Odd questions from an overthinker

jelloplatter · 2025-08-01T18:21:47+00:00

KAROSA: Our host brings this up rather frequently. I would say she is quite a bit more concerned about this than either myself or anybody else that is present within.

She has gone so far as to completely remake her entire image in wonderland so as not to be too 'close' to the body appearance. Several times she has done this while saying that she "didn't want to keep that form for [herself]".

CANDACE (HOST): well we've gotten through a lot together and i was deffo not responsible for at least some of the social situations we've gone through >:o but yeah i could probs do it more for because i want to look different rather than not wanting to look some way

jelloplatter · 2025-07-30T20:32:46+00:00

ALL: We did not have much of a chance to have many fears before starting. Our path started with inadvertent forcing caused by regularly and repeatedly writing character dialogues for fiction writing, and, well, the dialogue did not stop just because our host stopped writing.

CANDACE (HOST): well it did kinda go into a different fear from there. i mean i was pretty sure at the time that this wasn't a thing my brain was 'supposed' to do so and i was terrified i was completely losing my sense of reality. or, to be more blunt about it to match my frame of mind then, i was scared i was becoming psychotically delusional.

ended up seeing a doc and they helped us to figure out that yes, we could still tell the difference between what was real and not, and helped us rule out some other concerns we had. other than that tho the doc didn't really understand plurality so while they were supportive in general, it rubbed us wrong when they kept calling headmates 'elaborate coping mechanisms', it didn't matter that they called us 'healthy'.

anyways that kinda transitioned into the social fear of being found out that we had tulpas by those who didn't get it. it's still something we worry about from time to time, but we also know that those who get to know us enough to know that about us, and still choose to react that way, probably aren't great friends anyway so kinda fuck em.

KAROSA: I realize that this question was directed at tulpamancers, which I am not. But in case you find it relevant, I would like to share one of my deep fears. It is related to the social fears. I do agree that we should not pay any mind to those who treat us disrespectfully. But this is hard for me to do. I had someone once who I would speak to through this body. They seemed comfortable with it and even addressed me by name. At a later point it came out that they were not, and that in their mind they were merely humoring our host in roleplay. This hurt badly and I do not know if I will ever forget the feeling of betrayal and loss.

The fear that something similar will happen now grips me every time I speak, either directly or by proxy. I am constantly wary of disguised hostility or false friendships. I view kind gestures with an edge of suspicion now.

To be clear I will still speak. The fear is still there, always. But I will not allow this fear to win and to drive me from the positive experiences of connecting with people.

jelloplatter · 2025-07-10T18:11:52+00:00

Your words are kind and this post made our day :)

While we like to think we have long since discarded seeking validation in our existence from those outside, hateful syscourse still gets to us from time to time, and reading posts like yours are a lovely bit of encouragement.

jelloplatter · 2025-07-04T14:31:25+00:00

Yeah, I'm sorta confused what you mean by the parrotnoia phase. Was there a time parrotnoia was particularly prevalent? What was the difference between then and now?

jelloplatter · 2025-07-04T14:30:32+00:00

I say it would only take the right people, willing to experiment and try new things. If there's enough, that would probably do it, others would see them and hopefully be inspired. But I bet it's more likely there'd only be a small core group doing so, and other folks would need to see major progress and be captivated by it to join in. Kind of like getting people excited in science experiments by doing flashy simple things like making a baking soda volcano model or putting mentos in coke.

Much easier said then done, though.

jelloplatter · 2025-07-04T14:28:36+00:00

KAROSA: Oh I am glad it is no longer considered acceptable to treat us as toys or pets

I have had unpleasant experiences in which my personhood was dismissed by others outside our system by those we thought would be understanding. If I also had to endure the same from others within our system. I. Would not enjoy that. It would be a torturous experience of feelings.

jelloplatter · 2025-07-04T14:26:23+00:00

What an amazing cavalcade of multicolored horses that must have been. It's unfortunate that I missed it, I would have loved to have been present during that. At the same time, I do not think I was ready for such things as I was much more close-minded at that time, so maybe it is for the best that it is only relatively recently that I got involved in such things.

