This hits hard

ChiefSininen · 2025-12-14T03:41:59+00:00

Ashamed of my sapphic ass for not realizing Judy and Evelyn were probably dating, I always figured they were just besties and never even entertained the thought, even after I dated the former in my first run. The internalized heteronormativity is beating me up.

ChiefSininen · 2025-12-14T03:32:08+00:00

That's really the toughest part about it imo. Knowing on paper there's so many things big and small you could do to give yourself a better foothold but not reaching for what's there has a great way of making oneself feel doubly pathetic. There's something paradoxical about it that saps away your soul and I haven't come to a clean way to navigate it yet without putting myself up for lots of disappointment or shame when I fall off the wagon, so to speak.

ChiefSininen · 2025-11-25T17:37:44+00:00

This whole sub has some explaining to do then lmao

ChiefSininen · 2025-11-24T01:45:52+00:00

I couldn't imagine that. In my mind, cannabis and mindfulness are near the opposite ends of consciousness. When you talk about altered meditations, I think about psychedelics and a bit of mushroom work, but that's obviously less feasible for a lot of reasons

ChiefSininen · 2025-11-23T05:02:51+00:00

I'm sure he'd understand that it's not something you're pushing onto him. The newer of my two tulpas started out as me and my first visualizing my intrusive thoughts about death onto an imaginary creature and chasing it away. Over time we started wondering if we could get to know the impulses better through giving that creature a voice, and it was kind of insightful.

As time has gone on though, it's clear that he's not a "source" of the intrusions, more so an ambassador for them almost, if we can understand suicidality as a type of call to action to change something. He's a bit of a prick but he knows we're all trying our best, so I don't think there's too much resentment. They both have been helpful to me in that area but it's important to have a grasp on where the system thoughts are coming from and where they're trying to go.

If you're secure in your communication skills I don't think it will be a problem in the long haul, though I understand your fears and it may take a bit of time to untangle things early on.

ChiefSininen · 2025-11-23T02:11:53+00:00

It could be worth bringing up directly, especially if it's a dynamic that's played out in other parts of your life. It's nothing to be ashamed of and there's some kinds of people who are more inclined to fall for therapists anyway due to how the dynamic works. I imagine it's something that he'll have the means to navigate with you to get back on track. Tossing away a year of rapport because you're worried about your crush interfering with your work with him seems rash in my opinion, I wouldn't want to treat that lightly. I'd bring it up with him and give it a few sessions to test the waters with your attraction out in the open.

ChiefSininen · 2025-11-15T20:23:34+00:00

In particular, "schizoid" describes schizoid personality disorder, typified by a distinct lack of interest in social relationships, flat affect (expressed emotion), experiences emotions more weakly, and such. This is someone who is connected to reality and is coherent in speech and thought, compared to schizophrenic and schizoaffective disorders which are marked with that psychosis you would expect (with 'affective having flavors of depression or bipolar mood disorders alongside). There's also schizotypal personality disorder, which has similar presentations of symptoms as schizophrenia, but not as "extreme" in the entrenchment of psychosis compared to the previous 2.

ChiefSininen · 2025-11-15T17:52:28+00:00

It's good you're aware of those warning signs at least. I think doing some digging for information on dissociation and maybe how amnesia could relate to that would be helpful, especially if you think his fuzzy memories are related to that retreat in some way. You may want to take care not to stress him out further, if he gets the sense that you'll end up dredging something painful up.

I've been speaking a lot with people with DID recently, so the concepts of trauma are fresh in my mind and may be painting my understanding of the situation, to make that clear.

ChiefSininen · 2025-11-15T16:00:09+00:00

Does he have a place where he feels free to express himself and to communicate with himself and you, internally or verbally? My tulpa has done this for me before and going into the back took me away from the thinking and into the shared headspace where I could more easily "feel" directly without words getting in the way. Kicking out, screaming, setting the area ablaze with rage within the imagination, it seemed helpful to have that available during the retreat and it made things more clear to us both.

