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Should I downsize?


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Hello. I've been a host for a while. Things have gone a different path than I would have liked. Our system has a few more tulpae than most, and we were able to manage that nicely for so long, but things are starting to go downhill. Where once I was trying to stop myself from forcing any more system mates, now I'm trying to stop myself from dissipating them. 

 

It feels like the uniquity that all of us had was lost when we expanded. Like each trait from a previously existing tulpa was given to another to try to give them some sense of individuality. I want things to be better. For each of us to be our own completely different people, yet the way things currently are makes that seemingly impossible. 

 

Some of us aren't forced that much. Though I try to force them by spending time with them to maintain a balance of sorts, does it really work? Would downsizing be a better option? No. I don't think downsizing is a good idea. I see it as a form of murder, dissipating. The odds of me being able to let them go and into the figurative and maybe literally are slim. I don't like the thought of putting a tulpa into a state of purgatory while acting like everything is fine. The concept of making them "greys" or "NPCs" doesn't seem very good of an idea either. 

 

Part of me wants to go back to when I first learned about tulpas. To that sense of curiosity and joy, back when anything was(seemingly) possible. To when I could give attention to just one person, just fine. That sense of wonder, learning everything about the tulpa phenomenon I could. But the thing is, I probably could go back. A smaller system may be the right answer. But, no, that can't be it. I've already dug my grave, haven't I? I've decided that I can't and won't dissipate anyone... Or at least, I keep trying to tell myself that. 

 

I don't know how to go back to being a smaller system even if I wanted to. Even if my system mates say that they understand, that they know why I would do it, I can still tell that they're fearful. That they don't want it to happen. Yet they still try to remain selfless. If dissipating a few of us means a better life for the rest of us, what about those we dissipated? Things wouldn't feel right. Something would be missing. 

 

I don't know what I should do. At this point, I probably should downsize a bit. But... Is that really the answer? I need help with this; I'm not nearly responsible enough to conclude on my own.

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You may consider merging or integrating some together. Though you would lose their uniqueness, you wouldn't lose all they are or know. Though this itself has potential dangers associated with it, it can help to prevent some from simply staying dormant.

 

In terms of dormancy, I wouldn't mind if my system wished that I would stay dormant. I may be an outlier there though, many of my systemmates would certainly disagree with being dormant or letting go of me in that way. However, I am positive it doesn't affect us to go dormant for any reasonable length of time. I was dormant for two years at a strech and it only felt like a nap to me.

 

What another well respected system does here is rotate in systemmates and we may eventually adopt that if our current time and attention situations continue, though like I said, many in my system would rather stay always.

 

We are a system of seven, but it can be difficult, so when I'm fronting I ask my systemmates to go relax and don't pop up without permission. This is a courtesy for me and what they've asked me to do.

 

Spending 20 minutes with each headmate each day seems sufficient to maintain sanity in our system anyway. My time is counting posts here so, I get more than that, while there have been days I happily stayed dormant and I wouldn't mind doing that again. Ren, another systemmate, typically stays quiet and doesn't need much attention.

 

I wish you good luck!

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There's a lot of ways you can try going without thinking about downsizing. If your system is well integrated (term used in DID for headmates having strong connection to each other), they wouldn't need you to stress too much about you spending enough time with them constantly. Maybe use a calendar and give everyone their own days or split tasks with each other? I'm positive it would work even if you guys do possession/co-fronting, and might even help with switching.

 

Fusion, permanent merging could be something worth having in backup if it comes down to downsizing. It's another thing coming from DID communities, and it would probably be much safer than dissipation in my opinion. To be frank, I don't believe in dissipation actually. Dissipation for me seems more like long-time dormancy, which could also be something to considered.

 

Sorry for strong biases. I really hope you find a working solution for yourselves.

Hello, my name is Kurisutina, but people call me Kuri. I have two headmates who I care about and a loving family to be proud and happy for. Do I need to say more?