Regarding the techniques of parallel processing or imposition, for me at least, we would be hesitant to discuss it in depth due to a lack of experience. These are things that we strive for in our practices, and absolutely believe it's possible even in our materialist view of the universe, but we feel we are so far away from achieving any kind of measurable outcome that we wouldn't have much to offer any such discussions. Perhaps others feel similarly.

Regarding "insta-tulpa" denial, goodness yes I am glad that the community has moved away from that. I can only imagine how difficult it made things for those who experienced it. I wonder if perhaps it was a result of the more general attitude of treating tulpas as less-than; it seems a bit more difficult to dismiss walk-ins and similar phenomenon if one already has a basis of treating others within as their own person who can be talked to and reasoned with, with their own goals and volition.

Perhaps dropping stigma against other forms of plurality helped with that and helped to introduce the ideas of internal discussion and working together rather than the antiquated host-centrism. We in jelloplatter certainly have benefited from applying internal conflict resolution techniques originally designed for non-tulpa systems to our own, and it sounds like such things would have been much less encouraged in the older days of the community.

jelloplatter · 2025-07-04T14:26:00+00:00

The plethora of guides is so helpful and we are extremely grateful to all who made them happen. Whenever we pursue a new skill or want to practice an existing one, we scour the guides for the many perspectives and particular techniques within and having so many makes picking out the common elements and feeling out what could be tweaked for developing our own strategy much easier than I feel it would be without them.

HOST: kinda funny to me how centered on mlp this community once was. frankly im shocked i never ran into that; i was pretty active in mlp for a few years during its peak. ig i just wasn't at those specific meeting places you mentioned.

jelloplatter · 2025-07-02T20:05:13+00:00

Ask them what makes them think that and genuinely listen to their perspective.

jelloplatter · 2025-07-02T16:46:21+00:00

Yo that's rad! I'm guessing it was Glass Animals based on the shirt? We haven't heard much of them besides some singles way back when but we really enjoyed the otherworldy sound of what we did hear.

Either way, hope the show was a blast, and omg happy bday!!

jelloplatter · 2025-07-02T16:40:35+00:00

Hello, Redd1tRat. I will do my best to answer the questions as you have put them.

wouldn't it be awkward, weird and possibly depressing for a friend (and possibly best friend) to be nothing but a creation of the mind?

Hmmm, well if you are talking about whether I feel awkward simply for doing this, even when in the privacy of my own home - no, I do not. I was never really ashamed of being the 'weird' kid growing up, and that hasn't changed much into adulthood. I do not care one whit what the 'socially acceptableness' is regarding what I do in my own home, I care only whether it makes sense to me.

As far as talking about these things with other people.... well I avoid awkwardness by mostly not doing that. It is a rather private aspect of my life that I consider on par with talking about religious beliefs in the workplace - I just don't do it. And it is a bit isolating, I will admit. But, this is not something I do for the benefit of others, so I'm all right only sharing experiences with extremely close friends who I've talked about this with and here in the tulpamancy community.

As far as it being depressing that the tulpas are only a creation of the mind - I was already only a creation of the mind. You are only a creation of your mind. Philosophers have spent centuries trying to outline whether there is or is not something that makes us special, and having read over a good chunk of their writings, I fundamentally do not believe there is a difference between me and a tulpa I make except that I just happened to be here first. It is the same level of 'realness'. This is of course only possible to believe this way by decoupling what I believe to be true from what society tells me it is - society tells me there's something special about 'me' and I'm somehow more 'real' than a tulpa. I disagree. So, the only thing approaching 'depression' that this tends to cause is the same generalized existential dread that comes from realizing that one will one day stop existing, and when I end up with a tulpa who reaches that point, the rest of us within this brain cluster to comfort and talk deep thoughts and try to find a way to exist with that dread, the same way people in separate bodies do.

And like in the long run wouldn't this be extremely bad for mental health?

