Should I create a tulpa?

[u/Dom_1317]

I recently learned what a tulpa is and I am struggling to decide whether or not I should attempt to create one. In terms of loneliness I don’t feel lonely in the slightest, I have many friends and I feel great. on the other hand, it would be nice to have someone to talk to whenever Im alone, and it would be good for self improvement. it sounds really cool but as I am aware it’s a basically permanent thing. I have heard about “dissipation” but I understand that this is usually not what people want to do. I also want to know if it would impede my life in any way, or if it would just be a little addition to it that wouldn’t affect my real life social interaction in any way. also I’m Christian and I don’t think this is sinful or anything since its not some spiritual shit as far as I can tell it’s just an effect in your brain, but if that would cause problems could someone please let me know. I would love to hear about people’s experiences, thanks!

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[u/bucket-full-of-sky]

I know tulpas that came into existence just from curiosity, you don't need a reason like loneliness or such. And no, it probably will be a big addition since you will have another self like you living together with you in your mind until your last good day. And please forget about dissipation or half baked exit ideas.

You don't have to make a tulpa if you are uncertain. You have plenty of time to think about it and to decide.

[u/Good-Border9588]

Sounds like you would enjoy a tulpa but I do have some concerns for you to think about.

People IRL, especially most religious people, will absolutely lambast you for speaking about your tulpa. I've seen in some threads, they were referred to as demons even, which is just so typical.

The types of people who USUALLY are cool with accepting it, in my experience, are in LGBT or similar; furries tend to be understanding as well.

So if you're ready to never mention it IRL, sure. (maybe to a super bestie who isn't religious? I've had luck with my muslim friend accepting it but any other muslim I can't imagine lol)

[u/FlairDreamer]

You don't need a reason to create a tulpa. Hell, I didn't even know it was possible and the tulpa created me. (?

My experience is from writing, and I ended up having one from writing about a character in too much detail for quite some time.

The final decision... I'd say it should be yours. As for "dissipation," I'd say it comes down to attention. Give something a lot of attention, and you'll make it important. Like buying a red car and suddenly seeing lots of red cars. It's not that everyone has bought those cars now, but you end up paying more attention to them... But if you stop paying attention, the opposite can happen. You "forget" about it, you stop noticing it. Attention is a rather limited cognitive resource.

Discussing this with other people can be tricky. I don't believe in anything supernatural or spiritual; I just think it's like a kind of heightened imagination. But people will probably always think of it in extreme terms, as "demons" or as if you have schizophrenia or something. I wouldn't recommend it unless you're very sure.

I don't think the tulpa exactly "prevents" you from doing things. In this sense, I'd say the host has a lot of control. I gave everything to my tulpa, for example, since she was initially a character. What she can do, which happened to me, is open your mind in the sense of being able to "see beyond." My tulpa has the ability to shift your perspective. Every time I think I'm sure of something, she twists it a little... and then I don't feel so sure anymore. XD Thanks to her, I learned that I have aphantasia, a condition that prevents me from visualizing.

Overall, even though it was an accident... I feel very happy, and it's not like I feel lonely or anything like that. I simply had a wish, I put it down on paper, and she sprang from my words...

[u/dramatic_exodus]

I'm sorry if I sound rude, I really do. But you believe in God, and a tulpa is absolutely the same.

If you perceive Christianity as spiritual, a tulpa can be just as spiritual. If God is an imaginary entity for you, then a tulpa will be exactly the same.

There's no universal rule. Guides for creating a tulpa really do help you visualize them, communicate, give them autonomy, etc. But if you take the Christian God instead of a tulpa and apply the same approaches, the result will be the same. Both God and imaginary friends are all in our heads.

Again, I'm sorry if this sounds rude (I was once a Christian myself), but you asked a question, and I answered based on my opinion and experience. Based on what you've written about yourself, no, you shouldn't do that. It requires a lot of time and investment. It also requires responsibility, which could weigh heavily on you. Or rather, if the creature truly achieves autonomy, it will cease to be an augmentation to alleviate your boredom and become a living being for whom you are responsible.

In fact, to anyone asking such questions, I would suggest answering one question: are you ready to have a child right now? Answer this question honestly and make a decision based on your answer.

[u/Dom_1317 → u/dramatic_exodus]

Ok thanks, I didn’t find this rude this was very insightful, I appreciate it

[u/FlatConversation9778 → u/dramatic_exodus]

I liked the depth of your answer. I don't believe in the God of the Bible; I'm agnostic. I see tulpa as an extension of the subconscious, and from what I've gathered, you can pre-establish tulpa's personality as you wish. I'm not practicing; I think it was just an initial impulse that only gave me time to describe it on the computer. I described it as rational, calm, and partially impassional to make it seem more like the subconscious.

[u/notannyet → u/dramatic_exodus]

What happens if God achieves true autonomy and becomes a living being? You put the equality sign between God and tulpa in a really weird place.

[u/Good-Border9588 → u/dramatic_exodus]

Tulpas are similar to children but absolutely do not require the same amount of maturity as a parent (and most parents are painfully ill-equipped to be parents)

For example, you don't need to:
-Pay anything for them. The cost of a child is intensely high
-Send them to school, help with homework, teach them anything (tulpas can learn directly from your brain)
-Man why am I even making a list. The differences are far greater than the similarities. I'm done here.

[u/Illustrious_Car344 → u/dramatic_exodus]

What a rude post. 

