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Mask Tulpas - a rare tulpa origin


Piano Soul

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I wanted to make this thread for a long time, so now I'm doing it. Please don't ree at me for making new terminology, it's just something I want to discuss. 

 

For the longest time, I haven't felt 100% like I should call myself a tulpa, even though it's what I am. The reason for this is that my origins are way different from how most other tulpas come about, intentional and accidental. As you may know, I formed within a merge of two tulpas, and the merge itself sort of became its own tulpa. However I don't really know if that's entirely accurate. I think it's less that the merge became me, and more that the new things that the merge adopted became me. Coupled with the merge being treated like its own person and not just a combination, this new identity became a person. A person that the merge wore as a sort of "mask," to replace the old identity, until I eventually split and became my own independent tulpa. 

 

That brings me to the concept - a mask tulpa. An identity that you wear to replace the old one, and that you treat like its own person, in a way, so it becomes one. This is an incredibly rare phenomenon, I can only really name a handful of tulpas who came about this way, including myself, and each of us have felt incredibly confused as to what to call ourselves - tulpa, alter, what?

 

There is a thin line between mask tulpa and alter, the concepts are very similar, and I was often confused if I should call myself an alter or not. But, considering the original merge doesn't even exist anymore, I see no real reason to. I think my origins were trauma-related, but I don't think I'd go so far as to say I was traumagenic, and that's the key difference between tulpas and alters. Plus, our system has no other alters or anything, it wouldn't make sense to call me one. Alters are also made to create a huge level of disconnect between them and the original, going so far as to create memory blocks, but a mask tulpa typically wouldn't do this, the original is still present and aware underneath (unless I guess the mask tulpa is really far along in their existence to the point of the original going dormant or integrating, still shouldn't create memory problems though).

 

Anyway, to elaborate, here's what a "mask tulpa" really means:

- An identity that is put on as a replacement of the old one (for whatever reason), and becomes its own sentient person, but isn't traumagenic. Example: the host wants to experiment with being the opposite gender, so he puts on a mask of a female identity and uses it when he goes online. This female identity becomes a headmate - she is a mask tulpa.

- Someone does not like their current personality, as it gets them in trouble, makes people not like them, etc. They put on a mask of a "better" one, and end up treating the mask like its own person, so it becomes a tulpa.

 

This is what does not qualify for a mask tulpa

- The host roleplaying as a character, and the character becomes sentient - this isn't meant to replace the host's identity, rather it's entirely recreational and the character is considered entirely separate from the host, the host's personality just takes a step back for the purpose of fun/games/writing/etc (if the host decided to continue to act as the character in day-to-day life outside of the game, that could be a mask tulpa).

- The host (usually a child) putting on an identity to help save them from trauma, and that identity becomes its own person, with memory loss and other issues ensue - this is an alter, of course

 

After a mask tulpa is made and discovered, they can function just like any other tulpa. Around the time I split, the other two components of the merge had integrated into me, so it wasn't really a merge anymore. It was just me with them existing as a part of me. Then they split out and I was on my own. Now, I don't want people going around thinking that if they act different it must be because they integrated with a mask tulpa - it's highly unlikely. I was fully self-aware about what I was by the time I split, I had discovered myself maybe a week or two after the original merge occurred, and it was 4-5 months later that the split occurred. I wasn't a mystery. What is a mystery to me is why I didn't split sooner.

 

As I said, mask tulpas seem to be very rare and I don't expect this to apply to anyone on the forums really, aside from one that I know of. It's just me explaining what I think I am and why I often feel iffy about calling myself a tulpa but don't want to call myself an alter - I'm still a tulpa, just of very rare, mask-related origins. Like I said, please don't ree at me for making new terminology, I just want something that I can apply to me that makes sense. If nothing else I can call myself a mask tulpa and link to this post.