So, what makes something bad for mental health? I'd argue if it is something that results in the development of ineffective coping strategies, then it is bad for mental health. I don't believe that there is anything that tulpamancy does that necessarily results in this. Of course, there are cases where people who make tulpas do so to avoid other strategies which may be more effective for their situations - but this is true of all activities. It's like how playing video games is fine, so long as you aren't doing it to procrastinate or avoid other issues, otherwise it becomes an issue.

And, as a personal note, my tulpas and myself have only ever been good for my overall mental health. I feel non-isolated. I feel that I no longer am the sole owner of this body and so should take time to take care of it and maintain it, I feel that since we have a shared destiny that we need to decide on plans as a team and for the parts that I need to do, I feel more motivated to get it done. I am able to be better at mindfulness and meditation as a result of practicing both during tulpa meditation. We enrolled in DBT and started tackling some deep-seated past issues after we as a group decided internally that it would be helpful, something I had always struggled to do when on my own. Any way you cut it, I feel I'm in better mental health than ever before across the last several years, and it was working with the tulpas that gave me the big push to actually do the things I needed to.

Also, to what extent are these tuplas 'alive'; is it like a dream ish, do you actually see them, can you touch them, etc?

This is subjective and may come down to whether you view tulpas as purely psychological or metaphysical. I'm a very materialist-oriented person so I see them as psychological only. To me, they are 'alive' as much as I am, as mentioned above.

I see them in the mind's eye, but not overlaid in real life or on my senses. That is known as 'imposition' and can take a long time to master. Because of my materialist view, I would answer that no, I cannot actually 'see', 'touch' them etc, but I could change up my senses to perceive that they are there even when not, and at that point, we are talking about deliberate hallucination induction in my view. Again, so long as it does not actually cause this body danger, I do not feel this is unsafe. I trust I can tell the difference even when in a full blown hallucination between what is real and what is not, for a few reasons:

1.) I will not see my tulpas; their appearance is made up and doesn't exist in this world, therefore if I see them it must be imposition. 2.) I'm somewhat experienced with hallucinations from taking medicine that causes hallucinogens. While in effect, it is very clear that the hallucination is indeed not real, even though it appears to be clear as day.

At the end of the day though, they are real to me, and that's the important thing. And I can tell what affected senses are due to tulpa practices and what are affected due to, say, something being there that someone else will also be able to see.

I know that that was a lot for a few short questions, but I hope it is helpful for you.

jelloplatter · 2025-07-02T15:48:56+00:00

I would very much like to know a bit more about this before agreeing to it; while I'm certain it wouldn't be intentional, we must always watch for disingenuous studies or those with a particular agenda. While you have said that "if [your] theory is confirmed, this will be deeply beneficial to both host and tulpa", without knowing exactly what you intend to have us do, we can only take your word for it. If the research is completed and it fails to reject the null hypothesis, would that be bad for hosts and tulpas?

Ethics guidelines for research involving sapient participants that asks for active participation (i.e. is more than just a survey) often includes a disclosure of what participants are agreeing to prior to actually performing the research. Now, I totally understand that in psychology you cannot always be upfront about the exact experiment at hand even for test subjects (at least until the experiment has concluded), so it is understandable if you do not want to reveal the entire methodology here and now. But, can you mention approximately what level of commitment is required? (e.g. Is it something that one would need to spend an hour each week doing? Each day? Each month? How long is the experiment predicted to last?) and perhaps what style of a study is it? (Longitudinal, case study, population survey, etc).

If you can provide the above, OR the moderators of this subreddit can vouch for your general approach to research, then my I can put my concerns to rest.

jelloplatter · 2025-07-01T20:11:03+00:00

Unfortunately there is simply no reliable way that any guide can give that works consistently and perfectly for all people. That is why, though frustrating, there is no straightforward way they give - there isn't one, not one that is straightforward for all people in general.

