Psychological birth order and tulpas

[fennecfoxx]

The idea birth order shapes one's personality is probably a myth. Regardless, birth order does impact a person's role within their family.

 

Besides actual birth order, there is also the concept of psychological birth order. The Psychological Birth Order Inventory (see Flandre's post below if you want it in an image format), developed in 1991, aims to determine whether a person's perceived role in their family is most like that of a typical firstborn, middle, youngest, or only child. How well it relates to actual birth order is questionable, but, hey, this isn't the Research board.

 

The question: What is/are the psychological birth order(s) of your tulpa(s), and does it reflect their creation order?

 

(For tulpas taking the test, take "family" to mean "system", "parents" to mean "host", and "brothers and sisters" to mean other systemmates, unless your system is organized in such a way a different interpretation would make more sense. Skip any questions that are irrelevant, like questions about siblings if you're an only tulpa. To score the test, add up how many questions you answered "yes" to in each category and divide it by the total number of questions in that category, not counting any you skipped.)

 

All three of us took the questionnaire. I was surprised how high I scored on the firstborn scale (87%), since I don't fit the stereotype of the firstborn personality-wise. (That said, I am the firstborn in my family.) Kayleigh, the younger of my tulpas, scored almost as highly on the scale for youngest (78%). Both of us scored pretty low (33% or less) on all the other scales.

 

Alex didn't fit into one role as strongly as we did. Still, he scored 56% for firstborn (compared to 40% for middle born), which is fitting for being the oldest tulpa. He scored zero for the other two.

 

Anyone else want to give this test a go?

Edited May 19 by fennecfoxx

[Flandre]

That's a little bit hard to actually fill out, so I put some images together at least so it's easier to put them in an editor and mark boxes or something.

(Edit: Invision automatically shrinks the images, that's so annoying.. Uploading to Imgur I guess)

 

 

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Reisen was the first to exist in our system and I would call Tewi and I equal age sisters who appeared not too many months later (16 years ago), with Lucilyn being 5 years younger than the rest of us

(Each of our profiles' About Me's link to each others')

My scores:

Quote

Pleaser/Organizer (First): 1
Neglected/Rejected (Middle): 5
Charmer/Initiator (Youngest): 2
Scrutinized (Only): 1

 

Tewi's scores:

Quote

Pleaser/Organizer (First): 8
Neglected/Rejected (Middle): 0
Charmer/Initiator (Youngest): 2
Scrutinized (Only): 0

 

Reisen's scores:

Quote

Pleaser/Organizer (First): 3
Neglected/Rejected (Middle): 0
Charmer/Initiator (Youngest): 1
Scrutinized (Only): 0

 

Lucilyn's scores:

Quote

Pleaser/Organizer (First): 0
Neglected/Rejected (Middle): 0
Charmer/Initiator (Youngest): 9 (all checked)
Scrutinized (Only): 0

Well that's not surprising..

 

Our overall scores are biased because we're a pretty close-knit system, so questions like "My family is more involved in my life than I want" and "My parents try to manage my life" etc. are just always going to be a no. The scores make sense to me otherwise, though. Also might be noteworthy that Reisen still couldn't fully speak when Tewi and I first appeared, she communicated to Lumi in ~single words/short phrases + thought-meaning/feelings, although I still wouldn't call Tewi "the first" in the system. 

Also a lot of the questions seemed like kind of duplicates of each other just stacking points, but oh well, I don't think it's that serious of a quiz anyway

Edited May 19 by Flandre

[The Incans]

We have both Alters and Tulpa's in our system. Our Tulpa's are specifically created by one or more of our alters who felt that's what they needed.

 

Kitty was the first (Tulpa) and created many years ago quite by accident and as she is a Tulpa version of our mum for our littles who were unable to cope after her death.. Kitty instantly became 'Mama' and was  then the only Tulpa in our system for a great many years. Mainly because our external host at the time had no awareness of any insiders and it was also the busiest time of our life with university and work etc so they rarely got time to come to the front. 

Kitty's skills accelerated when a past host who wanted to go dormant decided instead to fuse within KItty to give her their 'fronting/hosting abilities' but Kitty's personality became the dominant one.  I guess technically she is a 'Hybrid'...she identifies as a 'walk-in'..she doesn't feel this is 'her body' and recognises 'all versions of me' ..as her daughter from her last life. (unlike other alters who are now aware they are all 'versions of me' from different points in time)

 

Many years later Kitty then helped with Jess' creation when our last dog passed ..originally she took the form and name of her last dog body for our alters inside so again for many years she didn't even speak or progress beyond that..her function was just to be a internal comforter.