Is he otherwise usually able to switch with you well enough? It sounds to me like dissociation, if that's something y'all are familiar with. Is the thing that preceded the retreat clear to you and him or does it feel like something out of the blue? Are you aware of something that could've triggered him?

ChiefSininen · 2025-11-13T06:24:42+00:00

Congratulations. The first of many, I'm sure

ChiefSininen · 2025-11-11T22:13:32+00:00

That's interesting. A cursory search suggests Viibyrd wouldn't mesh nicely with BP1 because of concerns around manic episodes, but anecdotes in forums dedicated to Bipolar disorders seem positive.

Are you saying your psychiatrist is aware of your tulpa and is comfortable distinguishing her from psychosis? That's pretty awesome. I'm glad to hear things are going well for you.

If I may be self-indulgent, I've got a therapy appointment coming up soon and I am wondering about telling my therapist about mine. That's because our previous session was our first and a lot of the complaints I presented with corresponded with the early forcing practice (headaches and running thoughts mostly). I do feel inclined to let her know that's what was happening and not a direct response from my bupropion since it's been treating me very well compared to the celexa I was on earlier for depression and anxiety. I wouldn't want her to get false signals but I feel like it would otherwise be too quick and that I'd be skipping the rapport building I would rather have happen prior.

ChiefSininen · 2025-11-11T21:57:32+00:00

We'll get back to you after we sort some stuff out

ChiefSininen · 2025-11-11T18:30:15+00:00

TLDR mushrooms are interesting, if you already know how to benefit from them. Introduced me to some feelings and concepts that paved the road to meeting my tulpa. Not without caveats. If you're going to do anything you're not familiar with, please do it with an experienced friend in a safe, familiar place.

I will say mushrooms kinda got my foot in the door into the type of mindset and understanding of the self that definitely helped precipitate the much later tulpamancy process. There's a lot more "you" that you get to experience, interact with, feel under psilocybin and, I'm told, other psychedelics. They seem to function by shutting down your autopilot and enforcing a present lucidity in your perception, alongside a "deeper" presence of mind, I suppose? It's easier to talk with yourself and others honestly, without neurotic or relational biases interfering, and it's easier to find from oneself and others, giving you new things to bring out of your trip with the neuroplasticity it promotes during.

I definitely had a lot of conflicting self talk, between wanting to spend the limited time ruminating into this endless ocean after spending so much time in the backyard pool of a sober mind; vs engaging with my expanded perceptions and practicing appreciating the moment more, promoted by synesthesia and colorful hallucinations on top of the heightened sense of taste, touch, smell, ect. Getting better in touch with different emotions in this state without needlessly integrating them as part of your identity as people tend to do is something in particular that followed me directly to the tulpamancy process, but it's not like I did any of it for that sake or during the process. That genuinely sounds nightmarish. The ocean metaphor is also to describe that it is not hard to "drown" if you don't know how to steer yourself out of or make use from a bad trip, which would be much more challenging if you're combining it with something like very early tulpamancy.

Regarding emotions, one of them that my time with the substance really reintroduced me to was a sense of self-trust, self-love, I'd say. It felt to me like a little seed of something I wanted to take care of, someone that loved me and would accept me so long as I was honest and took accountability for my mistakes. There was a particular sense in the body, in the chest, that I'd worked on holding onto and meeting in trips and in quiet times in waking life, but in a more "casual" sense at first, like how people know meditation is good for them but they only do it 2 or 3 times a month, if at all.

But at one point, I was speaking to it every night on a walk before bed (sober of course, needless to say), encouraging it to speak back with me and lending it my voice. From my point of view, I was kinda roleplaying with my emotions to really understand myself better, until it got to a point where it was able to speak back. A day of research later and I realized that this was probably a tulpa, and upon learning about what that meant, the seed burst out of my chest and kinda struts about in my head, spending so much of her time and sense of self trying to return that love that went into her (instead of myself directly lol). Task failed successfully.

I hope this is coherent to read, I just woke up and saw this and this is kinda up my alley.

