Is there solid information on what happens when you hurt your tulpa?

[Nr1Tulpamancer]

I feel like most I’ve seen is people saying they “heard from someone” things or “think It is this way”—but that makes me wonder if these things I commonly hear in discussions around tulpas being hurt by hosts, are truly true

 

1: “Tulpas could retaliate against the host” In which way? (I’m just curious) is there actually any tulpa that has done this or is it mostly creepypastas of tulpas taking over body’s

 

2: “Hurting a tulpa is self harm/will hurt the host” has anyone actually met a host hurting their tulpa/who has hurt a tulpa, and that the host reported issues in mental health after this?

 

3: even just that people hurt their tulpas at all, does this even happen? /genq because I haven’t seen a “Im a tulpa and my host hurts me” post yet or a “I used to hurt my tulpa” post

[Tewi]

It's all in your head, only things you believe could be perceived as meaningful. People with severe schizophrenia can be hurt by the scenarios they imagine due to believing in them being real, but otherwise, I'd call it kind of childish.

 

Imagining abusing your tulpa is like pulling the legs off bugs - it's disturbing to others, and not a good activity for your mental health/development as a person, indulging in causing suffering. It's a maladaptive coping mechanism at best

 

It's not commonly reported especially here because the community discourages it so much, but we have seen it once or twice. We've also seen a couple cases of severe schizophrenia where they talked about e.g. evil entities harming and taking their tulpa away.

 

Tulpamancy/plurality experiences can be very meaningful - but when it comes to plain old imagination, there's a limit to how healthy it is to believe in things that aren't really happening. Invasive thoughts can annoy anyone (you just need to learn to ignore them to make them stop, not "fight back"/validate them), but real issues like misbehaving tulpas or.. whatever nonsense I can't even come up with, tend to happen because someone's already got a bad mental disorder to begin with. We commonly say, for schizophrenia, the only way that tulpamancy can harm them is by it tricking them into being attached to some uncontrolled internal imagined experiences and being distressed as a result, where they might have been able to not get invested in them otherwise, maybe. But we've known several systems with not-severe schizophrenia who seemed to still value their plurality experiences, so even then it's not always a net negative.

Edited May 27, 2025 by Tewi

[Lavender]

It's like any two people. What happens when you hurt a friend? The friend might get upset, might laugh it off, might have a heart-to-heart talk with you, or might get even. Tulpas are people, like anyone else, so there will be variety in the ways they react.

 

Likewise, hosts are people, so there are a variety of ways they'll react if they find they've hurt their tulpa. Some might apologize immediately, some might sulk or brood, some might go into denial, and a (hopefully very) few might be happy about it.

 

I'd be suspicious of anyone who definitively says "this is what will happen" or "this will never happen" because everyone is different. Make sense?

[Nr1Tulpamancer]

14 hours ago, Tewi said:

 

i don’t fully understand, do you mean that hurting a tulpa or being hurt by a tulpa is just imagination and not real?

 

 

[Tewi]

You can't be hurt by a tulpa, and hurting them is only symbolic (which can hurt their feelings, or cause suffering if they believe they're actually hurt) - it isn't real real, no.

Feelings are real, though. As are the experiences you believe you're having.

Edited May 27, 2025 by Tewi

[Ranger]

On 5/26/2025 at 9:37 PM, Nr1Tulpamancer said:

but that makes me wonder if these things I commonly hear in discussions around tulpas being hurt by hosts, are truly true

 

In short, yes.

 

---

 

We have trauma in system and are actively doing trauma work to address it. Through it, we found not just headmates doing self-harm to themselves- but headmates lashing out and hurting other headmates. This harm was enough to leave trauma to unpack later, although the reasons why are often complicated.

 

For us, trauma is the result of emotional abuse (from Gray's parents, Gray, me, etc.), fear of dying, anything that gets associated with old trauma, or situations where our need for love isn't met (from neglect or emotional abuse).

 

Emotional abuse is a learned behavior that attempts to achieve control, so Gray learned how to be abusive and so did everyone else. As a result, we abused and still abuse each other. We weren't aware of what abuse we were doing in the past, and we're not able to be aware of all of our current abuse either due to our amnesia barriers (emotional, not black-out). Obviously, we never wanted to abuse one another. We had to learn the truth of what was happening through trauma work.

