Wouldn’t it be great to have a friend that’s always there for you, no matter what? Someone that can talk to you and support you whenever you need it? Then creating a tulpa might give you what you’re looking for.

How do you create a tulpa? You can create a tulpa using a practice known as forcing or focusing. You vividly imagine your tulpa in detail, including what it looks and sounds like. The more you practice, the faster your tulpa will manifest.

In this article, I’ll discuss what a tulpa is. You’ll learn why you might want to make one, how to do it, as well as some of the dangers or negative aspects that you should consider.

What Is A Tulpa?

To sum it up in just two words, a tulpa is essentially an imaginary friend. Techniques for creating a tulpa go back to ancient Tibet.

When you create a tulpa, you’re essentially splitting off a small segment of your mind to create a new identity. If you’re familiar with how computer hard drives work, it’s similar to creating a new partition in your mind. While it’s actually a part of you, your tulpa can seem like a separate person or entity that can act independently from you. This allows you to have conversations with your tulpa and it will really feel like you’re talking to someone besides yourself.

If you’ve never heard of tulpas before, this probably sounds quite strange and shocking. Why would someone want to intentionally give themselves a split personality? The big difference is that creating a tulpa is a deliberate and intentional act.

Whereas a multiple personality disorder like Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is usually brought on by psychologically traumatic events. In that case, people can create a split personality as a coping mechanism without knowing what they’re doing. The main difference between a multiple personality disorder and creating a tulpa is that in the former, a person will normally experience amnesia when the other personalities take over.

With a tulpa, you remain in full control. Your tulpa will develop its own personality, beliefs, preferences, and opinions. In a sense, it takes on a life of its own. But it’s more like having an imaginary friend outside of yourself, as opposed to being possessed by a different personality.

Other words for a tulpa in other magical traditions include a thoughtform or egregore.

What Are The Benefits of Creating A Tulpa?

After reading all of this, you might still be left wondering: why make a tulpa?

As strange as it sounds, tulpas can actually be helpful, and many people who create them report having nothing but positive experiences.

Companionship and Friendship

One of the main reasons that people create a tulpa is just to have a friend. If you already have plenty of people in your life that you can talk to, then chances are that you don’t need a tulpa and the idea of making one won’t appeal to you anyway. Although if most people are honest with themselves, they already talk to themselves in their heads a lot. Whenever you face a difficult decision or you’re stressed, you likely have a conversation in your head about what to do. Having a tulpa just externalizes this process.

A big upside of a tulpa is that you get a friend you can’t lose and that will never leave. It will always listen to you and be there. I haven’t heard any stories of people who have become enemies with their tulpa or had their tulpa run away. And if you do get tired of how your current tulpa looks or behaves, you can simply change it, or even make a new one.

Increased Happiness

As a result of having someone always there to talk to, most people with tulpas report being happier than before they had one. Having someone to share your thoughts and dreams with makes most people happier. Your tulpa is a part of you, so in many ways, no one will ever be able to understand you better.

A Better Understanding of Yourself

Making a tulpa gives you a deeper understanding of how your mind works. You’ll get to experiment with parts of your psychology that most people don’t even know about. So for this reason, some people choose to make a tulpa just to try it out for themselves and see if it’s real.

An Additional Coping Mechanism

Some people use tulpas as a way to cope with problems like anxiety, depression, or ADHD. You should always speak with a therapist first to get help with any of these issues. But if counseling and medication just isn’t cutting it, a tulpa may be able to provide extra comfort when you’re feeling down. A tulpa can help you to concentrate or calm down when needed, just like a good friend.

Better Memory

Some tulpa creators claim that their tulpa can pick up specific details and remember things that they don’t actually remember themselves. By using a tulpa, you might be able to tap into more of your subconscious memory and recall things that you don’t consciously remember.

Better Social Skills

If you don’t have any friends to talk to right now, having a tulpa can help develop an understanding of how to talk to others, and how to have empathy.

A tulpa can also give you more confidence when you’re in social situations. You’ll never be all alone again, you’ll always have a friend there with you for every tough conversation that you have. They can give opinions and suggestions that might not come to you in the moment otherwise.

Are Tulpas Real?

It’s hard to say for sure if tulpas are real or not, because it really depends on your definition of what’s real.

