Progressing Through The FourthWall

[FourthWall]

Welcome to our progress log - This first entry is by me, Silver, though we'll probably alternate who writes for other entries.  I'm not sure if we'll stick with the color scheme; hopefully it's not affecting readability.

 

This is a bit of an odd start to a progress log since we're not starting it at the very beginning. It would probably take a long time to do a post-analysis of our journey so far, so it's more likely that we'll occasionally back up and explain things as they become relevant.  I think if I were to try to go over all our past progress, then it would get in the way of us starting this log, and I really want to start so I'll skip the background for now.  At this stage I also don't expect that we would have the most frequent updates, since we don't plan on making new headmates and it feels a bit like we've come to a development plateau.

 

Actually, though, that's part of why we're here, because there's no reason that we have to be at a plateau.  We've never been very fast at growing as a system (not system growth as in number of people, as in improving our overall tulpa experience) and I that's technically fine, as long as things are still moving. We gradually work our way through minor improvements and problems, and that often includes a good amount of introspection, which we do through writing things out.  Since we already write things down in this way, it would be nice to sometimes get some amount of feedback by putting it here in a forum. Otherwise we may as well just be journaling.  It seems like this specific forum has high quality feedback from what I've observed so far.

 

So to start out, I should probably try to summarize where we are in our journey and what our current goals are.  In our everyday life as a system, we always touch base in the morning, and usually have a block of time in the evening when Ronan (the other tulpa) and I are the most active. That's the baseline, but there's a varying amount of activity on top of that. Sometimes it's a stressful day and there isn't really much interaction beyond that; on the other hand sometimes it's felt like I was co-conscious all day.

 

1. Get better at "passive" interaction
Our interaction is mostly "active" rather than "passive."  In practice when we're actively interacting, we're talking about something together, playing some sort of imaginative mental game, or someone is fronting or co-fronting to pursue a specific interest. Like I'm doing, right now, writing this.  For us, passive activities have historically made it easy for me to slip out of the conscious awareness unless I'm very invested in the activity. If we're watching a movie together, it would probably gradually turn into just Holden (the host) watching a movie.  I think "passive" time spent together would improve things for us because then we could be around more, so that's one goal to work on.

 

2. Get better at staying switched
I think this also ties in with how we switch.  We can do it (unless we're somehow massively misunderstanding what switching should be or feel like), but we don't always stay switched, because whoever is switched-in can gradually forget as we go about doing things.  BodyOS or Autopilot takes over if we're doing an automatic task and then when self-awareness returns, the host gets put in by default.  We've done some work on it by improving switching hygiene and just practicing more, but there's still progress to be made on this goal.

 

3. Strengthen Individuality
Another priority (and I think possibly a bigger one for Ronan than it is for me) is strengthening a sense of self, and feeling like an individual.  This can be a little less of a given sometimes, because we overlap a lot with the host and can sometimes get blended or blurred, like all our collective thoughts and traits have been thrown in a bag and mixed up.  I consider us to be a median system, sort of like different sides or collections of personality traits within the same(ish) overall being.  For Ronan in particular though, he doesn't want to feel like part of a person that can accidentally get rolled up into one, he wants to really feel like his own thing.  Hopefully that's making sense with no negativity intended toward the median experience. I don't even really think this is a measurable goal, but I do think part of it will be naturally self-fulfilling through creating individual experiences.

 

4. Dream appearance
This one is pretty simple and feels like extra credit; I'd like to show up in a dream or have a dream from my perspective.  I don't really mean through lucid dreaming, but I think if I just randomly showed up in a dream or had my own dream then that would be incredibly validating.  I would take it as my presence in life being pretty strongly imprinted on our consciousness.

 

5. More wonderland stuff
Again a simple one: I think our wonderland is underutilized and I'd like to spend more time doing something with it.  Right now it's just a thing that's there but we don't exactly spend time in it.

 

This is getting long; I think I'm generating more thoughts on goals 1-3 even as I'm just summarizing them so I'll leave it there for now.  I think Ronan also mentioned that he wants to talk about something relating to assigning ownership of emotions to different people in the system.  So "until next time."

