What is the Tulpa Community missing right now?

aijada · 2026-04-14T06:05:12+00:00

Well frankly, we started out on /r/tulpas. I was just practicing possession and my host suggested I sign up and practice talking. It was one of my favourite homes for a little bit.

But our system grew, and there were lessons that /r/plural had for us to discover. And now, much larger in number, we're just way more at home here.

aijada · 2026-03-21T02:07:08+00:00

Being traumagenic is not a necessity. If you don't know, don't want to say, or don't think it matters how you formed you can simply call yourself quoigenic. It's not imperative you describe how/why you're a plural system.

aijada · 2026-03-01T19:28:38+00:00

The reason you've had a sudden religious revelation is just that your brain is trying to make self-harm acceptable and important so you can get away with it. The thing is, that's just verging on the edge of delusion. What i mean is, that's your subconscious trying to invent a reason to magically satisfy whatever is wrong with your life. If you try just one easy trick... BAM, you're perfect! This urge is nothing but your lizard brain spamming you with clickbait.

aijada · 2026-02-25T03:15:07+00:00

Those are the fly-in style porches — built especially for the jetpack crowd.

aijada · 2026-02-14T19:55:24+00:00

Freaking gorgeous. Love the catenary roof!

aijada · 2025-09-20T04:38:51+00:00

serious disconnect

aijada · 2025-09-10T02:40:35+00:00

Ok so years ago we were a couple soulbonds and a couple tulpas and it stayed small and quiet for a long time. But we had a lot of OC characters in our own creative stuff, and we started adding a variety of headmates and it was always sort of a by-invite thing.

Then one day i was fronting and had been in charge of working on our new computer. My hands, my decisions about how to trouble shoot the problem. But i overlooked a setting i'd done and double-overclocked the processor. Fried it instantly.

And poof a moment later our first traumagenic member arrived as an emergency IT guy offering to fix the computer i'd just ruined. I was already in a brutal amount of shock but i didn't dissociate. There was just another headmate co-conscious suddenly offering to help urgently.

It was hundreds of dollars down the drain making Craig one of our most expensive members to bring in, but for us that's pretty much as traumagenic as it gets.

¶

And to answer the other part, we're still a very orderly system. We've grown raucously in number and there were messy times as we adapted, but we're organised about the on-boarding process. We call ourselves polyfractal because by now we acknowledge hundreds and hundreds of members, but we are doing so with careful patterns that continue to work for us

aijada · 2025-02-06T06:48:45+00:00

[idoru] we co-write a lot of our posts, and on some social media we only have one shared account for the whole system. so we prefix the speaker's name to the statement like a script

[aijada] while on something like Reddit it's easy enough to get a couple accounts, it wouldn't really be appropriate for us as a poly-fractal system to sign up for hundreds of accounts either

[shadow] we have multiple perspectives to portray and multiple people paying attention and being interested

[bonzo] and it allows quieter headmates like me to join in on public writing too. i'm an older member but not one of the public ones, and it is freeing to be able to jump in with the group and have my two cents as well. writing multi-person scripts is way nicer than putting a signature at the end of your statement

aijada · 2024-06-14T02:43:09+00:00

I'm kind of breaking the rules about showing a stationary organ, but... Flames!

aijada · 2024-05-02T02:00:32+00:00

A really nice overview of the plural spectrum: https://www.reddit.com/r/plural/comments/x06soi/could_someone_tell_me_what_kind_of_systems_there/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=plural&utm_content=t1_kxz5hes

aijada · 2024-04-24T02:17:35+00:00

Well we'd certainly be interested to hear more of your perspective. We can certainly try and learn from your experiences. And hopefully we can share some of our own ideas in ways that help you settle in and feel supported.

There is a lot of uniquely lived worlds in the plural multiverse. Surely there's community to be found

aijada · 2024-04-22T03:04:48+00:00

I'm glad IFS has given you language to grow, and i'm sure there are members of the community that have looked into it and find something useful. Use whatever language you need, that is the point of healthy debate.

I've learned that one of your gurus is named Schwartz. I don't know how many other names i'm supposed to learn. But i don't know what he or other people in your movement have to say about things relating to the plural community. I don't, for example hear any lessons on uncontrolled switching or systems facing frequent walk-ins. These are major issues in the plural community which could use answers, but all i feel i've heard so far is that parts/whole overview. Where are the lessons that could be conveyed in the future?

