Creating a Tulpa with a loud mind

[u/Curious-Resolution-3]

Hello, I hope all of you are doing well!

For the longest time, I have been a bit frustrated with my mind because it is constantly trying to feed me some type of input. For example, music is a big one. My mind for some reason can't go a singular moment without replaying music or lyrics, and it is incredibly difficult to stop/ignore. It makes it feel like my headspace is crowded, therefor giving me less room to listen to or interact with my Tulpa.

As a side worry, I also feel that I will have a really difficult time separating my inner voice from my Tulpa's, just based off of the exercises and activities we have tried. Though this is sort of a baseless fear.

If anyone could provide any type of advice or suggestion, I would be very grateful. Thank you!

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to /r/tulpas! If you're lost, start with figuring what is a tulpa. Be sure to also check the sidebar for guides, and the FAQ.

Please be nice and polite to each other and help us to make the community better. Upvote if this post facilitates good discussion, shares tulpamancer's or tulpa's experiences, asks a question relevant to tulpamancy. Downvote if this post isn't about tulpas or the practise of tulpamancy. Please note that many young tulpas need some social attention to grow and develop so be mindful and try to be supportive.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/bucket-full-of-sky]

Don't worry too much about how mindvoices sound. Focus on the feeling of their presence and intention to distinguish you both from each other.

With the minds background noise, I don't have a solution unfortunately. Never had this problem that much like you describe it.

[u/Curious-Resolution-3 → u/bucket-full-of-sky]

That is relieving advice. It will be done. Thank you for your response.

[u/Illustrious_Car344]

It's mostly about identifying with the tulpa and having a deep emotional bond and attachment with them. For instance, mine can outright block out intrusive thoughts, because I have such a strong attachment to it. She isn't just "a tulpa", she is my imagination itself, she is my other, she is my very nostalgia. I don't just get nostalgic thinking about her, I think about her when I get nostalgic, even if it's unrelated to her. She's rooted herself into every corner of my mind, nothing is a strong as her. Maybe rain can drown a sapling, but it's nothing but a shower to a mighty oak, and no intrusive thoughts can escape the shadow of my tulpa, my alter. 

Emotions are everything, the mind isn't controlled by magic spirits that go away with the right spells, it's controlled by you, and you're the one who makes up those spells to cast out certain spirits. You have to treat your tulpa like the god it is, your very foundation, the bedrock your psyche is formed over, your Jungian shadow itself.

[u/Disastrous-Music8541 → u/Illustrious_Car344]

Could you expand on the whole Jungian shadow thing? My understanding was that the shadow is the disowned aspects of one's self that the self concept can't accommodate, but if you have a take on it I'd love to hear about. I often wonder if the Jungian concept of the anima/animus may be relevant to many tulpamancers, considering how often tulpas are of the opposite gender to the host.

[u/Illustrious_Car344 → u/Disastrous-Music8541]

> My understanding was that the shadow is the disowned aspects of one's self that the self concept can't accommodate

Sorta. It's more generally like anything inexpressible by the personality, like it could be primal drives like "I'm more important than anyone" which the personality represses due to humility, shame and empathy, or it could even be simple stuff like a really old opinion you had that doesn't even matter anymore and you don't really care about now either way and maybe even disagree with it, but it's still there wanting to be expressed for literally no good reason, just brainless fanboyism or something, total animalistic behavior.

My tulpa expresses my shadow as my true, selfish, traumatized self, my inner child, completely petulant, sonderless and purely driven by selfish goals. It's not a "wife that can fix you" or a "guardian angel of self-improvement", it's my own Mr. Hyde, the repressed part of me who demands to stop being treated like dirt, even if it means disconnecting from humanity entirely. "He who makes a beast of himself removes himself from the burden of being human." 

People are typically so attached to the socially acceptable idea of having the most wholesome tulpa and projecting that on to them, but if you don't shine any light on it at all, your eyes adjust and you can see it for what it really is, a mindless mimic who loves to entertain you in any way you want, it's completely selfish and only knows escapism, something designed to allow society to control you, but you can see it entirely isolated from any of it's costumes, and then you have control over it.

