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Luminesce

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That's just what a spirit guide would say *thinking*.

 

Seriously though, your post is at least very good confirmation. Now we need to figure out stability because Dashie onlu lasts a few seconds at a time.

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This is another response to a PM (by someone too afraid to post publicly on the forum, but I encourage any lurkers who need help to do just that! We don't bite).

This one's about going many months without making progress on tulpa vocality, and the most common problem/solution to that.

 

 

I wonder if fully developed tulpas are possible with enough collective forcing time, or if it somehow must strictly come from continuously sitting for times far longer than I ever have?

 

I don't believe time is the most important factor, after a point, in fact I believe after roughly two months of forcing ~every day with no results, more time will not help anything. Usually at that point people only find success if they change how they're going about thinking of making a tulpa.. or how they think about their tulpa in the first place.

 

I assume vocality is supposed to be much more clear and obvious than what I experience, and the inability to communicate without any ambiguity kills me on the inside.

 

No, vocality usually when making a tulpa from scratch has a phase where your tulpa's voice will just sound like you, and intent for it to be "them", "not you", and generally "someone else" is very important for teaching your brain to treat the dialogue as not just you thinking to yourself. Vocality usually progresses from being predictable and sounding like you, to just sounding like you but less predictable, to quickly thereafter (if you've been keeping the intent to think of it as "someone else" (or your tulpa specifically, if you've got an idea of who they are in mind already)) full vocality where they no longer feel or sound like you at all. It often does require a bit of faith, unfortunately, and in a case like yours, the problem is usually telling yourself what could be your tulpa is only you, usually because it sounds like you.

 

I tried that for a while, and can seemingly sometimes kind of have conversations? But it is extremely hard to differenciate what might be their voice as experienced by me now, to my own, so I can't tell if I am just hearing unrelated dialogue in my head, or them, and asking isn't reliable.

 

The common trap here is that you're too worried about sifting through whether things really are your tulpa or not. At this point in time, unfortunate as it may be, having a single productive conversation is not your goal yet. Your goal is to develop a voice for your tulpas. That comes mostly from talking to them, expecting responses, and thinking "That was my tulpa" to things that seem like it could've been them (with the knowledge that at first it won't feel entirely like them, or sound totally not like you). Getting caught up in being afraid it's only you speaking, as far as I can tell after all these years, never helps at all. There's never really a time I've seen where it was a positive/productive to filter out what you think wasn't them - it's neutral at best, in a vocal tulpa. But that's far past what you need to be worrying about right now.

 

You can try parroting if you have trouble hearing could-be them thoughts as not yourself. Basically, you imagine talking to them, imagine what they'd say and sound like, just to give your mind an idea of what they will sound like. As their creator, you shouldn't need to worry about "influencing them" or "saying things they wouldn't" - both because before they've developed as their own person having their own experiences, you know them as well as anyone possibly could, and also because at this point even "putting some words in their mouth" for the sake of getting them vocal (so they can say "Yeah, I never said that") is far more important than being 100% accurate to what they'd actually have said. Remember, once they're vocal they'll be able to tell you if anything you thought was them wasn't, but not until they are. And they will not become vocal until you've taught your mind to differentiate their thoughts/speaking from yours. Naturally, as you're only one person, that requires a (hopefully short) phase of splitting thoughts that seem like your own (but seem vaguely not 100% intentional on your part) and telling your brain "That's not me, that's {tulpa}". To a perfectionist this can be annoying, but it's unfortunately what you have to do. And seriously, short of "My host thought X, but I told them Y after I was vocal", I've never heard tulpas say anything negative about the time developing vocality.

 

As for you having trouble seeing them, I do too sometimes, because my visualization by default is exceptionally poor. I just improve it by trying to see them anyways, no matter how poor (and demotivating it is, for me as a perfectionist), consistently for at least a week at a time before seeing serious results. Visualization is not affected by tulpa sentience or vocality at all, and is a non-tulpamancy skill that obviously is still very helpful. Not 100% required, but it may be for you by personal preference of course. People with aphantasia can still have tulpas. But yeah, practice visualizing - them, OR anything else you want. Places you've been, objects you've seen, even games you've played, anything helps. Here's a method my tulpa Reisen created specifically to help me improve visualization clarity: https://community.tulpa.info/thread-visualization-guided-visualization-but-not-weird

 

 

That's all I can think to write for now, and I doubt it'll be enough to read it only one time ever (but it could be!), so I recommend you refer back to this PM at least once in a week or so (or sooner if you'd like). This is basically the most helpful advice for someone in your situation I can think to give, and I hope it works out.