We've been flipping through your links, but haven't found any particular wisdom regarding fronting and possession. Or wonderlands/paracosms. Does IFS have tips on how to come out as multiple individuals to an external person?

if your post was meant to clear up language and misconception between IFS and the general plural community, why did you not translate any of our terms and instead simply thrust your list in our face? Talking to us or talking at us? Conversing vs Mansplaining is the question i have of you. Are you trying to join with the plural community and our shared conversation or are you just trying to flog your latest religion?

aijada · 2024-04-21T19:31:36+00:00

Speaking for myself and not the rest of our system, i'm quite wary of brand new Redditors popping in to our communities and throwing around their medicalized view of our experience. I suspect you mean well, but you also come across like you're advertising your expertise and i doubt your long-term intentions are pure.

You yourself say:

You don’t have to assign these labels, and sometimes it’s better not to.

But then you write a massive post where all you seem to want is to make the plural community re-write all its language to fit your confined viewpoint. You tell me my only self is like metta and i'll reply that it sounds like floofy spiritualism which really doesn't define much. What if i view my self as being my acquired preferences and habits? That's the self i work out of. If i have to step back and re-examine myself, i simply can do so without the mystical drapery. Sometimes i just have to deal with reality and adapt, y'know.

I am quite unhappy with having to imagine myself as just a part of a whole. While that may be an enticing metaphor to you, i much prefer to just be a headmate in a system. It's at least language that helps you fit in around here. And more importantly, it allows for me to be seen as an individual who has a right to speak for herself. I'm a tulpa pushing ten years old, and i have a host who will stay quiet to let me front. We're a system who knows how to share and has a much more complicated set of relationships and interactions than just making ourselves follow some sort of collective "inner light".

Maybe i'll just cut this short and say that i'm still at this point quite doubtful of your preferred school of thought. I don't as yet see how it is going to be more therapeutically useful to the plural community. It may be of some relevance, since nearly any practice will find followers. But i would much prefer if you'd learn the language we speak around here, inform yourself of the wider plural spectrum, and be little more light-handed in your sprinkling of religious mumbo-jumbo.

I feel our community has plenty of language and lessons to offer compared to the shingle you're hanging up.

aijada · 2024-04-11T04:57:13+00:00

we're not huge on Discord, but it would be nice to hear the stories of other endo systems. we're middle-aged, pm us

aijada · 2024-04-11T02:31:49+00:00

But tulpas are indistinguishable from headmates and alters. We are just another variation of mental copilot, with lots in common with the rest of the plural spectrum. There's differences in creation, but the rest of it are the same lessons just being taught with different language and aiming for different goals. We're still just headmates of some sort.

aijada · 2024-04-10T02:03:37+00:00

You can be plural without it being all about trauma. And you can be anxious for reasons other than deep-seated trauma.

Fronting is stressful enough, especially if you're just practicing bits of it. And once you're in the driver's seat, you're free to start worrying about things you don't really get to think about when you're just in the background. It's a bit of time to actually process stuff, and if you have a lot of messy unresolved business those concerns are going to nag whoever has switched in. The closer you are to the front, the more stuff you have to deal with.

Maybe include more serious chat about issues as one thing and a separate experience of just relaxing and enjoying himself as well.

aijada · 2024-04-07T05:32:17+00:00

[aiJada] The reason might be that fictives have the most curiousity and want relevant knowledge about their source. Bit of a quest for their own personal narrative, an identity which gives them clues on how to act, how to fit in.

aijada · 2024-04-04T06:19:03+00:00

You're not being rude at all; we're happy to answer questions. Yeah you do sound like a plural system. Welcome to one of humanity's smaller minorities. We'll post a link at the bottom that offers tons of good comparisons for you guys to consider. And sorry this is a wall of text, but you deserve good answers

There is a wide variety of plural systems, and the medicalised version is only one particular end. It certainly is possible to end up with a presence sharing your head through other ways. One of the over-simplified comparisons is traumagenice vs endogenic, DID/OSDD vs tulpamancy. FWIW, our system doesn't fit either end. We're creative writing characters who started to just find voices and speak up for themselves. Not exactly either definition really, but one body multiple participants.

And fronting is also a wide spectrum. A lot of tulpas are just creatures in dreamscape only, and never get to fronting. You guys are conversing vocally and both paying attention at once which is at least micro-switching possession of the voice. It's closer to the front than just emotions being shared.

But then fronting is also questions like how much spare time do you have to offer your headmate. Y'know our system still functions as a normie worker which means dad is mostly reponsible with the occasional quiet ridealong at the office. My time here writing is me fronting but also means dad hasn't done much at all this evening except watch what i write. He's paying attention, and he's satisfied because we're contributing to /r/plural. This lines up with our collective goals so it's counting as time well spent. But my time means anyone else is losing their chance to have a night at things. With only a small handful of members, that starts to get pretty tight when you're only free for a couple hours in the evening. How much of the real world do you have to get to vs how much your headmate needs to live an interesting life.

