Tulpa.info - tulpa-discussion

Or, it could simply be mentioned as part of teaching someone about tulpas and how to make them.

The question before (as I answered it), was if it was okay to make a tulpa if you had no intention of learning switching or possession.

3:56 PM

Your question is dumb. What am I supposed to say?

3:57 PM

"If a host is going to be a bad person to their tulpa, should they make a tulpa?"

3:57 PM

That's like, Tulpa Ethics 101.

3:57 PM

It'll always be up to the host in the end. But no, it would be rather rude, and not recommended.

3:58 PM

I don't see much deep discussion coming from such an ancient topic with simple answers.

Sorry to change topics. But I do have a question. Has anyone's tulpa asked to have their name changed and you find yourself absolutely incapable of remembering the new name first and constantly calling them by the old name? Is there a way I can.... like actually remember the new name and not constantly call them by the old one? I'm not having any luck at all with that.

@Lillyshins , yes, one of my dissipated sister had a problem with that

Write it down on sticky notes?

This isn't the first time and every other time she just gave up and went back to the other name. Now she is saying that again.... But I really would like to give her what she wants.

@Reisen Very well, I will break down the 'dumb question' for you, since you appear to not understand it. Deciding to restrict switching/possession at the outset is restrictive to the tulpa's possible life fulfillment. -> Restricting a tulpa's life fulfillment outside of practical reasons (such as the surrounding situation being inappropriate) is generally considered being a 'bad host'. -> Do you think that people who wish to be bad hosts should be encouraged or discouraged to make a tulpa, and do you see the contradiction in advising people that it is okay to be bad hosts, while simultaneously saying that "people who will be bad hosts shouldn't make tulpas"? (edited)

3:59 PM

There. Perhaps the 'dumb question' will be easier to parse now.

The tulpa might not care about the outside world and may never want to switch or possess.

I already addressed that.

Maybe I should have moved over to another board sorry.

That's a topic for the host and tulpa to discuss at a later date, once they've been made.

@Lillyshins It's fine.

I think hosts should be open to the idea of possession/switching when they begin, even if they take a while before starting it. While a tulpa might be fine supporting a host from the inside without possessing the body and find that a fulfilling way to live, there's no guarantee, and the host shouldn't make that decision for them

Well I don't.

4:01 PM

You can't force someone to learn switching or possession.

Shockingly, Tewi, I did mention that some tulpas may not want to possess or switch, but that actively being opposed to the possibility that the tulpa would want to possess or switch is already intending to be a bad host.

@SkyeNet , I think you are imposing your view on what tulpa should be on others now. Some of tulpas are just imaginary friends. If one doesn't want to develop them into alters, what's wrong with that?

That's thought policing, at best.

I said they should be open to it

@Deleted User I addressed that in my initial question - it referred to people who were making tulpas as something separate from the thing that already has a term to clearly describe it: "imaginary friend".

The host and tulpa should discuss once the tulpa is well developed and decides they do, against the host's wishes, want to learn to switch or possess.

for when/if the tulpa actually wants to have hobbies and such

It's entirely between them, not us.

I'm amazed at how devoted you are to twisting the questions right now.

Well I don't feel that way. You're all too used to this community's norms.

@SkyeNet , then why people who want to develop tulpas into something beyond imaginary friend shouldn't just call them alters?

I'm not twisting the question, I'm saying it's not our place to decide for them.

4:03 PM

I said a "bad" host would preferably not make a tulpa.

Imaginary friends called tulpas are tulpas too, in my opinion.

Okay. So you're answering a question that was never asked.

4:03 PM

Wonderful.

4:03 PM

Never mind, then.

You make possession sound like a huge deal that could potentially ruin a host's life. I really don't see the big deal in just letting a tulpa take over to have hobbies or talk to people, or whatever they like to do. The tulpa doesn't have to totally take over the host's life for them to just possess and do things they like.

@Deleted User Simple - alters are actually something different.