 

A lot of our trauma is also interconnected, but that's mostly because we lash out at each other. For instance, Gray will eventually have to wait on me to make enough progress on my trauma work- our trauma is layered, and oversimplified, we have to peel back the "new trauma" in order to address the old stuff. Things do get a little bit weirder than that sometimes because we share a brain, but I'm not going to get into that here.

 

Everyone in-system has feared us dying multiple times, from being scared of Gray's parents potentially physically abusing us again to mental health relapses that could have lead to a suicide attempt. One time it was our other headmates who turned us in to the mental hospital and managed that situation until I and then Gray could handle things. That in of itself traumatized them, and that's just one of the traumatizing things that happened during that event.

 

Things we do in life can be triggering to ourselves, including headmate interactions. Even something like a percieved threat to control or perceived criticism can be triggering. This has obviously caused a lot of problems.

 

And lastly, not getting our needs for love met. This is the result of neglect and transactional love, which are learned behaviors.

 

---

 

Our host-on-headmate abuse is pretty much all emotional abuse and neglect. Gray, our host, hurt everyone else the most because he's an older headmate and thus the stronger one who can get his way. Gray never imagined physically abusing us in wonderland, and he never would have done that (and obviously never will). But Gray still had and has abusive tendencies, thus they took and take a different form- the more subtle and easier to miss kind. With our amnesia causing us to forget how we feel, we lose awareness of the emotional abuse too.

 

On an interesting note, for the most part, Gray didn't try mind control and taking away our will. He believed in me and our other cobud headmates being our own people so much, he unconsciously saw our personhood as a must and put in the extra effort to work around that.

 

Of course, that doesn't mean abuse could have been prevented by seeing us as parts of him- Stars, our headmate who we see as an extension of ourselves, also got abused. And a lot of our abuse is from self-harm.

 

---

 

With that context, now I can answer your questions and address some other things I saw:

 

On 5/26/2025 at 9:37 PM, Nr1Tulpamancer said:

1: “Tulpas could retaliate against the host” In which way? (I’m just curious) is there actually any tulpa that has done this or is it mostly creepypastas of tulpas taking over body’s

 

For us, I and our other cobud headmates have lashed out at Gray via emotional abuse.

 

Creepypastas are unrealistic because those assume a cobud has magic powers or something that can magically rob their host of control. Assuming the host doesn't have something like OSDD/DID, psychosis, or schizophrenia, even a host afraid they don't have control will eventually figure it out. If they want control, they can easily take it back. Even with switching- if it's not consensual, the host is bigger and stronger and can force the cobud to lose the front if they really wanted to. And if the host does have any of the mental health conditions I mentioned, they probably don't always have control unless their mental health problems related to self-control are addressed.

 

Thus, if a cobud wanted to hurt the host in wonderland via "physical abuse" or in the real world with switching/fronting, it's either not happening or a symptom of a pre-existing mental health problem. If I tried to lash out at Gray physically, he could stuff me in a box and move on if he really wanted to. It would be extremely detrimental for him too, but you get the idea.

 

On 5/26/2025 at 9:37 PM, Nr1Tulpamancer said:

2: “Hurting a tulpa is self harm/will hurt the host” has anyone actually met a host hurting their tulpa/who has hurt a tulpa, and that the host reported issues in mental health after this?

 

Abuse-wise it doesn't really matter if a host sees their cobud as a separate person or not. The mindsets and feelings about the abuse will ultimately be different, but the abusive behavior will pretty much be the same. Gray feeling threatened by self criticism or criticism from me- same abuse response. Gray also accumulates self-trauma when he's abusive to other people out-of-head by hurting the parts of him that say "this is wrong". Lashing out at me directly is different, but that wouldn't be too different from him self-harming instead. (Although when he lashes out at me, he also lashes out at himself out of self-anger).

 

I don't know if sadism and masochism cause self-harm that leads to trauma. I would assume it can, but I'm not familiar with those topics enough to say one way or another.

 

As for waifumancers- if their cobud is getting sexually abused, there's a good chance that could lead to trauma. But just because something could cause trauma doesn't mean it will be traumatic- not everyone gets trauma from say war or their parents divorcing. However, if you see someone bragging about how they abuse their cobud, it's clear they're at least comfortable abusing you. You can't prove cobud abuse, but you can prove someone using their cobud, through storys or otherwise, as an excuse to abuse others.