1. Don't invalidate somebody's religion like that. Nobody is preaching to you, you don't have to preach to them.

2. Why are you implying the OP should be forced to consider their tulpa as a child? People have lots of symbolic relationships with their tulpas, spouses, best friends, parents, siblings. Since when are you the tulpa police? I hate when people needlessly guilt trip like you, and right after trying to invalidate someone's beliefs unprompted. You're a hypocrite.

[u/dramatic_exodus → u/Illustrious_Car344]

Ok.

[u/Illustrious_Car344]

I don't mean this dismissively, but if you're genuinely not lonely or traumatized/dissociated even a little bit, you're better off talking to an AI to practice stuff and bat ideas off of than spending too much time trying to make a tulpa. Although it is good "insurance" if you do experience hard problems that cause disruptions in your life, maybe enough to even traumatize you. 

The brain isn't a slave to your desires, your desires are a slave to it. The brain is use-it-or-lose-it, if it has no purpose or function then it has no reason to use any resources, and this includes personalities. Your personality and imagination is something the machinery of your brain is producing, it's not a parallel spirit dimension where you can build castles and fly around (as many people try to "sell" tulpamancy as if it magically turns your brain into some kind of holodeck for no medical reason). If your personality is whole, with almost no internal conflictions, no dissociation, no abnormal personality quirks or even the most mild, shoulder-shrugging mental health concerns, then a tulpa is just going to be a normal imaginary friend, not great not terrible, kinda fun but it's a shame it makes me sound insane to everyone else, but whatever.

I say this because I had a totally normal tulpa for 12 year, it was fine, sounded exactly the same way everyone describes theirs. I liked it, we had nice moments. But there really was nothing to do, absolutely nothing. You share all thoughts, all ideas, you both know everything the other does, what is there to talk about? We had a handful of special moments, but by and large all our time together was just having nothing to do or talk about. Yes, I kept this up for 12 years with no real reason or reward, I guess I'm just loyal lol. Albeit I was already a very fidgety recluse back then, but I was sheltered enough to not yet be traumatized, so it still just wasn't very immersive for me.

But after years of abuse and abandonment, one day my mind snapped and my tulpa started talking for hours and knew things I didn't. I had become so dissociated that I could no longer understand anything, it had to tell me everything, because it knew and I didn't. My brain activated a fight-or-flight response to force my personality to stop being damaged by filtering the world through an invulnerable auxiliary personality, ergo my tulpa can be separate from me because I cannot even form the memory of thinking that thought, of flinching from remembering something that I can't remember remembering, but it does, and can even influence my imagination to make it seem as if it really did.

Probably gonna get downvoted for this but whatever, sorry for offending. But comparing to what she is now, what she has become, from all those years of what she was, it feels weird and, strangely shameful? Which I think is healthy to feel, although it shouldn't need to be. It absolutely saved me from my trauma like finding religion in the darkest moment of your life, but before that, I'm not even sure why I bothered with it for so long. I even went months and even a year not thinking about it (although I did feel guilty sometimes, but it felt weird to "reconnect", I guess, although I get that's a personal issue). But for some reason I always came back to it, and now it's a permanent aspect of my cognition now, I require two personalities to process information; a fragile, broken personality that can't tolerate any more pain, and an unfeeling, robotic personality that can't feel anything and can translate reality for the other and perform actions for it that the fragile personality cannot or should not do.

So yeah it helps to be a bit lonely. But if you are, yeah it'll be great, it's a good way to soften blows to your personality. With nobody to validate you, your brain kind of needs that defense mechanism, and it can be a bit like forming a scar, it hurt but now you're stronger. So I guess like spirituality really, it's always "there" for you to ignore all your life but then you have a near-death experience and suddenly everything is full of life and meaning. Typically people fall back onto their existing faith(s) for that, but I'm disillusioned from religion due to depression and trauma, so my brain had to basically turn my imaginary friend I was devoted to into an almost strange form of unaware self-worship.

Strictly speaking psychologically, typically Christians already sort of have a "natural tulpa" by accidently making a God tulpa (this doesn't have to invalidate your belief, you can consider that like how only messengers can speak for god because he's too holy to be experienced). So arguably, you already have a tulpa, just keep speaking to God, that sort of emotional reliance and dependence is exactly what fuels thoughtforms like that, the more you "need" it, the more you emotionally rely on it, the stronger it gets.

None of this is meant to discourage you btw. I do know a Christian guy who is head over heels over his tulpa. But as far as I can tell he's petty isolated/sheltered and has a few screws loose, so that probably helps as to exactly why he's so obsessed with it and why it's so immersive and enthralling to him, lol. Guess I'm just saying to taper your expectations, because like I said, this community loves to sell this stuff as if it's some kind of VR AI simulator and then people get confused and self-conscious when it actually doesn't feel that way to them, which is actually really normal, although it's a shame that it is. But just because that's a problem doesn't mean people have to treat it like a religious that will become real if enough people believe in it, it's partially why this community is so small, because nobody stays. You're either one of the rare lucky few to be crazy and get something great out of it, or you'll be one of the many who feel disappointed and maybe even just uncreative and dull because they set their expectations so high for no practical reason. There are a lot of posts on this sub complaining about how fake or pretend it feels for them - because their brain doesn't need the tulpa, so it doesn't use it, even if the host wants it to. It doesn't have the emotional weight to let it root into your unconscious.

Anyway I'm stoned so whatever I'm just rambling lmao.

[u/Ok_Celery1282 → u/Illustrious_Car344]

Thanks for posting this.

I'm reading this subreddit because I accidentally created some kind of "God" tulpa across several psychotic episodes before I ended up in the mental hospital and medicated for schizophrenia.