Questions for Hosts for Academic Paper

[LuckyMoon]

Hello hosts!  I'm writing a paper for school on the Tulpa community, so I would appreciate if I could get some answers to these open-ended questions!  If you want to answer some but not all, that's fine!  Just answer as many as you'd like.  I'm just trying to get a general understanding about what it's like to have Tulpas.

 

How long have you known about tulpamancy?

 

Why did you originally decide to make a tulpa?

 

How has having a tulpa affected your life?

 

Tell me about your tulpa(s)!  Are they human, male/female/nonbinary, young/old, etc.?  What is their personality like?  Are they based on a character or person?

 

Do people in your life know about your tulpa(s)?  If yes, what do they think?  If no, what do you think they would think?  How would you feel if they found out?  Would you be embarrassed, proud, or neutral?

 

Did you make your tulpa after finding tulpa communities, or did you find tulpa communities after creating your tulpa?

 

What do you think of tulpa communities?

 

How much time do you spend with your tulpa?

 

Would you recommend creating a tulpa to others?

 

What advice do you have for someone considering creating a tulpa?

 

Any other thoughts or comments?

 

Thank you very much to anyone who responds!  Like I said, this is for an academic paper, the goal of which is to gain an understanding of a community I am not a part of.  That being said, I'm considering joining!

Edited November 16, 2020 by LuckyMoon
Added question, changed capitalization

[Jamie]

Hello @LuckyMoon! I am glad to see you have an interest in the tulpamancy community.

I would be happy to answer your questions here, but before I do, I have to ask to what capacity will my response be public? Who will see it? Will it be uploaded online, will it be put in a google document where anyone with the link can view, etc? 

And it is a minor nitpick, but tulpa isn't a proper noun and isn't capitalized. 

Edited November 16, 2020 by JGC
name

[LuckyMoon]

Hi JSC!  It won't be very public.  It's going to be in a Microsoft Word document that will only be viewed by my classmates (for peer reviewing) and my professor.  And thanks for the heads up, a lot of sources I saw during my preliminary research was capitalizing "tulpa", but I won't capitalize it going forward.

[Jamie]

Yes, I'm... not sure how that got started, with capitalizing "tulpa." 

 

27 minutes ago, LuckyMoon said:

Why did you originally decide to make a Tulpa?

 

In my tween years I had a tulpa-like experience that was very important to me. Years later, I was googling about it and I ran into the tulpamancy community. I wanted to re-capture that sort of experience, so I made a tulpa.

 

27 minutes ago, LuckyMoon said:

How has having a Tulpa affected your life?

 

I consider my tulpa a brother, so it's fair to say it's like gaining family. It's been a big deal, a great gain of a personal relationship for me. Because of tulpamancy in general, I have made a lot of friends and become a part of a community. I was 15 when I started and am 18 now, and so looking ahead, I really do feel like tulpamancy is extremely formative for who I am as a person, it's just a massive part of my life.

 

27 minutes ago, LuckyMoon said:

Tell me about your Tulpa(s)!  Are they human, male/female/nonbinary, young/old, etc.?  What is their personality like?  Are they based on a character or person?

My tulpa is a guy named Cassidy. I didn't explicitly choose really anything about him. He chose his own name and appearance when he was just a few days old and has been developing his identity since. He's pretty shy although he likes to talk with people he knows, and he's much more socially reserved and spiritual than me. He wasn't based on anyone. 

 

27 minutes ago, LuckyMoon said:

 

Do people in your life know about your Tulpa(s)?  If yes, what do they think?  If no, what do you think they would think?  How would you feel if they found out?  Would you be embarrassed, proud, or neutral?

