Introduction
Before we start
In this guide, we’ll show you how to build a genuine relationship with an inner character, how to interact with them effortlessly, and how to express them beyond your internal interactions. In other words, we’ll teach you tulpamancy.
This bubble is an example of what it means to “express them beyond your internal interactions” – I’m being expressed here to you.
We’ll start by explaining what tulpamancy is and what it offers, so you can decide for yourself if it’s worth trying.
About tulpamancy
Tulpamancy is the practice of building a genuine relationship with a character through sustained inner interaction.
You choose a character, talk to them, and imagine their responses.
As you spend time with them regularly, they become more detailed and consistent, and your engagement with them deepens.
From this, a relationship emerges, complete with its own history, emotional stakes, and genuineness.
This relationship is the essence of the practice. Everything else – abilities, reported experiences, and the jargon used by tulpamancers – emerges from it.
What does the practice look like?
We can divide tulpamancy into a few stages.
Engaging with a character
You spend time with a chosen character. You talk to them, imagine their responses, and place them in various situations. At first, it’s deliberate work – you consciously construct their words, reactions, and behaviors. There’s no single correct way to do it; what matters is genuine attention and making the character a real part of your life.
Emerging effortlessness
At some point, you may notice that they begin to respond on their own:
- You ask a question, and the answer arrives.
- You put them in a situation, and they act.
- You are about to tell them about a rough day, and even before you start, you receive an imaginary headpat.
Like learning to walk, interacting with your character becomes automatic with practice. And just like walking – once you’ve learned it with one character, you may find yourself able to do so with others.
By the way, this experience isn’t an invention of tulpamancy. The phenomenon of children experiencing this with imaginary friends, or writers with their original characters (OCs), is well-documented in scientific research1.
Expressing the tulpa beyond mutual interaction
Tulpamancers often call this switching – operating from your character’s perspective outside of your inner dialogue. It’s not as exotic as it sounds: you already shift perspectives between work and home, or between friends and family. This is simply that same ability applied deliberately.
It’s also optional. Tulpamancy is about enjoying the relationship, not collecting achievements. If you stick with the community, you’ll meet tulpas chatting away – much like the way I’m talking to you now.
Why do people practice tulpamancy?
There are several common reasons:
- Curiosity. Even if there are mundane explanations for these experiences, they aren’t well known. This apparent exoticism acts as a magnet for those seeking extraordinary experiences.
- Companionship. While a tulpa shouldn’t be a replacement for human relationships, they can always serve as an additional way to fulfill your needs.
- Creativity. Tulpamancy can be viewed as a form of art.
Some people might not be sure what has drawn them to tulpamancy, and that’s okay too.
Pure motivation and certainty aren’t necessary for success – which, ultimately, is building a genuine inner relationship.
What is truly necessary is the willingness to build this relationship with an inner character.
If you can invest genuine effort and emotional engagement into interactions that will eventually culminate in a relationship, you are likely to succeed regardless of your initial motivation.
Motivation also isn’t a constant. You might ultimately stay for the relationship itself, without any other reason. It’s also possible that you’ll become disillusioned with your expectations and decide it’s not for you after all – and that’s okay, too.
What tulpamancy isn’t
It’s not a replacement for human interaction
While tulpamancy is a viable supplement to a social life, it’s not the same as having other people in your life.
If you are deeply isolated, tulpamancy might help you cope, but it won’t solve the source of the problem. Tulpamancy should exist alongside human connections, not instead of them.
It’s not a therapy
Logically, a tulpa can’t provide the same help as someone from the outside who isn’t directly affected by your mental state.
Practicing tulpamancy can contribute to improving your mental health, much like going for a jog in the park can do so. But just as with jogging, you shouldn’t view it as a replacement for professional therapy.
It’s not creating or taking care of a new life
You can stop practicing tulpamancy. If you stop engaging with the character, the relationship and the habits connected to it will wither away. It’s not unlike what happens when you stop interacting with other people.
Disclaimer
A note about how this guide differs from the dominant approach in most tulpamancy communities. If this is your first encounter with tulpamancy, feel free to skip this section for now – it’ll make more sense once you’ve explored further.
Whether this is your first tulpamancy guide or your fifth, you should know that what we present here may not be consistent with what you’ll find elsewhere in the community.
You may have heard claims about:
- tulpas being independent people sharing a body with you
- certain “right” and “wrong” ways of interacting with your tulpa
- moral obligations you should consider before starting
These claims come from the dominant framework in tulpamancy communities. It adopted the idea of multiple independent people sharing a body from the broader Plurality community – and from that premise, the rest followed logically: if a mind holds separate people, then interaction can be “contaminated” (any response you consciously construct is treated as fake), creation carries obligation (you’re now responsible for a person you brought into existence), and stopping implies harm (ending the practice is framed as abandonment or destruction).
People who practice within that framework build genuine relationships, too. Our disagreement is with the framework itself, not the people following it – we just approach things differently.
The relationship you can build through genuine interactions is real and important. The abilities you can learn while building it are real and important.
We believe that what makes them real and important is the effort (and time, and emotional engagement…) we put into building and maintaining our relationships – not “right” beliefs.
If you’d like to understand the full philosophical framework behind this approach, see Dialectical Tulpamancy.