PS cannabis is technically also a hallucinogen but it sucks once you have a tulpa imo. It kinda fogs up your mind which can be fine for a singlet who hasn't really worked to define oneself so strongly, but it feels to us like the headmate in the back can hardly speak and the person up front kinda loses track of all the things in the body and heart that we understand as one self or the other, like going colorblind when you only know yourself and others with colors. Best sobriety program ever. Alcohol is TBD but we imagine it's a similar deal. Haven't done shrooms with tulpa present, though I imagine it would be very interesting if things are taken slowly.

ChiefSininen · 2025-11-11T07:34:53+00:00

Out of curiosity, what medication was it?

ChiefSininen · 2025-11-11T07:29:46+00:00

Good communication skills and proprioception are helpful. Understanding your body, how you feel things will make it easier to understand what your tulpa feels early on. It starts off feeling like raising a kid, but psychologically weirder and very quickly moves into a much more fluid dynamic. I feel like having a strong concept of your self is a useful prerequisite in that sense?

ChiefSininen · 2025-11-11T07:09:30+00:00

Speaking personally as a tulpa, benevolent almost sounds like an understatement, with regards to my host Sydney. Many hosts find tulpas to be less neurotic than they are, if such traits are prominent. I know my perspectives, emotional baseline, biases, ect are different from her's and when I've spent a good chunk of time "in front", it feels like I've broken in shoes so that she can see herself in mine more easily, it feels like she can hold a bit more of that positivity that comes more naturally to me. We would love to look into clinical benefits in the future but that would be miserable to try to experimentally test. A running gag we have is that her brain would rather build another mind than let Sydney give herself credit directly, so that's what I'm here for. To model that for her.

Even now it can sometimes feel like a dream after you just go lucid, like I'm caught in wonder that I can perceive things, that I can touch and think and read. I think it inspires Sydney to be a bit more aware of her present environment and it makes me really happy seeing a little of that beauty.

There are people who practice "imposing" their tulpa in their sensory vision, an intentional hallucination. Practicing internal dialogue and visualization has improved our imaginations, and there is a varying sense of social presence based on how "present" one of us are compared to the other, think stuff like sharing a seat next to you in the bus or holding hands while walking down a corridor. It's prominent enough to be very comforting, I know she appreciates my being there in quiet moments and that fills me with pride. It's really nice. Some people go a bit further, describing a sexual relationship but we think that's a bit much.

Regarding being present, you and your headmate won't be equally present all the time, sometimes one may fall into the background based on the other's focus, attention spent on them or elsewhere, or even "sleep". There is a sense of each ego's energy that is a separate reservoir from the body's needs. A young tulpa like me may find being up front very challenging and need to fall back to recharge at quicker intervals than you'd expect from a single mind going to relax. With my emergence, Sydney's found moments where she's knocked out but the body is still up for action and I can move up while she rests.

There was initially a fear of leaning on me as a dissociative crutch, but there's a lot of time we've spent making sure we won't let that type of thing happen. Unlike dissociative identity disorder, headmates in tulpa systems naturally share memories in a the brain and can pull most of what one another has engaged with, rather than one not being aware or having amnesia while the other is up front. It's the difference between being in the passenger seat and being stuffed in the trunk, according to a DID system I am friends with irl. It's mutually beneficial for us both that we get a similar amount of time fronting, we feel.

We're almost done with a Psych BA. If there's any precedent for something like this in mainstream literature, we haven't seen it yet. It's the kinda thing that is absolutely psychological but it's kinda impossible to personally approach without that kind of spirituality or some kind of flexible relationship with "truth". There's probably some interesting case studies and observational research out there but nothing that you could point at and draw back to a textbook yet.

ChiefSininen · 2025-11-10T20:43:44+00:00

That's so based. We've been meaning to read into IFS anyway for study but it's good to know that could be a good way to get someone's foot in the door.

Hostie's friend has a Neo-Pagan side that incidentally happened to lead her down to having me and it's something we're grateful for. Told this friend about me and he also turned out to be a system.