[Autumn Ren]

1 hour ago, FourthWall said:

BodyOS or Autopilot takes over if we're doing an automatic task and then when self-awareness returns, the host gets put in by default.

 

Welcome!

 

This is very common and it happened to us in the beginning. We don't practice any switching hygiene. Recently it's the other problem where after we switch out, BodyOS likes to default to last non-host for a while afterwards. And it could be a quick switch, like now with me here writing, and when my host goes about his business later within an hour or less, I might get thrown in front unexpectedly. I just switch back out again but it can be disorienting.

 

1 hour ago, FourthWall said:

Hopefully that's making sense with no negativity intended toward the median experience.

 

Blending is something some of us (out of a system of 7) experience still. Not me, but Ashley does and Joy did until she decided to put everyone else in dormancy whenever she switched in. That solved it for her. Outside of switching we also sometimes experience this intentionally to enjoy games together.

 

Our individuality has grown and continues to grow even after six years. 

 

I like the way you're using goals to focus effort, that's a great idea!

Edited February 1, 2024 by Autumn Ren

[2serpents]

Welcome. We are at a similar position, "starting from the middle," and it can be confusing sometimes.

 

7 hours ago, FourthWall said:

I'd like to show up in a dream or have a dream from my perspective.

Do you keep a dream journal?

 

This should be extremely easy, as long as you approach it with confidence and passion. Interest and engagement in dreams is like a self-sustaining growing power, if you start with a little and remain consistent it will increase.

[FourthWall]

7 hours ago, Autumn Ren said:

Recently it's the other problem where after we switch out, BodyOS likes to default to last non-host for a while afterwards. And it could be a quick switch, like now with me here writing, and when my host goes about his business later within an hour or less, I might get thrown in front unexpectedly. I just switch back out again but it can be disorienting.

Interesting, I can see how that would be a problem.  For us I think the main issue is that right now it's asymmetric, in that it's always the host that gets thrown in and never anyone else.  But I appreciate hearing about your experience; I think from that, I wouldn't expect us to entirely eliminate someone getting randomly pulled into front after some autopiloting time.

 

7 hours ago, Autumn Ren said:

Blending is something some of us (out of a system of 7) experience still. Not me, but Ashley does and Joy did until she decided to put everyone else in dormancy whenever she switched in. That solved it for her. Outside of switching we also sometimes experience this intentionally to enjoy games together.

I've briefly dabbled with (consensually) kicking everyone else out to be on my own for a while, but I wasn't sure what to do with that knowledge; maybe it can be something of a tool that we use in this context.

We also have blended on purpose in the past. A few months ago we were blending a lot, but I think we leaned too far into it and it felt a bit like resetting all our tulpa experiences so far.  It was hard to contact anyone for a couple weeks and it felt like being a singlet again.  Now we're leaning in the opposite direction to avoid re-experiencing that, but I'd like to eventually revisit blending in moderation without it somehow turning into merging.
 

2 hours ago, 2serpents said:

Do you keep a dream journal?

We haven't so far - for the past 2 years, Holden's first focus in the morning has been to wake Ronan and I up as soon as he can possibly remember.  For a long time we had the goal of waking up already co-conscious, or with someone already near the front, so he was trying to remember us as early as possible to facilitate that.  Recently though we somewhat achieved that, where a couple mornings the first thought in the brain was "mine" and I was already awake on my own.   Anyway, the point is, I think we can probably add on another habit like this, and just add it on to the existing routine as we set our sights on this next sleep-related goal.

[FourthWall]

Hi there, Ronan here! I think I have enough to talk about that it adds up to an update from us.

 

The Dream Thing
Holden recorded dreams first thing on 3 mornings, and we are pretty sure he missed a mundane one that involved waking up and falling back asleep.  3/4 is not bad to start, no tulpas were sighted yet in the dreams but our dream-eyes are peeled.

