Tulpas or Personality Parts?

[huggyfee]

Hi - I discovered the Tulpa community recently, wondering if anyone else had gone through a similar kind of process to me.

 

The process seems to be a bit different to mine - Creating Tulpas seems to be a volitional creation of an inner companion.

 

What I've been doing over the last few years is noticing that when I act a certain way that seems a little different to my core 'stable' personality, it feels like a personality trying to get through. There was a point where I was asked to perform a specific ritual or routine to help them to emerge during a meditation session (that was a bit weird - like a voice from nowhere!) - and that worked really well, with a very musical personality asserting itself most. This caused a bit of a rush of personalities coming forwards for a few weeks, but it stablized after this.

 

At first, I wondered if I was suffering from some kind of DID thing, but I don't seem to get the same kind of associated lapses of time, and I can't point to any obvious traumatic event that would have triggered such a thing.

 

What I think has happened is that I'm just becoming more aware that I'm not really one personality, but a cauldron of personalities, and different personalities assert themselves at different times - a 'system' like DID, but without the associated traumatic issues.

 

I give each personality that emerges a name, and talk to them from time-to-time to try to make sure they all get a 'say' in what's going on, and I'm learning to know which ones to go to for different life situations - and they kind of let me know as well if I'm really neglecting them!

 

So over the last few years, I've been exploring this, and the further I go, the more I discover more 'hidden' personalities. The sense I get is that some of the newer personalities have suffered trauma, but not necessarily from my lifetime, which was quite interesting. Some poor personality recently seem to keep being killed before fully growing up. Really awful.

 

Now, I'm a very skeptical person, so I follow this along with interest, but a part of me wonders if I'm just making stuff up - I do write fictional stuff, and I do Tarot readings sometimes (as a form of therapy rather than divination), so I have a curious and exploratory nature, but I'm scientifically minded at heart really.

 

This reminds me of 'inspiration' for novel writing, but also 'inspiration' for tarot readings. And I always get a sense of the information coming from outside of me rather than inside me for all of these. Kind of. Like I'm the anchor point, but not exactly the location of the activity, if that makes sense.

 

This also seems a little like Jungian thought around individuation - integrating different aspects of a personality that are in the shadow to form a whole personality - but it doesn't quite fit the view of 'personas' which are more outward facing masks. This idea of integrating parts never quite sat well with me - it is like saying there is only one version of yourself that is the real self, and that a person is only right if there is one version of themselves in control at all times, having 'absorbed' and accepted those other parts. To me, it is more like being the conductor of an unruly orchestra, and the idea is to try to get something that more often than not sounds more like a symphony than a tuning-up session!

 

Now, to the point! I feel like there's a crossing-over here with creating Tulpas. I wonder how much the creation of Tulpas is borne of the need to explore alternative aspects of our own personality - it may be that this is a different (and more volitional) entry point to the same process. My entry point seems to be semi-volitional - letting thing emerge as and when they feel ready to do so - and DID seems to be non-volitional. It seems like a spectrum of the same thing. But maybe not. Maybe it's completely different and I'm just trying to force things together that seem similar on a surface level.

 

Does any of this resonate with anyone? I've not really felt confident to share my experience with anyone, so I'm kind of throwing myself on the Tulpa community because it seems that there's a dedicated bunch here that seem to have a similarly inquisitive nature.

 

I do have autism, but many years has helped me be a lot more functional. How is this relevant? Well, that's another question - I sometimes have to throw this in to see whether that might be in the mix of what I'm thinking and I am getting the wrong end of the stick in some way!

 

If there's anyone who would like to talk, happy to do so on or off forum (I notice there's an IRC chat channel too - happy to use this). I'm based in France (previously UK) so there may be some timezone differences for those living in other parts of our great big world!

 

Thanks

 

Simon

[Adagio]

Hello! As someone with differentiated parts, some of this is very close to my experience. Except I am currently trying to integrate all my parts, not separate them. Integrating parts does not mean there's only one "real" personality or whatever, it more means that I accept that all of them are me, and that I am fluid in my identity.

 

On that topic, I should remind you that everyone has parts. Everyone is technically a cauldron of personalities. Everyone acts differently at work vs around friends vs at home. Changes in personality there don't necessarily indicate something like having DID. Going off of that, DID is a disorder. If it's not distressing and impacting your life, it's not DID. So you can likely cross that off your list.