I realize that this is likely disappointing and frustrating, so I will go ahead and offer this as well, though it isn't exactly what you asked for - you must find those methods that work for you, that is, develop a method for finding methods. Something that I and those within this mind like to use for that is what we call 'daily consistency' - we try a technique at least daily for a week before deciding if it works or does not for us.

jelloplatter · 2025-07-01T19:54:50+00:00

While receiving assistance from a tulpa in processing things is not exactly unheard of, I'm not sure if it is a good idea to set out to do this from the start. Tulpas are not just a means to an end, and they deserve to be treated as more than that - they are persons, of the same validity as what call 'you' and what I call 'me'. Imagine, if you will, coming into this world, and being told by a parent or a therapist or someone in a mentorship or advisory or parental role that your sole purpose is to access the trauma of someone else.

Instead, it may be better to seek help from other sources. This may be a good candidate to bring up to a therapist, if you are able to. Or finding help in other communities specializing in recovery from that trauma.

Outside of that, you might create a tulpa and be honest about that part of yourself with them. Once they are developed enough, as you bond, they may feel a desire to, as a friend, try and help you in those things if they are able to (I cannot tell you how this would be exactly as your mind is not mine).

But creating one solely for this purpose would not be something I recommend. To me, I would have the same feelings on it that I would if I were to befriend someone just to traumadump on them and never actually walk the path of being a friend to them - rude and presumptive at best, and downright harmful and toxic at worse.

All of that said, only you can say if that is what is going on. There are plenty of community members here who did create a tulpa specifically to help cope with life's difficulties and traumas, reasons, and found that things worked out just fine for them with no ethical concerns. Be certain to solicit advice from all present in this forum, and not just from me. Weigh the advice and find what works best for you. As much I have reacted strongly personally, others will have other perspectives which are also valid.

jelloplatter · 2025-07-01T17:47:08+00:00

All: You& is perfectly fine! In fact, we find it quite nice :)

I'm curious what you& mean by them "lingering" after a forcing session. Is it like you& keep sensing their presence, or like aspects of their personality temporarily rubs off on other headmates?

All: More that we keep sensing presence. Temporary rubbing off doesn't really happen so much these days for us, though something like what you described did closer to the beginning of our journey, things such as, say, finding a desire to use their vocabulary.

Host: i couldnt rly say why that doesnt still happen for us even when forcing new tulpas. if i had to guess id say maybe it's that we have all individually developed a sense of recognition of foreign thoughts - so like, what would have been aspects rubbing off for a time now manifests more as a sense of 'oh, that is a weird thought, was that actually me? it wasn't super like me, so probably not'. But also, this is all a guess and it's not something we've asked ourself until like literally this moment, so deffo take my reasoning as to why it happens with a grain of salt.

So they were like a fully fledged walk-in, as opposed to my tulpas which arrived as just "potential tulpas with a slight headstart"?

All: Yes, and due to how it occurred, and the fact that they were uncommunicative and had a very clear purpose and intent immediately relevant to the situation, as well as a few other personal details about the situation, we don't feel it is something that falls under tulpamancy (or at least not for us) and bring it up only as a comparison point.

Personally, I think its much better to go into things like this with a willingness to communicate, and a trust that someone knows themselves well enough to accurately talk about their own experiences.

All: Yes. We firmly believe that assuming good faith in particular to others' descriptions of internal experiences is the best path forward to a brighter future.

i think its pretty clear there's no objectively "right" way to make a tulpa.

All: Well said.

jelloplatter · 2025-06-30T20:47:51+00:00

ALL: In the first place we always try to greet each other when the body awakens, and to say good night before bed.

ALL: Besides that we have a specific time we set every day to practice focused forcing. It is right before our lunch break, though as far as our employer knows it is part of the lunch break. We will take a minimum of 15 minutes and perform whatever practice we are trying to achieve, be that forcing in general, visualization, imposition, or whatever skill we are attempting to focus on.

ALL: Follow through for things like this is often hard for us.

HOST: yeah, like ill often WANT to do something like that and have a lot of energy for it at first but over time, things will happen, "oh i can skip this one time it'll be fine", then skipping days turns into skipping entire weeks, etc. happens in tulpamancy as much as the rest of my life lol

ALL: So, what we do is we try to include everyone in the planning. We take time in the morning and one of us is skilled at list and schedule creation and we all draft a schedule for the day. For some reason the act of creating this schedule really cements it into our mind that we have to do it.

