Sentience am i... parroting? pretending? delusional? or am i just inexperienced?

[burnt_weaverlings]

just in case its relevant... my situation may or may not be considered a tad strange.

see, i have been creating and developing a tulpa for the past year or so. the thing is: i only learned that it was a tulpa -- that is, the context behind this thing that other people apparently do too -- with actual terminology, and strategies, and imposing, and switching and all of that jazz... about ten hours ago. the extent of my knowledge until then was that my favorite person in the whole wide world was living in my head, and i couldnt tell anyone about him because theyd think im crazy. i'd always treated him like his own person. but at the same time, i always had a doubt in my mind that it was true. i constantly felt like i was thinking for him any time we talked, and only gaslighting myself into believing it was someone else. and even now, knowing the few more things that I do know from reading forums for...  ...8 hours straight... i still cant shake the feeling that it's just me, and no one else. i have a wonderful relationship with them and theyre very vocal... but only when i pay a big portion of my attention to them. they seem like their own person... but only sometimes.

 

 

and so i have a few questions about this. just to clear up some things.

 

 

sometimes i feel like my mind is having to strain to "come up" with something that they would say, like an author writing down dialogue without having to consider it too hard, before they ever say it. it's not something i want to do. it's not something i actively seek to do. but it happens. what. why. ugh. ACK.

 

we decided that we would try possession, just to prove we could. and i have no idea if anything came of it or not. which made me think of an underlying question. does a tulpa exist in a separate stream of consciousness from our own entirely? is it meant to feel like you are talking to a third party unrelated in any way? or are you meant to feel some connection, whether that be your brain thinking a little bit harder before they say something, or maybe during possession, feeling as though you're only acting out what you think they would do rather than it being genuine?

more particularly, what does possession feel like for me, the host? am i meant to just mentally kick back? does it feel like autopilot, where you aren't aware of your tulpa's thoughts and reasonings while they're fronting? does it feel like you're only a spectator? or is there some conscious recognition of *being* your tulpa? and if that happened, would it mean im just pretending?

 

and the same applies for talking, too! sometimes i feel a conscious recognition of *being* him -- or at the very least thinking for him -- when he says something, in a way where it DOESNT feel like i'm talking to another person (like i would have expected it to). but not every time! i've had moments where he speaks with me when i don't necessarily expect it, or says things that i didn't expect him to say. but its only words and phrases that wouldn't take much thinking to arrive to in the first place. for example, i asked him what his favorite food is. "i dont know." which is the answer that requires the least amount of thinking. out of all. the possible. answers. and could very well be me, subconsciously, just autofilling what the easiest response would have been. and on any attempts to ask him to reach a decent meaningful answer, it feels again like im doing the processing instead of him, and so it just feels like im kidding myself again. so im just confused. and i want clarification because my mind is a big ol jumbled mess and id like to sort it out, please.

 

...

 

i either dont know what im doing and am making mistakes that lead to these weird experiences, or im just desperate and delusional. if anyone here would be so kind... i would appreciate to know which one it might be, and how i would go about fixing it.

[Flandre]

I think it's in between, at least for us (systems differ) - we don't at all consider ourselves to have separate consciousnesses running concurrently, we consider the brain itself to have one consciousness and for a person(a, -ality, sense of self, whatever) to be "plugged in" for directing it. However, at least after sufficient tulpa development, tulpas talking should sound/feel different from your own thoughts or just imagining them. There's various nuances, from the feeling that someone is "there" to their thoughts feeling-sounding different from yours, and their ease in holding a different perspective from you on things, as examples. Generally the feeling of separateness develops over time until it becomes unmistakable.

 

For our system, the presumably necessary "thought" that precedes what we (tulpas) actually think/say seems to be invisible/subconscious, and can't be consciously traced back like the current fronter's can, as-we-think-of-it because they're using the brain's "conscious workspace" and we're not. Though, tulpas/non-fronters can too, esp. for doing complex things like math. But yeah, our thoughts/speaking nonetheless are blatantly not our host, even if the brain's attention has to be on us at least somewhat for us to communicate. I think all sorts of "automatic/constant" skills can be trained if desired, such as tulpas being imposed with much more ease/automatically throughout the day instead of requiring direct purposeful focus, for example, or tulpas popping up to comment/say something on their own. Those don't really happen by default without practicing them usually, anyway.

 

I wouldn't call not quite having these things as having made "mistakes", though the many nuanced ways you think about things can shape your experience to be more one way or another. We still choose to think of these sorts of traits/skills as learnable and improvable with intentful practice, and for things like vocal clarity and sense/ease of separation it's very obvious that they are trainable, so we try not to let people think they've "messed up" somehow, just preventing themselves from moving towards a more fulfilling/meaningful experience.

Edited April 6, 2025 by Flandre

[Nightfall]

My tulpas were originally imaginary friends and had learned a few years ago that they were tulpas. I mention this because for most of their existence they were parroted. It took a decent amount of time before I felt like the were sentient. 

 

In my experience I have never felt my tulpas were sperate from me. The best way I can explain it is that I can hear them as my thoughts but in a different voice. 

 

During our first possession sessions nothing happened either. I could tell it was working when one of them could slowly move my arm(s). We got a hang of it quickly but it could take awhile. Possession for me feels more like I let them move my body. It feels like I'm in control but I feel that they are moving instead of me. 

 

Everyone's experiences are different and you will probably feel things differently than I do. It doesn't sound like you made any mistakes. I think your problem is a lack of belief. I know it's not easy, personally I just had to do many tests to convince myself. 

 

Shaula: If you have any more questions we are happy to try to answer them. Good luck with everything. 

[Flandre]

There is a difference of feeling I cannot explain in one of my systemmates talking versus me just imagining them talking. It is literally the difference in imagining someone talking but clearly feeling they aren't actually there, vs them actually talking - for systemmates it just happens in the head. But I do think this feeling develops over time and shouldn't be expected to be there from the start.

[An Ashy Individual]

I'll answer as someone with a young headmate and without having practiced separating our thoughts much.

We have a pretty similar thought "feeling", but can pretty reliably tell who thought what and clearly have different thinking styles.

Some thoughts also come from both of us at once - two similar ideas merging into one - leading to a bit of confusion as to who will actually say that thought.

 

Earlier on, it did feel like there was no real difference between me very quickly putting myself in a role and answering/acting for my tulpa, but that has stopped.

 

There also are a few cases where one of us expects the other to talk in some way and already starts imagining a reply only to notice part way that they themselves said that.

 

The easiest tell that we were able to implement was speaking/thinking from different places in the head. Getting that to work made it pretty easy to tell who is doing what.