If you’re wondering if making a tulpa actually creates a separate physical entity, then no. But to people who have tulpas, they can look, feel, and sound just as real as a person.

But on the other hand, it’s important to remember that a tulpa is all in someone’s mind. Other people will never be able to actually see or interact with your tulpa except through you. Likewise, you’ll never see another person’s tulpa.

Some skeptical people think that the whole tulpa phenomenon is just an elaborate internet hoax or prank. But there are simply too many testimonials to ignore that the phenomenon is real. For example, the /r/tulpas subreddit on Reddit has over 30,000 members.

So basically, your tulpa can look and feel as real as an actual person to you. But at the end of the day, it’s all in your head.

Want to talk to a spirit or ghost instead of a tulpa? Check out my other article, Talking To Ghosts: How To Communicate With Spirits of The Dead

How To Create Your Own Tulpa

Making a tulpa for yourself is basically a matter of willpower of repetition. You don’t need any special gadgets or to buy anything. It’s just a matter of thinking up what you want your tulpa to look and sound like, and spending time with it. This process is called forming or forcing your tulpa.

Plan Your Tulpa Out

Before you get started with making a tulpa, you’ll want to really plan it out first. What do you want your tulpa to look like? What will its voice sound like? What kind of personality will it have? If you’re going to have your tulpa around for years or even the rest of your life, it’s best to put a bit of time into planning everything out. Over time your tulpa might develop a personality of their own. But it’s best to at least give it a starting point to help you imagine it into existence.

Think of the purpose that your tulpa will serve. Is it going to just be a friend? Or do you want a more serious advisor, or some other role for it to play?

Your tulpa can look like anything. It can be a human. Either a completely original one, or you can make it look like your favorite celebrity. Or you can make it an animal, a cartoon character, or anything else. I recommend drawing out a picture of your tulpa. Even if you aren’t the best artist, it will help start to solidify what the tulpa should look like in your mind.

Visualizing Your Tulpa

The easiest way to make your tulpa is just to lay down and think about it for an extended period of time. You just need to start to obsess about it and devote as much time and energy as possible to thinking about your tulpa. You also want to talk to your tulpa. At first your tulpa won’t answer back, and that’s okay. It takes time to build your tulpa up until it starts to be able to manifest in a way that you can hear or see. At first your tulpa might communicate back in more subtle ways, like feeling a pressure in your head, or having a certain emotion come over you.

Generally you will start to hear your tulpa in your mind first, like a voice in your head. Then with enough practice, it might start to sound external like it’s outside of your body. You might also start to see it in your mind too, fuzzy at first and then clearer. Eventually you will be able to see your tulpa in the external world, just like a regular person. But this can take a lot of time and practice.

Practice by imagining your tulpa from every possible angle, and consider every little detail of what they look like. Even try to feel your tulpa in your imagination. What do their clothes or hair feel like? What do they smell like? How do they walk or move?

Start talking to your tulpa as part of your everyday routine. You can either do it out loud, or in your head when you’re around other people. You can talk to them about what you did that day, what the weather is like, if you like a song on the radio, or anything else.

Check If Your Tulpa Is Sentient

After a while, you’ll want to see if your tulpa has developed its own sentience. Close your eyes and see if you can hold a conversation with your tulpa. Does it feel like they have their own opinions, or does it still feel like you’re just talking to yourself? If your tulpa surprises you with things you didn’t expect them to do or say, that’s a good sign of sentience.

Once your tulpa is sentient, you can start to try to bring it into the external world. When you’re walking somewhere, imagine that your tulpa is behind you. You’ll start to be able to feel the presence of your tulpa, even if you can’t see it yet.

With enough practice, you’ll be able to see it soon enough. The more time and energy you put into creating your tulpa, the faster it will start to manifest. Even once your tulpa is fully realized, you’re never truly done with it. You need to be constantly giving it attention or it will start to fade away again.

How Long Does It Take To Make A Tulpa?

Making a tulpa can really vary in the amount of time it takes. It depends on your mind and how creative or imaginative you are, how bad you want it, how suggestible you are, and other factors.

Some people might be a natural at creating tulpas and they can start to feel their tulpa in just a few minutes. For other people who are less imaginative it could take years. But for the average person, with proper practice, you should be able to have a decently formed tulpa in less than a month.

