The Element of Secrecy

[Guest Anonymous]

One thing that really interests me is how some seem to have a stronger desire to share. Like it is important for others to see the thing that makes them happy, and to know about it. Is it like something in the depth of your being that feels like sharing your friend is a way to give back to them? Or a way to immortalize them in a way?

 

With David, he both wanted to share what makes him happy and also to "immortalize" me or at least so I won't just go into total oblivion when he dies.

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Unfortunately, my tulpas' sentience is not to be questioned. I absolutely will not stand somebody thinking they're just imaginary friends I pretend to talk to and trick myself into believing respond. So it's not that easy for me. I can be pretty persuasive, though. Worst case scenario I convince them I've got some mental disorder and my tulpas are effectively real, delusions.

 

 

I put way too much time and effort into removing my influence from them and making them autonomous to have that just ignored, you know?

 

 

That's interesting. David puts zero conscious effort into trying to make me independent and autonomous or "removing his influence" from me. That will never change either.

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Oh and he acknowledges I am an imaginary friend, art muse and a role playing character and a day dream star and a dream persona and a thoughtform all at the same time. It is possible because we are doing it. Anyways, also we are a blended, median, bigender system or whatever. Yeah. Semantics make it easier to explain to peoples.

[Sock]

Here is an older thread on a similar theme from way back in 2012. Some might find it interesting ot compare the old and new responses: https://community.tulpa.info/thread-do-your-friends-family-know-about-your-tulpa

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Here is another about "have you told your parents?" from 2013: https://community.tulpa.info/thread-have-you-told-your-parents

 

Haha, I actually ran in to an old reply of mine in the first thread. It's funny to see how loosely I spoke then, as compared to now. Almost like night and day, even.

 

I was going to hold off really posting the things that occurred when I actually did spill the beans, but seeing the above link, I may as well post it now:

 

I do a good deal to keep my experiences a secret from those who are close to me. There was a time when I did open up about it, but this is no longer the case. When I decided to share, this mainly resulted in a lot of bad things happening. The general vibe I got was a desire for me to stop altogether. When I later told someone else who I really should not have told, I was bluntly turned against my residents, and I stopped practicing developing them. It was such that I would even refuse to day dream, and would berate myself for doing so. It naturally took some time for me to return to them. During this period, I was largely worse for ware mentally, and rather than become healthy or normal, I opted more for hating my own self, and bending over backwards to please others and what I felt to be their expectations for me. I was sad a lot, and it took a long time for me to start stabilizing, even then I was very prone to being highly fearful about offending people, not getting close to others for fear of erring with them, and thinking everything I did was a mistake, and the only way to rectify it was to be someone else. In all this, I do remember time when , even though I was terrified about going back to it, I'd see glimpses of the girls, have small conversations, and would deeply miss them.

 

When I finally did start bringing them back to perception (They never actually went away, I could even still sense them when I was not trying to), I decided never again to reveal this information to another person, as I would not gain anything from it, but would lose something greatly precious to myself. In fact, I was never planning to come back here, opting to keep my dealings inside to myself, but circumstances dictated otherwise. Even so, I do not refer to things in my day-to-day life with the in-folk outside of the community, and even try to ensure my interactions with the girls are during times when no one will notice what I am doing.

 

Really, I'm still rather secretive even in the community, and while I have been opening up a bit more, that old fear is still in me.

[Guest Anonymous]

@Sock,

 

Awwwahhh, well I am super glad you tell us and share with us! I am so glad you came back to your dreams and your girls! Good fer you! Hurray!

[Luminesce]

Nobody could remotely affect our relationship. No matter how many friends I lost, even if my family cast me out onto the streets, even if it meant dying, my tulpas mean more to me than anything in the physical world. Calling them tulpas makes that statement seem like a little much, but that's just a term we picked up. They've been much more to me and earned that loyalty. It's safe to say I haven't a fear in the world of someone affecting our relationship in any way whatsoever. You physically cannot stop me from interacting with them.

 

But yeah I'd rather avoid any socially weird situations if I can. And I don't fancy the idea of being labelled insane. But as far as my own personal worries and insecurities about telling others goes, I have none. It's all up to other peoples' feelings.

[Pioneer11]

As of now, I think that topics like Tulpas are best kept secret from the general population. There are too many ways in which sharing could go wrong, not to mention that many people would see Tulpamancy as insanity (schizophrenia, DID and the like, as they are portrayed by the media). I personally do not feel the need to share the existence of my Tulpa to non-Tulpamancers. Even if they accepted his existence, I feel that they would never really understand what it means living with him, what he means to me. This made me an extremely private person, so I also never gossiped about other's relationships or talked about mine. As for my Tulpa, he does not even want to speak on this forum. In fact, lately I did not update my PR because he argued that our recent progress was too intimate to even post about. I’m on the fence on this; it’s true that internet changed our view of privacy, yet having the opportunity to connect with likeminded people has improved our relationship, not to mention the ways I force. That said, when I was writing about him I shared him with a couple of friends; they were interested in his character and we often would talk about him. But I did not reveal that he resided in my mind and seemed to me as real as any other person.