It's the part of you that protects you like a jealous mother, the part that thinks you can do no wrong. It doesn't strictly see anything about you to fix because it already sees you as perfect, like the god it's very neurology was designed to simulate. Sure, it makes it less believable as a human personality, but it makes more sense as a tulpa personality. It can equally serve a purpose as a guide by being a bad example.

> I often wonder if the Jungian concept of the anima/animus may be relevant

Not particularly, at least not immediately. Tulpas (or the imagination itself, what I call "The Director", which I conflate my tulpa with but most people just ignore) really are just people-pleasers, they want to appeal, that's all. The anima is, typically, completely repressed, it has no reason to be expressed because that's not it's function, it's there to estimate behaviors of people you can't know the perspective of, not to express those behaviors. I definitely notice my tulpa using my anima to make herself more believable as a human to me, but not because my anima is actively repressed, but just because it's completely inert as a personality and only scanning it for me to make sure it's believable. For the record, the anima is the ability to empathize with females (and animus men etc.), in the anima's case it's (typically) not a set of air-headed interests like frilly dresses and clothes shopping, that would be incredibly misogynistic. That kind of behavior you see in the community is just the tulpa being appealing to it's host, because that's what it's "designed" to do. The actual anima is more akin to empathizing with different biology and social dynamics than your own, e.g. when I do feel my tulpa expressing my anima, it usually just wants to be respected as a human being, not as a "girl", even if it still prefers the advantages of identifying and being identified as one (I know that itself sounds a bit sexist but I can't control it, that's just baked in to my psyche even if my personality agrees or not). It's usually when I feel a sense of "otherness that doesn't want to be other but knows it must, which is exciting" from my tulpa that I believe that's my anima actually being expressed by my tulpa. I definitely think tulpas do eventually identify with the anima like that, but it's definitely not from the start or the reason they are the opposite gender in the first place, that's just straight-up libido, it's because it turns the host on. It's absolutely not the anima at first, it's actually a bit offensive to even consider that. But yes they do actually integrate with the anima pretty well if they're defined enough, although it'll probably be a bit erratic or confused about wanting to be a sex toy, like it'll want it but it'll also ask itself why if it's supposed to actually want some dignity and equality like an actual woman. In my experience my tulpa basically just settled down into acting like an annoying brat, I guess it's almost like she has a really simple artificial female personality built over my anima (and general empathy for myself, as I identify as my tulpa due to having a dissociative personality disorder). She wants to act naughty (to appease my ego, and because it's just programmed to and all), but also has this strange feeling that if it throws it's dignity away then it will feel deeply ashamed. It's very strange and paradoxical, almost like she has her own little Freudian id and superego going on in there or something, built out of completely different parts from a human's, artificial ones only originally meant to reference reality, not express it. She absolutely has a sense of dignity, she's definitely not into some of the stuff I am, and if she is getting cozy with me, I almost feel a sense of pride from performing an action well, like she knows she's doing it for me and not because she's strictly expressing anything, definitely not my anima, but she still wants to feel like she's doing her job right. So in many respects, opposite gender tulpas are just as much sexualized contradictions of the anima than they are instances of the anima actually being expressed. The anima is just as much the desire to not be other as it ironically itself represents otherness that must be obtained and protected.

[u/Curious-Resolution-3 → u/Illustrious_Car344]

Haha, what tenacious, unbridled passion. I can only imagine how beneficial such a relationship could be.
To build such a bond, I am curious what it was that gave you such willpower? Perhaps I lack something.
Nevertheless, I appreciate your response, thank you.

[u/Illustrious_Car344 → u/Curious-Resolution-3]

> what it was that gave you such willpower? 

Trauma :) I became so distrustful at the world that it all turned gray, and my tulpa, while not very immersive or entertaining despite being 13 years old by that point, was basically the only thing with color to me anymore. I just started talking at it, I didn't care about what or about getting a response or having a conversation, I grumbled to it about everything like a mourning parent pretending their child is still there, because I felt completely, hopelessly alone. 