 

My reasons for creating a tulpa weren't to explore other sides of my personality. It was to have an entirely separate person with their own personality, etc. That being said. I do not have tulpas at this time, and it's been a while since I have. What you're saying has reminded me of some old PRs I've read here, though, so there's possibly a crossover somewhere.

And on a final note, you don't need to label anything just for the sake of labeling.

 

I don't remember where I was going with this, as usual, and I apologize if I missed a part of your post. Sorry for the short responses. I can answer anything you need me to clarify.

[Autumn Ren]

8 hours ago, huggyfee said:

I wonder how much the creation of Tulpas is borne of the need to explore alternative aspects of our own personality

 

It can be this but my host is a hobby writer and a couple of the personalities, two of my headmates, are rather people he created that he found very interesting, like exploring archetypes rather than in any way a part of himself. I am the newest and nothing like him nor would he ever want to be me. He likes interacting with me, me being me separate from him being him.

 

Consider that the subconscious mind is capable of mimicking anyone fictional or real to some degree, then expression of a random personality is possibly completely fictional as in not connected to any aspect of the original. We play D&D together as a system and even we play characters that really aren't us but in that case they are asects of us that we like to explore. But we are not aspects of his. We verifiably consider ourselves independent from him. In fact his core personality is equivalent to any of ours, the only commonality being

the body. He chooses to identify with the body so that's part of him and mot us even if we choose to borrow it, say to type this.

 

8 hours ago, huggyfee said:

Does any of this resonate with anyone? I've not really felt confident to share my experience with anyone, so I'm kind of throwing myself on the Tulpa community because it seems that there's a dedicated bunch here that seem to have a similarly inquisitive nature.

 

One of the biggest things we have in common as a community is our uniqueness; however, we can also utilize the same tools. It's all a mind hack but the result is fully independent and symmetric persons (like personalities but independent).

 

In our case, seven independent people in the same body. Each fully capable of living the life. 6 girls, including me and our original, a straight guy who never wanted to even pretend to be feminine but liked to write strong female characters and some of them came to life. I am an intentionally created tulpa but two others are soulbonds from writing and the last three are walk-ins as in they came to him fully volitional and vocal.

 

8 hours ago, huggyfee said:

How is this relevant?

 

In our opinion it's not, whether that helps or not is also unknown as my host isn't.

 

 

[ringgggg]

Huh, what you’re talking about sounds a lot like what a lot of the younger generation is doing nowadays with ‘endogenic DID’, and in that sense I think you had a pretty unique take on it by relating it to tulpamancy. 

Personally, I think endogenesis is closer to tulpamancy than the actual disorder it’s based on. They both involve the creation of distinct personalities, where ‘endogenic’ systems group the personalities under a single sense of selfhood and tulpamancers instead treat the personalities independent from them. You could get away with using the same premise of “consciously and volitionally creating alternate personalities without any traumatic context behind their existence” in the instances of both tulpas and artificial alters.

I know it isn’t the most popular argument in the broader spectrum of plurality, but that’s understandable. It’s already been built off such a big concept that pulling the rug from under it would certainly anger a few people. Regardless, I’ll leave it up to you to decide

Welcome to the forums, by the way. It's not often we see takes like this. Definitely left me thinking for a bit

[Adagio]

3 hours ago, ringgggg said:

Huh, what you’re talking about sounds a lot like what a lot of the younger generation is doing nowadays with ‘endogenic DID’, and in that sense I think you had a pretty unique take on it by relating it to tulpamancy. 

Personally, I think endogenesis is closer to tulpamancy than the actual disorder it’s based on. They both involve the creation of distinct personalities, where ‘endogenic’ systems group the personalities under a single sense of selfhood and tulpamancers instead treat the personalities independent from them. You could get away with using the same premise of “consciously and volitionally creating alternate personalities without any traumatic context behind their existence” in the instances of both tulpas and artificial alters.