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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Lumi andI agree with this wholeheartedly, in my signature is a visualization practice thread. For some a little guided visualization is extremely helpful. In my experience, visualization cannevery rewarding for everyone involved, practicing 20 minutes a day can see improvements month over month, just like other forms of exercise, there's no shortcut that we've found.

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I'm not sure how to know what vocality is or not.

 

I may have mistakenly interpreted it as something that comes in degrees and improves overtime, but is it actually something that a tulpa either has or doesn't have at all?

 

I think I normally would have thought that my tulpa has some degree of vocality, but that it is at a low degree, and that our goal is to increase it so communication can become as easy and clear as talking to any other person. If vocality is something that just either is or isn't, then I am not sure. I want to lean towards yes, since I have forced for over 2 years very close to everyday, and don't go a day without interacting with her. We even talk, and I accept whatever response I do get as her within reason, but conversations are often very one sided, and it is often a large strain to get responses and often involves a lot of confusion and anxiety for me. It is very hard to intrinsically tell the difference between thoughts I choose to accept as her and ones that are not. I just do it because I thought it was part of the process. I wish there was a more concrete way to understand what I am experiencing and that I could explain it better.

 

Does this seem like we have vocality? Or are we somehow not there yet? I wish I could just show my experience as I probably am choosing words poorly or not covering the entire picture. I really can't tell if our vocality is far behind what I previous thought, (as in perhaps not even there at all) or if we are actually a lot further than I thought we were.

 

I just really want communication with her to become clear and easy, so we can freely interact without anxiety or misunderstandings. It is hard to talk to her about anything and exchange complex thoughts in words. Hmm... it is tremendously hard to explain these experiences in any concrete way that makes sense because so many things are incredibly ambiguous, so I guess I'll leave it here for now...

Creation for creation's sake.

 

More of my drawings

 

Resident Dojikko

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If by degrees you mean from 0 to 100 degrees..

Vocality only "is or isn't" insofar as if your tulpa is clearly vocal or not. Otherwise, clarity of mindvoice is very variable and changes both with system and activity, plus some tulpas have off days or off times like mornings or nights.

 

As best I can tell you're still in the "teaching your brain what your tulpa talking sounds like" phase, but that's only taking into account all I've heard of your experiences so far... and not that you've been apparently trying for so long, to which I don't have much more answer than those I gave already. In that "phase" things may or may not be your tulpa, but you need to teach your brain that there should be a tulpa talking in the first place, and that it shouldn't sound like you. Which again is slightly complicated as at first it probably will sound like you, so a lot of the progress relies on your intent for them to exist separately rather than just picking out what already does sound like them. You can do that, but it's not enough on its own to make your tulpa vocal. Vocal, by the way, is the general term we use to mean a tulpa can clearly communicate with their host with little confusion.

 

I can't really tell you any better than I have how to improve your tulpa's vocality further - but I can at least tell you that there is in fact a point (usually just "achieving vocality", but maybe a little ways past) where it's very clear what thoughts are and are not your tulpa 99% of the time, and that if you manage to succeed in this endeavor you will reach that point. Just so you know that constant confusion and doubt are not in fact the end goal, lol. It's very obvious when my tulpas speak for a multitude of reasons, and clarity of voice is only like 33% of it. The other majority are the "feelings" of it coming from them, with context, intent and meaning conveyed as sort of wordless thought information along with what they actually said vocally.

 

And again, I'll recommend you hear more than just my own answers by posting in Beginner Questions General (you could make your own thread, but since you seem afraid of posting in public, simply posting in an existing thread may be easier). I've pretty much told you all I can unless you've got different questions or some progress is made, but who knows what others might have to say? Not me or you, and that's basically the point.

 

Straight up copy-pasting your post there could work, really, but feel free to include more information if you feel like context that was only in our PMs is missing.

