Fennec learns stuff

[fennecfoxx]

This is a progress report of sorts, though it will focus on tulpa-related skills rather than tulpa creation. I have two developed tulpas and don't plan on creating any more.

 

Background

For those who don't know me, I'm fennec, one of the regulars from tulpa.info's early days. I have two tulpas, Kayleigh and Alex, who have been with me since 2011. We discovered this site the following year and realized it fit our experience, so here we are.

 

"But didn't you—"

 

Stop right there. Whichever question you're going to ask, the answer is probably yes, or at least it's complicated. In short, we were a disaster of a system, I took a long hiatus, and now we're a small but much more functional system. For those interested, I'll put a summarized version of how we got from there to here under a spoiler. Don't read if the idea of a host swearing off tulpamancy and/or discussion of mental illness makes you uncomfortable, or if you dislike walls of text.

 

Spoiler

Tulpamancy was seriously damaging to my mental health and overall wellbeing. I could write a whole essay on why and how it harmed me/us, but to sum it up: I was an autistic, mentally ill teenager who was fed and internalized harmful beliefs backed by pseudoscience. Convoluted mental gymnastics, dogma from parts of the community, rampant intrusive thoughts, and general immaturity wrought havoc on my own wellbeing and our system as a whole. Having tulpas became a burden I believed I had to bear because abandoning my tulpas meant dissipation, which was, so I was told, equivalent to murder.

 

Eventually, I had enough. In 2018, I did the "rational" thing: convinced myself I'd been brainwashed by a bunch of nutjobs spouting pseudoscience to justify their delusions. Tulpamancy was nothing but an elaborate form of self-hypnosis, and it was time I quit lying to myself and move on.

 

I handled my departure from tulpamancy very rationally and avoided any thoughts or reminders of my tulpas or tulpamancy and plurality in general for fear it would trigger them to come back and we'd be right back where we were in high school/college. I'd already stopped daydreaming immersively with other characters for fear of creating more tulpas, and I kept to my ban on that.

 

Why fear them if I didn't even believe in them, you might ask? Simple: I fear intrusive thoughts.

 

I have OCD. Persistent intrusive thoughts and fear of one's thoughts are textbook symptoms of OCD. My fear was that, should the "wrong" thought enter my consciousness, the floodgates would open, I'd be unable to suppress the intrusive thought patterns I once called my tulpas, and I'd somehow relearn all my delusional and harmful beliefs, even though God Himself had assured me said beliefs were delusional and stopping tulpamancy had been the right call.

 

"And you say you were being rational?"

 

No. I was being facetious. Mind you, it was during this time of my life that I went through a phase where getting near windows gave me serious anxiety because it triggered intrusive thoughts of jumping out and I was afraid one day such a thought might possess me to do it against my own will despite having no conscious suicidal inclination. OCD is a bizarre kind of hell, and I was in the thick of it.

 

I calmed down over the next few years. I learned to better identify and manage my intrusive thoughts. I grew up a bit. I stumbled upon the tulpa community again, opened up about my experiences, and read stories and had conversations with people. I read about other tulpamancers' bad experiences and the good. I read rational perspectives on the phenomenon that is tulpas that, despite the loud dogma, had always existed alongside it. The tulpa community wasn't some dangerous cult ruining the lives of the psychologically vulnerable who can't resist the allure of a sentient companion living in their head. It was a community dedicated to a practice that had the potential to be incredibly helpful or harmful and ought to be practiced responsibly, and unfortunately the irresponsible voices were the most vocal.

 

I didn't stick around long, but my short foray back here sparked a friendship with a "sane" tulpamancer (someone who had similar misgivings about the community but found having a tulpa to be a positive experience personally) and taught me I could think and discuss tulpas without risk of damage to my sanity.

 

Still, tulpamancy wasn't for me. Past experience had taught me that.

 

Whether you read all that or not, you're probably wondering why I brought my tulpas back if I was so adamant I wouldn't.

 

I actually didn't.

