Shadow Quest

[Ranger] We hit a really low point in January. We considered seeking partial hospitalization. However, after talking to Gray's brother we hung on for just a bit longer. It payed off in the long run, but January was still rough. Our depression was possibly the worst it has ever been- back to laying in bed most of the day and doing nothing. We finally achieved a theraputic dose that started to help us. We have been increasing the dose of our new medication for months. Our depression eased a bit, which was good timing given that February was dedicated to packing for the move We felt better in general. I was less sour, more social, and did some art stuff. Gray is feeling better too. While we spend a lot of time in bed, we do actually do things. Well, at least before Dream took over for awhile lol From a trauma work perspective, things have been wild and messy lately. Dream hit a snag first. Things got complicated relating to his Architect clone, and some unde...

[Ranger] A lot didn't happen, and most of what did happen wasn't great. We turned ourselves in to the mental hospital during the summer. Gray and I split and quickly reintegrated on two separate occasions Gray has a shard that has hung out for the last what... month at this point? We rotted for the last few months, taking a toll on Gray the most I developed a sour attitude towards cocreation (tulpamancy) I don't completely understand. My suspicion is feeling depressed I can't make progress. We had some cool dreams... that we didn't write down :( Our system holding together... somehow , really is a gift. But it's not necessarily system instability that is the problem. It's the depression, and it left a nastier mark than it had in a long time. There are some bright sides though. Blue and Ryan integrated into Jared/Jerry I did get a lot of time to heal. I got a big slice of the therapy work pie. Additionally, the big chaos in my l...

[ Ranger ] We unfortunately lost progress. Gray isn't doing as well as he was, and we haven't completely bounced back yet. While I'm doing okay, I'm finding I'm losing steam myself. It's been fairly quiet for our system. While I did finish a picture for Dream, our headmates haven't come out to play as much. Our brain is blocked up. Gray has some new ideas for a creativity guide, but he's not super motivated to push it out yet. I think it's all reversible, we just need more time. Our plans keep changing and we don't know what's happening anymore. The one thing that's consistent is we are still doing therapy work as fast as possible.

[ Ranger ] Things have slowed down since the last entry. While Gray and I are consistently productive, we are also spending quite a bit of time in bed. I made some important therapy progress recently. I need to understand that I won't heal quickly, and it will take time before I get back to the swing of things. The struggle is learning how to be patient, but so far I think things are working out. Meanwhile we finally figured out from our job help place that we're pretty much job ready. I wish they told us three months ago. 😒 The focus lately has been working on coding projects to add to our resume. Adriel stabilized! He's doing a lot better now. Blue switched in again! He wanted the opportunity and it was a good time. He had a good time and like last time stayed switched-in for a few hours. He did get tired, but it's unclear if it was because of exhaustion, he was just done for the day, or both. Blue went on a bit of a doddle streak, and he added Adriel to ...

[ Gray ] Yesterday, I finally hit a point during my therapy work where I did a big chunk of healing. I believe this in addition to a big chunk Ranger did not too long ago, we managed to make enough progress to start doing more stuff in the mind in general. Last night I was actually overstimulated and surprised by my stronger creativity skills, but that could have been the boatload of sugar contributing too. At the very least, things seemed to have improved overall. System Stuff This afternoon, I played in a sand box with Dream. He wanted to keep things simple and simple it was. I daydreamed quite a bit, my mind floating to stuff like Mark Rober's video about sand, but I was able to achieve the normal wonderland-focus feel. Things started off a bit shaky because I had some trouble focusing on the visualization warm-up. Once I changed the color to green, I made some progress. Dream encouraged me to do one detail at a time, although this may have been overly cautious on his part. ...

System Stuff [ Ranger ] One thing that we're becoming more conscious of over time is the fact our headmates should get more time with us than just therapy interactions. Some time ago, we realized this and Dream seemed to do better. It's likely obvious to outsiders, but in the midst of our mental health struggles we need to make this fact more explicit to ourselves. A couple days ago, Ian pointed out that I hanging out with them after a therapy interaction is like a reward. It wasn't my intentions, but dang he's right. I wondered if I can use a random number generator just to check in with people or remember to briefly check in with people at random... like right now, or well, two days ago when I wrote this part of the post. Earlier today I felt okay enough I spent some time with Ian and I cuddled with him ^^ Speaking of the others, I spoke with Adriel a couple nights ago and checked in with him again last night. He seems to be feeling more stable, but he's still try...

