Tulpas, Alternative Personalties, Alter Egos, DID alters, Imaginary Friends

[Like Ra]

I really don't talk about this very much but I have a tulpa, yeah. Kind of happened by accident during a very stressful period of my life, but he's more or less stuck around.

Tulpa or alter? A tulpa is something you create consciously by yourself, an alter is what you get "automatically" = DID. (@CollectiveThought, please correct me if I'm wrong.)

Anyway, any more details? Can he front? Do you talk to each other?

[CollectiveThought]

Tulpa or alter? A tulpa is something you create consciously by yourself, an alter is what you get "automatically" = DID. (@CollectiveThought, please correct me if I'm wrong.)

Yes...and no. 😅 Generally speaking, alters do tend to automatically form in response to new trauma, especially initially, but some people with DID do learn to consciously create new alters. In fact, that's exactly what I did with my long-term co-host—I intentionally created her to replace me because I couldn't deal with life anymore. In her case, she's considered an alter because I have DID, whereas for someone else who is otherwise mentally healthy she would be considered a tulpa.

I'm not saying it's the case here, but it's at least possible that a person with a tulpa may actually have dissociation (a broader group than just DID), and that that tulpa would be an alter according to current psychological science. And I want to note here that I am also including single-episode PTSD with dissociation here, which can cause a split between an apparently normal part who deals with day to day stuff and an emotional part who holds onto the "bad memories"*, especially because of the mention of the tulpa being around since a very stressful period.

This leads to new terminology like calling people who experience plurality "endogenic systems" if there is no trauma behind the creation of their plurality and "traumagenic systems" if there was trauma involved. Also, I should point out that alter is really a term used by psychology in reference to a disorder, while tulpa is not really associated with psychology in any meaningful way yet, and is a more casual term with a longer history behind it. Also, anger gets involved sometimes, so in general you would want to avoid calling your headmate(s) "alter(s)" unless you've been diagnosed with something because people who've been through a lot of bad stuff feel like you are somehow trying to minimize what they went through in the unwilling creation of their headmate(s). The term tulpa has its own cultural baggage, but is much less likely to anger someone if you use that term, which is why a lot of plural systems avoid using the term alter and use the term tulpa instead. Note: If you are a non-traumagenic system, please feel free to correct anything I've said here; I'm still pretty new at trying to understand other plural experiences.

This is splitting an awful lot of hairs over definitions and emotions, though. As always, humans want neat labels and categories to put things in (because our brains are lazy and want to use cheap heuristics wherever possible) and the universe usually refuses to cooperate.

And then to muddy the waters even more, I want to bring this back to plural experiences and talk about a model called Internal Family Systems (IFS treatment is used for everything from anxiety or eating disorders through PTSD and dissociative disorders and is a popular method of treatment). IFS is based on the idea that we all have different parts that need to work together like a family for mental health. I was recently starting to read a book (No Bad Parts) by the same PhD who developed the IFS model. My therapist wants to try a modified IFS treatment on me, especially because I have been unknowingly using a lot of IFS-style skills to try to help myself since I learned I had DID. In this book, Dr. Schwartz's descriptions of talking to parts sounded an awful lot like talking with alters or tulpas, which I found quite interesting. In fact, it's his contention that DID alters are just "more polarized and disconnected from the others [ed: in comparison to the parts found in those without DID]."

In other words, all of us are born with many sub-minds that are constantly interacting inside of us. This is in general what we call thinking, because the parts are talking to each other and to you constantly about things you have to do or debating the best course of action, and so on. Remembering a time when you faced a dilemma, it’s likely you heard one part saying, “Go for it!” and another saying, “Don’t you dare!” Because we just consider that to be a matter of having conflicted thoughts, we don’t pay attention to the inner players behind the debate. IFS helps you not only start to pay attention to them, but also become the active internal leader that your system of parts needs.

While it may sound creepy or crazy at first to think of yourself as a multiple personality, I hope to convince you that it’s actually quite empowering. It’s only disturbing because multiplicity has been pathologized in our culture. A person with separate autonomous personalities is viewed as sick or damaged, and the existence of their alters is considered simply the product of trauma—the fragmentation of their previously unitary mind. From the mono-mind point of view, our natural condition is a unitary mind. Unless, of course, trauma comes along and shatters it into pieces, like shards of a vase.

The mono-mind paradigm has caused us to fear our parts and view them as pathological. In our attempts to control what we consider to be disturbing thoughts and emotions, we just end up fighting, ignoring, disciplining, hiding, or feeling ashamed of those impulses that keep us from doing what we want to do in our lives. And then we shame ourselves for not being able to control them. In other words, we hate what gets in our way.

Sadly, Dr. Schwartz never directly discusses tulpas in this book.

* According to the theory of Structural Dissociation, which is the current basis of a lot of theory around the formation of DID, OSDD, and PTSD with dissociation.

[Like Ra]

Yes...and no. 😅

I love it! 😂

headmate

I really like this word/definition!

This is splitting an awful lot of hairs over definitions

Isn't it something what biology and geology are doing 80% of the time? 🤣

Science does not exist without classification, and each and every classification is wrong. Including "bits" (electronic-wise).

As always, humans want neat labels and categories to put things in (because our brains are lazy and want to use cheap heuristics wherever possible) and the universe usually refuses to cooperate.

Exactly! Moderation is a pain - you always have to decide which post to move to which thread. 😆

In other words, all of us are born with many sub-minds that are constantly interacting inside of us.

That kinda answers my question...

[Lycalopex]

I really don't talk about this very much but I have a tulpa, yeah. Kind of happened by accident during a very stressful period of my life, but he's more or less stuck around.

Tulpa or alter? A tulpa is something you create consciously by yourself, an alter is what you get "automatically" = DID. (@CollectiveThought, please correct me if I'm wrong.)

Anyway, any more details? Can he front? Do you talk to each other?

Not an alter, a tulpa, yeah. He kind of solidified after effort from me, before then he was more of a faint presence helping keep me coolheaded.

We talk, yes. Most of the time he's in the background letting me go about my life, but he pipes up with a comment every now and then or makes his opinion clear when I'm doing something dumb. He can front, but prefers me to relay things second-hand when it happens online.