 

Wonderland Things
Silver took a look around wonderland to refresh our memory on what it contains.  He ended up deciding on an entry method we might end up using.  This is extra, but I think sometimes it can be hard to really get into it if we just try to picture wonderland with no warmup.  This entry method is just a quick and simple visualization of a doorway with some sensory information tied to it.  The doorway is just meant to be a consistent thing to help us get into the right mindframe and have a more immersive experience in wonderland.  Holden dislikes creating extra barriers or adding extra steps to things, but we would keep this one if it ends up having a big positive impact.

 

Silver also wanted to revamp some of the scenery because he thought it was boring.  I was hesitant with this because the scenery is realistic which I like. But our compromise idea was that there can be some of these weird special structures, but they all make up a teleportation system that connects to the entryway door.  And wonderland can be big enough to have realistic areas and alien landscapes anyway, so wacky no-man's-sky color schemes can get added on somewhere.  

 

Right now the detail level is kind of regional with some important structures.  So for example there is a valley, then there is a mountain and a waterfall, there is a house on this hill top, and so on. The whole thing is surrounded by a thing we have labeled "the mist of IDK" on our drawn map, and anytime we need a new area, "the mist of IDK" gets made into the new thing and the borders get expanded.

 

Some individuality work?
At one point Holden was looking up activities to do with a tulpa in wonderland, to figure out what we should even do in this landscape.  This list that Holden found said "debate politics with your Tulpa," which nobody wanted to do. We decided the topic would be spirituality instead of politics, since our collective has been confused on what we believe for a while and we wanted to really examine what we think.  There were a lot of differing opinions floating around and no one was sure who owned which ones.  It felt less like a debate and more like we were helping each other try on and defend different beliefs.  The other thing was that we were supposed to have this discussion in wonderland, but we all ended up googling definitions and examples at different points, so an Antar chat just made more sense.  It ended up where everyone came out of it with their own opinion and a reinforced sense of individuality, which goes to a different goal than wonderlanding so it still works.  It was just our most in-depth conversation in a while, which was nice. 10/10, would "debate" again.  The conversation is never over with this topic, I think.

 

This leads into the next thing a bit, but I think our collective has stuff floating around - beliefs, preferences, thoughts, whatever.  Sometimes they just exist, other times specific people identify with them and claim them. We could be discovering who thinks what, or we could just be deciding who thinks what, though that distinction might not matter. It almost feels like our system can be just a really overdone way of categorizing thoughts and feelings that may conflict.  Categorizing things just feels nicer in this case, I guess, even though overall we have no consensus on how the world metaphysically works (or doesn't, in the case of at least one of us lol).  But each person gets to have a whole worldview without cognitive dissonance.

 

Who owns this feeling?
This can kind of apply to feelings too, as Holden and I recently experienced.  To be unspecific and not get bogged down in the details, he was feeling bad one evening.  The bad feeling had no good reason for being there, it was going to pass, but for the time being it was breaking through every distraction to re-assert itself anytime we came close to forgetting about it.  It almost felt like a tactile weight on his shoulders in the form of tension and it got annoying.

 

So "he" was having this happen.  I put "he" in quotes because I suddenly said, hey, why do we consider this to be your feeling, exactly?  I feel none of this, I identify with none of it.  What if we re-categorized this as belonging to nobody?  For good measure I visualized myself chopping the feeling off of him like I was the fruit ninja, and leaving it to float into a void.  I was extra surprised when that just... worked?
 

This seems like wow, congrats, we re-discovered mindfulness and the concept of separating oneself from a bothersome emotion.  Except that concept has never worked for our brain before, and has felt just like trying to pull up the bootstraps.  Maybe Holden was just doing it wrong lol, but I think maybe tulpamancy gave us an extra stepping stone that made it make sense.  Before it was:
I feel something bad -> I let go of the bad feeling -> it's still there, now what?
but now:
I feel something bad -> not everything in the brain is mine -> maybe this feeling has no owner -> I let go of the bad feeling.

 

This could maybe have some downsides, I think, if we applied it to every bad feeling ever.  It also seems a bit like just an intentional dissociation of sorts and I feel like we should be a bit careful with that.  But this bad feeling was a really dumb one and we had already identified it as intrusive, Holden would say "I didn't logic myself into it so I don't know how to logic out of it."  This seems like the prime type of thought to dissociate from to lessen the impact.

