PSA For the Tulpa Community

I’ve been reading the progress log of a certain tulpamancer that many of you probably know of and how their tulpa became obsessed with possession and switching. She became impatient with him, was all but doing stuff behind his back, etc. They switched, and she wanted to control him most of the time. When the host abandoned his tulpa to all but dissipate, he forced her become the new host. She grew infuriated and tore him apart after a time. She panicked and later managed to salvage him, but the whole experience was scary.

I don’t want to rag on these two in particular, but in reading all the build up to their situation, it’s made me realize something that could happen to anyone.

Tulpas can be manipulative. Tulpas can be controlling. AKA, Tulpas can be abusive.

As we know, tulpas are their own entities. Our community works to ensure that the morale is to treat them as such. They deserve to be treated like any other person you know.

I think most hosts do their best to do just that, however, I saw in the comments on this particular system’s progress thread and what happened when shit started to go down was basically an equal fork in the road of people either A) throwing the tulpa under the bus, suddenly exclaiming that she was an intrusive thought or a monster that had always been out to get the host and should be destroyed or absorbed, or B) treating her like a perfectly kind upstanding tulpa to be defended, and what’s more, encouraged to continue. Perhaps the latter partially comes from the equal-treatment ideology, but I also suspect some simply wanted to watch the shit hit the fan and observe this as an experiment they weren’t willing to do themselves.

Now here’s my point. TULPAS SHOULD INDEED BE TREATED LIKE ANY OTHER BODY PERSON. But what that means is: not only should you treat them as a human that deserves rights and respect, but you should also understand that like any other human, a tulpa can develop a terrible personality and become an abusive person. While you shouldn’t suddenly treat them like a monster to destroy, YOU STILL NEED TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT WHAT THEY’RE DOING IS WRONG.

If your tulpa starts to manipulate you, betray you, lie to you, disrespect you, negatively pressure you, or control you (not just consenting possession but controlling the way you should act on your own accord), THAT IS NOT OKAY. Like any other abusive person in your life, you shouldn’t murder them, but you need to either stand up to them and make some changes, or push them away from you entirely. They’re not healthy for you. I don’t care if you love them, you are in an abusive relationship. If you have to send them off to live in the wonderland on their own and lock the door behind you, or put them into a cryogenic sleep, or spend a very long time hashing out your relationship until it’s healthy enough to continue on equal terms, YOU NEED TO KEEP YOURSELF SAFE, HAPPY, AND HEALTHY.

I suspect in the above mentioned case of tulpa and host, it was not only the tulpa’s desire to be the host and human rather than tulpa, but also the host’s desire to abandon his life that led to the incident, so again, this isn’t the main point of my post, and things could be very different for others.

My point is that this is an example of how things can go wrong, and that we as a community need to understand how to properly approach abusive tulpas. I’m not even going to pretend I know the exact right way to do this, but we can’t just ignorantly allow the ideology of “Kill or Encourage” to be the only options.