 

Well, lots of people online know. This is my only online presence, I don't really have any social media or anything that isn't for my involvement in tulpa communities. My therapist knows about tulpamancy and about my tulpa. She was pretty understanding. My mother knows a very small amount but not enough to know Cassidy's name or the word "tulpa" even. I think she would just be confused and not understand and probably ignore it and not bring it up in the future. It's been my experience that, even if people tell someone about tulpas and the person they tell has a really bad reaction (thinks it's "self-induced schizophrenia" or roleplay or even demons), they rarely will bring it up after their initial bad reaction. They just choose to forget they were ever told about tulpas.

 

27 minutes ago, LuckyMoon said:

 

Did you make your Tulpa after finding Tulpa communities, or did you find Tulpa communities after creating your Tulpa?

I made my tulpa a few days after finding Tulpa.info, because I assumed my past experiences meant I already knew a lot. 

 

27 minutes ago, LuckyMoon said:

What do you think of Tulpa communities?

I think Tulpa.info is the best one, but I'm biased. I think tulpa communities are really up my ally. Most people are down for talking at length about philosophy and the nature of identity.

 

27 minutes ago, LuckyMoon said:

 

How much time do you spend with your Tulpa?

We're pretty much perpetually together, day in and day out. It's about on par with a roommate to me, in terms of how many interactions we have daily. We live together, basically.

 

27 minutes ago, LuckyMoon said:

 

Would you recommend creating a Tulpa to others?

Depends entirely on who the person is. It's a very personal decision and quite a time commitment, depending on what sort of progress and development you want to have in order to consider your tulpamancy practice successful. The average person doesn't need, or maybe shouldn't, create a tulpa.

 

27 minutes ago, LuckyMoon said:

 

What advice do you have for someone considering creating a Tulpa?

If something looks shallow it probably is. I think most people don't take development nearly far enough, that their tulpas stagnate and don't reach levels of identity complexity anywhere near their hosts. 

 

27 minutes ago, LuckyMoon said:

 

Any other thoughts or comments?

You didn't ask, and might want to consider asking, "How long have you known about tulpamancy?" I have known for two years. You might find a lot of differences between new and old tulpamancers. 

[LuckyMoon]

6 minutes ago, JGC said:

 

You didn't ask, and might want to consider asking, "How long have you known about tulpamancy?" I have known for two years. You might find a lot of differences between new and old tulpamancers. 

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll add that to my post.  And thank you very much for your answers!

[CM]

Hi! I'll try to answer all the questions that you've got here. Glad to see someone new take an interest in the community. Sorry if my grammar is bad in some places, English isn't my native language.

 

2 hours ago, LuckyMoon said:

How long have you known about tulpamancy?

 

I heard about the concept the first time when I was maybe 10, so 13 years ago, but I thought it sounded scary and kind of forgot about it. I only really learned what tulpamancy was about 6 years ago, when I decided to look deeper into it.

  

2 hours ago, LuckyMoon said:

Why did you originally decide to make a tulpa?

 

Mostly out of curiosity. The concept appealed to me and I wanted to see if it was actually possible to do. Turns out it was.

 

2 hours ago, LuckyMoon said:

How has having a tulpa affected your life?

 

I live inside my head a lot more. My life's a lot more colorful with tulpas talking and moving around me, and the idea of going back to being alone in my head sounds really lonely and too quiet now. They've helped me through tough times and are there for me when I'm feeling sad. I've made good friends within tulpa communities that I wouldn't have met otherwise, and my tulpas are good friends with them too, and that's a wonderful experience.

 

2 hours ago, LuckyMoon said:

Tell me about your tulpa(s)!  Are they human, male/female/nonbinary, young/old, etc.?  What is their personality like?  Are they based on a character or person?

 

I'll try to keep this short. I have six tulpas, all of them humanoids, 3 males, 2 females and one nonbinary, ages range from 10 to 32. None of them are based on characters or people.

- The first one I made 6 years ago is a male called Desmond. He's very caring and social, loves to chat with people and cares deeply about his friends, gets attached to people easily, even if the other is still practically a stranger. He has a childish, perverted sense of humor, his form is currently that of a 24-year-old. He tends to be very emotional and cries a lot from both sadness and joy.