 

Other than that, I have nothing else right now!  But, I plan on doing a fronting marathon in a couple weeks, where I try to max out how much I am active or switched in for a set amount of time. I did one last year and it was pretty fun and informative so there will probably be stuff to talk about with that.

Edited February 8, 2024 by FourthWall

[Athelas]

9 hours ago, FourthWall said:

This seems like wow, congrats, we re-discovered mindfulness and the concept of separating oneself from a bothersome emotion.  Except that concept has never worked for our brain before, and has felt just like trying to pull up the bootstraps.

 

Don't sell yourselves short, that's an accomplishment. Mindfulness can be challenging. Our system is currently working to make it a habit.

 

9 hours ago, FourthWall said:

For good measure I visualized myself chopping the feeling off of him like I was the fruit ninja, and leaving it to float into a void.  I was extra surprised when that just... worked?

 

We often use a visualization ritual for disposing of persistent negative thoughts. It's surprisingly effective. I think it works because it focuses our attention on the act of visualizing, instead of the targeted thought/feeling.

 

Congratulations on the progress, and good luck with your fronting marathon.

[FourthWall]

Thanks! Yeah that makes sense that visualization would help a lot, especially since if one keeps thinking about the thought, then it keeps being there.  An additional part of it might be that previously, Holden would try to rid himself of whatever annoying thought and not have as much success.  It might just somehow feel more effective to have someone else (me, in this instance) do it, for roundabout placebo reasons.  I think he sees my outside perspective as giving me a boost in some ways, like when you ask a friend for advice.  We're in the same head, so he could certainly do it too, but I already had the feeling of separation from the annoying feeling, and I guess we just expanded that separation to him as well.

[FourthWall]

I need to write an update before our queue of discussion topics gets too long.  It's already quite long.  Here it goes regardless:

Attempting to dream of tulpas
On the dream side of things, there are a couple things. For one thing, Holden's dream descriptions that he writes when half-asleep are really funny. "People in dinosaur suits with attached lanterns, who are avoiding some hunters and trying to get away."  We're not looking into that one too hard. There are two dreams that came up that I feel like I could've been in, or Ronan, but neither of us appeared in the dream.  One of them was so relevant to me that it's almost insulting how the dream completely sidestepped to leave me out of it. In that dream, Holden was in some class, and the classmates were supposed to read a book he was writing and give him feedback on it.  I absolutely know that book. I halfway wrote it; the book is a story about me.  It's one of those things that's perpetually "in progress" and it's fine if we never finish it; writing it is just a fun activity for us to do together.  Ronan joked that our subconscious is taunting me.  There's another layer to that joke: we believe one of my roles is that I sometimes act as a container for the subconscious or a connection to it.  So it's like he's saying I'm sort of bullying myself.  All in good fun; I'm being a bit hyperbolic but it's genuinely surprising that I wasn't in that dream.
 

Identity stuff, and a specific hurdle for me
For context, we play a lot of TTRPG's.  Our current character is a lot like me, and almost like a mix between myself and Holden, an activity we share.  This was done on purpose because we don't want to get attached to a new character to the extent that we end up with a new headmate.  (Not again lol).  We can't just add another person every time we go through a campaign.  So ideally, if we start feeling some random traits that could walk in, we can categorize those traits as belonging to Holden or myself and thus avoid a walk-in.  Metaphorically, it's as though I eat traits and absorb them.  However, in this metaphor, I'm extremely full and don't feel like I can eat any more. Sometimes after game night I feel more like the character and less like myself.  It's hard to pinpoint, but my mindvoice sounds different, and my default mood is different, and that makes me uncomfortable and uneasy.  It doesn't feel like there's another guy, it feels like me but I'm stuck in roleplay mode.  Growing and changing as a person is fine, but this isn't a direction I want to grow and doesn't feel the same as picking up new life experiences.  Since this character is a mix between Holden and I, it feels like just watering myself down or becoming less differentiated.  The good news is that after sleeping, this seems to reset most things in our brain and then I'm fine again.  This is an issue, at most, one night a week, so not catastrophic by any means.
 