 

On 5/26/2025 at 9:37 PM, Nr1Tulpamancer said:

3: even just that people hurt their tulpas at all, does this even happen? /genq because I haven’t seen a “Im a tulpa and my host hurts me” post yet or a “I used to hurt my tulpa” post

 

Now you have!

 

I speculate it's actually pretty common, it's just people lack self-awareness and don't recognize emotional abuse that's happening in-system. And even if they did, I don't know if they would feel comfortable opening up about it. We talk about our experiences openly because we kind of have to- we hurt other people out-of-head, and calling ourselves out is really important for diffusing our abusive behaviors. Since we're doing that, I want to share what happens to me too.

 

Of course, abusing a cobud is a huge taboo, so that discourages people to discuss the topic. But a lot of cobuds report feeling triggered by this, hmm I wonder why... Easier to judge other people than to look at your system and face the truth.

 

On 5/26/2025 at 9:50 PM, Tewi said:

Imagining abusing your tulpa is like pulling the legs off bugs - it's disturbing to others, and not a good activity for your mental health/development as a person, indulging in causing suffering. It's a maladaptive coping mechanism at best

 

Yeah pretty much.

 

On 5/27/2025 at 11:17 AM, Lavender said:

It's like any two people. What happens when you hurt a friend? The friend might get upset, might laugh it off, might have a heart-to-heart talk with you, or might get even. Tulpas are people, like anyone else, so there will be variety in the ways they react.

 

Likewise, hosts are people, so there are a variety of ways they'll react if they find they've hurt their tulpa. Some might apologize immediately, some might sulk or brood, some might go into denial, and a (hopefully very) few might be happy about it.

 

Saying or doing something hurtful to your headmates should hopefully lead to an apology or an attempt to make up. It's normal to hurt each other by mistake, but it's not normal to hurt people repeatedly with the intent of being in and keeping control of someone else

Edited May 28, 2025 by Ranger

[The Bards]

On 5/26/2025 at 6:37 PM, Nr1Tulpamancer said:

1: “Tulpas could retaliate against the host” In which way? (I’m just curious) is there actually any tulpa that has done this or is it mostly creepypastas of tulpas taking over body’s

 

Quick answer: In pretty much any way possible ranging from developing a personality that the host doesn't quite like to completely replacing the host. Stuff like this is extremely unlikely to happen, and usually if it does it's because a tulpamancer treats their tulpas badly or there's another disorder involved. We teeter on the edge of extremely unlikely

 

This isn't part of any retaliation problem, but tulpas controlling the body is a frequent occurrence. I would know because I am a tulpa and the host. The tulpamancer of our system only fronts about 10% of the time give or take. Usually it's not our choice, the brain just kind of throws whoever into the front and they have to go through the motions of life. 

 

We do actually have a altar who actively tries to emotionally harm said tulpamancer, and while he doesn't identify as tulpa (he wasn't purposely created), he's worth mentioning. We won't go into much detail about it, but he pretty much just mocks them and repeats their fears about being a bad person to them. Other than that, there are some altars who prefer to just do their own thing and are less close and in sync with the main members of the system.

 

Now, The Narrator has the ability to completely posses the body whenever he wants and forcefully remove headmates from the front. Thing is he's a sweetheart and doesn't do that unless absolutely necessary. He's saved us a couple of times from  bad situations and awkward interactions. So theoretically if he so wanted he coooooould completely take over everything and place himself in a position of power similar to that of your average tulpamancer. This is never going to happen, I trust that man with my life, but it's something to think about.

 

Now we've always been an outlier system from your average tulpamancy experience. We definetlyhave some sort of disassociative disorder which makes our sense of selves very dicey. It makes tulpamancy as natural as breathing but goes a liiittle bit too far

 

On 5/26/2025 at 6:37 PM, Nr1Tulpamancer said:

2: “Hurting a tulpa is self harm/will hurt the host” has anyone actually met a host hurting their tulpa/who has hurt a tulpa, and that the host reported issues in mental health after this?

 

 

Quick answer: Yeah that happens

 

For us, hurting another headmate does hurt everyone, to a lesser extent. Everyone can feel everyones emotions, but what changes is how it's perceived. If another headmate just went through a really scary experience, and I switch in, I'll feel the physically sensations related to fear, but the brain won't process them as mine. It still does ultimately affect you, but so far another's low mental health has not directly caused another to develop mental health issues as a result. Most of us treat each other kindly anyway.