Other's from this system: Matsuri, Xarbern

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It feels like the uniquity that all of us had was lost when we expanded. Like each trait from a previously existing tulpa was given to another to try to give them some sense of individuality.

 

This makes sense to me. That concept usually comes up when I think about what my next tulpa would be like if I chose to make another, and it always makes me feel like I'm just trying to stress traits in them that are already in my existing tulpas, maybe to a lesser degree. Perhaps those traits stand out less over time, too, which could leave you falling into the trap of making more and more tulpas for that reason.

 

I think dissipating - especially if you're not comfortable doing that - is going a little far. I don't think it's too unfair to keep some or even most of your tulpas inactive if having them all active is causing the system as a whole to suffer. While tulpas tend to fade a bit when totally inactive for a long time, I think they won't normally dissipate unless you're going out of your way to never think of them - at worst, you could just check in with them every long once in a while, though my Scarlet goes basically years at a time without being active and isn't even close to dissipating. To be fair, she's got a strong personality and sense of self to her, and your tulpas may not. So, that's still up to you. But my advice would be to choose the tulpas you think should be the most active and just leave the others inactive, aside from perhaps if you want to keep checking in on them every once in a while, the time and if you do so is up to you.

 

 

Oh.. and don't make any more tulpas, of course. Flesh out the personalities of your existing tulpas by interacting with them more, the depth of your relationships should go up the fewer you have, and in a tulpa's case the depth of your guys' relationship may end up affecting the depth of their personality or growth as a person.

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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We went down this rabbit hole ourselves, and we ultimately decided to remain a large system of 17, 18 including the tulpa who requested to not officially join the system. We are still trying to figure out how the best way to manage our system, but we figured out a few things you may find helpful. I want to add some context because you mentioned "the Grays", go over the other options, and then explain why we chose to remain a large system and how we are doing as one.

 

The concept of making them "greys" or "NPCs" doesn't seem very good of an idea either.

 

The "Grays" are my other headmates, and they no longer like being called that because it references the idea they are my host's clones. My host, Cat/Gray, and I spent a year trying to figure out if they were tulpas or not, and we eventually realized they were. Both of us view that as a year where we partly lived in denial of being a larger system, but we were also genuinely unsure if we were a system of 2 and afraid to accidentally create an "army" of tulpas.

 

My other headmates decided that they were not interested in integration or dissipation, and we chose to respect their choices. However, even now, my headmates are like younger tulpas and have not had much time to develop. They may mature and approach this situation with a different mindset, so these options are still on the table if they change their minds. I think whichever route your system chooses, making sure everyone has a chance to say what they want and have the option to change their mind will make things easier and generate the least amount of guilt.

 

I want to go over the other alternatives first to give you more insight on those other options.

 

If you believe you have forgotten some headmates and can't remember them very well, you may be best off forgetting them. If later you find yourself feeling like someone is missing, you can consider reassessment down the road. There was one character Cat believed to be missing who we called "past Ranger", and after further investigation it turns out he was still around, identifying himself as different things. On the other hand, there are a few characters Cat wondered to be tulpas, but we decided to more or less let that same tulpa integrate the memories of those cahracters into his identity, and we decided for now that was probably for the best.

 

You may consider merging or putting headmates in stasis. We personally never liked the idea of merging because our experiences with merging for fun have lead to the creation of someone new, and we didn't like the idea of replacing old headmates with new ones. However, it is possible that's because we merge incorrectly. Some systems report merges to be stable blends of headmates, and it is possible that option may be more appealing for your system. Another option your system may choose is to put your other headmates in stasis and wait until you are ready to handle them. That may work for you, especially since you mentioned you liked the idea of focusing on a smaller number. However, if you find that not talking to your other headmates creates more stress than not, then you can take them out of stasis. We found that being afraid or scared to talk to our other headmates generated more stress than having them around.