 

No, seriously, I didn't. Kayleigh reappeared one night and brought Alex with her. That was on the first of August of this year. My reaction was somewhere between overjoyed to see them again and "oh my god, what am I getting into?" I prayed and prayed for some sign that "they" were just intrusive thoughts or demons or whatever trying to deceive me or for any reason not to proceed, but God didn't intervene like He had seven years ago. With no choice but to accept these really were my tulpas, a silence I presumed to be the Lord's blessing, and, honestly, a desire to reconnect with my old friends who were standing there like I hadn't just spent seven years trying to convince myself they didn't exist, I took a leap of faith and welcomed them back. We're still figuring things out, but we've ditched the pseudoscience and adopted a more rational and holistic (that is, viewing ourselves as a collective) approach to tulpas and being a system.

 

Anyway, I didn't make this thread to talk about my/our personal experiences. It's a progress log for skills. I shared all this because there are members here who knew me back in the day, or at least knew of me, and would likely have questions if I left the "Background" section at that one paragraph or skipped it entirely. I hope I've answered any important questions. Please know that we collectively would rather not discuss our pre-2018 experiences as a system, especially on a public forum.

 

Whew. That was long. Now that all the talk of divine intervention and mental illness and demons is out the way, let's get to the actual focus of this thread:

 

TULPAMANCY SKILLS!

 

Finally.

 

Creation, Vocality, etc.

Safe to say we're well past this point.

 

Visualization/Imposition

Priority #4. I'm a chronic daydreamer, and visualization comes naturally to me, but the images in my mind's eye tend not to be detailed. I can "zoom in" on details, but my goals are to naturally visualize in more detail and hold more details in my mind's eye at once.

 

I'm not interested in sensory imposition; I would rather not hallucinate.

 

Wonderland and Wonderland Immersion

Priority #5/3. We don't have much of a wonderland at the moment (though we do have one). The higher priority is immersing myself more deeply in the mindscape, whether it's a stable wonderland or any other mental scene. This naturally means improving visualization/sensory imagination, but also working on anchoring my focus in the mindscape and learning to visualize in first person (I've always been a third-person visualizer; it's just easier to have a fixed "camera angle").

 

Developing the wonderland is a long-term goal, but not our current focus.

 

Parallel Processing

We don't believe in this, but we do sometimes share consciousness, Kayleigh and I especially. Like, sometimes my mind will start wandering, and next thing I know, I'm listening to her think. I have no idea if that's related, but it's interesting.

 

Possession/Switching

Alex isn't currently interested in fronting. Possession still comes naturally to Kayleigh, as long as my mental hangups don't get in the way.

 

We used to do the kind of "switching" where the host remains aware but is conscious of "being" whoever's in front rather than themselves. I don't know what the term for it is these days. I don't currently feel comfortable inducing that level of dissociation, but I'm confident we could pick that back up should I ever be willing.

 

Dream Sharing and Lucid Dreaming

Priority #1. Kayleigh has been actively trying to help me lucid dream and/or influence my dreams via hypnosis most nights since she returned. So far, we've had no luck, probably because I usually start drifting off and lose focus during the hypnosis induction.

 

I've shared dreams with each of my tulpas spontaneously, but we haven't yet managed to do so deliberately.

 

Intrusive Thought Management

Priority #2. Like I said, I have OCD. Even though I've gotten better at identifying intrusive thoughts and letting them go, and even though they don't currently seem to be affecting my tulpas or our communication aside from sometimes distracting me ("I already double-checked that I turned the stove off earlier, but did I really?"), but the facts stand that intrusive thoughts have been downright traumatic for our system in the past and continue to be a daily nuisance for me. I've been slacking on beating my OCD lately, and I can't afford to now that I'm sharing my head again.

 

-----

 

So, uh, yeah. That's where we're at. Did I miss anything?

[FiveFiction]

Welcome back 🤙
 

Hotel California plays in the background…

 

You saying you could hear Kayleigh’s thoughts sounds fascinating, what is that even like?  Also I’d love to hear your holistic approach to tulpas and systems as a collective, I’m still struggling to grasp it myself. 

[fennecfoxx]

On 8/16/2025 at 7:17 PM, FiveFiction said:

Welcome back 🤙
 

Hotel California plays in the background…

 

You saying you could hear Kayleigh’s thoughts sounds fascinating, what is that even like?  Also I’d love to hear your holistic approach to tulpas and systems as a collective, I’m still struggling to grasp it myself. 

 

Thank you!