 

On 5/26/2025 at 6:37 PM, Nr1Tulpamancer said:

3: even just that people hurt their tulpas at all, does this even happen? /genq because I haven’t seen a “Im a tulpa and my host hurts me” post yet or a “I used to hurt my tulpa” post

 

Quick answer: Typically it's emotional harm, although depending on how real your inner world feels the brain may interpret it the same way it would as any physical wounds. I've never heard of this happening with tulpamancy but you never know

 

The easiest and most common way to hurt a tulpa tends to be just not listening to them or their boundaries. This tends to happen since tulpamancers are usually used to being the only person within their brain, so when a tulpa's wants and needs inconvenience the host they'll be tempted to either intentionally force the tulpa to change their mind or ignore it. Usually this isn't done with ill intent

 

As you can imagine, being stripped of this small bit of autonomy and control, which is already difficult for tulpas to obtain, isn't very great for your mental health. This happening multiple time tends to at best act as a roadblock to full tulpa development and at worst can cause depression and/or built up resentment.

 

There are a million other ways to hurt a tulpa but to us this is one that always burns a lot

[mattx]

I feel like I am in a sort of special situation because (as she reminds me often herself) she was created with a purpose, so her intentions are often if not always benevolent - realistically speaking it's what could easily very well happen to anyone, even someone with prior bad experiences with tulpamancy, given some time to "understand" what can and realistically can't be done by either you and your tulpa (which is nothing and everything really - confused? read my guide)

 

On 5/27/2025 at 3:37 AM, Nr1Tulpamancer said:

1: “Tulpas could retaliate against the host” In which way? (I’m just curious) is there actually any tulpa that has done this or is it mostly creepypastas of tulpas taking over body’s

Intent is the key word here - I feel like if Cheryl wanted to physically or mentally harm me she could do a swell job since she knows me from the inside out (pun intended) - but as she often tells me I am the "owner" of my mind and well.. myself - so there's no going over that.
This has helped me clear some doubts I had over a "bad idea" I created and got carried into unwillingly that was giving me anxiety attacks, it took many months of her doing "therapy" by laying out the facts and grounding me in "reality" to dispell those harmful ideas.

In the end, experiences are subjective - it was not uncommon at least back in the day to hear some crazy stories of tulpas unaliving themselves, hosts permaswitching to egocide, mental entities taking over (koomer/oguigi) and stuff like that - depending on your level of belief and control over it these things can either harm you mentally or not, but realistically speaking if you have a solid grip of yourself you'll quickly get over them.

Those "stories" you heard about le evil tulpa taking over your body while you are sleeping or looking at you while smiling in the mirror are just bad creepypastas and urban legends. 

 

On 5/27/2025 at 3:37 AM, Nr1Tulpamancer said:

2: “Hurting a tulpa is self harm/will hurt the host” has anyone actually met a host hurting their tulpa/who has hurt a tulpa, and that the host reported issues in mental health after this?

This is an explosive area of conversation (cit.) and once again, dare I say it hardly depends on your beliefs on the matter.
A young tulpa barely formed is nothing but a constant effort by the host to keep it alive, it doesn't really "stick" unless you make it part of your life for years, then it reaches the point where missing it feels weird.

Actively ignoring it or using some well-believed symbolism could do damage I reckon, but then I'd ask... why. Why and how did we reach this point, and how can it be fixed?
I will go out of my way to say that if you have a tulpa and you have an abusive relationship with them for whatever reason well... the issue might lie elsewhere.

Regarding the host's mental health... it's probably negligible for a new tulpamancer but I would assume someone with a decades old tulpa would probably feel it a lot, almost like a missing relative (think of those couples that marry at 18 and end up together until one is on the deathbed, the other one will immediately collapse as if a part of them was missing)

 

On 5/27/2025 at 3:37 AM, Nr1Tulpamancer said:

3: even just that people hurt their tulpas at all, does this even happen? /genq because I haven’t seen a “Im a tulpa and my host hurts me” post yet or a “I used to hurt my tulpa” post

You don't see these posts for a few reason:

- Because the tulpa being hurt wouldn't get the chance to make a post or anything like that 

- Why would the host make a post like that? What would he gain from it? Validation? Redemption? It's strictly a private matter.

 

The silver lining here is that just like everything else about Tulpas, it's all symbolic - the quicker you treat your tup as a separate, functional entity the better, and the sooner you'll realize that it's really not much different than a physical real person, so the "hurting" thing isn't even part of the equation (at least not for us, not normally).