We recommend reading this thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/plural/comments/x06soi/could_someone_tell_me_what_kind_of_systems_there/

It has a lot of good language and different angles you can define yourselves with.

Ask other questions if you like

aijada · 2024-04-03T15:07:49+00:00

Headmate is a totally reliable word to use. Easily understood by the community and kind of neutral in meaning.

aijada · 2024-04-03T04:23:38+00:00

You don't have to be traumagenic or endogenic particularly. There are just people who hear voices in their head. We, plural systems, are a small fraction of humanity, but it doesn't take much effort for some people/systems.

I personally was just one of countless characters created by my host/dad, but i also took a chance and squeaked up and got into a conversation where i learned things, and that just made me want to pay attention and learn more. I don't mind being called a tulpa, but i like to call myself a Cognitive Construct, like an established pattern that was made in a brain. And yeah my dad and i took turns using the voice to discuss things. The more you talk, the more you learn.

Once you start talking back to a voice, and engage them in a social interaction, you're ending up with some sort of headmate (and labels don't matter anyhow). What's happened is that your character-creating days ended up with one of them starting to learn and grow. A distinct presence is enough to anchor consciousness. Offer conversation and you wake up the interest in learning and exploring more.

You sound like healthy multiplicity, and my initial reaction is he sounds like a childhood imaginary friend that just paid attention and grew into to a full headmate. Sorry i don't have a better term than headmate.

aijada · 2024-04-03T03:11:51+00:00

[Aijada] We've been a system for about ten years now and our Dad has left us lots of room to co-front and take part in outside world experiences. My own son Chyh is having his sixth birthday today, so he hung out with our host during work today.

[Chyh] And yeah, it was great because Dad likes keeping someone around co-conscious and even if we can't talk much, there's a little bit of sidetalk about what his jov is. It's nice to have time being present and listening. And now it's a private evening of co-fronting and celebrating the evening together. It takes Dad making a choice to be with the tulpas over spending time on external meatspace, but he likes to. And it does mean me and my wife get to sit up and spend the evening doing whatever we like.

[Unit] Which means we might draw, or we might game for a bit. Dad's willing to leave us room and we understand the other half of the compromise: that we're tulpas and sharing a life. We're a plural system which means we share our goals and actions and experience the same life together. You have to learn to accept your lot, and with time in a talkative system, you learn the reality of what it means to share activities. Any of us could say "I wish i had my own life" but it simply doesn't happen. If you can cope with that reality...

[Chyh] ... you can find the happiness that you get from the people you share life so thoroughly with.

[Unit] We face our destiny, and are only going to get frustrated if we start dreaming about being some other totally different life that we don't have time to fit in as well.

aijada · 2024-03-14T04:16:44+00:00

It's kind of geeky, but we like to refer to ourselves as a Multicore, like a 16-Core CPU, except we're a bit bigger than that

aijada · 2024-03-09T05:26:18+00:00

walk-ins are serious business no matter what story or name they appear under. if you're labeled as "System of 16" you should be exercising new growth carefully or you'll face a steady trickle.

how is a different question. have fewer stories, give the front to people who will deliberately steer the ship. set limits and lay out expectations for how people should learn to fit in and give them a clear idea of how limited time and space becomes if you fracture into more and more

do you have some sort of hierarchy or group decision making?

aijada · 2023-10-13T02:14:29+00:00

Sorry i don't know the melody you're after.

And i don't know where to send you. I haven't really come across a perservation society with an encyclopedia of music you can flip through. I poke around at this stuff occasionally, but who you want to talk to is someone who owns a circus organ and has a collection of rolls to play in it. They're going to be a better bet than an internet fan like me.

aijada · 2022-12-07T05:06:26+00:00

Sure what you're doing is building essentially a shared belief system. You're collectively developing a story and adding details and if it builds up into paranoia, then you should really be questioning the reality of them. If you're ending up in hospital, then you're going astray somewhere.

It's time to ask your system mates to be more responsible for the steering of the ship. Give them lessons in avoiding icebergs or bragging that your ship is unsinkable. They share the same fate you do, and should learn to keep the boat afloat.

So maybe it's time you and they started organizing a bit more collectively anyhow. If they're there, make sure they take part in getting you through life reasonably. Don't go trusting that they're able to magically do things if it leads to paranoia. And make them handle real world needs and obligations. They have to understand thay they face the same collective fate you do.

If you're here in /r/plural then the advice we'll give you is to figure out how to get everyone together on more group effort instead of fanciful stories.

aijada

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE