RE: Be Seein' Y'all
Nowadays, I'm coming from the perspective of harm reduction. There are a lot of younger users here on this subreddit. They can easily find it, and if they might be in a vulnerable mental place, it can be tempting to encourage this practice like it could be a supplement or panacea for getting mental health needs met instead of getting help from professionals when needed, depending on the person's circumstances.
I've been a tulpamancer for five years. I don't know what I would have experienced that gives me the authority to say this, but if you are under the age of 16 or 17 and reading this post: please close this tab and forget about this subject until you are 18. It's not worth the family drama. It's not worth the forced hospitalization risk due to insane parents. It's not worth it.
Wait until you're older. Your tulpa will thank you.
I now believe that professional mental health would be the best first choice whenever accessible, or even tamer practices like mindfulness meditation or art therapy before attempting tulpa creation would be a good idea. I'm not meaning to bring down anyone who has had a great mental health improvement since doing tulpamancy, but we should still be aware that these are the good examples that we're seeing and self reporting, while maybe the negative outcomes are choosing not to, so it could be reinforcing a positive bias.
Yeah, survivor's bias is a hell of a thing with tulpamancy. I go out of my way to stress that tulpamancy is not a silver bullet, but enough people don't that it doesn't really matter (lol). I'd love if there was some kind of unbreakable minimum age needed for participation in this subreddit or to get access to the tulpa creation guides; but then that creates problems in terms of making material easy to distribute.
Your tulpa will not solve your mental health problems. They can help you solve them, sure, but they are not a replacement for any mental health professional, a proper diagnosis (during which you DO NOT LIE FOR ANY REASON, these tools they use only work when people are being honest) and a more wholistic approach to health for the entire body (including the mind).
I guess your tulpa’s life is as real as you make it to be.
Bingo, though I would have phrased it like:
I guess your tulpa’s life is as real as you let it be.
One of my tulpas is looking like she's about to blossom into an author. She's been posting to both here and her blog and wants to write a book. Another one just wants to create works of art, not caring if anyone knows it was actually her who did it.
It takes a very unique and tolerant person to be aware of a person's plurality and still view them as mostly normal or even sane, much less be in a close relationship. To those of you with tulpa and significant others who understand, you're very lucky.
This. I would love to actually get numbers on this, but I don't think that plurality open to the relationship is very common. I have it in my relationship (love u senpai <3), and I wish this kind of thing was a lot more common for tulpamancers and their significant others.