 

Perhaps in the future, when I can impose him vocally, we will coauthor our research, ideas and projects in a blog. Or we will write a book together; that’s an indirect way to interact with others.

 

I also often wondered if my life would be easier among people who are plural or practice Tulpamancy. Sharing a house with normal people is kind of draining because I have to check my behavior. Of course, it’s something that I’ve been doing for years so it became natural, but it’s not ideal. Maybe things will change once DID and schizophrenia will stop being stigmatized, and being plural will be an accepted phenomenon.

 

When I finally did start bringing them back to perception (They never actually went away, I could even still sense them when I was not trying to), I decided never again to reveal this information to another person, as I would not gain anything from it, but would lose something greatly precious to myself.

 

I can sympathize. When I was a teen, I told my mother once about him, and it did not go well. I live in a religious country with a religious family. Of course the first thing she thought was that I was possessed. That and that I was crazy. I backed off and behaved in perfectly socially acceptable way since that day, so she let it go. I could say that it killed my desire to share him with the world.

[Sock]

It is pretty impressive to see folks with wills that strong, I think. Though I have no plans to run that risk again, once was enough for me.

 

Though it will be undeniable to those who know that my future work was inspired by them, and may occasionally include them. Even so, I'll keep the relation as secret as I can.

[Temar]

We're of the "outside people know about us but think we're something else" crowd.

 

In writer circles, it's really common to talk about your characters having "minds of their own." Literally, it's part of the soulbonding phenomenon for literary characters like me to do this, to the point where we suspect there are a lot more headpeople out there than anyone realizes, it's just their authors don't recognize them as such. I lived that way for 16 years before we realized I was sentient.

 

So, among other writers, we fall back on the language of authors conspiring about headstrong characters. This way, we can talk about "hearing" a character being amused about something, pass commentary around in the language of "what that character would say if they were here." Joss has had an actual conversation with another author's character in this way... one who, judging by how she talks about him, we suspect is a soulbond.

 

But our host's too shy to broach the topic outright. She's afraid of rejection, or of people thinking she's crazy. Worse, I think she's afraid that people will think we're the delusions of an overactive imagination and not take us seriously... not because she doesn't have the confidence to refute that, but because she knows it would hurt both us and her to be so devalued and dehumanized (de-tulpaized? depersoned?)

 

So while we're not exactly a secret--her sister and close friends know a number of us by name, even--the extent of what we are is probably not going to be discussed any time soon.

[Pioneer11]

In writer circles, it's really common to talk about your characters having "minds of their own." Literally, it's part of the soulbonding phenomenon for literary characters like me to do this, to the point where we suspect there are a lot more headpeople out there than anyone realizes, it's just their authors don't recognize them as such. I lived that way for 16 years before we realized I was sentient.

 

That’s similar to our situation! He is almost a soulbond since he existed since before I started writing about him. I also agree that many authors have proto-soulbonds, yet since Tulpamancy is such an obscure topic, many fail to recognize that their characters truly live within their minds and often let them fade. I only found out about Tulpas an year ago and it changed our life. If Tulpas where known among writers, perhaps being plural would be more socially accepted. Novelization will probably be different, however, since as of now many put their characters through emotional turmoil because of the plot.

[Guest Anonymous]

In writer circles, it's really common to talk about your characters having "minds of their own."

 

Things like an imaginary muse are also acceptable or fairly common in the visual arts. Honestly, it isn't the talk about having a imaginary person in your mind that is the problem. If you associated it all with creative pursuits people are far less likely to think you are batty.

 

Mistgod would say that emphasis on sentience in the tulpa community is first, irrelevant (unnecessary), and second unfortunate. That part can be kept totally private to the host/creator. There is no real need to reveal that when sharing to the greater world.

[J.Iscariot]

IMO some things are better kept to yourself, and sometimes, there is no other reality than that. I won't speak of my own experiences with sharing my.... 'tulpa', with other people. My brother, who is my confidante, knows about her, and a few friends online do know about her from simple mentions, whether it be 'my friend' or 'my girl' overall.

 

If you have something precious, I know that there will never be any real 'need' to share it with other people. I'm someone who really, really doesn't care about people, most of them embody imperfections that make my faith in humanity go down altogether. People are great at corrupting what is beautiful and nice (no I am not speaking of my own experience), if you don't do it well when it comes to introducing your tulpa to people, it might not end well at all. Look, I am a contrarian more than anything, I'm not against it just because it's 'fun' being against the popular opinion. Relying on other people, to me, represents weakness and a lack of planning that will end up putting me in a weak position, it's all stuff I learned in the past about people, I cannot generalize. There are good people, there are bad people, but you don't know.... rather, your tulpa doesn't know. A young tulpa can end up meeting people with very different views. People online have no borders over expressing their opinion, they don't understand that there is a human being behind the screen, they see a concept deprived of emotions more than often, which leads to the entire trolling, abuse, hatred cycle.