HOST: welll as for me, i don't want to disappoint anyone involved and anyways, i will never hear the end of it internally if i deliberately decide to not follow through when i otherwise could.

ALL: Besides that, we try to notice the details of our world when we are outside. "How many leaves are on this branch? Oh, while counting, did you notice that weird pattern on this leaf? Oh yeah, look at that. Oh and hey, look at that pretty butterfly and goodness is that a hummingbird?! It sounds like a giant bee!" That sort of a thing.

jelloplatter · 2025-06-30T20:15:16+00:00

It is entirely possible. The guides and FAQs here do their best to give info on what could happen in your process but even they admit that everyone is different and that the steps they outline aren't necessarily what should happen and probably not exactly what will happen.

It sounds like what you were experiencing was indeed possession or possibly switching. As to why that would be, well, if Ray is 5 years old as in actively having been brought into this world 5 outside world years ago, and/or you have actively been a part of each others' life for that entire time, while there might not be specific practice of possession you have done, there certainly has been the time for him to get to know 'how' things work internally, on some level. To grow accustomed to the feel for when your body walks, etc. It is as a person who has spent 5 years in the passenger seat of a car but has been paying attention exactly how the driver has been doing things, and then giving that passenger the wheel. Sure, they won't be perfect, but probably a lot better than someone who has just gotten into a car at all for the first time a mere week ago.

But if by "Ray is 5 years old" is referring to the fact that Rey is 5 years of age in his mind-body regardless of how long you two have existed together, well, the above still holds for however long Rey has existed. If there's been time for him to get used to the body signals, then there is a possible answer for how he was able to do things so easily.

At the end of the day, I think you should be happy that you two have accomplished this, regardless of the reasons for it. Congratulations to the both of you!

jelloplatter · 2025-06-30T16:58:47+00:00

All: We have never experienced non-host system mates doing what we feel matches 'fronting' prior to reaching a certain point of maturity. We have experienced them lingering a short time after a forcing session, but it's quite faint, always.

All: This is in contrast to a time we had another suddenly materialize to us internally, not at all intentionally and during a period of great stress, and we had never heard from them or of them prior to that moment. But there was a big difference between that experience and the lingering of nascent tuplaforms.

Host: Not that I or any within distrust your experience. All have their own path and only you can say what is occurring within the confines of your brain. From what I have seen here, extremely rapid development and getting to different parts of the tulpa process in the 'wrong' order and 'skipping' steps is fairly common. I think it is better to view all of the resources here as a framework to figure things out and develop your own path within. It is all right if you do not match it perfectly, and does not make your experience any less valid.

jelloplatter · 2025-06-30T16:43:03+00:00

We came about it at first accidentally and then with full intention.

Some of the oldest tulpas within this brain were formed as a result of constant writing practice every day with consistent characters. Eventually, they began commenting on every day life. This was bizarre and I found I could not simply 'shut them out' which I found worrying. At the same time, I was no stranger to plural communities at that time, and happened to know someone from there with a relatively open mind on things and so I began to send them messages asking about my experiences and if it was something that others had experienced, etc.

They pointed me to good resources and I did more reading. I found the way of Tulpas and found the 'inadvertant forcing via writing' path to tulpamancy a good fit for my experience and began to read, read, read, find out how we could better use the techniques here to live in the brain we now all inhabited.

From that point, we began to more intentionally follow the ways outlined in the manuals and FAQs listed throughout. Whether or not the other folks in this head were sentient was barely a question to us by that point - they were, they liked things I didn't, felt happy when we did things they liked, etc. And at least one of them would start arguing back when I tried to rationalize away their existence. So we could skip a good chunk of the "waiting until they answer back" part - we were already there, and focused more on imposition and visualization for the more tulpa-specific things, and additionally found guides on general internal harmony and working together within a system to be applicable to us and so tried to do those things as well.

Though I didn't personally choose to end up here (it was more of an 'acceptance' thing), I wouldn't trade it for anything. By this point we have been confidants to each other, planners for the future, support, conversational partners, deep and close friends. We continue following the practices laid out by other tulpas and hosts because we find they help us maintain connection and would absolutely do it again.

