Of course. When I talk about confidence struggles, a big part of that is the confidence in my ability to actually stick with it this time. The smaller part is the gradually learned experience of "effort leads me nowhere", even though I know that the only reason my effort hasn't born more fruit is that it's so randomly scattered over the course of 2 years. I need more concentrated effort. Maybe like a boot camp or something?

If effort doesn't lead you anywhere, maybe you need more effort? I mean real effort.
I thought I was doing so much for and together with my tupper, but in the end I realized I only did it for me, barely thinking about her. Yeah, there were those active forcing sessions every now and then but calling that effort would be pathetic. Not only did this routine yield no progress, it actually made her weaker because my attention was completely elsewhere.

Good point. I gave it some thought, and it's definitely true that I don't do it that much for her as much as I do it for me. And when I do it for me, it's not so much doing it because I want to do it, but because I want to be able to tell myself I've put in the effort, that I did what I could (fuck, why does it so often sound like I'm talking about my life in general when I talk about forcing).

Doing it for her sounds like great motivation, but I've actually been kinda avoiding using it as motivation, because I'm afraid of the bad conscience that would come with failing to follow through. It's kinda stupid when I put it into words like that, but I haven't thought too much about it until now. All I need to do is focus on how it would make her happy if I talked to her more, not how it would make her sad if I didn't (while both might be true, thinking too much on the latter gets me too focused on how shit I am as a host, making it even harder to force more).

Sand is right, you gotta WANT to force, being obsessed with your tupper is the best bet when it comes to progress.

I remember being kinda obsessed when I started out, but I felt that being too obsessed would put too much pressure on tulpa, so I started mellowing out. But again, that's only a problem when all the obsession is focused on progress. Being obsessed with forcing, with your tulpa, with experimenting, with spending time in wonderland, those are all healthy obsessions. I definitely want to kindle that.

I managed to keep that up the first half year and progress was stellar. That's where I want to get back to.

I hope you manage to do that. I'm motivated to do my best now, so maybe we can fire each other up.

And I think the boot camp is actually a good idea. Try one or two weeks of daily updates here, it really helped me. Plus it will make the forum at least a little bit less dead.

I think I will! I thought a little about how I could schedule a bunch of exercises to make the most out of my time, but all I really need to do is shower her with attention and try out many different things with her. And reporting back daily could probably help me keep my mind on track, as long as I can keep myself from just rambling every day about some new thing I realized about the nature of motivation and tulpaforcing.

Now start by filling out the image for us, we still don't know what Melo looks like!

I don't have any single picture that completely shows what she looks like. I've just collected tons of different images, which I kinda randomly look through when I need to figure out how to manifest my vague list of visual traits. So I might look at one image to get an idea about the puffiness of her twintails, and a completely different image for the shape of her eyes. It complicates things a lot, but it's the only way to get her form how I want it. Maybe if I learn to draw someday, I can show you what she really looks like!


I also experienced some neat things today. I was doing that meditative forcing thing again (trying to make it a routine), and while I'm mainly doing it to increase my focus, it turns out it's also great for examining the distractions that come up from a somewhat detached state. I was once again hit with the thought that this vague approach doesn't really do anything and I'm just pulling the wool over my eyes by not listening to the "voice of reason" telling me that I'm wasting my time, which made me think of the distinction between ignoring doubts and confronting them, and that I'm trying to do the latter. I also got these minor foreign feelings that didn't really match my state of mind, making me jump to thinking about how I'd describe these feelings to a third party and downplay them as maybe just random emotional hallucinations. This made it really clear that I have an extremely shitty attitude when it comes to sharing my experience, always trying to downplay whatever happened to me so I don't seem foolishly excited over minor things, but secretly hoping someone will tell me "dude, that was definitely your tulpa!", to which I'll respond "naaahhh, I'm not too sure", hoping they'll convince me harder. I read that post by Sands a long time ago about absence of doubt, and I think I half misunderstood and/or corrupted the meaning over time. I took out of it that whenever I see something that might be a sign, I don't have to instantly conclude whether it really was her, which made me want to always be rational and neutral and never jump to conclusions, which just lead me to introducing doubt to balance out belief whenever something exciting happens. Which isn't right at all. Sands' point, I believe, was simply about not using blind belief as a tool to drown out doubt. So what I really want to do is acknowledge doubt as a distraction, but one that I can overcome, instead of ignoring or drowning out. And when something happens that genuinely excites me and makes me want to believe it was actually her, there's no need to do anything about it, I can just allow myself to be excited ....r-right?

