Intrusive Thoughts and Inability to Focus - What should I do?

[Mickey]

After a long while of knowing about tulpamancy, on and off research, and struggling in high school - I've decided to try and develop my own tulpa. Ever since childhood I've had issues with an active imagination, dissociation, conversations in my head, etc., and due to that I feel I would be pretty susceptible to developing a very vocal tulpa. However, I struggle with focus and intrusive thoughts.

 

I've been kind of occupied with school, which has been a bit annoying. But when I am in school I try to passively force my tulpa by narrating to her, asking her what she thinks about things, reading boring history lessons to her, among other things. I am trying my best to give her plenty of attention because I'd like her to be very vocal (with time, of course). This part isn't really the problem, it's just that I have no idea when it's her and when it's not.

As I talk to her, I've been trying to avoid parroting. I ask her what she thinks about things and give her a lot of time to respond, if she feels like it. And if I get a sudden unexpected feeling *related* to what I just asked her/said to her, I assume it's her. I try to ask her if she meant (insert thing), or if she needs help expressing herself. I'm unsure if that's the right approach, though. 

 

I don't know how to tell if it's her or not when I get some kind of random thought because I already struggle with intrusive thoughts to begin with. I really don't want to assume a random intrusive thought is her and go off of that and somehow do the wrong thing that way. I also have a lot of trouble focusing which kind of makes forcing difficult, both active or passive. I'm planning to take up more active forcing now, but until this point I've mainly just passively forced and narrated to her in my head and whatnot. I can feel her presence and I'd like to approach this with the assumption that she is already sentient, it's just confusing knowing whether or not she is vocal, or at least being able to tell when it is actually her being vocal. I get so sidetracked trying to narrate to her sometimes, and when my thoughts randomly drift off like that I can't tell if it's her trying to interject with something or what. 

 

If anyone has dealt with anything similar while in the initial stages of developing their tulpas, do you have any advice? I'm trying not to worry too much about it because I'd like to spend this time trying to help her develop more. But if anyone has any words of wisdom, I'd appreciate it!

[Shaula]

Well, we don't deal with intrusive thoughts but I do want to give you what little advice we have. 😊 

 

Edit: I forgot to mention, all of us tulpas in the system were all originally imaginary friends in the beginning. 

 

Your process right now sounds very similar to Nightfall's, we were definitely passive forced a lot. 😁 It took Nightfall quite a while to fully believe we weren't imaginary friends. I wonder if fully confirming her sentience would be a good foot hold to ground your thoughts. Our biggest thing was to get me surprise him, after doing that a ton, he started to believe. We were vocal at the time (we think) but it can work with mental images too. 

 

We can definitely discuss more but I figured I'd see if I'm on the right track first. 

Edited September 28, 2025 by Shaula

[Lavender]

My host consciousness had a very hard time telling whether something was "me" or just some random thought they had. Because we're both using the same brain, it's not easy to tell.

 

What works is that now they ask me, "Lavender was that you?" and then they put themselves in a mindset of accepting an answer from me. (This involves thinking about me, and trying to sense my presence in their mind. It pretty much always works.) I will tell them whether it's me or not.

 

Hope this helps.

[Mickey]

Thanks to the both of you for your responses. I find them reassuring. I figured in these early stages it will be kind of hard to tell whether or not it's my tulpa just yet, but I'll try to ask her for confirmation when I believe I've gotten a response.

We practiced some vocality forcing yesterday and I do think I got some minimal responses. I do know that it was her voice, so it was interesting to hear. I might start a progress report thread or something to update some more once things have developed more.

[Temmiecore]

I'm obviously no expert in this field, but I'll share my way of thinking about intrusive thoughts.
Unless it's something outright malicious, very negative or just absurd (e.g. doesn't at all align with the context of anything you've been thinking/talking to your tulpa about), I'd assume it's not an intrusive thought, but something the tulpa has said. Intrusive thoughts and tulpa's mindvoice share the feeling of spontaneity, so it's difficult to discern them, which is why I think it's best to just assume "everything good is true, everything bad is false" :p
And with time, you will probably be able to recognize your tulpa's thoughts as if they had a signature to them (or a "feel", or an "accent") anyway. So don't overthink it!