That is literally my answer to your question of if a host who has no intent to switch or be possessed should make a tulpa. That it's not up to us to decide.

They are primarily referred to in the context of dissociative disorders, to my understanding.

Another way of putting that is that it's okay for them to make a tulpa, I guess.

What different possibilities tulpas and alternate identities have?

They also do tend to serve a rather different function than tulpas do.

Well for one thing, they're much more well established and defined in this community. (edited)

4:04 PM

Considering I barely know what defines an alter.

Tulpas, even those that are more similar to 'alters', do tend to be companions rather than different personality subsets only, or reactions to stimulus created by stress.

ok, I think I agree with you now

I don't find it unreasonable to refer to that as something different from an "alter" - "alters" could thus be turned into "tulpas", just as "imaginary friends" can as well, since tulpas do share some similarities with both.

It's quite characteristic for tulpas being both alternate identities and imaginary companions.

There may certainly be something linking them to more of one or the other, but I do find that a full "tulpa" does tend to be both, and quite a few don't exhibit the quality of being an 'alter' or otherwise developed 'person'.

But still, it's your opinion a tulpa needs to have certain abilities to be called a tulpa. In my opinion, imaginary friends that are yet to learn it or don't plan to learn it deserve a privilige of being called a tulpa too.

I do still call them 'tulpas', but I will copy and paste what I just posted in beginners to explain.

4:13 PM

For the record, I don't consider tulpas to be a 'tulpa' initially. The lines are certainly not the clearest, but tulpas do rather develop as an errant thought or concept/idea in a person's head, progressing to be a 'proto-tulpa' of some type (though I would love to have a better term than that), be it closer to a typical 'imaginary friend' in which the host is pretending to be the tulpa as means of... "developing it", or something closer to the 'imaginary friend' displaying apparent independent agency as Luna referred to. That said, I do think that in the latter case, that apparent independent agency doesn't necessarily occur in the same way that it does with, say... authors. Some people do in fact develop their tulpas without making them into a character first, but instead developing them via experience.
Beyond that, I suppose I would consider one an actual 'tulpa' in the more specific sense (rather than as shorthand for all of the above) once it displays a clearly developed personality at minimum, and certainly once it can possess/switch and assert itself as somebody different than the host.

4:13 PM

When in more technical discussion, I prefer to dispense with the broadly defined shorthand and use more specific terminology to avoid confusion, generally trying to define them in advance so things can be more clear.

Probably worth noting that, once we as a system started spending about half of our time with the host fronting and the other half with one of us, we realized we were probably a little outside the original scope of "Tulpamancy". But above all tulpamancy is a name, and it also reflects our origins.

4:14 PM

You might consider us "more than" or "not" tulpas at this point, but I don't find the recategorization necessary.

Mine started out that way. So unfortunately I can't add to the development portion of the convo. But tulpa seems an extremely broad term if those are the definitions.

I do not think that: imaginary friends displaying minimal independent agency (but claimed as such by the host), ones that display a developed personality and more likely independence, and ones that can switch/possess and demonstrate that they are in fact different; are the same thing and should not be referred to by the same term when in more technical discussion regarding what each of them actually are, with regard to morality or the technicality of 'what is a tulpa'.

You know, Winter, sometimes terms are not clear and they are more dependent on arbitraty classification rather than classification based on strict definition. The problem with the tulpa is that it is arbitrary term with many deprecations.

I know.

4:18 PM

That is why I want to specify it when I am discussing it, so that two very different things are not classified as the same.

Also since we are all different we are going to experience all of this in different ways. Even if it's actually all going the same in each of our brains our lens will be different enough for it to appear to be wildly different. Not all the time but the possibility is definately there

It's tilting at windmills, in my opinion

That is true.

4:20 PM

However, there is quite a bit of consistency despite that, which is what I try to grasp at.

It's all we can ever do.

