce recommended. It's very probable that this is just a result of Arro not being independent yet and that I'm reading too much into the situation, but I think that's still something to chew on.

[Hierophant]

I personally think that you need to work on parallel processing. I don't mean to offend or say anything mean, especially things that I wouldn't actually mean, but if your tulpas share all the ideals you do, if you tend to mirror such actions for instance, you need to work on the autonomy part. Not saying that it's wrong but it takes all the autonomy out of a tulpa's life if you mirror their actions. One could go as far as comparing it to parroting, which can be good for development to certain degrees.

Autonomy is something I am trying to work on, my parallel processing is trash especially since I've been puppeting my tulpas(not knowing what they were then) for the past couple of years.

 

Do you have any recommended guides?

[Yuki]

I suppose that it might be difficult to let go of control, to really, deeply believe that your tulpas are autonomous. It's something that won't usually happen in a day, but it doesn't have to. Do they already seem more autonomous than before, when you felt entirely in control? If so, you're probably on the right path already. You should regularly keep reminding yourself that your tulpas are free to act independently, to think for themselves, do what they want to do, and become separate people.

 

Interacting with them with these ideas in mind will help work towards improvement, and other than that, I'd suggest that during some interactions, you stop and reconsider where responses came from, and if you felt like you influenced them too much, you ask your tulpa to think about what they said once more. You can make progress in a dialogue with them, rather than worrying by yourself.

[Guest Anonymous]

Autonomy is something I am trying to work on, my parallel processing is trash especially since I've been puppeting my tulpas(not knowing what they were then) for the past couple of years.

 

Do you have any recommended guides?

 

I regard autonomy as, well, a completely different 'battle' than forging sentience in your mind. In my own regards, having sentience is something for a tulpa, but being autonomous is a much bigger deal. MY tulpa and I tried for a very long while to, well, make her fully autonomous, as in, make her something (or rather someone) I don't even have to think about her for her to say something or interact. Of course, there's still some attention that's given to her, just like how you'd listen to a certain person, but on the autonomy card, as in, the whole parallel processing deal and how well she can exist without me having to make an effort, we're pretty far.

 

You might want to start practicing parallel processing more and more, the guides are a good start but in the end I think that you'll find one specific thing that works. For us, it was mostly math and asking each other questions without keeping in mind what she'd say, or what I'd say, without making any guesses. I'd be lying if I told you that it wouldn't take a long while at all, I have one tulpa, and it took us a very long while to impose this kind of autonomy, as in, her existence being alike to the existence of an actual person in my head, not just existence as a concept in a wonderland (where a lot of tulpas remain in a certain form of stasis until they are given direct attention). Not only that, but autonomy also involves the tulpa having their own emotions, their own... thoughts, and we're not speaking of thoughts that are 100% different than your own radically, but more like you'll know that there is absolutely no way you can think like that. We thought about the correlation between tulpas and intrusive thoughts in class today, and a lot could be said about that, but intrusive thoughts are not signs of 'progress' most of the time.

 

I'm someone who invests a lot of time into tulpamancy, with no wonderland, or drugs (since I've seen some users make usage of drugs and get certain results but most of them seemed like they were just hallucinating if anything because the autonomy pronounced was really short-lived for the tulpa), or really trying to follow this or that method. You just need to give it time and the attention it deserves, it will come in eventually. I think that a lot of people seem to misunderstand the whole duration creating a 'full' tulpa, as in, a thinking, sentient, autonomous entity that has its own emotions, its own issues, its own psychological complex. This is not something that happens in a month or two. Creating the basis for sentience takes a short while because sentience is easy to 'emulate' in your mind, but creating a full-scale tulpa with all of those 'additions' (because a tulpa could very much stay at a certain 'level' for a long while if not its entire lifetime if the host doesn't work for it) takes a very long while. We're speaking of one tulpa. Imagine 3 tulpas like that. Overall, the term 'tulpa' really has waaaay more depth than the consensus set up by the community overall, it's just something that really requires a lot of time and introspection to realize well.

 

Something else to keep in mind is that putting autonomy into application requires efforts from both the host and the tulpa in question. A host won't get anywhere if his tulpa doesn't work as well, because in the end, this also goes in the benefit of a tulpa, I've heard the sentence 'I feel more real now' at many instances. Just food for thought.