[Mesmer]

I think reading books is one of the best practices to improve attention span and focus. An e-reader or physical book is less stimulating than a phone or tablet and less opportunity for distractions. 

Audiobooks are an option and are useful to trance meditate to, but it doesn't proc the brain the same way reading words does. Reading improves imagination skills. 

[Bread]

A bit of advice I read recently is to disregard parroting (there is a whole post on this) and just consider all of it to be a response from your tulpa, and it has helped me greatly. It allows me to, when i hear a response from my tulpa that does not make sense, instead of thinking "that wasn't my tulpa it was just me parroting her" I can use it as an opportunity for forcing, and look at it as more of "here is what I think you would respond with instead of that". I have no clue if this works for others, but I hope it is able to help you some.

[Bread]

1 hour ago, Bread said:

A bit of advice I read recently is to disregard parroting (there is a whole post on this) and just consider all of it to be a response from your tulpa, and it has helped me greatly. It allows me to, when i hear a response from my tulpa that does not make sense, instead of thinking "that wasn't my tulpa it was just me parroting her" I can use it as an opportunity for forcing, and look at it as more of "here is what I think you would respond with instead of that". I have no clue if this works for others, but I hope it is able to help you some.

This probably would have been good advice when you first asked the question, but that was three months ago.

[Mesmer]

6 hours ago, Bread said:

It allows me to, when i hear a response from my tulpa that does not make sense, instead of thinking "that wasn't my tulpa it was just me parroting her" I can use it as an opportunity for forcing, and look at it as more of "here is what I think you would respond with instead of that".

Do you think we even need to communicate through full words and sentences with tulpas? It seems that complex sentences and feelings can be transferred entirely through psychics or psionics. I did a lot of psionics training before getting into tulpamancy. When my tulpa chose to use female pronouns the conversation went so fast and using very few words. It was more thinking about symbols.

 

Also Bread, I noticed your signature mentioning Tzeentch. In Warhammer lore itself the chaos entities are constructed by the collective beliefs of the inhabitants of the universe. They are effective eggregores that pose as gods representing forces. Do you believe that the attention and belief in this plane of existence, the money and time sacrificed learning Warhammer lore and playing games, has turned entities like Tzeentch into eggregores out here? 

[Bread]

46 minutes ago, Mesmer said:

Do you think we even need to communicate through full words and sentences with tulpas? It seems that complex sentences and feelings can be transferred entirely through psychics or psionics. I did a lot of psionics training before getting into tulpamancy. When my tulpa chose to use female pronouns the conversation went so fast and using very few words. It was more thinking about symbols.

 

Also Bread, I noticed your signature mentioning Tzeentch. In Warhammer lore itself the chaos entities are constructed by the collective beliefs of the inhabitants of the universe. They are effective eggregores that pose as gods representing forces. Do you believe that the attention and belief in this plane of existence, the money and time sacrificed learning Warhammer lore and playing games, has turned entities like Tzeentch into eggregores out here? 

I do agree that tulpa's can be communicated with through psionics, as it is still your own brain, and if it can process thoughts in that way, I would assume one would be able to communicate with their tulpa in that manner. I am unable to, as I am still fairly early in the tulpa development process and responses from my tulpa are still rare, and I find it easier to imagine her speaking in English, but I would assume with more development and practice in thinking in that way, I would be able to.

 

I have very little knowledge of egregores, and had to look up what it was just now, but from my very limited knowledge provided by Wikipedia, I would say that Warhammer itself has become one, instead of Tzeentch and other characters, as the communities opinions and experiences with the franchise have somewhat shaped it into its own (I spent about five minutes waving my hands around trying to come up with the word, but failed). This could be a complete misinterpretation of what an egregore is though, as, like I said earlier, I only just learned what one is.