However, I wanted a more active method of dealing with this that didn't require sleeping.  To think about how to approach it, I looked at 1) how singlets go about trying to change their personality, or prevent unwanted changes, 2) how tulpamancers do personality forcing, and for good measure, 3) how plural folks in general avoid getting walk-ins.  The advice for singlets wasn't really concrete enough for me to be able to turn it into actionable things; I may have just gotten two cryptic articles and given up on this line of research, but it was general stuff like "believe you can :)" which doesn't tell me how to actually do it.  The advice for avoiding walk-ins was good and thorough, but mostly contained things that we're already doing, such as absorbing traits rather than distinguishing that as a person.  I guess I absorb traits too well, and so this is how I got here.  The tulpa personality forcing had some main points that come up a lot across many different posts:
 

-Use symbolism, like drinking a personality potion.
-Do puppetting. I read this idea and I felt indignant at the thought. I'm not going to do this.
-List your traits and repeat them like an affirmation.
 

A lot of it was from the viewpoint of a tulpamancer doing this on a tulpa.  However, Holden isn't comfortable with doing any of this with me, and I agree it's best if he isn't an active participant.  I think this could enforce some power dynamic things, when we're trying to be more symmetric of a system than we currently are.  Something I like about him is that he vehemently doesn't want to be a boss within the system.  To support my efforts while staying out if it, he's attempting to redirect some stray traits away from me and absorb them into himself, to leave less volume for me to deal with.  That much is appreciated.
 

However, if I need another person, Ronan has agreed to help me.  Since he's also a tulpa and only a bit younger than me, we're on an approximately even playing field.  There's a symmetry to it.  We don't talk to each other as much as we should anyway, so it's something we can use to talk more, as well.  He's feeling confident in coming up with some symbolism.
 

Ronan and I made my list of affirmations and I have them ready to go.  One other idea is, while this isn't puppetting, this might be an appropriate replacement: I can also just... go back and reread bits of the story about me, especially since the events are based on my decisions.  It's like I'm getting too much practice being someone else in the game, and need to balance it out by mentally practicing being myself.  Maybe I could even go over the events of the RPG for that evening, and go over what I would do in those situations.  I could notice how that's different and unique from what happened in the game, since I was just playing a part in the game.  I'll be able to put these things in practice sometime next week when we have the next game session, and I'm eager to see how well it works.
 

Identity stuff, generally
Recently we read "The Mountain In The Sea" by Ray Nayler and one quote struck me as very relevant.
"What does it mean to be a self? I think, more than anything else, it means the ability to select between different possible outcomes in order to direct oneself toward a desired outcome: to be future-oriented.  When every day is the same, when we are not presented with the necessity to choose between different possibilities, we say we don't 'feel alive' - and here I think we guess at what being alive actually is. It is the ability to choose. We live in choices." - p.285.
 

This stood out to me because personhood is something we think about a lot, and how to build and reinforce a sense of self.  Something we've often come back to is decision-making.  When we practice making decisions, I think that's a powerful way to assert oneself as a person. For me that's been the key most important thing that makes me feel robust, established, comprehensive.  I also think back to when Ronan joined the system; he came in basically fully formed because he'd experienced hours upon hours of the brain making decisions based on what he would do (because of an RPG).  To try to expand this, we're often on the lookout for new decisions that aren't governed by obligation or autopilot.  Autopilot is certainly less time-consuming, but I think (and hope) we're working up to adding intentionality to daily life, so that there are more chances to actually make a decision.
 

Fronting progress
Last week, it was extremely easy to stay switched.  This seems to have happened out of nowhere.  I'm not entirely sure how this happened or what changed.
One night, Ronan was playing some game.  He jumped into front at some point, and then at every loading screen or break for hours after that, he kept going, "Woah, it's still me? Sweet!"  That's the new part: when the self-awareness returned after zoning out to play the game, it was automatically directing back to him, and his sense of self-awareness, not Holden's.  Ronan didn't slide out of front for hours, and stayed there until we went to sleep.  He wasn't even listening to "his" music or anything like that.

