Tulpa's as 'Therapy'

[Ranger]

I prefer cocreation instead of tulpamancy and cobud instead of tulpa

 

Reading this thread is very interesting to me. Normally I would say in bold letters absolutely not, but I think there's more nuance here than I'm appreciating.

 

It makes me wonder if some people really only need self-help resources to fix their problems. CBT wasn't enough for us, we needed more intense therapy and assistance to do trauma work. And I'm well aware that having a cobud can make you happier and cocreation in general may help with self-exploration.

However, I cannot in good conscience recommend cobuds as therapists. Some people genuinely do need a mental health professional to assist them. If you have deep trauma, opening that up can be dangerous if you're at risk of losing self-control and acting on self-harm or suicidal ideations. A cobud also can't make something like schizophrenia go away. And even in general- I did get thrown into the "guardian" role, and it just bogged me down. The system "caretaker" role can be exhausting, and nowadays, we pass that responsibility around if Gray or I can't work on our trauma problems by ourselves.

Thus, I want to take a more middle of the road approach- in general I'll still stick to saying no, but if I have the ability to get into the nuance, I can elaborate a little. I'm working on writing a general guide, and I'm not a huge fan of the idea of presenting so much nuance the main idea gets lost.

[Luminesce]

For actual therapy, definitely not, you are likely not qualified to therapize yourself

As motivational companions though, absolutely

It's not really professional therapy when a friend points out your negative thinking and says you need to have more confidence in yourself, but it can be helpful in the same sort of way, and tulpas can very much do that

 

So yeah some sort of middleground, I guess it's best to compare them to a supportive and understanding friend (tulpa personality may vary) which can very much provide mental benefits and encourage personal development, but for many serious therapy-requiring issues like trauma or personality disorders I don't think they can replace an actual therapist in most cases

[Lenore]

And then there's our system doing therapy on our host without even realizing it. We recently learned we were actually using a technique called Imagery Rescripting to help Bee process traumatic memories.

 

We were reading this study on managing fear of failure, specifically fear that stems from negative experiences of criticism in childhood. This part really stood out:

 

Quote

1. The therapist enters the scene and prevents the criticism
2. The therapist addresses a critic and points out the child’s needs
3. The therapist addresses the child and acknowledges their needs
4. The therapist suggests to the child to perform an activity that would meet their needs

 

Replace "therapist" with "tulpa" and you have exactly what we were doing. Basically rewriting painful memories with the response Bee actually needed from the adults in their life. It's been really effective at helping her let go of certain things.

 

We've had success applying some techniques borrowed from CBT and IFS therapy as well. I've spent the past couple of months retraining Bee's inner critic, with promising results. In particular, we've noticed that we've all felt less socially inhibited, which is a big deal for Bee especially.

 

I recognize that we may be an unusual case, though, and self-administered therapy is certainly not for everyone. I think that tulpas are in a unique position to help their hosts with mental health struggles, just by virtue of being on the front lines, so to speak. Even the most understanding friend can't know your thoughts with the same intimacy as a headmate.

[The Incans]

I can accept that some very severe cases of psychosis etc especially in an acute/emergency situation may need external help such as medication or hospital.

 

For me though where the cause of much of my 'littles' distress was that they just didn't understand the concept of death and why our mother had to leave us when they weren't ready ..creating a Tulpa version of her on the inside was a comfort and probably because we believed in it too. ...our mother had told us she'd always be with us and listening it was just that our (human) eyes couldn't see spirits...being an autistic child we took everything literally.

It's been more of a spiritual journey for us. I don't see it as any different to religious belief's ..people don't get sectioned or medicated for believing in god and going to church every sunday!...and there are many religions throughout the world. 

 

We don't get believing in someone we've never met in our lifetime is going to help us, but believing the spirit of your mother would (who dedicated her life to us when she was alive) makes much more sense her spirit would join us as a walk-in, the same for our last dog's spirit..we were her world when her soul lived in the body of a dog and. lived with us 15 years. 

I believe I (host) do have a form of OSDD I don't know if I'd get a DID diagnosis as the ones that are 'alters' are versions of me at different ages when trauma took place.  The one's that are 'not mes' are all Tulpa bodies representing a past loved person or pet. I believe you can have both (Alters ans Tulpa's) and Kitty and Jess are so sentient for us because some past social mask alters decided to re-integrate with them rather than me to keep their memories alive within our system..so those 2 are actually 'hybrids'  whereas the other 3 (Angelo, Bear and Ralphie) are more your traditional Tulpa..we intend for them to remain as internal companions only for our littles so no alters will be integrating with them (to fast track their ability to 'front')

Edited March 11 by The Incans

[Autumn Ren]

My host's regression and exposure therapy as helped by other headmates acting as the "therapist" worked and stuck. The help more like just keeping a clean perspective and to guide my host to a resolution. Some of these were deep seated childhood traumas.

 

The result was the permanent removal of triggers, moods, compulsions and conditioning surrounding those resolved traumas.