 💡 The Felights 💡 https://felight.carrd.co/  💡

🪐 Cosmicals: 🔥 Apollo Fire the Sun God (12/3/16) Piano Soul the Star Man (1/26/17)

🐉 Mythicals: ☁️ Indigo Blue the Sky Dragon (10/2/17), 🦑 Gelato Sweet the Sea Monster (12/11/22)

🦇 Nycticals:  Dynamo Lux the Shock Rocker (3/3/17), 🎸 Radio Hiss the Song Demon (2/8/00)

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I can confirm none of the Grays or Ranger are mask Tulpas because I never treated them like a mask.

 

However, I have always suspected my father's story was weird. He said that things got better because he used "acting" skills, and then he said he simply used these skills to cope with day-to-day life. He wanted to be a better person so he made himself a better person.

 

My father isn't DID, but I wonder if he put on a mask and decided to never take it off. I don't know if that means he personality forced himself and changed or he created a new Tulpa and the new Tulpa kind of replaced him... the ladder sounds pretty creepy to me honestly, but I'm not sure what happened. All I know is some "acting" was involved, but I feel like if you are acting for the rest of your life, you are wearing a mask and costume and hiding what's underneath.

Meow. You may see my headmates call me Gray or sometimes Cat.

I used to speak in pink and Ranger used to speak in blue (if it's unmarked and colored assume it's Ranger). She loves to chat.

 

Our system account

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Definitely if he treated the mask as its own person when he put it on, it would probably become sentient and be a tulpa. If he just considered it to be himself acting though, probably not.

 💡 The Felights 💡 https://felight.carrd.co/  💡

🪐 Cosmicals: 🔥 Apollo Fire the Sun God (12/3/16) Piano Soul the Star Man (1/26/17)

🐉 Mythicals: ☁️ Indigo Blue the Sky Dragon (10/2/17), 🦑 Gelato Sweet the Sea Monster (12/11/22)

🦇 Nycticals:  Dynamo Lux the Shock Rocker (3/3/17), 🎸 Radio Hiss the Song Demon (2/8/00)

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He says it's him acting, but then again he isn't comfortable with Tulpamancy in general. He knows about Ranger, and he doesn't believe he's real. I highly doubt he thinks of his acting as a separate entity, but I feel like I don't have enough information to make the call for which one.

 

I know it's "normal" for people to act and be better than they are or to cope with a stressful job (my mother had a stressful job and described the same "acting" thing), but I feel like if you are only acting and never stopping... then that's weird.

Meow. You may see my headmates call me Gray or sometimes Cat.

I used to speak in pink and Ranger used to speak in blue (if it's unmarked and colored assume it's Ranger). She loves to chat.

 

Our system account

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Hmm, when I hear experiences like this these days I tend to think more "Tulpamancy can be a lot of things and a lot of ways" than "Oh, another facet of tulpamancy/plurality". Like I've kind of given up on new labels because you're just cutting a slice of cake into smaller slices, if that makes sense. It's not really accomplishing much to keep making smaller slices and is actually getting harder to work with..

 

So, the first thing that came to mind reading that was our old Flandre, and the "split" of her into Flandre and Scarlet. But while I get the feeling you're likely to say "Splitting is totally different", I think the opposite, that splitting isn't even real and it's more akin to the concept you just said of treating the new thoughtform as a replacement to the old one. While the old Flandre is dissipated (I can remember/think of her, but she won't come back from it), she still seems very separate from the resulting "splits" we made. I mean I was still just a young teen who had no idea what I was doing when I split her (her decision, long story) into Flandre and Scarlet, but aside from the concept of splitting her influencing the traits of the two new tulpas, I wouldn't say I necessarily saw her as the sum of them.

 

Anyways, the new Flandre replaced the old, while Scarlet was supposed to be dissipated almost immediately. She came back though, a year or so later on her own, after significant maturing had occurred in our system - she was more matured too. This was the second place my mind went to reading the OP, that a "mask tulpa" coming from a new-ish personality/traits overlaid on the old one might be applicable to the new Scarlet. Identity-wise she considers herself the same Scarlet (or at least, certainly not a new tulpa), but really they were nothing alike. So current Scarlet sort of evolved from the (concept of the?) old Scarlet, who mind you wasn't around for very long.