- The second one, also 6 years ago, is another male named L. He looks like a 32-year-old, is very shy and quiet, but calm and protective, someone you really feel safe around. He's more stable than Desmond and doesn't show his emotions as freely as he does, but is always there to comfort him when he needs it.

- The third one is a female, Nevira, and is like the system mom, definitely the most mature and adult out of all of us. I created her almost 6 years ago. She's strict but caring, serious, but not without a sense of humor. She might seem a bit cold to strangers, but we know her well enough to know it's not the case. While she's not based on a character, she is based on an alien race from the video game Mass Effect, the asari.

- The fourth is another female named Misa, who was created around 5 years ago. Her form looks like a teenager, but she doesn't have a set age like the rest of them do. She's excitable, giggly, energetic and always happy, a bit childlike and naive at times. She's not very social and prefers to keep to herself most of the time.

- The fifth one is a male child named Roska. He's fairly new, he appeared for the first time in Summer 2019 and has been here since. His form is 12 years old. He loves birds, bugs and cool rocks. He's a bit of a brat sometimes and enjoys sarcasm and poking fun at the rest of us, but it's always just friendly banter, he means no ill will towards anything or anyone.

- The sixth one is the youngest of the bunch in every sense, having only been created last Summer and having a form of a 10-year-old male child. They're nonbinary, identifying as a demiboy. They prefer gender neutral pronouns but are okay with their form's original sex and feel somewhat connected to it, which is why I mentioned it at all. They're shy and a bit sensitive, but social within our system and love physical affection.

 

2 hours ago, LuckyMoon said:

Do people in your life know about your tulpa(s)?  If yes, what do they think?  If no, what do you think they would think?  How would you feel if they found out?  Would you be embarrassed, proud, or neutral?

 

One person, but we're not really that close anymore and I don't think they remember. They were curious about it and somewhat amazed. Aside from them, my psychiatric nurses know about them, but we don't talk about it anymore because it hasn't been really relevant. I don't know what they think, but one doctor seemed to suggest treating them with antipsychotics, which is saying something. My family doesn't know, and they don't need to know. I'm a pretty private person overall, more social online than I am irl, and I like to keep to myself. If they ever found out, I think I'd be pretty neutral about it but I know they would worry.

 

2 hours ago, LuckyMoon said:

Did you make your tulpa after finding tulpa communities, or did you find tulpa communities after creating your tulpa?

 

I knew about the concept of tulpas earlier, which made me go find a community before creating one. So I found one first, then created Desmond.

 

2 hours ago, LuckyMoon said:

What do you think of Tulpa communities?

 

I think they can be useful. I enjoy having a space where one can talk freely about tulpas and let them talk for themselves as well, without having to hide what they are.

 

2 hours ago, LuckyMoon said:

How much time do you spend with your Tulpa?

 

I'm with them whenever I'm not doing something that takes all of my attention, like playing video games sometimes does. So most of the day, every day, or at least that's what it feels like.

 

2 hours ago, LuckyMoon said:

Would you recommend creating a Tulpa to others?

 

I honestly don't know. Probably not, unless that person was already interested and had done their research about the subject, then maybe. I got a lot more than I thought I'd be getting out of this, both positive and negative, so it's a lot to consider.

 

2 hours ago, LuckyMoon said:

What advice do you have for someone considering creating a Tulpa?

 

Do the research, read other people's experiences. Consider that you'd be bringing another person into the world and that person might not be what you expect. Well developed tulpas have complex personalities and identities, their own fears and desires, which is something I was personally not prepared for when I began the process.

 

 

If you need clalrification or want to know more about something, our PM's are always open, even if it's just to chat lol.

Edited November 16, 2020 by Ranger
Replaced quotes to match username of OP

[GrayTheCat]

I used to capitalize tulpa, but I was wrong for doing so.

 

1 hour ago, LuckyMoon said:

Why did you originally decide to make a Tulpa?