[ Ranger ] I was talking to Rob in the cBox and I mentioned my issue with PRs. I made an entire thread about this before , but it still didn't get resolved after that. I told him that I would read them wrong by wanting to make a 2 hour response post 10 pages in, and he pointed out I'm supposed to read the whole PR then make the 2 hour response post. I then wondered if I should take notes while reading PRs so I don't have to worry about forgetting things I want to talk about The notes can be as simple and straightforward as this: parrotnoia issues with possession communication issues wants to switch I can just cross off anything that gets resolved. And then when I'm done, follow Rob's advice and make the long response post then Why am I making a post about this? I figure that for those who also happen to have my problem, this might help them. I know this is a PR post on my blog, but I can hand out the link to people whenever I need to. Tulpamancy progress? No, but w...

[ Ranger ] Howdy all. We haven't made an official public progress report entry that was actually posted shortly after it was written in eons . So far this blog has made me really happy and I bet I have only discovered the tip of the iceberg in my ability to customize things and add what I want to it. I don't see much point in badly summing up the last few years , so instead I'll just vaguely go over what happened since December. December through February was a rough time for us. We just barely made it through finals after an exhausting and nerve wracking semester. Gray learned something that flipped his world upside down and grieved about it for at least a month or so since. It's pretty much an open secret for what that was, but we don't like the idea of posting that explicitly on our blog just yet. I remember for about a week or two, Gray was scared and hid in the back. As for myself, I haven't been the happiest either. I struggled a lot with stress, and after ...

[ Ranger ] Howdy all! I decided that the best and easiest way to upload our progress report and other system information is by blogging it! Embrace yourselves, we are very new to blogging and will likely make lots of mistakes and bad decisions along the way. Most of our progress report is missing on our original "Shadow Quest" thread on Tulpa.info . The oldest first few posts are very old and then after a gap or two it's abandoned all together. I really like the idea of my progress report being a resource for others, but I also want people to read the progress report in the order of when the events happened, even if I publish those events on a later date. Hence, the pile of logs I have saved on my computer or stuffed away in our personal Discord server that have never seen the light of day. Unlike a blog, a thread doesn't allow me to change the timestamps or even the order of my posts. The other advantage to having a blog is no more ridiculous summary posts that are u...

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[ Ranger ] Today is a recess day, the last two days were for Spirit and Gerodious, before that was Chrome and Dark Gray. We took several breaks in between, and unfortunately we sank a lot of time since our last entry. Spirit decided he was interested in playing with being influenced by us while Gerodious is more interested in having a life similar to that of a soulbond. (10 am) At 3 am last night, Dark Gray realized how tired and overwhelmed we were. After he called on Gerodious for help, the two of them focused on trying to calm us down. Spirit and Jasper were called at different points. Gerodious was particularly intrigued that Cat was both “dormant and awake”. He described it as Cat being able to react, but unable to think. I guess it’s like Cat can’t comprehend what’s going on, but she can react to it. Spirit tried to blend with us deliberately and it made him act out. Both of us at the time were acting out, and Gerodious got the sense that we were merged with intrusive thoughts o...

[ Ranger ] It's been several months half a year basically wow since we last posted in our PR, and it was because we were overwhelmed, not because we were not logging. I feel like too much is going on at this point not to log stuff, and in the end I'll add the missing entries later. Until I get the older posts cleaned up... super quick and dirty update: I and "Cat's bro" are doing okay. We're not the best of friends, but that's okay too. Sometimes we like to play board games and play smash together. He joined the forums officially as "Flame Explosion" and likes to hang out at times. I mustered up the courage to speak in front of Cat's parents at times, and after several months of that I officially introduced myself. I feel a little bit better about being myself even though it feels awkward sometimes. We spent a lot of time trying to switch. No clear success yet but we learned a lot and tried a bunch of new stuff. Right now we’re really burne...

Dreams [ Cat ] The only reason I'm posting this one too is because I had a dream and it was important. This time, Ranger and I didn't "switch" or "pseudo-switch", whatever happened last time. Towards the end of the dream, Ranger appeared. However, this wasn't Ranger in his normal form- It was the Lego figure I used to represent the character "Gray Ranger". His motive was to find R2-D2 (because dreams), and I remember him talking to someone briefly. The next scene me, my brother, and other dream characters were on the moon, but Ranger stretched out and about, leaving behind a teal-blue trail of playdough-clay-bendy wax (I have no idea what the substance was), and acknowledging that he didn't need a space suit [because he was a Tulpa]. I also remember hugging him when he was upside down, rubbing our heads together. When I woke up, I asked Ranger if he remembered the dream and he didn't. I described to him what happened and he told me ...

