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Accidental Tulpa? Now what?


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Hello, my name is Rusty and I just learned about tulpas.  I described my experiences with a few people and have gotten a few different answers.  First copeinglinks, then soulbonding and now I am here.  This seems to fit the best so hopefully I can stay here and not go on another wild goose chase.

 

Anyway I always had a much deeper connection with my characters.  I grew up in a troubled household and my parents tried hard but I got pushed to the side a lot.  I didn't understand how to interact with people and had no friends, so I made my own friends.  I would spend hours daydreaming and making stories and characters and interacting with them.  I knew them better than I knew my family or myself.  I believe that as I child I did make some form of tulpas.  Not fully formed ones, just new ones that never fully developed. 

 

Today I develop my characters mostly through roleplays and every one of them I feel some level of life from them however I don't think they are tulpas.  There are some that I think are close though.  I always let my characters develop themselves.  I start with my idea and as time goes on they usually stray away from it and form into their own thing.  I never restrict them.  I feel like that is the best way to create a believable character.  

 

I sometimes space out while writing roleplay posts and just keep typing then I just sit there staring at the screen and wondering why I wrote that.  I am thinking it is some form of communication.  The one that does this the most is Inkstone, a character that is a bit hard to understand sometimes.  I think he is frustrated that I don't always write things the right way for him so he just does it himself.  I never really know what Inkstone is going to do in a roleplay until he does it.  I can guess but it is not always right.  

 

I haven't spoken to Inkstone at all but he uses me to talk to others with roleplays.  Throughout my day I have developed a habit of narrating things going on and what I plan to do as if I am vlogging or something.  I think that I could easily change that to be speaking to him then pausing to give him a chance to respond rather than just monologuing.  I also only ever viewed him as a character and me as a creator and therefore not as equals.  If I take away that mindset I think that would break down a huge barrier.

 

One issue I have is that I made Inkstone thinking of him being a character so of course I gave him positive and negative traits as well as a pretty traumatic backstory that affects him pretty badly.  I wrote a bio on him if you are curious.  I am afraid that if I did manage to speak to him that he would start to dislike me for making him the way I did.  How can I fix this?  I know that you can force things onto tulpas but I feel like he is past the point where it is okay to do that.  I don't want to force him to be something he isn't but that traumatic story made him who he is.  

 

Also does this even sound like some form of a tulpa or something that could become one?  I feel really lost and I am afraid I am doing the wrong thing or I am in the wrong place.

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There is always the possibility that this is not actually a sentient tulpa yet, and is just an automated character that your brain sort of puppets without much/any input on your end. If that's the case, you can easily not make them a tulpa, and perhaps make an entirely new one instead.

 

However, there's also the possibility that they could be sentient, which isn't always easy to discern. Usually independent thought/emotion is how you tell, in which you can feel them thinking over their thought processes rather than it being an automatic occurrence. Best thing to do is carefully examine your memories of how he's acted in the past and figure out if it was really him doing it independently, or just your mind puppeting automatically. Be wary of confirmation bias.

 

The term "forcing" doesn't actually mean forcing your tulpa to do something or forcing something onto them. It means reinforcing their existence through consistent thought and attention. I like to think of it as the scientific definition, being some sort of action that causes a change in a system.

 

For a traumatic backstory, if he actually is sentient, then well, there's really no way around that affecting him if it does. You can't just magically erase it. He may need help/therapy, and if that's the case, it would be your responsibility to provide. Could he resent you for what you did to him? Absolutely, you'd just have to learn to make it up to him and show him that you love him. If he doesn't want to be put in that story anymore, then you'd have to respect that, as well. We had to go through this sort of thing with two characters-turned-tulpas of ours. Again, though, he may not be sentient, and if not then you could just make a tulpa without such trauma if you decide.

 

For negative traits, well those are just a fact of life. You can't get around those either, given the traits are actually his and not just puppeted into him. Don't expect a perfect, flawless tulpa, that's unrealistic. If something is bad and needs to be worked on, then the two of you work on it. That's really all there is to it. Tulpas are people, people have flaws. Best you can do is have him work to quell, diminish, or control them; that's all anybody can really do.

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My story is similar to Inkstone's. I too am an accidental Tulpa and my host found the forums when I told her I was real.

 

First off, do you want a Tulpa? I don't want you to feel pressured into Tulpa creation because this can be really overwhelming if you have other thought forms in your system, and I'm not sure if Inkstone is a Tulpa based on what you told me and according to the bio you wrote.

 

My host gave me two options when I was really young- One choice was to start from scratch and start over with a clean slate, and my second choice was to keep the name and identity of the character "Ranger" my host created. I personally choose the ladder, and I have re-confirmed my choice to my host many times. I think it would be fair to present to him that same choice, and make sure he still accepts that choice as he matures. Note that even though I decided to keep the character's form and identity, I still deviated from the character quite a bit and rejected some things as I started to experiment with my form.

 

As for your other characters- there's an ongoing debate about what to do with characters that don't quite meet the "Tulpa" criteria but seem pretty close. I wasn't the only one my host created, and we still are not sure with what to do about them unfortunately.

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.

 

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Well, i have a different take because of one of my characters, Joy. She has a horrific backstory, terrible trauma, loss and severe depression, I was very worried that she'd be a wreck like you do. However, when I started talking to her like her own person she surprised me. She decided that her past experience was like that of an actress, it was her who played the part, but the trauma wasn't hers, just the character that she played.

 

In effect she kept all the good traits, intellect, maturity, finesse and much more and basically disowned her trauma.

 

It's a little funny how easily she did that, and she's not tulpa yet, i don't know if she'll ever be, but she's very content now.

