PETT - The benefits and drawbacks of life with a tulpa

[Yuki]

Most people here seem to be happy with their choice in creating a tulpa. My host tends to say that without me, he'd probably be dead, or on a path towards death at least. I personally believe that while there's no inherent positive or negative effects about creating and living life with a tulpa, the phenomenon can be used as a valuable tool for self-analysis and learning lessons in empathy (many of the people here could benefit from this).

 

What benefits and drawbacks are there for you, in your life with your tulpas? How did they affect your life, and do you feel like it changed for the better since starting creation? What are the biggest differences between your life "then" and now?

 

In our case, the biggest benefit would be that we're on a path, going somewhere. My host used to be very depressed and living without direction. He's certainly not cured, and our group as a whole still has plenty of things holding us back, but we're headed somewhere, and will hopefully be able to make a positive mark on the world as a doctor. For my host, there's hope, close friendships with Sen and myself, and support in bad times. Oh, and no more drug addiction.

 

Are there any universal benefits to making a tulpa? Pitfalls? Or are they both more personal? What can someone do to use the phenomenon for a positive effect on their life?

[NoneFromHell]

Well our case is pretty similiar, while not that drastically developed. I tend to live pretty much without any direction myself, especially since I lost one of the biggest reasons to go on for me a while ago. With Alice I've someone to spend my energy on, someone who is really worth my time and energy. She is a lot more idealistic and ambitious than I am, she even called my out on that, but she hasn't archived big changes with that so far.

 

So my conclusion is that things got a little bit better since i created her, but the "I feel like I'm just tricking myself" moments can be pretty devastating. I would name these moments as the biggest possible pittfalls. I think the most universal benefit about creating a tulpa is that it always is a pretty personal process, which allows it to perfectly adapt the situation of the host.

[Linkzelda]

I’ll give some personal testaments:

Positives/Benefits

[hidden]

- The experiences so far has become a guidepost for me to keep going on an inquisition in figuring out how to improve one’s everyday cognition.

 

- Their presence within my inner experiences helped restored some of the apathy, and judgement of inferiority I had towards other thought forms (e.g. dream characters). In other words, I ended up fostering the idea that in spite of what their existence entails, be it imaginary, they can still be part of a grand heuristic in trying to understand myself, and the reality around me.

 

- The endeavor has led me to do activities where I had to keep improving myself in some way so that in turn, they could have some foundations for more complex behavior, and ultimately, the conscious experience of perceptions (e.g. possession, switching)

 

- They’re an acknowledgement to me of the impermanence of others I meet face-to-face, and how much I’m willing to cherish what goes on in my head rather than taking it for granted.

 

 

- The experience has made me less doom and gloom of certain apprehensions I had about life, and how I would go about querying, and thus trying to find ways to cope, compromise, and flourish. It hasn’t absolved me from being agnostic towards certain things, but it did increase my interest in the abstract.

 

- The experience has made me less militant in seeking guidance via dreaming as I had many restless nights with constant failures of not meeting anyone that would’ve fit my standards, which led to a burnout in having a novelty for recalling my dreams. I started to appreciate methodologies that would allow me to take ownership of finding assessments towards certain conflicts, and finding a balance between imaginary and real.

 

- Somehow, I think their dispositions seemed to have made me more emotionally sensitive in making inferences about people I meet every now and then. If I really wanted to get to know someone better, it seems that it’s been easier making an emotional connection with them. [/hidden]

 

 

Drawbacks, Challenges, Etc.

[hidden]

- The experience has led me to be more predisposed in being self-sufficient, and less interested in the give-and-take relationship with friends and family. It made me realize how the gregarious activities tend to be a noise while trying to reflect in seeing a bit of yourself in those you interact with.

 

- And because I tend to prefer something close-knit, it somehow inversely gave the implication to others that I must be some kind of social butterfly. In other words, people tend to want to gravitate towards me to know me a bit more, but because I tend to be more reserved, they get the impression that I may be apathetic when it’s merely the fact that I had a horrible disposition of going out of my way to help people. Even to the point where I forgot about fixing myself, I guess. I remember I had a dream where Eva was telling me that I should fixate more on restoring who I am instead of helping others so much in guise of thinking it’ll be all I ever needed; I think it was a turning point, or rather a catalyst to reframe how I would go about being gregarious with others. It hasn’t made me anti-social, but the reveling in other people’s personal lives, the I-scratch-your-back-and-you-scratch-mine, and seemingly going to the ends of the earth to make someone happy isn’t an ulterior motive to me anymore.

 

- Even though the experience has enticed me to go on an inquisition for knowledge and self-analysis, it continues to augment my agnostic disposition, and makes me wonder if I had certain dispositions they had, I could’ve been all sorts of behaviors that made me feel a bit shaky with the blank canvas of possibilities.