Speaking of things I want to believe was her, I got one today. When I said in the first paragraph that I thought about who I'm really forcing for, what I actually did was narrate it to her. I was kinda rambling back and forth, not sure what to make of my thoughts at first and taking a moment to comment that the semantics are fucking me up, when I felt a head pressure. For context, I've been having occasional head pressures pretty much since I started forcing, always in the exact same spot. For a long time I haven't been sure what to make of them, since those techniques for using head pressures for communication never worked for me. At first I only got them while forcing, but later they've been happening at random times. Then they've stopped completely as I've gone a long time without forcing, only to come back again at random times after something triggers me to think I should get back to forcing again. This correlation between being aware of Melo and getting head pressures convinced me that they have to be related to her even if she can't seem to use them to communicate, so I just started interpreting them as poking. Now whenever I get head pressures, I direct my attention to her and ask her if there was anything she wanted, and when that doesn't get me any response, I just spend some time telling her I haven't forgotten about her. So back to earlier today. I was going through that examination of my motivations for forcing, when I got that head pressure, and I stop and direct my attention to her, asking her what it is (more out of habit than because I expected a response). And I instantly get this new feeling washing over me, a really comforting feeling, as if she was telling me without words "it's okay, you don't have to worry so much". Or maybe she did use words actually, I'm realizing as I'm writing this that I did have that exact thought in my head, and I just ascribed it to being a description of the emotion I felt without giving it too much thought. This is where I'll allow myself to just accept it without drawing out any skepticism. Nor do I need anyone to confirm anything. I both want to believe and find it hard to even question that it was her.

How can it be absence of disbelief when you add disbelief, homo.

By being an idiot who gets hung up in a single detail and forgets the main point.

It's like you're a big boy now...

doushio

Last few posts made me feel like I had said enough for a month, so I kinda put off the idea.

Something has been on my mind the past day that I feel I need to resolve with myself. I've been visiting this clinic to investigate whether I might have autism (shouldn't be a big surprise for someone in this community), but yesterday one of the doctors brought up that they might need to investigate if I also have ADHD. I've always had various issues with focusing, but throughout my whole childhood no one ever told me I might have ADD/ADHD, so I figured I was just a little undisciplined and restless by nature. Now that someone has finally said that it's a possibility, all the implications suddenly come crashing down on me. Particularly, it would explain so much of my issues with forcing. While I try not to compare myself to others that much, I've been wondering for a while why some people just read a single guide and manage to achieve vocality in a few weeks, while I've been reading everything I can get my hands on and debating every intricacy of tulpaforcing with myself for years without managing to find out what they know that I don't. I've chalked it up to having a tendency to overthink things, but why do I have this tendency in the first place? Why can't I seem to control it even after acknowledging it's causing more problems than it's solving? ADHD might explain all that.

So while it's not an official diagnosis yet, I can't get the idea out of my head now, and I've been thinking about what I should do about it if it's really the case. Decided to search through the .info forums to see if there were any hosts with ADD/ADHD who had found ways around it. Found this one post that resonated with me:

I actually made an account just to reply to this thread, because, Quenz, I really feel for your description of "laziness" that prevents you from spending time with Sky. I had a very similar experience for my entire academic career. In adulthood I discovered that what I was experiencing as an inexplicable "laziness" was actually executive dysfunction, which is a symptom of a number of mental disorders including autism and ADHD, both of which I have, both of which I was not diagnosed with for the whole span of my childhood and teen years. I was confused and frustrated with myself for years. I didn't understand why I couldn't tear myself away from aimlessly browsing the internet, playing video games, or any of the other pointless pursuits that occupied my time in favor of things that were more edifying and enjoyable, not to mention productive.