 

She has made alot of progress recently with taking human form and maturity but obviously doesn't have the experience Kitty came into the system with. Also several alters were older than her when she came into our system and despite maturing since ...so she tends to emotionally be like a 'younger sibling' to many of our alters. ..maybe closer to a 'middle child' She is much loved by all of us and recently promoted to our system Gatekeeper which she's very proud of! 

 

 She still really enjoys being able to change form though and playing with the others inside and has chosen to identify as a 'Kitsune'

Angelo is newer but he quickly matured mainly because again Kitty influenced him alot he was created to be the partner she missed from her last life and who she saw as the first and only love of her (last) life. 

 

It has been decided he will remain inside only and no alters will be integrating with him to give him knowledge of external world. 

 

Ralphie & Bear are like the 'toddlers' of the family! They are younger than our youngest 'little' and are still learning but they won't reach the same level of sentience as Kitty & Jess. Like Angelo they will remain 'pure Tulpa' and won't be integrated with to accelerate their 'abilities'.

 

 

[ReallyArtificial]

Ooh, great idea for a discussion! This is something we've talked about amongst ourselves before, as I'm the oldest child in a fairly large family. I always felt pressured to be a perfect role model for my siblings. In my system, though, I consider Athelas to be like a role model to me, and Lenore to be like the older sister I never had.

 

As far as “birth” order, Athelas is my oldest tulpa. When he was a year old, we created the wonderland characters who would eventually become Calliope and Lenore. Lenore was created last, but she's always been developmentally ahead of Calliope, and we all consider Cal the baby of the group. (Athelas and I decided to upgrade the two of them to tulpa status because Lenore started talking out of the blue one day!)

 

Our scores were:

Athelas:

Quote

Pleaser/Organizer (First): 9 (90%)

Neglected/Rejected (Middle): 0

Charmer/Initiator (Youngest): 8 (80%)

Scrutinized (Only): 3 (30%)

Pretty much what you would expect from the oldest tulpa

 

Calliope:

Quote

Pleaser/Organizer (First): 1 (10%)

Neglected/Rejected (Middle): 3 (30%)

Charmer/Initiator (Youngest): 8 (80%)

Scrutinized (Only): 3 (30%)

Cal is baby confirmed

 

Lenore:

Quote

Pleaser/Organizer (First): 9 (75%)

Neglected/Rejected (Middle): 1 (8%)

Charmer/Initiator (Youngest): 8 (89%)

Scrutinized (Only): 4 (40%)

Similar to Athelas, but leaning more toward youngest

 

Bee:

Quote

Pleaser/Organizer (First): 7 (58%)

Neglected/Rejected (Middle): 3 (23%)

Charmer/Initiator (Youngest): 1 (11%)

Scrutinized (Only): 5 (50%)

 

Overall, our results were pretty closely aligned with how we perceive ourselves! 

 

I found it interesting that I scored almost equally for oldest and only child. It makes a lot of sense when I consider the roles of “pleaser/organizer” and “scrutinized.” I was very much a people pleaser, and very much under scrutiny from my parents, but I never took on much of an organizer role because I'm terribly disorganized lol

 

All of my tulpas scored high for the "youngest" category, since things like "it's easy to get my host/system mates to give me things" and "I can be the boss when I want to be" were yes across the board. What can I say, we live to make each other happy! We also tried to answer as if we were ignorant of each other's responses, so we had more than one person trying to claim the title of most charming/most adorable lol

 

I have to say, I'm kinda baffled by the gender differences in how this was scored. Like, why is “I believe my parents have high expectations of me” scored for daughters but not for sons? I'd love to know the rationale behind it. To add to the confusion, two of us are non-binary. I scored myself as female since I'm afab, but Calliope has no birth-assigned gender to go off of. We ended up scoring them as male to balance things out.

[Shaula]

I do have one question answering questions. What do we do if we don't really "have" parents? I mean, it feels weird to put Nightfall in that category for obvious reasons (that we consider ourselves married). I feel like I'm overthinking it a little bit but it's probably a good question to ask just in case. 

 

Nightfall: honestly, the rest of us (self included) would default to Shaula for parent status. That's probably the other part that confuses things for her. (Yes, we got stuck on the first question, lol.) 

[Luminesce]

We just consider the host to fill the position it's asking about, although context can matter if your relationship differs, e.g. "attention from parents" could make sense with host while another thing about parents doesn't

[fennecfoxx]

@Shaula Pretend it says "person who brought you into existence" instead of "parent" and try not to overthink the weirdness