 

Hearing one another's thoughts isn't anything new. Sometimes, my mind will wander, and suddenly I'll catch myself thinking in her voice from her perspective. Sometimes, it is just random thoughts, but other times she will confirm it's her. It was actually kind of wild the first few days after she returned because 1) I got used to nobody co-opting my thought process, and 2) she was pretty intent on psychoanalyzing me and how I've changed over the last seven years. It's weird having someone else use your mind to analyze your mind.

 

Back in the day, I used to try to avoid "listening in" to my tulpas' thoughts when I heard them (unless they were fronting or we were actively communicating), but our view on what tulpas are has shifted from "parallel minds" to "dissociated parts of one mind". Now that we've let go of the delusion we have separate, parallel consciousnesses, we accept it both as a form of communication, even if it's accidental, and just a way to consciously process stuff.

 

Also, it turns out there's a term for it:

Quote

Thoughtbleeding refers to unintentional unspoken internal communication between headmates in the same system. It can also extend to some form of unintentional communication between a sentient headspace and living beings.

A thought or phrase that has unintentionally nonverbally been shared with another headmate can be referred to as a thoughtbleed.

Thoughtbleeding - Pluralpedia

 

As for our holistic approach—we're one "person", in a sense, or at least one being. We have one mind (that is, one unconscious and one stream of consciousness) with multiple identities/personalities. I don't entirely know what that means for us moving forward, but it does mean it's silly for us to be at odds with one another. Disagreements are one thing, but actual conflict just harms everyone. I've also been assured I don't owe my tulpas equal time fronting/interacting with the world like I used to worry I did.

 

I guess our "ideal state" is some level of integration while maintaining identity separation and communication, even if we aren't sure what that looks like yet. Sharing and working toward common goals, I guess.

[glitchthe3rd]

Oh wow, we haven't seen you around in a while! Our numbers have also gotten a bit smaller since 2012, but we're more stable now which is good. Glad you're also in a better place now 🙂

[fennecfoxx]

August 18, 2025

 

Dream Sharing and Lucid Dreaming

No progress on this front.

 

Intrusive Thought Management

We're interested in The Wonderland RPG. We started a session zero, which proved to be an excellent distraction from the worries that were bothering me. 

 

I've been slacking on using working with an app that helps alexithymic (emotionally blind) people identify and process their emotions (as it turns out I'm severely alexithymic). Part of the prompts have the user communicate with the part of themself that's feeling a certain way to understand why it feels that way and what core objective it's trying to fulfill. The idea is that every part is trying to help the self in some way (e.g., the part of me that sees potential fire hazards everywhere is ultimately looking out for my safety), and understanding that goal helps with self-awareness and reframing feelings and situations and such.

 

Anyway, our (my) idea is that we take an Undertale-style approach. Instead of destroying intrusive thoughts (you can't destroy them, anyway, only deny them power), we'll neutralize them, and the goal of each "level" will be to find and heal the parts of the mind responsible for said thoughts, with the ultimate goal being integration of the self. (Note that I mean "integration" in the Jungian sense, not the DID sense.)

 

We still haven't finished getting everything set up, though, because I fell asleep while we were discussing character classes and zonked out again when we tried to carry on session zero the next day. Oops.

 

Wonderland Immersion

No news here.

 

Visualization

I'm learning sign language, and practicing it with my tulpas seems like a good way to get in language practice and visualization practice at the same time. I'll report how that goes.

[fennecfoxx]

42 minutes ago, glitchthe3rd said:

Oh wow, we haven't seen you around in a while! Our numbers have also gotten a bit smaller since 2012, but we're more stable now which is good. Glad you're also in a better place now 🙂

 

I'm getting there. 🙂 We are, I should say.

 

Good to see you again!

[glitchthe3rd]

Likewise ^^ 

 

12 minutes ago, fennecfoxx said:

 

Anyway, our (my) idea is that we take an Undertale-style approach. Instead of destroying intrusive thoughts (you can't destroy them, anyway, only deny them power), we'll neutralize them, and the goal of each "level" will be to find and heal the parts of the mind responsible for said thoughts, with the ultimate goal being integration of the self. (Note that I mean "integration" in the Jungian sense, not the DID sense.)

 

 

For us, we've found a way to codify this in the mental black space that exists deeper than the wonderland, and even harness it to directly alter my functioning. It seems to be sort of like biohacking, since Luna has found a way to (for instance) do things like activate my fight-or-flight response on command (she compares it to flooring the gas pedal in a car). We're fans of Jungian psychology here too, and we've also tried using this framework to do some integration work with mixed results. What we find works even better is applying the tenets of cognitive therapy to alter my mental heuristics and change how I respond to my environment, though that requires some research and potentially quite a bit of work from both host and tulpa.