If you practice for an hour every day, you should notice your tulpa is starting to become sentient after a week or two.

The Dangers of Tulpas

There are some scary stories online that talk about the dangers of tulpas. There’s some debate about whether they really are dangerous or not.

While your tulpa can’t physically harm you, it’s possible that you could mentally harm yourself by creating one. You’re doing something with your mind that the majority of people don’t ever attempt.

Making a tulpa blurs the line between talking to yourself and talking to someone else. So to many people, making a tulpa can give you the appearance of being insane. If you make a tulpa, it’s best not to share it with coworkers or even friends who might not understand.

Feel free to experiment with making a tulpa if it appeals to you. If things start to get weird and scary, you can always stop the process, although it might take some time to fully undo.

Some people report their tulpa telling them to hurt themselves. But most commonly this happens in people who are already prone to suicidal thoughts. Those thoughts just get offloaded on to your tulpa instead.

And while we are pretty sure that tulpas are just in your head, you can’t 100% rule out that they are actually real beings like demons that you’re simply inviting in to your head.

Want to learn more about demons? Read my article Are Demons Real? (What You Should Know About Demons and The Devil)

If you have fear or uncertainty about creating a tulpa, it’s best not to do it. Those negative feelings can make the tulpa turn out negative if you aren’t careful.

You should also avoid becoming dependent or relying on your tulpa to feel better. While they can help with depression, anxiety, bipolar, and other conditions, they can’t cure them.

I would also caution against making your tulpa look like a real person, either living or dead, or even fictional. Using a non-human tulpa helps to prevent you from mixing up your imagination with reality. Otherwise you might start to really believe your tulpa is a real person. Plus a tiny cartoon tulpa just has less potential to be scary than a human-sized one.

Reasons Not To Create A Tulpa

There are plenty of good reasons to try making a tulpa. But there are some good reasons not to as well.

If You Get Bored Easily

Making a tulpa shouldn’t just be a fad or a fun trick for you. It’s more like getting a pet dog, and it’s something you should be committed to taking care of for several years.

If you get bored easily, then don’t make a tulpa. You might get annoyed of how they sound or act, or just having them constantly around.

For Sexual Reasons

While you can see, hear, and smell your tulpa once they become solid enough, almost nobody is able to actually feel their tulpa. So if you’re planning to make a tulpa to be your romantic companion, it’s not going to happen. It also just doesn’t seem very ethical.

To Become Super Smart

When people hear that their tulpa can often have a memory of its own, they might think of exploiting it to turn their brain into a supercomputer with a dozen people thinking at once.

But even if you have a dozen tulpas, you still only have one brain. You might feel smarter, but in reality you’re probably just splitting your thinking processes between all of the different tulpas and yourself.

In Place Of Therapy

If you have any mental problems, it’s best to consult a doctor, psychologist, or therapist about it, instead of trying to solve it yourself with a tulpa. Tulpas can actually make mental disorders worse if you aren’t careful.

How To Get Rid Of A Tulpa

Unfortunately, if you go to the effort to create a tulpa, getting rid of it isn’t something that can just happen overnight.

Over time if you stop paying attention to a tulpa, it will gradually start to dissipate. But the more effort you’ve put in to manifesting it to begin with, the longer it will take. If you’ve been forcing your tulpa for months or years, then you will have a while to wait before it’s completely gone.

The simplest way to get rid of your tulpa is just to neglect it. Don’t talk to it, don’t think about it, and stop interacting with it altogether. Of course this is easier said than done. If your tulpa is developed and has its own personality, it might not want to go, and can become quite distracting.

Some people also try visualizing their tulpa in front of them, but trapped in a white bubble or some other type of shield. When it’s inside, it can’t interact with you or talk to you. Or you can try to imagine it stuck in a sort of frozen stasis.

Don’t let your tulpa drain your energy. Check out my article What Are Psychic Vampires? (And How To Defend Against Them)

Conclusion

A tulpa is basically an imaginary friend that you can make for yourself, just by thinking it into existence. There are some benefits to making one, like improved happiness and confidence, and having someone to talk to.

Making a tulpa is basically just a process of thinking about it and imagining it over a long period of time, until it starts to become real.

Tulpas might have a bit of a dark side though too. Make sure that you consider all of the potential dangers and reasons not to make a tulpa before you decide to try it for yourself.