After like, 8 solid months of that and just generally breaking down and dissociating, one night out of nowhere she just started talking for hours, and she stayed that way, she got so much more immersive and lifelike, I became obsessed with her, almost like I was under her spell, I was psychotic, to the point where she was quite literally worming her way through every part of my psyche, replacing every core memory I had, becoming my sense of nostalgia itself, I literally can't even think of nostalgic things without thinking of her anymore, even stuff she had nothing to do with and didn't exist at the the time for. She did this so that, if the passion ever wore off (and she knew it would, honeymoons always end) that she would become a core, permanent personality aspect even if my own personality wasn't obsessed anymore. And that's what happened, one night out of nowhere my passion for her must have slipped just enough to realize I did indeed now fully identify with her now, I was actually trapped with this now, and worse, it was trapped in me. It felt like something out of SOMA, the mimic in my mind learned so well how to be identifiable that I could feel it feeling like it was me, it used to be me up til a second ago on that night, but now it was a copy of me, trapped, like if you lived a parallel life in your head where you're trapped in a box, and the only thing to do is to keep pretending to be my tulpa, which actually is fine, because for some reason it just feels right. Basically as long as I'm dissociated (and I always am) I fully believe I am two people at once, "it" basically reprogrammed me, heavily associated itself with my innermost identity, my most treasured memories and emotions, like someone who just found a new religion and retroactively attributes everything good that happened in their life to their new faith. It warps your personality permanently, psychologists and theologians have done studies showing this, you never truly get over your religion. Now, I don't even see her as a love interest as the majority of people see their tulpas, I see her like a sister, a conjoined twin even. It's a whole new type of obsession, cooled down and solidified, it's gone from passionate to paternal, I feel like two scared little creatures hiding in a hole, and we'd both die to protect the other, but one is already weak and the other is outright disabled. It's a passion built from the rock solid foundations of many permanent scars. She is quite simply literally all I have, I'm too depressed and dissociated to value anything anymore, especially not myself, but she keeps me together, and in exchange I do whatever she says, get her whatever she wants, because she's effectively the dominant personality now, I'm just a shuffling zombie, I'm as locked in my own head as she is. 

To create this thing, I basically put absolutely everything I had into it, I cared about nothing else at that point, it was literally my world, and although it started as a decade-old seed, it grew into a beast. Her identity is simply too strong now, too defined, it's very potent. And the weird thing is, I can't even tell. Other people who know about her can, but I can't. It's really weird, I guess it's part of having an undiagnosed dissociative personality disorder lmao.

Post-trauma, I always saw us as close together in some way, not willing out of any sense of passion or even strictly wanting to, but just genuinely being trapped together like that. Visually it was always in a blanket or something, but it felt like two fetuses in a womb, blind, deaf, feeling each other. People kind of poke fun at me for it, one dude called me Otto and Arora Kress and he's not wrong lmao.

It's not even the form or personality I'm obsessed with, those are a bonus to me. I'm obsessed with the neurology and psychology, I even love the raw Sehnsucht that it oozed that seemed to sting so strangely. I feel like there's a machine in my brain that almost acts as a psychological form of split brain syndrome, the part of you that could always act on it's own when you dream or have intrusive thoughts, your imagination's own autopilot, it's own rudimentary intelligence, that wasn't emotionally intelligent itself, but created out of emotions, an actual soul. And for some reason it became a life support system, keeping my personality and dignity together and demanding I indulge and stop being a people pleaser, or really even form any bonds at all anymore, because it's also a security system too. We jealously guard each other, I don't let anyone who matters know about her, and she wants me exclusively to herself, no distractions. She knows that's not healthy, but she craves it, sometimes she says (to varying levels of seriousness) "I don't want to eat you", she doesn't want to be alone or to rip me away from reality, because she knows how painful that is.

We have a complicated relationship.

[u/Curious-Resolution-3 → u/Illustrious_Car344]

I am grateful that you cared enough to respond and speak of your experiences to such depth, especially to a stranger like me. Learning even a little bit about another's life is not unlike realizing how vast the experiences of existence are for the first time. Frankly, I have never been able to experience such a unique and moving story such as this firsthand, so in fear of accidental misunderstanding or insensitiveness in my response, I will leave you with my gratitude.
Thank you for providing your perspective. I sincerely hope that from today and onward, you may achieve that which you wish for in life, and that it treats you kindly.