I first heard the term “tulpa” from a friend I used to play D&D online with. He was part of a group of “neurodivergents” on Discord that practiced tulpamancy, and for one reason or another, he thought I would be interested. The funny thing is, while I never ended up joining the group, the more I researched tulpamancy, the more it occurred to me I had already been doing something similar most of my life.
So, a brief explanation of tulpas (although I’d recommend looking it up yourself for a better picture): Essentially, they’re a hybrid between intentional and controlled DID and an upgraded imaginary friend. Basically, unlike DID, a personality is consciously created, and not ever placed in a position of power; rather, they serve more as an advisor/friend than an alternate self.
For me, I was always a lonely kid. There are numerous reasons for it, some out of my hands, some not, but ever since a young age I would create imaginary worlds, and people to inhabit those worlds. No joke, I literally had planets and civilizations young me would visit in my headspace. The only one I really remember now was a futuristic planet of chronic gamblers that young me would play with, betting imaginary fortunes on silly occurrences, like the next colour of car to go by, or whether the time on the clock behind me was even or odd. However, along with all the planets, I also had one imaginary friend that was a constant companion to young-me on my imaginary adventures.
Honestly, I don’t remember her original name, or even her original form. However, from my earliest memories of her to my high school days, she was at one time a robotic cat (gosh did I love robots as a kid), and eventually she was a plain ol’ black cat, then she was some kinda cat-human (I swear I’m not a furry), then she was some form of elf-eared fey creature, and then she was just a girl. By the time she was a fey thing however, she finally had a name; and that was Twitch.
No really. I have no idea why, but that’s her name.
Anyways, Twitch was always something of the opposite of young me; she was cynical, sharp-witted, sassy, and honestly a bit of a b**** in the best possible way. I never was good at standing up for myself, so Twitch stood up for me, at least in my head. Funny thing is, now that I’m older, I’m far closer in personality to her than I am to young-me. I guess she rubbed off on me? But anyways, she was someone to talk to, play with, and in general just hang out with. She was the textbook imaginary friend.
Then grade 10 came.
Someday I’ll write in depth about my grade 10 year, because it was literally a turning point in my life, but for now it will suffice to say that grade 10 was filled with pretty much every form of issue; family issues, school issues, social issues, personal/emotional issues, you name it, I had them. Out of this tumultuous phase, for some reason I generated five new Tulpas. I really have no idea how or why, but they fleshed out my “headspace council”. Six heads were better than one, seven if you counted myself, so one way or another I made it though grade 10 and into grade 11.
Grade 11 was also interesting, as that was where I first experimented with manually editing my psyche and self-psychoanalysis. More on that in a later post as well, but suffice to say my current self was vastly unprepared for what life and family were requiring, so I figured I needed to “rewrite my code” into someone better at a fundamental level. I genuinely think this worked, and a huge part of it was again thanks to the tulpas. One person’s opinion of a “better me” was vastly inferior to seven opinions, after all.
One thing I especially struggled with was objectivity. All around me, I saw a world of people unable to see the other side of issues; a world filled with equally incorrect people constantly digging at the holes in each other’s armour, instead of trying to meet in the middle over what little they were both correct over; an abundance of emotionalism instead of solid, practical, objectivity. There was no side I wanted to be on, so my answer was to be on no side; To accomplish the erasure of self, to reduce my own opinions, and instead leave things to the “tulpa council”. If they, wildly different personalities, yet each created by me, could agree on an issue, then I would consider it my stance. It changed how I looked at things, because it took the “put yourself in someone else’s shoes” and cranked it by 6. Armed with a council of 6 tulpas, I moved on to grade 12, graduation, and the workforce.
And that’s when the next batch came. By this time, I was pretty confident in my mental reformatting capabilities, and so I created 5 new tulpas specifically to balance out the last 5 I created; personalities designed to round them out, and make up for what they were lacking. Twitch didn’t need one though, as she was kind of my counterbalance anyway. Original me became relegated to something of a tulpa status to make things equitable, and so now I had a council of 12. From there, I broke them up into their pairs and scheduled two for each day (and Twitch on the weekends). It took too much effort to keep them all present at once, so I left it at 1-2 active always, with the rest on standby for when I needed them.
I should note it was at this point that I learned about tulpas and tulpamancy from my friend. Not much to say from here on, I did create four more tulpas, two for Sunday (so Twitch only needed to take Saturdays), and two “emergency use” tulpas for when situations are a little more dire and call for more…extreme action.
Honestly, I can’t imagine any other way of life now. As much as I’d like to say I never get lonely, that’s unfortunately not the case. However, having the tulpas around goes miles towards keeping that at bay. Plus, I think I’m well on the road towards my goal of emotional neutrality, and an unbiased, rational viewpoint. I’ve always had the (probably not healthy) opinion that if I want to be reliable to others, I must first be self-reliant. In other words, always be in a position to give, not take. Thus, creating my own go-to’s for my mental and emotional needs was the natural conclusion. Time will tell how well things work out, but for now, I’m confident.
I don’t know how interesting this will be to you guys, but if you’ve read this far, that’s something I guess XD Let me know what you think of tulpas, if you’d already heard of them, and if you had any imaginary friends growing up.
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