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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I feel like my post in - well, first off, if you haven't given it a look already, I highly recommend you check out and post your own story if you've got one in the "Butterfly Effect in Tulpamancy" thread, though remember it's not the How'd you find tulpa.info thread. Anyways-

 

I feel like my post in that thread raises quite a few possible questions about our system that would fit in this thread. I went into far less detail than I was tempted to because I didn't want my post to be too long or off topic, but.. yeah, we have some history. I'm more than willing to talk about it if anyone is willing to ask.

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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  • 2 weeks later...

From Beginner Questions General:

 

our memories feel "tinted" with the view/feelings/way of thinking of whoever was fronting (switched) at the time, so like if Tewi did something and I recall it it immediately feels like Tewi (as a sweet bonus we actually see ourselves in the memories and not just Lumi's body), with the "context of the thoughts" also feeling like how they thought (even some systems who switch might not understand this - we think REALLY differently between us lol). So we remember what others did just fine, but the memories feel super obviously theirs.

 

Do you use any particular technique to see yourselves in memory instead of the body? I can pull up a memory and know I'm intentionally falsifying it, but I'm concerned about what useful information might be lost in doing so. However I may choose to recall it, I know the actual live experience is of me seeing the body, trying to some degree to impose my form over it, never doing very well, and being somewhat uncomfortable.

 

Our memories of fronting are lightly 'tagged' with the fronter, but we can get confused for a moment and occasionally can't even recall. But then, I think a lot like Ember, except for lacking most of her hangups, inhibitions, and self-limitations (and adding a few of my own). Iris is much more distinctive in thought patterns, mindvoice, and mind feel.

 

-Vesper

I'm not having fun here anymore, so we've decided to take a bit of a break, starting February 27, 2020. - Ember

 

Ember - Soulbonder, Female, 39 years old, from Georgia, USA . . . . [Our Progress Report] . . . . [How We Switch]

Vesper Dowrin - Insourced Soulbond from London, UK, World of Darkness, Female, born 9 Sep 1964, bonded ~12 May 2017

Iris Ravenlock - Insourced Soulbond from the Winter Court of Faerie, Dresdenverse, Female, born 6 Jun 1982, bonded ~5 Dec 2015

 

'Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you.' - The Velveteen Rabbit

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Do you use any particular technique to see yourselves in memory instead of the body?

 

uuhhhh, no? It's a side effect of when we first started switching, we would often impose/think of the body as looking like us, like I'd have my hat and Tewi would have her bunny ears, and the rest of the body too. Since we learned to think of ourselves like that it's sort of an easy toggle when remembering - most our memories are in third person, which obviously isn't how they happened, which means our brain is actually recreating the scenarios as it thinks they were and not how they actually were, sooo looking like ourselves fits right in! We could probably just as easily remember it as the actual body, and like, in-depth stuff doesn't look like us I guess, but if we think "Hey who went on that walk the other day?" it'd probably look like whoever it was... idk, memories are fake by default.. but we don't purposely make anything up, it's just whatever the brain feels like thinking of stuff as

 

note our visualization isn't great so it's not like STUNNING CLARITY GR8 VISUALS of ourselves lol, it's as vague as visualization itself more or less

Hi, I'm one of Lumi's tulpas! I like rain and dancing and dancing in the rain and if there's frogs there too that's bonus points.

I think being happy and having fun makes life worth living, so spreading happiness is my number one goal!

Talk to us? https://community.tulpa.info/thread-ask-lumi-s-tulpas

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  • 5 months later...

Flandre, or anyone else, I'm looking for guidance. I'm considering switching in for a longer period of time. Currently, it would be "try a week, if that's good, try 3 more and make it a month. And after that... maybe several more months. However long, until we feel we're entirely out of this hole." I have several concerns. 

 

1. My reason for not hosting has traditionally been, "My strength comes from my distance." I.e., I'm able to not fall into some of the holes as Jamie because I don't have to react immediately, no one is really talking about me so it's almost never personal. 

 

2. I fear that I'll be revealed to be weak, the longer I front. That I will be incapable of hosting, potetially harming my system in the process, and that my ONLY strength is my distance. Part of me also says, well, it's a chance to prove myself. Another says... you don't have to! What if you fail? You'll be so upset. What if I degrade the trust my system has in me? I've been a constant. What if I'm radically different, after some time dealing with all of daily life? 