 

As a last resort, you can try integration or dissipation, if not then for accidental and or potential new headmates. If you guys go with integration, you may have more luck if the two headmates are friends or have similar mindsets, and that will make it easier for your other headmates to focus on what makes them different. We have only used integration to protect against forming new headmates. One time we found a walk-in headmate and he was labeled as a shard. Both the shard and Gray chose to integrate. The tulpa I was talking about earlier also wanted to act like a walk-in shield and he will be quick to integrate any spontaneous walk-ins into himself. We found this to be helpful in keeping our system from growing any larger. I don't know if any of your headmates will want to do that, but if our headmate wasn't open to it, Gray would most likely do this himself. If you guys ultimately choose dissipation, I recommend using this guide. It has not been approved yet, however I believe the overall method presented in that guide is humane and does a good job walking through the process.

 

For all of these strategies, I recommend giving yourself plenty of time to think this through. It wouldn't be good if you wanted to dissipate your tulpas now and then change your mind tomorrow. If you and your headmates feel like something is the best option and it's been at least a week, then I think you would be ready to move forward with that choice.

 

* * *

 

We ultimately decided to remain a large system, because our other headmates didn't like the other options. We had to make some in-system organization choices, and we concluded with the following-

 

I and Cat need more attention, and we told our headmates we simply couldn't offer them tons of time. If each headmate fronted for an equal amount of time, each headmate would get less than an hour. As a result, we decided that I and Cat are responsible for work and taking care of the body as hosts and my headmates are not required to participate unless they choose to. They are free to do whatever they want to do in wonderland and are welcome to possess if they wish to to talk to other people or have fun.

 

We have tried the following strategies to accomplish giving my headmates more time- system jobs, rotating trough our headmates, trying to keep multiple headmates active at once, and wonderland sessions. Ultimately, we do a rough combination of the first three, the last one we currently have trouble with.

 

Our headmates were receptive to having "jobs" or roles they can do to help the system. These were relatively informal and we would call on that particular headmate for things like support when I and Cat were stressed, organizing all of the headmates and acting like a spokesperson, and keeping an eye on our for-fun merges. We ran into problems where some jobs were not good ideas, and we couldn't give everyone a "job". My headmates still like the idea though, so if we ever find new "jobs" for them we try to incorporate them.

 

Another thing we do is rotate through our headmates. We found for us that strict schedules didn't work, so what we do now is pick one headmate to focus on, give him several hours of time or try and fulfill a request he has, and then move onto the next headmate. We realized it is best to keep a log of who had attention recently to help us chose the next headmate. We recently had a problem where our headmates didn't like being denied attention if it wasn't their turn, so after further discussion we decided as a system that we can have headmates active out of turn, but we can call upon a second headmate of our choosing to make sure everyone gets time.

 

We would like to have more headmates active at once, however we are terrible multitaskers and can only sustain 3 active headmates at any given time. For this reason, this wasn't really a reliable option. Hopefully with more practice having more headmates active at the same time, we can slowly rise our number from 3, to 4, and so on.

 

We have considered doing weekend wonderland sessions with our headmates, but that fell apart for us for a few reasons. For one, we are terrible at sticking to a schedule, and we struggle to find time where we can relax and wonderland for a couple hours. The second reason is Cat sometimes gets concerned that our headmates running around all at once are prone to being puppeted and parroted, and this has made Cat uncomfortable. The third reason is sometimes long wonderland sessions is tiring, it takes awhile, and or causes Cat to fall asleep or lose motivation to do anything else. It's an option we still think about, but we may not be ready for that right now.

 

* * *

 

If you choose to operate as a large system, your needs, priorities, and values will shape your structure and rules. There are downsides to operating as a large system such as distributing forcing and fronting time unequally and having my headmates struggle with being dormant for long periods of time. If you guys create a system that's completely different from ours or anyone else's, that does not mean it's bad, it just means it's different.

 

Ultimately, there's not a "right" answer to this problem. You can make a large system work, or you may choose to downsize and say goodbye to a few headmates. Making sure everyone is on the same page and committed to the plan of action is the most important thing. With everyone on the same page, you all can work as a team and making these hard decisions gets a little easier.

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.