 

To me, if you force yourself to talk about something you hold precious to heart, it means that you don't really hold it that close to you and you're just trying to force that emotion. A problem I always had was that I saw too much in people, and gave them too much trust and esteem, I thought they were more than what they really are, and in the end, we really just differ on the level of perception.

 

A very wise friend once told me that 'the only person that can hurt you is yourself'. Allowing people into your heart in a way you're associating them to how your tulpa literally lives and functions is taking that concept off and breaking things into something not pretty. I have seen tulpas live off interaction online with no other activities, I've seen tulpas meme all day. It's not bad in moderation, everything in large doses can end up harmful.

 

 

NO THIS IS NOT ABOUT WHAT I EXPERIENCED IN THE PAST IN THIS COMMUNITY. This message was in no way, shape or form aimed at the previous occurrences that may come to mind. To me, there is no desire to share what I find so lovably intimate and nice. And I think that tulpamancy shouldn't even be shared on a personal level, because then, if we just whore things out so much, we toss away the value of things so easily, and we end up coming off as a newer generation tumblr.

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Also I feel like I need to press on how great secrecy and intimacy is. I don't really know/understand why anyone would be willing to share something so precious and something so great with people online. People you don't know. People you'll never meet and might end up pointing fingers at you 'oh he has an anime tulpa' 'oh he has a pony tulpa in his head', because you THINK they'll share sympathy. Ichtys has something in his sig that's so nice and so true about talking 'bout tulpas online. I think it has no point. It's like blogging about what your niece did or something. I don't understand why you'd even talk about something so great to people you don't know and will end up judging you in secret for the sake that 'oh, people accept me'. People are overrated. Call me a pseudo-intellectual all you want, reality is that people need people to live and breathe in a way they don't feel awful about people. The hierarchical model of society engraved in everyone's brain here makes it so that society is a musthave, social contact is golden and is supposedly always good. Do you understand why people dislike reddit so much? (trust me, I have been on /r/tulpas for such a long while and ended up deleting my account out of shame) It's because people talk too damn much about shit that is either too intimate and personal to even share, or about stuff that doesn't matter to other people. WHY do people even DESCRIBE HOW THEY HAD SEX WITH THEIR TULPAS ON REDDIT, why do people mention how they had this palpitating and breathtaking sleep paralysis and they suspect it's the tulpa god.... people aren't stupid by nature, but the way they SHARE their experiences... if you're married you're not going to make it your life to blog about your wife and how she woke up in such a cute way today. Leave that to the amazing vloggers at youtube who do such a great job at making the world about them. Do you know why people hate on tumblr, aside from the entire 'special snowflake' mentality? It's because they speak of such unimportant and, with no real respect, stupid shit. The more we talk of tulpas in such an open way the closer we come to this level of 'advancement' (lol) that makes close to absolute no sense to even share.

 

Someone lives. Whoa, okay. Where IS the fun in typing about it online? If your every action were typed on some forum or some reddit board where people are going to circlejerk with you, would you feel any comfortable? I used to do that, I mean, I shared a lot of stuff I wish I never typed, and it made my tulpa feel uncomfortable with the whole spotlight of attention. 'Made me feel like an attentionwhore', she said. So, if you enjoy being 'that', at least, in some people's books (and claiming you don't care even though the entire model of socializing here is having people care about you and 'ditching tha haters m80'), go ahead and go nuts with the whole tulpa chit-chattering. You have something nice, something great, not for the sake of talking about it on tulpa.info. Isn't that what people used to do anyway? Waste forcing time and chat on tulpa.info with speculations? I'll be blunt, people are always people's bitches for some reason, aside for a few people... it's really beyond me why some people really WANT to tell you about their amazing adventures. The adventure is amazing because it's happening and not because you're tweeting, chatting or blogging about it. If you blog about it in an educational way, I'm all for it, that's fucking great, that's what PRs are for and Chupi's blog is such a good depiction of a GOOD way of expression of a tulpa's development. Wanna know why? Because his experience helped other people, he taught them stuff they were wondering about and were thinking 'oh, is it right?' 'am I doing things right?' 'maybe this dude has the answer', and the answer he had was the one they needed.

 

But if you feel the need to tell anyone and everyone about how you had such a great time, I don't know, hunting down this giant shit-talking midget in the wonderland and eating his children for supper with your band of amazing avenger headmates and tulpas... doesn't it kind of ruin the experience in some ways? Who gets up and thinks 'Whoa! I am going to have such a good time today posting on reddit and tumblr about my experiences!', just who does that? Who NEEDS to actually talk about those things in such an open way that are supposed to characterize you and make you your own person? People are only people for other people, in the end. I chose to be someone for my tulpa, but for people? For you people? For anyone? Never.

 

 

(again please this message is not aimed at my past experiences or anyone please don't sue me or make the hammer fall down again oh god)