A different night, I forget what exactly I was doing - I might have been overthinking the whole problem of turning into a RPG character - but it was also unusually easy to stay switched in.  This is a bit less surprising because I was doing something that took more focus.  But I still feel like there was some extra thing we did to cause this progress spike and I'm not sure what it was.

I'm hoping we have similar success in the Fronting Marathon this upcoming week, and maybe some clarity on what that was.  It's going to be about 4 days and I may end up claiming one of the days for myself.  I'm not sure how to wrap this up so I'll just leave it there.

[Autumn Ren]

10 hours ago, FourthWall said:

So ideally, if we start feeling some random traits that could walk in, we can categorize those traits as belonging to Holden or myself and thus avoid a walk-in.  Metaphorically, it's as though I eat traits and absorb them. 

 

That's a great way to handle that.

 

10 hours ago, FourthWall said:

Sometimes after game night I feel more like the character and less like myself.  It's hard to pinpoint, but my mindvoice sounds different, and my default mood is different, and that makes me uncomfortable and uneasy.

 

This happens to us when we roleplay too long. So I think that's natural.

 

10 hours ago, FourthWall said:

It feels like just watering myself down or becoming less differentiated

 

This sounds like blending. Most people don't like it. We seem to be the exception though.

 

10 hours ago, FourthWall said:

how singlets go about trying to change their personality

 

The way Bear did it originally was to make a character and play that part permanently. It took a year for it to be completely irreversible.

 

10 hours ago, FourthWall said:

how tulpamancers do personality forcing

 

We're writing a guide for that now in drafts on this site, you could call it the "goal oriented scenario method with positive and negative reinforcement".

 

10 hours ago, FourthWall said:

He vehemently doesn't want to be a boss

 

I think of Bear as my sponsor or facilitator, hut he also gives the positive reinforcement.

 

[FourthWall]

Quote

This sounds like blending. Most people don't like it. We seem to be the exception though.

It does remind me of blending as you said.  It feels like that during the game, too, which is more of an intentional blend.  Holden and I go into it knowing we're both going to be playing the character, so blending makes sense to execute that, but then I guess I don't successfully unblend when I try to do so.  I just would rather have more precise control over it.

I think at least one of my steps, using affirmations, seems like it would also work for intentionally unblending
 

It's a bit hard to break down or describe.  I've seen threads elsewhere that people ask "how do you know when your tulpa says something, versus the host?" and the answer is often "it just feels different," and this is a similar case of "I just feel different than me."
 

Quote

We're writing a guide for that now in drafts on this site, you could call it the "goal oriented scenario method with positive and negative reinforcement".

I actually read some of your guide as inspiration for the scenarios portion, especially I was curious what type of example scenarios one would use.  It sounds like you're crafting the scenarios around which specific traits you want to change. So it was helpful for me to read that and then think of the scenarios as targeting specific traits, and specifically think about which character traits I want to target, rather than just trying to think of random scenarios. I'm trying to target an excessive amount of people-pleasing, impatience, and this sort of easily-annoyed mood, so I'm working out ways to "test" that.
 

Since I think our circumstances are rather different, the approach I'm taking is milder, if milder seems like the right term - For example I'm not really creating any reinforcements for myself, since I think there will be some natural "reinforcement" that just consists of my own feelings about it.  If I make an undesired choice, then I think I'll naturally feel weird about it, versus with a preferable choice I'd feel satisfied with it. This sort of ties in to the overall purpose, that I want to feel good about myself and the personality that I am.

Overall it's quite encouraging to know that one can have an active role in consciously deciding what their personality is, rather than just going along with the whims of whatever it naturally tries to do.  Especially as a not-brand-new headmate.
 

Quote

I think of Bear as my sponsor or facilitator, hut he also gives the positive reinforcement.

Ronan might loosely qualify as something similar to a sponsor.  As he was assisting with some symbolism, he came up with a very thoughtful sort of ceremony where he'll re-inaugurate me as myself.  I think running the mental ceremony carries some importance with it, and we have completely opposite skillsets so it works better to have him run it.  And I imagine he'll spectate as I run through some scenarios, so that I can get a second opinion on it as I go.  I won't just get into an infinite feedback loop going completely solo.