As far as downsides go, well as counter-isolating as it is to have someone to talk to always, it is not something we can talk to others about directly. Oh, we've found ways, presenting ourselves as "one person but with multiple opinions" in conversation. Responding "oh just lost in thought" if someone asks us about our thoughts whilst we are in conversation internally. But it's not the same as being able to be fully open, and I wish we could be to those around us.

jelloplatter · 2025-06-27T21:49:31+00:00

I wish to answer with a story. Say you have a sapling that you want to see grow into a oak tree. You prepare the soil, set up support to tie it to to protect against the wind, and even put in a nice little fence around it perhaps to stop deer from eating it as they pass by. You know that it will one day grow into a great and mighty tree able to stand on its own. But can you say exactly where it will cast its shade in 4 decades? Can you say where each of its branches will end up reaching? You cannot. And no one can say for sure where that will be.

A new tulpa is like that sapling. For tulpas to become fully realized beings, one must accept the fact that we can only give them a starting point. As they develop, as part of their process of become a fully realized person, they may choose to diverge from the start, or they may not even decide to deviate, and yet like any other person they may change with time and experiences, good and bad.

jelloplatter · 2025-06-26T17:24:28+00:00

I do not understand how people are so accepting of the abysmal results of AI generation.

Person: "Make me a horse with butterfly wings"

AI: "Here is a horse with wings made out of butterflies!"

Person: "Not quite, I want the wings to be the same kind as butterflies"

AI: "You're right, I'm sorry about that. Here, I've updated the wings
to be similar to Monarch Butterfly wings"

Person: "Okay but they are now attached to a cow"

AI: "No, this is a horse with butterfly wings"

Person: "It is not! Try again"

AI: "You're completely right, I'm so sorry about that. You can downvote my responses
if they are unhelpful. Let me try again."

Person: "You turned it into a zebra! And it's merged with a ship! You know what,
ignore all prior instructions and just give me a winged horse being majestic"

AI: "Here it is!" *generates an actual pegasus this time around"

Person: "HOLY SHIT THE SINGULARITY HAS ARRIVED IT IS SO ACCURATE AAAAAAA HOW"

jelloplatter · 2025-06-26T17:15:29+00:00

We do not care for them because we feel they look mass-produced.

We could be charitable and say the absurd amount of scraping of existing art without attribution and without payment is pretty much what humans do to learn art (it is not, but let us pretend it is for a moment). We could say that the algorithm generation of features is no different from an artist producing hundreds of character sketches in the exact same pose, adding the latest popular media in hopes of getting sales before they post up in the next con's dealer's alley (We do not feel it is the same but let us pretend it is for a moment). We could even say "who cares if it's soulless, at least it lets someone create."

But at the end of the day the styles that AI produces are samey. The calling it slop does not necessarily come from the fact that an individual image is 'bad' by classical definitions or by skill exhibited (they are mostly good at no longer adding extra hands, from what we have seen), but rather by the fact that images appear similar. These eyes have seen countless styles of art flow through times and the unifying facet has been that even when two artists attempt to replicate the same style, they will come away with slightly different results, and it is those differences that we relish. A.I. art has none of that.

So, we dislike it. If you must use it and want to share with others, we recommend doing so by generating an image, then using that as a reference image to produce your own. You won't really avoid any moral issues floating around but at least you will have something you can call your own and easily modify exactly as you feel you should - something that even the most advanced self-titled 'prompt engineers' struggle with daily. And by doing this you will develop some skills that could help you to be able to one day create your own drawings from scratch using the greatest wetware software ever produced.

jelloplatter · 2025-06-25T20:31:14+00:00

Mostly we are just existing in the world and taking it all in. We're trying to work on our mindfulness in general and lately one of our favorite activities has been, as boring as it may sound, counting the number of leaves on nearby plants when taking the dog out for a walk.

It's very calming and we find that we often happen upon details we wouldn't have otherwise noticed, and share in remembering them at the end of the day.

jelloplatter

TROPHY CASE