And I think separating imaginary friends that are called tulpas by majority of the community anyway, isn't a good method of achieving your purpose. Especially, if you don't convince a lot of people to consistently shape it as you want to. People will call even their "unborn" imaginary friends they are yet to hear tulpas and we can't do much about it, in my opinion (edited)

And if they truly believe that eventually it will become a tulpa anyway.

...I'm not saying that it is practical. I know most people will go on saying that their imaginary friends are tulpas if they want to.

4:25 PM

However, with people who want to have decent discussion and try to gather information, some consistency of what we are talking about is required.

What could be feasible in my opinion, is to introduce something like internal classification and promote it.

Placing labels on this like this sometimes cause more harm than good. But agreed. We have to have some sort of baseline to have any sort of real discussion about anything really.

4:27 PM

Anyway I've taken too much time already my break is long past you guys have fun.

Let me put it this way - if we have two people describing an apple, and one person describes an apple as commonly known, but another describes what is commonly known as an orange - they will not have a decent discussion about how to eat the apple.

4:28 PM

Or how it is grown, what it goes well with, the color, etc.

4:28 PM

However, they can both agree that it is a fruit, and is typically juicy.

4:29 PM

I would find it equally important to use two separate words (such as apple and orange in that example) as shorthand for these two separate phenomena, just as I find it important to use separate words for the separate described phenomena in the tulpa community.

The problem is that here we are not sure if the tulpa is analogy of a fruit or an apple. It's not that obvious to choose a good level of classification

Otherwise, when one has multiple groups that are describing different things with the same word, and trying to come to global conclusions about "what the word describes" at the end based on all groups' descriptions, one comes up with unintelligible gibberish that may or may not have some commonalities.

And excluding a lot of companions from being a tulpa seems like a bad idea to me

Alright. Quite frankly, if a different term were more widely adopted for tulpas that can switch/possess or otherwise demonstrate some form of clearly independent and developed agency, with "tulpa" being used for the others that are also under the current blanket term, I would be happy to change.

4:32 PM

I don't care about what specific word is used, just that the different words are used to describe different (and occasionally contradictory) phenomena.

4:32 PM

I also don't particularly care if there are words used to describe the specific types of 'tulpas' that are referred to, but people haven't gotten there yet either.

4:33 PM

Essentially, if I am discussing what a tulpa is when there are three different common definitions for it which repudiate each other, and I am using one definition while the other person uses another, the discussion will be gibberish and generally unproductive.

Tulpa is well known to be a very vague umbrella term for many thoughtforms/types of pluralities' system's members.

4:35 PM

Over the years we've made it more "inclusive" than "exclusive" for the sake of community and acceptance, rather than shunning those with different experiences.

4:35 PM

Those who consider their systemmates soulbonds or alters participate in discussions regularly. Relative to how few of them there are.

Tch.

See: the Fall Family, as the first to come to mind.

Alright, at the very least then, if "tulpa" is meant to be a blanket term for essentially anything vaguely fitting the term "character in a person's head that has some kind of illusion of independent agency", then it should be advertised as such.

I tend to define a tulpa as a character having it's own identity and giving an impression of independence from it's host, who could potentially develop abilities of possession/switching and function as an alternate identity.

Well when you add "illusion" in there it doesn't sound quite as nice.

4:37 PM

The latter half is extra, Luna, but that's basically the definition.

Fine. "Appearance", if accurate terminology causes people to be squeamish.

But it's right, there is no good, catchy word about tulpas who entirely fulfull the last part of the sentence.

Independence is sometimes interchanged with sentience or other terms.

4:38 PM

I meant, Winter, that including "Illusion" implies a sense of not caring for the legitimacy of the phenomenon that we're talking about.

The problem is that tulpas are presented as an independent 'person' from the host with their own personality, feelings, thoughts, etc - but when it is practically used, it refers to essentially anything a person wants to say is a 'tulpa', as long as they claim it is 'independent'/'sentient'/'sapient', etc and is entirely in the person's head.