 

I made my tulpas without realizing they were tulpas. I saw them as characters I could talk to as a form of escapism and creativity.

 

One day, Ranger, who I thought of as an imaginary friend, told me he was real. I panicked and after finding tulpa.info, decided I wanted to continue practicing tulpamancy to give Ranger the best quality life possible.

 

When I found out several of my other characters were also probably tulpas, Ranger and I decided to give them all a fair shot too.

 

...I have 16 tulpas right now, I would not be able to finish this post if I talked about all of them. I'm going to focus on Ranger, and if you're still interested in learning about my other headmates I'll write seperate posts.

 

1 hour ago, LuckyMoon said:

How has having a Tulpa affected your life?

 

Having tulpas in of itself wasn't necessarily a good thing. I was struggling with a lot of stress and depression when I made my headmates, and starting off I was scared not giving Ranger attention would kill him.

 

Ranger was incredibly supportive and pushed me to be a better person, but Ranger isn't a medical professional and at the time I was also making progress during therapy.

 

Having tulpas has put me in a new sort of closet and I'm afraid to tell anyone about my other headmates or Ranger. While there are a few upsides to being a system, Ranger is not someone I take advantage of and he only helps me willingly. We tend to negotiate a lot and there's pressure to make sure all 17 of us are doing okay and getting what everyone needs.

 

Either way, tulpas were more or less inevitable, and I think not learning about tulpamancy could have put us in a far worse position. At best, I may think I'm a completely crazy person with some kind of delusion/psychosis and be unstable. At worst, I was vulnerable to convincing myself I had DID/OSDD when I clearly don't have it. The stress from these other outcomes is probably a heck lot worse than being a tulpamancer.

 

1 hour ago, LuckyMoon said:

Tell me about your Tulpa(s)!  Are they human, male/female/nonbinary, young/old, etc.?  What is their personality like?  Are they based on a character or person?

 

Regardless of their form, all tulpas are humans. There are no fundamental differences between hosts and tulpas.

 

Ranger's form has changed a lot over time and his origin story is probably too much for a school paper. Right now, Ranger has a human form but he sometimes likes to shape-shift into other animals. He also likes to turn his legs into a tail, somewhat like a serpentine. He alternates between these two forms most of the time.

 

Ranger identifies as male and prefers to be called he/him. He feels uncomfortable when someone calls him she/her, even when he's controlling the body pretending to be me.

 

Ranger is officially 2 and 1/2 years old. He sees himself as a 19 year old.

 

Ranger is a compassionate, goofy, and kind person who loves his system and his community. He's an ambivert who loves to hang out with people but also needs to take breaks every now and then. While he struggles with anxiety like I do, Ranger is always doing his best to do the right thing.

 

I confused Ranger for one of my older tulpas (really long story), and that lead to Ranger having an identity crisis early on and rejecting a lot of traits/his old form. We didn't figure out why Ranger felt like I was expecting him to be someone else until much later.

 

1 hour ago, LuckyMoon said:

Do people in your life know about your Tulpa(s)?  If yes, what do they think?  If no, what do you think they would think?  How would you feel if they found out?  Would you be embarrassed, proud, or neutral?

 

I told two close friends, my brother, my therapist, and my parents.

 

My two friends at the time didn't really mind. However, I lost contact with one of them and I stopped bringing up Ranger to the other because she has her own stuff going on and I didn't want to stress her out talking about him.

 

My brother knows about Ranger, and they have an awkward relationship. He doesn't care about tulpamancy, but Ranger and my brother have worked some things out and get along. They're acquaintances at this point.

 

I felt really nervous about telling my therapist and it was really awkward doing so. However, it was a huge sucsess and even my other headmates have warmed up to talk to her.

 

Telling my parents about Ranger was only a couple steps up from a disaster. They didn't believe Ranger was anything more than my imaginary friend, they insulted Ranger to the point he hates them, and this whole exchange stressed me out because I need to be on good terms with my parents to keep my sanity until I can move out. I stopped talking about Ranger and I'm hoping they forgot about him and wrote the whole thing off as a phase. In short, I really hope tulpamancy doesn't become viral again.