Particularly that last sentence is literally me, in all parts of my life for the past decade.

But in the end, all I've really learned is that my problems might be related to an actual medical conditions rather than me just being a lazy piece of shit, and that things might get better if I get some medications prescribed. I wanted something more, some stories about people overcoming the same challenges as me through means I can copy, not people lamenting over how hard it is. Particularly this thread got my attention for seeming to address the challenges, but it only makes it seem gloomier, since the poor guy doesn't seem to be getting anywhere.

Only idea I got is meditation. Some quick googling suggests that meditation does in fact help against the symptoms of ADD/ADHD. But I've known for a long time now that meditation helps with forcing and I still can't keep a good routine on it, so not sure what will make it different this time. Incidentally, I dropped the essence focusing meditation since I felt it wasn't that productive after all, promising myself I'd just go back to the more familiar focus-on-your-breathing meditation, but I haven't fulfilled that promise yet.

Why would I be looking for an excuse? I think you know as well as me that both wallowing in guilt and trying to fight guilt are a waste of mental resources compared to simply forcing more. I just feel that ADHD could explain a lot about the particular challenges I've been facing, and maybe give some answers about how to deal with them. The diagnosis has implications for how you approach studying and working, so why wouldn't it have implications for tulpaforcing?

And it's not like I haven't done anything since last post, just didn't feel I had much to report on. Had some active forcing sessions I got pretty absorbed in by just jumping into it as soon as I felt any trace of an impulse to force, but haven't been able to turn it into a regular thing. On the other hand, I've been doing way more passive forcing than normal, but the fact that the only responses I get are when I'm deeply concentrated, makes the usefulness of passive forcing feel really questionable.

Well, maybe. I thought a lot about it, made that post, and then it suddenly stopped bothering me that much. I guess even if I found some advice specifically tailored for people with ADHD, it wouldn't be as useful as "do whatever helps YOU feel helps YOU focus". So in the end, nothing really changes.

I'm probably just being a little too hard on myself on passive forcing. It feels unproductive because I don't seem to be getting any better at it or getting any responses out of it, but it's really the sort of thing you get better at without noticing, and not getting any immediate responses doesn't mean it doesn't work at all. I still feel active forcing is the bread and butter, but as long as I don't use passive as an excuse to not bother with active, there's no reason I shouldn't try to passive force whenever I remember to.

Also, I noticed that Bernd has started on another week of daily updates, so I guess this would be a good time to accept his challenge.

Today I experimented with a new forcing schedule: Setting up computer notifications every hour reminding me to go force for 5 minutes. 5 minutes feels like the sweet spot where just fucking doing it is easier than putting it off. And 5 minutes is just the minimum, if I feel like doing more I just keep going. Got a lot of forcing done this way. Did a bunch of random wonderland stuff. Built a merry-go-round for no particular reason, which I later removed out of frustration after realizing how hard it is to visualize your surroundings when being moved around. Fucked around a bunch with parroting just to see how well I can imagine a voice (not very well so far). Made Melo cosplay to spice things up a little while visualizing her. Visualization is still fucking hard to me, but turning it into a thing to play around with makes me far less likely to fry my brain and burn out. Made a creepy basement with a portal to make it easier to visualize visiting completely new places. Made a treehouse, but didn't have any ideas for what to put in it, so I asked Melo, and after a few seconds of nothing, the word "aquarium" popped up in my head, which made no fucking sense to me, but now I have an aquarium inside house on top of a really fucking tall tree. Lost count of the hugs, but also a did a few headpats, and kissed her on the forehead at one point when it seemed like she was expecting something like that. Got headpressures during most of the sessions, but asking her what she means by it didn't lead anywhere this time. Assuming it's not just some kind of strain from focusing hard, maybe it's just a way to poke me. Sometimes people poke even if they don't have anything to say. Other than that, the signs of autonomy mostly come in the form of seeing her randomly move around. Sometimes it seems like that I just attributed a movement to her, other times I'm more willing to believe I had nothing to do with it. Lots of grey area cases, like when I asked her what she thought about her new outfit and she returned a thumbs up, which could have just been me unintentionally brainstorming for what a positive response might look like. Should probably investigate more into that, since being able to clearly make out yes or no would be a helpful start for communication.