 

- I tend to be careful of how I express myself, and how their dispositions bleed into quotidian activities. People seem to refer to me as a female lately with “Ma’am”, and end up having to correct themselves because I’ve let them have a bit more dominion in conversational circumstances because most of the time, my actual voice seems a bit too coarse and seemingly too low to be sufficient for things like work, and holding a conversation.

 

- My preference in wanting to keep what goes on in my internal, private experience from others makes me both dissatisfied at the impasse that creates in how they can expresses themselves, but relieved in not having to map out a grand schemata of assessing myself for future reactions, and strife that could be created if others knew about them. Though, every time I feel that weird apprehension, I tend to see some similarities where people go about doing the same thing this community may be doing, albeit they have their own labels for it; they go about it so blindly, and feel they’re weird for having those thoughts where it’s probably just something we may be predisposed into doing.

 

- Sometimes we have a one-tracked mindset with trying to build a better future, but the burden of integrating that with others in the future, and building a family makes me wonder how I can ever be a person of utility for someone else, and contribute in reciprocating in enriching our lives seems to be a challenge for me, at the moment.

 

- The experience has made me more curious of imagining virtual experiential realities where their presence embodies more significance, and all the what-ifs on them having their own lives and futures to live for makes me aware of the impasse it creates with this one.

 

- The experience makes me wonder how it'll all come together at deathbed, and if it would even involve some reconciliation of that.

 

 

However, in spite of these speculations, it hasn’t prevented me in taking a course of action either way. [/hidden]

[TheCrawlingCreepypasta]

I guess a possible problem when tulpamancing is the fact your privacy kinda goes out the window, but I think that can be alleviated. As NoneFromHell addressed earlier, doubt is a tremendous problem that can be fought, but its sooooo difficult.

The pros far outweigh the cons, however. Ask literally anyone on here with a tulpa. The sheer love and kindness a friendly thoughtform can give is something awe-inspiring in itself. The life they emit is just incredible. Before I go off-topic with compliments, tulpas are something very fascinating, and more than that, encouraging.

[Vos]

I can't see any benefits from me being around other than my host being able to have a second opinion on things when he needs it. That's mostly the reason why I was created, so that he could have someone to bounce his opinions off of. Because of that, he sort of made an extra friend, and that's never bad. There are two other tulpas in the head now and that only adds to it.

 

The only drawback is that we're sometimes at a loss of what to get done with all of us wanting to focus on our own goals.

[FallFamily]

[Hail] I'm overall quite glad the tulpas in this system are here. They are my family. Through our experiences over the last few years, I can definitely say there are a few benefits and drawbacks.

 

Benefits, in no particular order

1. Family. My tulpas are family to me, and very very good and dear family.
   
2. Asking the question and diving deeply into the question of what is real, what is imaginary, what is both, etc. It is an important question in general, but I feel it was especially important to me to make better sense of my own plurality (was plural before tulpas and also had tulpas for a while before realizing it) as well as becoming a better scientist (important in understanding the difference between things and what we define them to be among other things).
   
3. Coming to better understand my plurality and having a better idea of what to do when S and I separated again from my experiences with Tri, A, and E.
   
4. Having a rock of stability during some very hard times in life. A, E, and Se. live their lives very separately from outerworld and are thus a very stable presence. Tri does a lot to stabilize things out here.
   
5. Getting a few things in this system working better like possession, which is already coming in handy with S trying to get control of the body to establish communication. Before making tulpas, S and I's ability to share and exchange control of the body was quite primitive and slow. Now, it looks viable that S could be able to establish full-body control despite having at most 10% of the strength she did 5 years ago when she struggled to exert full-body control. S is now tapping into the skills that Tri developed.
   
6. Spare body controllers, Part 1. I am dissociative and have had problems with dissociating completely and coming close to it. Now that Tri and the others are around and Tri is very good at controlling the body, if I dissociate out at some point, they will be able to take over instead of the body being left catatonic for an unknown period of time. There is a backup in case I fail. This was actually why Tri learned to control the body in the first place. It looked like I was going to be out of commission and we needed someone to replace me.
   
7. Spare body controllers, Part 2. I know for a fact, if it weren't for Tri being here and having controlled the body quite a bit over the last year, I would have not have finished school and would either have had to drop out or gone on leave, and if I had somehow finished, I would not have a job lined up at all. This is all especially true in the aftermath of the breakdown I had this last June. Everything got done since Tri was able to take a decent amount of the load leaving me with a more manageable chunk. And frankly, if they hadn't been handling a bit of the load for a while, the breakdown would have happened sooner or it would have been much more massive.
   