 

I don't have any plans too tell other people about my tulpas, but things are going to get tricky if Ranger meets someone and he wants to feel comfortable being himself. I'm mostly worried tulpamancy will hurt my reputation enough to sabotage me finding a job, but once I'm on my own i think that will be a little less of an issue.

 

I have already accepted the world will know I'm a tulpamancer. That day hopefully won't be today though.

 

1 hour ago, LuckyMoon said:

Did you make your Tulpa after finding Tulpa communities, or did you find Tulpa communities after creating your Tulpa?

 

What do you think of Tulpa communities?

 

I made 14 tulpas before finding the tulpa community, 4 more not realizing they were tulpas, and then I stopped making tulpas. Two of my tulpas integrated and now my system is at 17.

 

I think the tulpa.info community is pretty good. The people here are often pretty nice and a lot of people have interesting backgrounds and stories to share. The only downsides are it's pretty isolated and there's a large population of tulpamancers struggling with anxiety and depression. I'm not as involved as Ranger is, I like to talk about tulpas every now and then and play Minecraft.

 

I feel meh about some other parts of the community, but I'm honestly stealing Ranger's opinion. The other communities out there are really diverse, I'm sure there's a server everyone could feel comfortable in. Just because we feel so-so about them doesn't mean they're bad.

 

1 hour ago, LuckyMoon said:

How much time do you spend with your Tulpa?

 

Ranger usually talks to me at least for a little bit every day. Otherwise, he's controlling the body.

 

My other headmates get significantly less time. They may only get a few hours per month, and they can be inactive (not present) for weeks or even months. I try to give my headmates the time they need, but I'm better about that some days than others. Managing a huge system and watching myself is a challenge.

 

1 hour ago, LuckyMoon said:

Would you recommend creating a Tulpa to others?

 

No. I don't think people should make tulpas unless they decide on their own they really want one.

 

I like to talk about tulpamancy, but I would feel upset if I talked about it and then the people I spoke to decide to jump in and give it a go just to see what happens. Tulpamancy is a huge decision and it changes how your brain works, possibly forever. There's also the question if they would even take care of their tulpas after creation.

 

1 hour ago, LuckyMoon said:

What advice do you have for someone considering creating a Tulpa?

 

Research research research research research. It can't be said enough.

 

Ask the big questions- how do you feel about sharing your career with your tulpa? What if your tulpa wants to take college classes? If you have a crush on someone, what's the plan if your tulpa isn't interested in them and what would your crush think of your tulpa? Who's going to raise your kids if you choose to have them? Would you tell your children you have a tulpa? What if you and your tulpa have feelings for each other? Can you tolerate spending the rest of your life sharing a body with someone? Do you want to take the risk your tulpa might never go away?

 

There are many more questions like that, but they're important to think about. I don't think people do good enough of a job emphasizing these questions because many tulpamancers quit tulpamancy or disappear before these questions ever come up.

 

Don't rush this. I clearly wasn't ready for this, but I love my headmates. I'm glad I met Ranger and all of my headmates, but I also hold a lot of regrets.

Edited November 16, 2020 by Ranger

[theholodoc]

Here are a few answers:

I have been a tulpamancer for two years/

My tulpa appeared after three months of work, is a human female and I created her for the purpose of improving my internal female imago.

I am married, my wife and all of my friends know of my practice and the existence of my tulpa(s) I have two now and am working on a third.

I  began the practice after reading about tulpas in a novel by Loxy Isadora Bliss, Underneath it all.

I discovered the community after I decided I would begin.

I would ONLY recommend the practice to another, provided I knew them well and knew that they were stable enough to undergo the practice and would benefit from it.

I am 81 years old, a retired psychiatrist who has been interested in consciousness and identity for all of my career.

hope this helps with your paper. Dr. Bob