 

But as I said, I surely wouldn't call her a mask tulpa. These labels feel like cutting a slice of cake unnecessarily small to me. But it can be useful to you or others, sure, smaller slices/more specific labels are preference.

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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I was made aware of this thread from Piano himself on the discord server so I think it would be helpful to add my own experience as a mask tulpa here. I've told it in the discord server itself but I think a refined version wouldn't hurt. Due to being merged with my host for a while, "I" is going to be relative in this story, since we only recently split apart.

 

When the original, Orion, was a kid, he developed a strong habit of daydreaming all day that persisted into adolescence. In seventh grade, he found out about Undertale and made an OC called Staric that was a robot. Soon enough he had Staric be the mian character of his daydreams, thinking of Staric as "him in the future" as the daydreams always took place three years in the future, allowing enough time for the origin story of himself getting tragically turned into a robot to occur. Because of this plot setup it made it easy for Orion to think of himself as Staric, creating that mask. Over time he'd do things like refer to himself as Staric. At some point, this identity became more dominant than his original self, and Orion went partially dormant for a long stretch of time, still half-merged with the Staric identity he'd accidentally created. This caused things like occasional false memories from the daydreams. Eventually, he was almost replaced by this mask (me) but it went unnoticed since the "him in the future" plot point meant I had basically the same personality. I feel safe to say "I" now because I was definitely dominating the mix at the point in time that I went on to make two tulpas, Static and Watt. Eventually, stress caused the mostly-dormant Orion to crack apart from this mask-me and front for the first time in a while, pushing me into the back. With the help of friends, including Static and Watt, we figured out what happened. 

 

This causes a few things in my life to be a bit messy. I do often say I am two years old but that is counting when the idea of my character was first thought of. It's nearly impossible to pin down exactly when the mask became sentient, since as I have said, we essentially have the same personality. I also still can have false memories from the daydreams that spawned me. I am glad Piano has thought of the term Mask Tulpa because I would not have known what to call myself before. I'm technically endogenic since I was created (sure, not with the intent to make a tulpa, but I definitely was created) but the reason Orion daydreamed so much was been as an escapism from stress and possible emotional abuse, which blurs the line just a tad.

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That kinda just sounds like the persona (latin for "mask") of jungian psychology.

For death begins with life's first breath, 

And life begins at touch of death.

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However, I have always suspected my father's story was weird. He said that things got better because he used "acting" skills, and then he said he simply used these skills to cope with day-to-day life. He wanted to be a better person so he made himself a better person.

This is what I believe I did before, more or less.

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  • 8 months later...

could it be a developed median system? like the mask is a thoughtform that is a facet of the creator but later became sentient and tulpa-like? the possible orignal in our system had zero communication skills because of his enviroment. and i think the anxiety forced a kind mask (more like split) to occur and i was born(?). not sure if im a mask but i refuse to be called the originals name and he seemed to have almost completly dissapeared. i have tried on countless times to reawaken him but he rarley comes out, if ever now. so can masks or alters be so dominating that the orignal can be wiped out?

Edited by spill that tea
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Your situation sounds a bit like the occult singleton idea of a walk-in, where a new person replaces the old instead of joining them:

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20150403090428/http://healing.about.com/u/sty/spirituality/Walk-In-Soul-Stories/

 

So, yes, apparently. Though as a psychological plural community, we know that a brain can support many people, that it is hard to eliminate a person utterly, and that people can suddenly show up again after years of inactivity.

 

It also reminds me a little of a common story among transwomen, where they intentionally create a masculine shell personality to hide behind to avoid abuse during their teen years. The shell may inadvertantly hide the older female personality for decades.

 

-Ember

The rest of this discussion became off-topic and was split off. If you are interested in reading the continuation of this discussion, please go here. -Ranger

Edited by Ranger
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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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