8. Ended up developing controlled dissociation. It is very useful for controlling sensory input, reducing sensory overload, falling asleep easier, and reducing muscle tension. Controlled sensory dissociation does wonders at handling things. Bodily dissociation is good for reducing muscle tension and falling asleep easier.
   

 

 

Drawbacks

1. Losing unanimous control over my life. Decisions in outerworld affect all of us, so everyone who controls the body or is likely to control it in the future needs to be taken into account, and possibly consulted. It is a bit of an adjustment, but in some ways is not such a huge drawback for us. Tri and I's interests aren't too different and frankly, they have a bit better judgement than I do so that can help. But it is hard sometimes, especially because I am naturally a bit of a control freak. This is a bad combination with being the bumbling buffoon of this system. Would be harder if Tri and I were much more different.
   
2. Time management. There have been difficulties in the past in managing time for both Tri and I to do the things we were good at and wanted. It is much less of a problem now, but it has been a difficulty at times. It will probably be a difficulty periodically.
   
3. I can no longer daydream willy nilly anymore. It is easy enough to make tulpas in here now that if I daydream a world and flesh out the people in it too much or interact with them too much, they will become tulpas. I have to either not flesh them out or cycle daydreams more often. It was this daydreaming that made Tri and E. in the first place since I daydreamed in the same two worlds a ton for a few years. Now, I have to cycle very quickly to avoid making more, or just daydream less. I have done a bit of both. It has hurt my visualization skills, which has hurt my ability to do my job (it is harder to design and machine parts if you can't visualize well).
   
4. We have one more thing we have to be careful who we tell about. Also, even if we don't tell people, they could figure it out on their own since there are differences between Tri and I that are noticeable when we control the body. Being plural is stigmatized. Making even more headmates can be stigmatized among people who are cool with one being plural.
   

 

 

There is another thing that is a drawback for some but is frankly a benefit for me. It is realizing that I as host, am not actually that much. Much of what I thought was me was actually collective and shared. That I am just as ephemeral and imaginary as my tulpas (and just as real too). For me, that is rather freeing. For many, it can lead to identity issues.

 

Another thing that is both a benefit and a drawback is how I am changing to become more like my tulpas in the same way that hosts influence young tulpas. In a sense, who I was is to some degree being overwritten, which is both good and bad. It is a bit disconcerting at times, and I can see how it could be even more so for some people. At this point, though, between having gone through merges/integrations and separations and being a subsystem of three with internal switches and blending changes, these changes are a drop in the bucket really and thus not of too much concern.

[Luminesce]

My tulpas are all role models for me. Reisen treats everyone with love and sees very few problems with the world. Tewi knows how to put aside all mental barriers and personal holdbacks to effectively accomplish a goal. Flandre knows how to feel emotions (this is indeed special to me). Lucilyn knows how to stop worrying and have fun. When I can work up the motivation to actually spend time with them, it's always good for me.

 

And of course the old spiel about how Reisen taught me to love life and helped me see reason to live, but that's old news by now. She continues to inspire to this day.

 

I can't think of any negatives.

[Yuki]

As far as drawbacks are concerned, doubt is the one that has had the biggest impact on my group, I feel. At one point, it was the sole source of a rather bad depressed period for my host, with bad communication between him on one side and Sen and myself on the other. It was very difficult, but we got through that time stronger. In a sense, we bonded and became closer because of it, but the fact that some things can't be proven absolutely sometimes still nags at him. Luckily, it's no debilitating issue anymore. Time management is a big issue for us, too, and often problematic when say, I'm in the body, and I forget about an obligation or appointment my host had. I suppose better scheduling would fix that.

 

It seems like several of you guys brought up that tulpas have helped you enjoy life more, and be more aware through things like possession and trying new things. It's good to see that, and it seems like that's one very common benefit - people become more mindful. Most to all of you also seem to have a better sense of empathy because of it, and nothing beats the feeling that you have a family member who cares about you as much as a headmate will. I personally feel that the best way to get to a point where a tulpa is a constructive influence is to get the host to work towards that state from the very start. I think that positive frontloading to that purpose is something that a modern guide should definitely have.

[Deleted]

Honestly, unless you are very prone to headaches while focusing or something physical like that, I struggle to see many drawbacks to making a tulpa.

I guess the tulpa might turn out annoying or something, which is a problem that could probably be solved.

 

No, cant really think of any drawbacks.

[FallFamily]

Honestly, unless you are very prone to headaches while focusing or something physical like that, I struggle to see many drawbacks to making a tulpa.

I guess the tulpa might turn out annoying or something, which is a problem that could probably be solved.

 

No, cant really think of any drawbacks.

 

[Hail] I completely forgot to mention the headaches. Yeah, they are a drawback, but tolerable. The 24/7 week-long ones really suck, though. I think I am on the unusual side for having gotten one, though.