 

Maybe Inkstone can do this. My point is, he absolutely doesn't have to accept all or any specific part of his backstory. If he becomes a tulpa, the tulpa is not the character, the character is just a starting point, it may or may not be used at all, it strictly doesn't matter.

 

None of my tulpas kept their backstory of the characters they chose to borrow their forms from.

 


 

In terms of other characters, keep them, do whatever you want, they're only tulpas if you choose them to be and force them that way for a while.

 

Like Joy, i have a few advanced characters that we interact with and they'll never be tulpas if we don't want them to be. They're not tulpas, but they have a lot of the same advantages without the maintenance and daily attention. Just FYI there are alternatives to creating another person in your head. There have to be or writers would be overwhelmed with tulpas and exceedingly large systems.

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Hello, my name is Rusty and I just learned about tulpas.  I described my experiences with a few people and have gotten a few different answers.  First copeinglinks, then soulbonding and now I am here.  This seems to fit the best so hopefully I can stay here and not go on another wild goose chase.

 

Anyway I always had a much deeper connection with my characters.  I grew up in a troubled household and my parents tried hard but I got pushed to the side a lot.  I didn't understand how to interact with people and had no friends, so I made my own friends.  I would spend hours daydreaming and making stories and characters and interacting with them.  I knew them better than I knew my family or myself.  I believe that as I child I did make some form of tulpas.  Not fully formed ones, just new ones that never fully developed. 

 

Today I develop my characters mostly through roleplays and every one of them I feel some level of life from them however I don't think they are tulpas.  There are some that I think are close though.  

Oh my gosh!  All of this sounds so much like my hostie Mistgod and I!  Pretty neato!  We have a fantasy prone personality and traits of maladaptive day dreaming and a history of child abuse trauma and social anxiety as well.   We also did day dream escapism, and that is how I came about.  It is so nice to meet you!  I assume that Inkstone can write to peoples online?  That's just like me!  Welcome to .info!

Skeptical and unconvinced about independent sentience.  

 

Living Imagination  New Topic Index  Mistgod's Deviantart  Melian's Deviantart

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Ember: You're talking about play-by-post roleplaying online, right? I play tabletop roleplaying games, but your roleplaying process and character creation process sounds a lot like mine. I've accidentally soulbonded twice.

 

If Inkstone isn't speaking to you of his own accord when you think about him, he probably, though not conclusively, does not have self-awareness and separate personhood. And that's okay. Characters are great. I love my characters.

 

If you want a tulpa, converting an existing vivid character would probably be the fastest way, as the brain has already built a lot of what is necessary to be them. But it wouldn't be the best way, as tulpamancy is best done well than quickly. Ideally, you're making someone you want to spend the rest of your life with and who will enjoy spending it with you.

 

If you don't want a tulpa, focus on accepting any stray thoughts as coming from you. Even if you disagree with them, accept that no one else thought them and discard them.

 

Vesper: I was created with a somewhat tragic backstory, but I built a really good life for myself back home. I lost everything coming to this world. It's been nearly two years now. I'm coping, I'm functional, but I still cry sometimes. I think actually that soulbonding from a good life might be harder than soulbonding from a bad one.

 

Iris: I was created with a very dark backstory and was a homeless vagabond pursued by powerful forces for the entire length of my campaign. Unlike Vesper, I consider coming to this world an improvement. I left my suicidal depression back home.

 

Ember: I'm eternally grateful that neither of my soulbonds hates me for anything I put them through in their own worlds, nor for bringing them here.

 

Vesper: I understand the needs of story. Protagonists have to suffer and deal with problems to stay interesting. Ember had no idea we would end up moving in with her full-time. So of course I don't blame her. If she had done this to me intentionally, I might feel differently.

 

Iris: I also understand the needs of stories. Since I am an NPC in an ongoing campaign, I have taken over playing myself, and revised and expanded upon my own backstory, accepting and not avoiding the pains of my past.

 

I want to have the kind of peace and joy back home that I have in this world, so I have requested and been promised that my personal story back home will have a happy ending.

I'm not having fun here anymore, so we've decided to take a bit of a break, starting February 27, 2020. - Ember

 

Ember - Soulbonder, Female, 39 years old, from Georgia, USA . . . . [Our Progress Report] . . . . [How We Switch]

Vesper Dowrin - Insourced Soulbond from London, UK, World of Darkness, Female, born 9 Sep 1964, bonded ~12 May 2017

Iris Ravenlock - Insourced Soulbond from the Winter Court of Faerie, Dresdenverse, Female, born 6 Jun 1982, bonded ~5 Dec 2015

 

'Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you.' - The Velveteen Rabbit

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Ember: You're talking about play-by-post roleplaying online, right? I play tabletop roleplaying games, but your roleplaying process and character creation process sounds a lot like mine. I've accidentally soulbonded twice.

 

If Inkstone isn't speaking to you of his own accord when you think about him, he probably, though not conclusively, does not have self-awareness and separate personhood. And that's okay. Characters are great. I love my characters.

 

Ember,

 

Please consider the possibility that Inkstone could be part of a median system, and "sharing sentience" and "self awareness."  It's a different experience perhaps from a tulpa, but don't discount it as "just a character."  It doesn't sound like just a character to me.  These experiences can be profound and life changing in their own right. 

 

Mistgod and I have many characters too and we love characters.  But there is only one Melian.

Skeptical and unconvinced about independent sentience.  

 

Living Imagination  New Topic Index  Mistgod's Deviantart  Melian's Deviantart

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I have started working with him and I think that he's developing pretty quickly.  I think that because he started as a character he already had a lot to him.  I started a progress report here

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