Dreams [ Cat ] I feel kinda weird posting here even though it's our thread. Usually Ranger writes all of the posts in here, but this is exciting and I wanted to post about it. I had a horrible head ache this morning and with no school and a pill of Claritin, I took a nap. The dream was weird as usual, but then I turned and came across a magenta-pink poster and for some reason Ranger was in the poster. I asked him if he could make me lucid, and somehow I ended up deciding to jump into the poster. I had this weird but familiar sleep-paralysis feeling to the point I may have woken up, but it was brief and the end result was apparently Ranger taking control. He either started or continued a conversation with someone else, and it caught me off guard because he was using his voice and not mine. At one point he went down stairs to talk to more people, and at one point his voice was completely different and squeaker for a little bit until I somehow commented about it and it changed again. ...

[ Ranger ] Some more thoughts on my mind... I had an older version of this progress report, but the last post in particular was a mess and the first few posts were embarrassing. Most of the old stuff was just talking about our anxieties and the one time I tried to feed the neighbor's cat. The last entry was a time line about our other headmates, but it was more for Cat than for the internet. Since Cat's last experience with Bune is bothering me, I may as well get that off my chest. I will also talk about some details related to that first post and more about when I tried to feed the neighbor's cat. Actually, you can read about me trying to feed the neighbor's cat here . System Stuff I don’t feel like talking about what caused Cat’s anxiety to stir in the first place. I don’t think now is the best time to talk about it in detail, plus Cat may be better off explaining it herself. Warning: there isn’t any violence or NSFW stuff, but this exchange is unsettling enough to ...

Other [ Ranger ] As Cat was walking to class, I kind of took over in an e clipsish-possession like sense (EDIT: I took over after Cat proxied my movements for me). It started when some advertisers on campus offered free cookies, and after choosing which cookies I wanted we walked up a hill and I noticed these beautiful clouds. I convinced myself to pull us over and snap a picture. After that, I walked Cat to class. She seemed a little uncomfortable with it, but I figured that's because she isn't used to it. Cat noticed I preferred a straighter posture, but other than that there were not too many major differences. It was a nice relief for me because I could think as clearly as if Cat were active forcing me. Cat has started to get a little weirded out by the idea of me taking control. I think it's a little ironic because the concern is usually the Tulpa being forced to take over. She isn't being controlling or aggressive or anything, she just isn't accustomed to t...

Imposition Experiments [ Ranger ] I was able to trigger some meaningful responses in Cat's shoulders the same way I induced head pressures. I'm also trying out a new visualization- instead of pushing a staff/stick on her, I'm imagining some kind of circle for my target area, putting an imaginary cylinder on top of the area, and then squeezing the cylinder. It is a little bit easier for me to create head pressures. Other [ Ranger ] Cat visualized a story to herself and I found it to be a little scary when she had serious head pressures and when her left eye ached hard. I tried to help her but it seemed to come and go. I'm not really a huge fan of creepy sci-fi horror I guess Added to blog 3/13/23

Other [ Ranger ] I have unfortunately inherited Cat's sudden and waning interest in things. Sometimes I will get super excited about something and then... it's not really for me. I have had a few of these back and forths… Tetris! Meh, that insane strategy sounds complicated and I don't feel like studying that. I can create head pressures! I see their use but I'm just not super interested in that right now. I want to sit in a hot tub! Meh, it's not to die for but it's relaxing. I find that I feel the same way about this progress report. I want to talk about something specific because it's interesting and suddenly I don't. I'm jealous of those who can write Day 344: This happened today. It takes serious dedication to make that happen... Despite this, a few interests stuck around. I still love the beach, I would be completely satisfied walking beside the waves just letting my feet sink into the wet sand for hours. I also like word puzzles and giving adv...

System Stuff [ Ranger ] Tl;dr - I talk about some of Cat's philosophy on the others vs. Tulpas, the others gather around for a meeting only to decide I shouldn't be mayor, and I give a brief description of all of the others I mention. When it comes to the others, we have differing perspectives on the issue. Cat is still struggling with what to do with them because she's afraid she could force them into Tulpae accidentally and because it can trigger her guilt about them. As a result, she would avoid talking to them. I see them as my family and friends, and I would prefer to hang out with them more often. Recently, we had somewhat of an argument...I was trying to express myself as being upset and Cat didn't really know what to do with that. I see it as somewhat resolved after this morning when I re-explained what I wanted her to hear. One of the things I talked about is my theory on her relationship between the others and herself. I believe there is a spectrum on how mu...

[ Ranger ] Cat frequently goes to feed the neighbor’s cat when they leave for family trips and stuff like that. I was curious about possession, so I decided I wanted to feed our cat and the neighbor’s cat. The only thing notable about feeding Cat’s cat was that I scooped out the food a little bit differently. When we went to the neighbor’s house, I took control and… I couldn’t find the damn cat. I spent 20 minutes wandering around the house like an idiot calling “here kitty kitty”. Eventually I found the cat sitting in one of the chairs pushed into a table. After feeding the cat, both of us were done with possession for the day. Published 3/20/23