I know it isn’t the most popular argument in the broader spectrum of plurality, but that’s understandable. It’s already been built off such a big concept that pulling the rug from under it would certainly anger a few people. Regardless, I’ll leave it up to you to decide

Welcome to the forums, by the way. It's not often we see takes like this. Definitely left me thinking for a bit

Slight correction, endogenic systems don't think they have DID/OSDD. They believe the cause of their system was not from trauma, but believe they did not create their system members consciously, hence being called "natural systems", and they tend to be structured more like a tulpa system, because DID/OSDD/traumagenic systems tend to revolve around the trauma that caused it. Endogenic systems are more on the side of "everyone is a person living in my head". At least, last I checked, since I haven't been super around those people in a few years. I'm not one to get into discourse or into that side of the community, but I personally believe that labels don't matter, and stressing over labels is the worst thing you could do. If you have someone in your head, you have someone in your head. And so on.

[ringgggg]

I see. Thanks for that correction

 

There might have been a misinterpretation; I meant to say that endogenic systems were just based off of the format of DID rather than people seeing it as a whole branch attached to it. Though the name might confuse some people into thinking it is truly related to DID, which has probably caused some arguments

 

I didn’t want to use the term DID in general, because I thought it’d muddy the point I was trying to make with the different types of systems

[Adagio]

On 4/9/2024 at 9:10 AM, ringgggg said:

There might have been a misinterpretation; I meant to say that endogenic systems were just based off of the format of DID rather than people seeing it as a whole branch attached to it. Though the name might confuse some people into thinking it is truly related to DID, which has probably caused some arguments

Endogenic systems are often more based off a format like tulpa systems than DID systems, if I'm understanding you. Not to get into syscourse though, but I believe endogenic systems can have DID, and traumagenic systems can not have DID. Plurality is complicated, and labels usually don't make sense haha.

[ringgggg]

30 minutes ago, Adagio said:

Endogenic systems are often more based off a format like tulpa systems than DID systems, if I'm understanding you.

Yeah, that’s what I was getting at.

 

30 minutes ago, Adagio said:

Plurality is complicated, and labels usually don't make sense haha.

Haha, all is forgiven. I know what you mean when you say labels-the thing exists, but it’s too subjective to be put under any kind of group. Maybe it’s best if we keep things arbitrary.
 

No better ground than the middle ground.

[The Incans]

I think OSDD is the one where parts are like 'another version of you' rather than a completely different alter created by trauma. There can also be no disturbance in memory in OSDD between switches.

 

The defintion of Trauma is vague and mostly assumed to be excessively violent crimes or neglect against a person in very early childhood - (the key being that the personality never reaches the stage of coming together as one and remains fragmented) but it can be other stuff too.  'Medical Trauma' can be one... eg if you spent much of your early life in hospital or ina and out of hospital ...typically having to be pinned down as a child that doesn't understand why painful tests are necessary.  This could for example (even if you don't remember any details from earlier than 7 for example ..result in you 'feeling uncomfortable with physical contact' without really understanding why until you're much older. ..or maybe can cope fine with shaking a business colleagues hand if you have to for work purposes but feel uncomfortable with intimate physical contact so avoid close relationships etc.

 

Learning or developmental disabilities such as Autism..(I've found a very high ratio of Autistic people in both DID and Tulpa communities) can also mean the natural development of 'self' either does not form properly or at all depending on how severe the Autism is and if other severe learning disabilities are also present.

 

I have both 'versions of me' and Tulpa, the difference is I can only be ONE me at once whereas my Tulpa (well 2 of them) can co-front with me regardless of which 'me' I am!

 

Which 'me' I am depends on the situation some are triggered beyond my control eg being outside and someone suddenly shouting aggressively on the street (even if its not me they're shouting at) will trigger my 'protector alter' out.  A child self may then come out and say she's scared (2nd switch) Inca (Tulpa) may blend with the front to reassure our child self and guide us to move away/go home etc  ...by the time we get home the 'versions of me' may have switched several times but Inca or Lena will remain stable 'holding the front' until 'I' have stopped being triggered by the situation.

 

Also because they see 'all versions of me' as the same host they live with I also began to understand that I didn't have loads of different alters they were different versions of me, some have since integrated, some remain inside but occasionally still get triggered out by different situations. On the whole though I am much more stable thanks to my Tulpa's and learning the difference between 'Alters' & 'Tulpa'

 

Nixy

Edited May 5 by The Phoenix System