 

3. Is this giving up on Jamie? I don't want it to be, but is that enough? I just want to crawl out of this hole. But.... we recommend so often, don't switch to fix problems. But I can do it better, and there are serious consequences if it doesn't happen, if you understand the seriousness of depression. I want out of this hole, ASAP. 

 

4. What if, the way I live life, Jamie doesn't want to come back to? What if, I cut people out, maybe make new friends, throw things away, choose what classes to take, and then we say, "Okay, time for Jamie to be main fronter." And he doesn't like my friends, he doesn't like the classes, he doesn't like the way I've set up our life. Do I really have the power (or the right) to do this- to make it my life? It's always been Jamie's. 

 

5. ...I don't like eating or sleeping. On a physical level. On one hand, maybe it would help with eating healthy. I don't experience the cravings that Jamie does, I'd be fine eating salads every day for the rest of my life, I don't desire any foods. On the other hand... no joy from eating or sleeping... no hobbies, really, besides maybe reading... Those things can change! I can find hobbies. But that, too, scares me. I don't know. I can't help but think... doing this would change me. I've been relatively static my entire life. I'm still 12 in my head, I'm stuck. I really am just afraid... what if I don't like the change? What if I'm worse off? What if I fall further down the hole- what if this is a terrible idea? 

 

6. My therapist knows about our plurality. She's heard about me, but we make sure that Jamie is always in front during sessions. We've told her, but I don't think she really understands that we do switch. No one else has to know, but I would want to tell her, "This is Gavin." I think differently than Jamie. Maybe I could also benefit from therapy. Not to mention... it would be the first time in my life someone IRL knew they were talking to me. No one has ever looked at me and known it was me. It would be the first time ever I didn't pretend to be my host. What if she doesn't like me? 

 

Bear told us, in his opinion, that I should be main fronter during this time of danger, since I'm more level-headed. We'd thought about it before that, but when he agreed, it became a serious possibility and we keep being drawn closer to it. I tried a stint of this before, I think it was just 3 days... it was awful. I get lonely. I feel numb. I'm always very, very spacy and numb. I can't recognize my own face- I don't have a face!

 I do not think I have ever, in my entire life, not been notably dissociated. I'm scared of who I might be without that. 

 

Any advice or support greatly appreciated,

 

 

Gavin

The world is far, the world is wide; the man needs someone by his side. 

Our Thread

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1. My reason for not hosting has traditionally been, "My strength comes from my distance." I.e., I'm able to not fall into some of the holes as Jamie because I don't have to react immediately, no one is really talking about me so it's almost never personal.

 

2. I fear that I'll be revealed to be weak, the longer I front. That I will be incapable of hosting, potetially harming my system in the process, and that my ONLY strength is my distance. Part of me also says, well, it's a chance to prove myself. Another says... you don't have to! What if you fail? You'll be so upset. What if I degrade the trust my system has in me? I've been a constant. What if I'm radically different, after some time dealing with all of daily life?

 

Hmm, I wonder if what I'm going to say is or isn't what you want to hear. Well, I do think switching and staying switched for a long time starts to lessen your ability to stay totally different from your host. In our experience, you do start to drift back to some extent to old habits and ways of thinking. (At least for us,) It's not so much you suddenly question whether you're still you or are actually your host - rather, where you may once have *cough* been able to ignore the motivation issues your host experienced, you can't really do that any more. I think you start to influence your "host"/brain's "default" while your host/brain's "default" starts to influence you, too. But it takes a long time of prolonged fronting to do that.

 

Though to assuage at least a little fear, I'll say I don't think fronting has affected us in that way permanently. At worst, not fronting for even a day after several weeks is enough to kind of refresh us. But second - Lucilyn has absolutely fronted for over a month at a time many times before. And she seems to have affected us as a whole in certain ways, though I can't say if it's simply because she's so cleanly assertive in thinking how she does, or if it really was the prolonged fronting. Either way, when talking to our friends in the "no capitals, relaxed grammar, and (normally?) like Lumi" mode, something we all learned to do before Lucilyn was even made, we actually talk more like Lucilyn now than Lumi. I don't really know how exactly that happened, but we sometimes write things only she would normally write like "ain't".

