How to Identify and Solidify a New Sub-identity in Your Personality

Though there are many, many reasons why you would want to identify a sub-agent in your mind—self-reflection, addiction relief, internal family systems (IFS) practices, parts work, loneliness, erratic behavior—the process of identifying a character, part, sub-agent, or tulpa is essentially the same.

Of course, before understanding how to disambiguate a part of yourself, you will need to understand why you would want to do that. Since that is outside the scope of this post, you may want to read this blog post or these articles about plurality, tulpamancy, and IFS first.

If you are already familiar with plurality, by all means, read on, remembering that, while you are discovering these new landscapes in your mind, you ultimately have control and still make the top-level decisions. While it’s important to ask for input from your parts and characters, no individual identity should always run the show.

Why Use the Term “Disambiguate”?

As a person who identifies as a plural and finds it useful to identify characters or sub-agents in my mind, each new character is not necessarily a new part of me. It is a piece of me that has, before now, operated below the surface of my awareness, and I want to “disambiguate” that identity to bring it into focus, make friends, and share knowledge.

This process is sometimes easy and sometimes takes a lot of conscious effort. For instance, you might already have a name for a certain mood you get into. That’s already the beginning of a part or a character. Or maybe, when you are intoxicated, you start to hear a voice that isn’t really yours in your mind. That’s also a great place to get curious about a sub-identity.

Other times, you might have no idea where to start. Or, if you have started, maybe you’re stuck on what to do next.

Curating Another Version of Your Self

If you really, really want to create a tulpa, part, or character but are not sure where to begin, ask yourself some of the following questions:

·        Where am I in conflict with myself? – Having wildly opposing opinions about something, even something as simple as both liking and hating pink socks, can illustrate a complex identity that might benefit from more analysis and disambiguation.

·        What’s missing about my life or personality? – Identifying ways you wish you could be is sometimes enough to build a sub-identity around. What type of person would act that way and what would they be like?

·        What roles or archetypes do you embody in various group settings? – Most people understand that their identity fluctuates to some degree depending on what group they are interacting with. You might have a “work” personality and a “home” personality. Ask yourself if there are useful distinguishing personality traits to identify there.

·        Are there activities, thoughts, or behaviors you have that don’t feel “safe” or “good”? – Due to the shame and guilt culture we have, it’s easy to repress quirks, kinks, and non-standard behaviors such that they never get expressed. What would it look like for one of your characters or sub-agents to take on those traits, desires, or behaviors? How might they act in ways you wouldn’t act yourself?

Getting to Know You

Just like when you meet a new external person, you will need to spend some time acquainting yourself to this newly disambiguated voice in your head. You may need to ask some standard getting-to-know-you questions like the ones on this list. This is helpful because, in all honesty, you are forming a new relationship. Your part, character, or tulpa will ultimately become a collaborator in how you live your life and make decisions, and you want to start off on the right foot.

Here are some other strategies to meet and learn about this part of yourself:

·        Play a decision-based video game as that newly disambiguated part – Pay attention to what decisions they would make and what their reasoning is.

·        Watch or listen to media and ask that part of you what they think of it – You might also think about media you have already seen and see if this character you have now agrees with your feelings about some of your favorites.

·        Create character-specific playlists – Choose some songs that your character might enjoy and stick them on a playlist together. This is a great resource to have if the part you disambiguated starts to become hazy again.

·        Roleplay or create kink scenes with other people where you can “embody” that character – Getting some experience in a “real-world” setting is a very grounding activity for characters and parts. Let them act out and make decisions inside a safe set of rules you create ahead of time. Don’t forget your safewords!

Negotiating and Getting Along with Every Part of You

When you disambiguate parts of yourself, you may find that some of them are less desirable than others. That means you are really putting in the work. No one condones everything they ever think. That means that you are going to run into shadows (as well as guiding lights), and that can be both difficult and scary.

In negotiating with shadow parts of self, ask them why they act a certain way and see if you can come up with a solution together. For instance, one of my characters, Trevor, frequently attempted to sabotage my diets, saying, “It’s not really important. It’s not worth it,” and the like. However, when I asked him why he felt that way and helped him do some introspection, we discovered that he simply did not enjoy being alive. So, then, how do we make life more enjoyable for him such that he doesn’t feel the need to sabotage the rest of me? In the end, we decided that Trevor really just wanted some friends, so we sought out some roleplay scenarios that interested Trevor, and he has since been excited to be featured in the stories I write, which has significantly improved my relationship to Trevor.

You might wonder why I didn’t just “get rid” of Trevor if he doesn’t want to be alive. The thing is “getting rid” of a character or part is easier said than done. While I do believe it is theoretically possible, that character must fully consent to leaving, and if there is any resistance at all, they will just come back in new and perhaps even less healthy, more subversive ways. I would much prefer to have those identities out in the open where I can keep eyes on them rather than pretending that part of self away.

Living with Characters, Sub-agents, and Parts

I have found disambiguating parts of my identity to be an incredibly in-depth and rewarding process that gives me so many more angles for evolution than I had access to before. It’s been a beautiful way to cultivate empathy for all sorts of archetypes while learning more about what I want out of life. I highly recommend the practice, but it does take being something of a personality and self-reflection nerd. If you do not consciously think about your characters, they can fade over time. But, that said, you can always give it a shot and decide it’s not for you without any harm done. It’s your mind; decide how you want to interact with it.