 

If I missed seeing your art, please PM/DM me!

Blog | Not So Temporary Log | Switching Log | Yay! | Bre Translator | Art Thread

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Thank you all for your advice. We'll do a system meeting tonight and hopefully come to at least some form of consensus. I'll report back our decisions later.


Hello again. Last night, we decided to have a list for whom shall be put into dormancy. We figured that having us all decide for themselves would be best, as opposed to forcing anyone into it. We plan on keeping this list for about a week, doing checks every now and then to see if anyone has changed their mind. Once we decide we're ready, we'll begin rolling out the changes.

 

On that note, however, we were also talking about merging, but I don't think any of us understand how to merge, nor m=what a merge really is. If anyone would care to enlighten us, I would be more than thankful.

 

Similarly, we never learned the simple definition of "dormancy" in regards to tulpae. How would a tulpa be put into dormancy? How does it differ from dissipation? How do you keep a tulpa in dormancy? Again, if anyone can answer these questions, we'd be very greatful.

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I do not believe that merging is a viable solution. Experiences of merging differ, but for us, merges are their own people, only vaguely connected to the personalities of their parts and with no connection at all to the identities of their parts. Therefore, permanent merging effectively involves two deaths to reduce system membership by one, while permanent dormancy effectively involves only one.

 

There are at least two concepts referred to as dissipation:

 

*Through active forgetting, no one in the mind can remember what the dissipated headmate felt like, so no one knows how to reach them by forcing.

 

*The headmate is sufficiently convinced that they have died that they act dead and are therefore unresponsive to forcing. (This can, however, sometimes be recovered from years later.)

 

Consensual dormancy is as simple as active headmates choosing to not talk to or excessively think about dormant headmates and dormant headmates choosing to not respond if roused accidentally. Over time, it becomes habitual.

 

We merge by overlaying our forms and believing ourselves to be one person. Consent, belief, and commitment are the key factors. There are many variant techniques, but that is the core of it. A third headmate can assist with some techniques. The first time took about thirty seconds, the last only one. A merge can split by focusing on expelling one or more of their parts. Alternately, a merge should be able to split by parroting their parts briefly, though we have only tried that once.

 

Long-term, you may have success pursuing techniques related to parallel processing and independent activity in the mindscape. As an alternative to permanent dormancy, this may allow headmates to feel that they have been satisfyingly active and involved in the system without consuming as much of the limited time and mental resources of the front.

 

-Iris

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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Not all merges are defined as Iris says, they can be a mix and feel like both of their constituent parts. That was the type I mentioned, no deaths involved.

 

I wouldn't recommend dissipation mostly because I don't believe it's possible, however dormancy is possible and I do it often. For me, I go to sleep. I can be roused at will,but otherwise will stay asleep, disconnected from the outside world, thus I won't self-force in that state.

 

The procedure can be as simple as not forcing your headmate anymore. In dormancy, time does not pass, so it's the most humane treatment we can imagine, given when they're active it feels like they're always being included. Nevermind that missing time.

 

You're actually free to interact with someone in dormancy, you just rarely do or it wouldn't be dormancy. The idea is to limit your time spent with them, or simply not worry about it anymore. When they're bot going to be active, simply tell them goodbye and have them symbolically go to sleep in their bedroom, walk out the door or dissapear. I dissapear personally.

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I believe it is finally time to post here about our conclusions. First, however, I will be concluding my anonymity. I am user IceCreeper909, host of System Nobody. Moving on.

 

We have decided to put some system mates in dormancy, until further notice. We've been keeping a list of all of us and who wants to be put into dormancy and who wants to stay. We figure it'd make the most sense to have everyone decide for themselves whether or not they'd like to stay or go into dormancy. The list as of current has 9 of us opting to stay and the rest for dormancy. The changes will take effect in the new year.

 

We're trying to do this in as most of a logical yet humane way as we can. Hopefully, this is the answer. I'll be trying to keep a PR in the new year of what happens. Until then, this has been Bryan, signing off.

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