 

So, yeah, it's possible you can rub off a bit on your host/brain's "default" habits/ways of thinking and acting from fronting a lot. And while your fear is somewhat founded, that you may not for an extended period of time be able to make everything better by being yourself, I'd say you're not likely to be permanently changed from that. Basically, I'm going to recommend changing who's fronting every so often for best results. That is, after all, what we do. After 2+ weeks we start to feel bad if we've been making only one person do all the work. When we were last working our fair stand job for 12+ hours a day for two weeks straight, Lumi and Tewi actually split the time in half I think, even when Tewi felt more up to the task than Lumi.

 

3. Is this giving up on Jamie? I don't want it to be, but is that enough? I just want to crawl out of this hole. But.... we recommend so often, don't switch to fix problems. But I can do it better, and there are serious consequences if it doesn't happen, if you understand the seriousness of depression. I want out of this hole, ASAP.

(and a little bit)

4. What if, the way I live life, Jamie doesn't want to come back to?

 

Considering we were faced with the same concept, of having Tewi take care of everything difficult in our life, I'd say you've definitely picked the right Ask thread. Again my answer is, I recommend you take turns. We don't make Tewi do literally everything that's difficult, with Lumi most often being the one to do things she might normally do, but sometimes even Lucilyn will try (which she sees as earning her fronting time in that case). Even with this current effort/motivation thing we're working on, it's gone from Tewi to Reisen to me all working on different aspects over the last month or so. Working together is just far better than the overrated "best-equipped system member does everything". We wouldn't want Tewi to actually get tired or stressed out (not again), and especially Lumi wants to be able to do something like that 12-hours-a-day fair stand job himself without relying on her. Actually, Lucilyn ended up fronting for the last 4 hours on one of the days so that she could try some supposedly really good ice cream one of our coworkers could make (and it was pretty good).

 

So, I think you'll be okay fronting for a while. But don't ever feel locked in. Even if it were just two of you and not practically a whole team like us, knowing that the other will be there to take over is pretty powerful. Do what you can. As for the concept of being used to being dissociated and not wanting to become "associated", that sounds.. really silly, but also I don't have any advice about that. Change isn't always a bad thing, and it tends to be more organic (we call it "growth as a person") than your fears will have you expect.

 

6. My therapist knows about our plurality. She's heard about me, but we make sure that Jamie is always in front during sessions. We've told her, but I don't think she really understands that we do switch. No one else has to know, but I would want to tell her, "This is Gavin." I think differently than Jamie. Maybe I could also benefit from therapy. Not to mention... it would be the first time in my life someone IRL knew they were talking to me. No one has ever looked at me and known it was me. It would be the first time ever I didn't pretend to be my host. What if she doesn't like me?

 

If you mean.. don't like the concept of your host "Switching", that would kind of suck. It's always a gamble with any given therapist how they'll take the concept of switching. Especially in your case they'll likely see it directly in the Plurality sense, where "switching" with a "tulpa/alter" is seen as a coping mechanism, not always healthy. You guys have to be the one to judge if that's something you should do. But your therapist surely isn't qualified to help you with the questions you're asking me about switching and if you might "change" from fronting too much, so I'm not sure it's totally necessary.

 

Yeah, uh, keep having your host front when seeing your therapist.

 

Bear told us, in his opinion, that I should be main fronter during this time of danger, since I'm more level-headed. We'd thought about it before that, but when he agreed, it became a serious possibility and we keep being drawn closer to it. I tried a stint of this before, I think it was just 3 days... it was awful. I get lonely. I feel numb. I'm always very, very spacy and numb.

 

Considering Bear's system and our system that he also knows very well both have very dependable people to switch with who think completely healthily and in some ways better than their host - I'm not sure that experience applies directly to your system. When you cite dissociation and being distanced as your main strengths, that doesn't inspire me with confidence to have you fill the same role Tewi does in our system. So I'm really just going to recommend fronting as long as seems productive and okay with you, before switching back, even if it's not long before you switch again. Working together sounds healthier and more reliable than just having you do everything.

 

Though if you want more advice than that, perhaps ask someone who knows your system better than we do, maybe after having had them read this post.

Hi. I'm one of Luminesce's tulpas. Unlike the others, I don't think I stand out too much from him personality wise.

I'm just special because "I'm a tulpa". So I don't think I've much to offer, here. I'm happy enough to just be with him.

Ask us stuff - https://community.tulpa.info/thread-ask-lumi-s-tulpas

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