Do you think it’s possible to become a soulbonder or multiple if you’ve never experienced the phenomenon before? What advice would you give for someone looking to become a soulbonder?

Soulbonder is a term I haven’t heard much since the livejournal days, and I think its a shame that most people seem to have stopped using it. I answered a series of questions privately just the other day with a person who didn’t feel like typical multiple/fictive language described the relationship between them and their headmates. I described soulbonding to them, and it seems like the language of that was a much better fit.

What the language I see commonly used today seems to lack is the expression of the deep emotional closeness between between bonded individuals, as well as the easy encapsulation of a few other traits most soulbonders share. Soulbonding in general*:

• is essentially experienced by a singular individual, whether a singlet, or one member of a larger system.
• involves a deep attachment from the soulbonder to a fictional person which soon manifests itself as a headmate OR finds themselves with a fictive headmate which soon translates into a deep emotional attachment.
• generally have *only* fictive headmates, or headmates which have strong ‘fictive’ traits (Old rp characters, mythological figures, public figures, etc)
• Often the soulbonds take on an advisory/healing role to the soulbonder.
• Soulbonds tend to talk more and front less (this is by no means a hard and fast rule)

To answer your question, I absolutely think that its possible to become a soulbonder if you’ve never experienced the phenomenon before. (I believe it may be possible to become a multiple as well, but I will not touch on that because multiplicity is *not* my area of expertise. If someone else wants to field that question, please do.)

The advice I would give someone looking to become a soulbonder is this:

• pick one character, a character who resonates with you, and you have a lot of feelings for. Not a character necessarily that you think is a lot like yourself, but a character you admire for their strength, or sympathize with for their problems. Essentially a character that you have strong “feels” for.
• Ruminate on that character. Try to ‘get to know’ them as deeply as possible. View/read/listen to all their source material, and any fanfiction that speaks to you as ‘true to character’. Collect pictures of them. Do anything that keeps your mind focused on them, as if calling out to them. Keep the character in your mind during the day, maintain your feelings for them.
• Ask during the day (in your mind) what would X do? What would X want? (Getting ice cream? ask them what flavor they want. Having difficulty with something? ask what they would do)
• Eventually  if you’ve established a bond, they will answer back from the back of your mind. It may be faint at first, and you may be inclined to dismiss it as you pretending, but don’t do that. Keep asking questions and talking back when you receive an answer. This will strengthen the bond.
• Another way to do this would be to do it on paper instead of your mind. Write a scene with you and the character, as descriptive and detailed as you can make it, and write a conversation back and forth between you. Eventually, if you’ve established a bond, you’ll start to ‘hear’ their answers before you write them.
• If none of this works after a while, pick a different character. It may be that the character you’ve been focused on just isn’t receptive/isn’t the right bond for you right now.

To some of you, this may sound like either ‘rolpeplaying’/’playing makebelieve’ or like creating a tulpa. To those of you in the former ‘makebelieve’ category, I have no answer for you; nothing I say will change your mind anyway, aside from experiencing the phenomenon of having a distinct mind intrude on your own. Go on, try it. 

To those of you who think this sounds a lot like a tulpa you’re absolutely right.  “As far as I’m concerned there is likely a lot of crosschatter between the two phenomena- people who believe they have soul bonds may have inadvertently created a tulpa, and people who believe they have created a tulpa may have come into mental/spiritual contact with a soul bond . In fact, I am not entirely certain they are distinct phenomena at all, but I have no evidence either way.”

To those of you attempting this- good luck and happy bonding.