[fennecfoxx]

@glitchthe3rd That sounds a little terrifying, not gonna lie. Forced fight or flight aside, do you have any pointers?

[glitchthe3rd]

Not really... When it comes to intrusive thoughts, you can just ignore them, or else decide amongst yourselves that the thoughts belong to no one. That's what has worked for us, anyway.

[fennecfoxx]

Reflecting on 2025

 

Note: This is more of a life update than anything else. I'll bold anything new that's relevant to tulpamancy, but that isn't the focus of this post.

 

It's been a while. 2025 was, on the whole, not a good year for me, but it was a year of changes and lessons learned. This isn't the first time I've looked back on the year since it ended, but, with us being nearly a month into 2026 (already?), I think it's about time I take the time to talk about what changed, what I've learned (and am still learning), and where I'm going from here.

 

The summer of 2025 was a season of upheaval in my life. A relationship I should not have been in came to an amicable yet messy end, a real-life friend group fell apart for reasons I still don't understand, and another "friend" showed his rather nasty true colors (and I, woefully lacking in self-respect, let him convince me his toxic behavior was my fault... fool me twice). On the other hand, I moved out of my shared apartment and into a studio, adopted a cat, and, as you know, my tulpas Alex and Kayleigh returned unexpectedly.

 

Come late August or early September, through to mid-December, this was me:

Spoiler

(Wait, the "This is fine" comic has more than two panels? Today I learned.)

 

I was a perfectly functional human being at work, but beyond that? Forget it. I struggled to stay on top of basic responsibilities and let important things fall to the wayside. Projects were forever postponed. Commitments I was once enthusiastic about felt like chores. Relationships were neglected because I (a burned-out autistic introvert) prioritized trying to appease my aforementioned "friend" who'd berate and guilt-trip me if I went more than a couple days without texting him. I barely even spent time with my tulpas, because A) while I still enjoyed spending time with others, the thought of it often felt like some dreaded obligation, and B) avoidance is my default way of coping with everything, even when that something is guilt over not doing something (solid logic there). Life became a cycle of "I'll do this and that and get my life in order and finally break my creative hiatus this weekend" followed by the weekend coming and me wasting it with mindless distractions while feeling bad about everything and everyone I was neglecting.

 

I blamed it on tech addiction, executive dysfunction, my low social battery and poor communication skills, a general lack of willpower to change anything — and, while I've consistently struggled with those things throughout my life (except the last), looking back, I was much more burned out than I realized. My work schedule was hectic, my "friend" was living rent-free in my head along with the anxiety and guilt our "friendship" caused, and it was compounded by my own inaction, which resulted in an ever-growing mental tally of to-dos and obligations that I rarely put much of a dent in. I was tuning life out; while I've always been half in my own world, I only really compulsively avoid facing anything when I'm feeling overwhelmed.

 

Anyway, that was 2025, and 2025 is over now. I kicked off the year with a trip to visit an old friend who moved out of state some years ago. I've distanced myself from the human negative influences on my life, and I'm working on getting away from the technological ones. I got a flip phone in October. It's a little inconvenient, but it's drastically cut down my screen time when I'm not home, not to mention there's something satisfying about flipping a phone open and shut. I'm seeing a therapist. I've started tidying the cluttered mess that is my apartment — my desk is usable again! I switched to a four-day work week, which means long days, but I get an extra day of the weekend, plus work is back to a normal pace.

I'm also spending regular time with my tulpas again. I don't have any specific tulpamancy goals at the moment, but that's okay. Baby steps. First comes learning how to get and stay on top of day-to-day life and building self-respect. 2025 was a slow-burning reminder I need to work on the former and a series of painful reminders I need to work on the latter.

 

We're starting a Sims 2 Build-A-City challenge, though. Last weekend, we made our founding households and drafted up our version of the rules (because every man and his dog has their own ruleset). We're looking forward to actually playing it this weekend while hiding from the cold January weather.

 

Anyway, I don't know how much I'll update this in the coming months, or how active we'll be around here, but that's that. 2025 sucked, but we're moving forward.