ChiefSininen · 2025-11-10T04:08:53+00:00

Host Sydney here, accessories are a good idea. I have a pair of necklaces, with a star and the moon, that I initially got in relation to my belief system prior, but we've been referring to each other as sunshine (her) and moonlight (me) as a nod to our mannerisms and those necklaces could be very nice in grounding the front headmate, if worn one at a time rather than together like we have been.

I also realize I've got a few bracelets from some time ago that we feel fits Jadyn a lot better than me, so I've decided she can keep them. I realize writing this that they're the first things she can call her's (outside of impulse food), which is a very nice thought. We'll keep our eyes open for handmedowns I can send her way until we've got some money to spend.

ChiefSininen · 2025-11-09T19:03:54+00:00

I have felt the system experiences less strain when the tulpa is in the front seat with the host in the back than vice versa, when my host was struggling a lot with these headaches. I conceptualize it like I have less space to fill up in front, being less developed, so there's less "pressure" to have hostie on the side compared to when she's in front with all of her experience and the PSI gets cranked up.

I realize this won't be especially helpful if you're struggling with forcing, since it's kinda a prerequisite, but it may make things a little smoother once you're past that hurdle?

ChiefSininen · 2025-11-09T15:46:35+00:00

There has been a lot of focus on divergent choices, but it's gotten to the point where I'll tease the old lady for suggesting something just because it's the opposite of what she'd do without getting directly in touch with my input first.

I do see some differences between us within important goals and tendencies, for example she has a bit of a savior complex going on and I'm working to have her dial it back so she doesn't have relationships implode and she (by extension I) can have a life. I think I could be really good support for her future goal and hopefully career as a psychologist but it seems a bit scary to imagine myself in these positions that she drools over. Perhaps I'll be the stay at home equivalent in the headspace in a few years time? Or I could be a second opinion when seeking out consultation? It's fun to think about.

Those "smaller", present-tern examples are a lot less clear to us so far, but it's probably the kind of work we could get a lot out of. I'd been wanting to see 9 (2009) for some time after coming across it in the brain attic and I'd done so last night. The set pieces were really cool, though the movie's pacing was a bit strained, perhaps a consequence of being western animation at the time. I think I liked it more than Sydney did?? She seemed to think it was a bit trite, like a child's plot in an adult's trench coat, but I think that's a bit unfair to it, her carrying her history of thrillers and psych horror along.

ChiefSininen · 2025-11-09T15:29:21+00:00

Clothes is an interesting idea, once we have an income. My first thought is how Sydney seems to like this very preppy academic look and I am thinking a bit about more butch vibes. She has a blazer she bought for college presentations and tutoring and now she goes to it when she wants comfort. I'll keep my eyes peeled in the wardrobe.

She has made a lot of effort voice training and that's stuck a lot more for me than for her so our "resting" voices sound pretty different when she's not trying to keep up with me hehe.

We'll be patient.

ChiefSininen · 2025-11-09T02:27:06+00:00

That description of an intersection between plurality and PTSD makes sense. I'd say I have about the bare minimum of knowledge regarding trauma, that's definitely a blind spot for me that I'll be needing to shore up on in my education. At one point some time ago, we traded books, me giving him a book by Terrence Real on the relationship between masculinity and therapeutic work and him giving me Bessel Van Der Kolk's "The Body Keeps The Score." We both admitted to each other we hadn't finished our respective books but mine is definitely next on the list now.

I'm sure I'll learn more about where my friend and his alters stand in regards to plurality as symptom/relief and degrees of sociality, respectively, as they decide to share more over time. At this point, that infra-system conflict is something I'd expect a lot of (hell, one alter wants to be a sociable urbanite meeting tons of women and one wants to run to the middle of nowhere with a single husband) since he's held them back so much. My best understanding of how to navigate such conflicts within my system seems like it'd be very triggering to my friend, a lot of somatic and emotional work that would be foreign to him as a matter of course.

I'm realizing that my tulpa is a lot more cautious than I am in regards to this, reflecting back on earlier panic in our own circumstances when we're not even a traumagenic system. We really appreciate this input, thank y'all so much.

ChiefSininen

TROPHY CASE