Overall, I feel today was pretty productive and enjoyable. Not sure how long I can keep up this kind of schedule, but I definitely want to keep trying for a while. Beyond being productive, I feel it's also conditioning me to be willing to just impulsively jump into forcing instead of putting it off all day.

Read something a while ago about how passive forcing helps create associations between your tulpa and the world around you, thus making them feel more real. Kinda made sense to me.

So day 2 of daily updates.

Kept up the schedule as best as I could, but didn't quite have the drive from yesterday, not pushing past the minimum 5 minutes for most sessions. Gotta turn up my experimentation another notch to not run out of interesting stuff to do.

Resurrected the merry-go-round with the above suggestion to make it slower. Worked a little better, but still hard, ended up just going off and watching her ride it alone. I think my mind just has a harder time accepting that I'm moving around when I'm not actively moving myself. Much easier to visualize taking my own steps.

Tried making her do various poses, which felt kinda silly, but probably helped a little with visualization. Then I tried to focus more on just visualization by moving into a void and letting myself just view her from any angle without regarding my own position in relation to her. I really made my work harder by deciding on a 2D form, instead of imagining real shapes, I gotta think like an artist and reduce everything to lines and shading, something I have no previous experience with. Either I'll have to find some kind of game that does a good job of representing the 2D aesthetic in 3D and use that for inspiration, or I'm gonna spend a lot of time staring at drawings trying to figure out how the fuck that combination of lines makes the face look cute.

Been observing her movements a lot. She does a bunch of stuff that doesn't seem like something I puppeted her to do, but whenever I try to ask her something and tell her to answer with body language, I find my mind too clouded with expectations and genuinely can't tell if they're dictating what I see. Did experience something pretty unexpected, though. I was touching her back and noticed her tail wrapping around my wrist, as if it to arrest it. Wouldn't be the first time this has happened, but this time it was extra interesting, because I totally forgot she has a tail, I gave her one ages ago, along with some other devilish features, but at some point I just forgot to actively visualize her with it. To me this implies that she has some kind of idea of what her form is regardless of how I'm trying to visualize her, combating the idea that I'm just visualizing her from scratch every single time.

Just don't make my mistake and try something completely different every time.

I've learned that there's a line somewhere between both extremes of always trying new things hoping for a miraculous breakthrough, and settling into a boring routine while stagnating.

Also I'm curious what Melo's tail looks like.

It's this black spaded tail with a rubbery texture that you often see on cute devils. I imagine that if I licked it, it would taste like licorice, but I fear that at the moment that would count as unsolicited sexual contact.


For day 3, I did a little more of the same. Added an observation deck to this really big tower I made earlier. I realized that while spiral staircases are really practical when building tall buildings, they're really hard to visualize going through. I think it's something about not being able to perceive exactly how you move through space.

Did some experiments on other senses. Basic tastes are really easy to imagine. Sounds are kinda tricky. Tried to imagine playing on a xylophone, and I could hear a basic scale and an arpeggio, but not much more. Tried to get Melo to try, and she appeared to just repeatedly hit one of the lower keys, which somehow produced a high pitched note.

Revisited an old experiment I did with using the real world as reference when visualizing Melo, specifically to get an idea of her height in relation to me. Basically just finding a spot that's as tall as the top of her head and using it as reference. Still seems to be a nice little trick, since I'm working with a bit of a size difference that is sometimes hard to wrap my head around.