• Kind of but not really. The plural community co-opted it a while ago to mostly mean ‘a being created through will’ though some of them in the plural community do use spiritual practices to create them it isn’t always a given. See here or here.

      Some say it isn’t co-opted, but the fact that there’s a lot of confusion about it means, to us at least, that it’s not a good term and it should probably be replaced by better ones like Parogenic (see here or here) or Willogenic (see here or here).

      There’s a lot of back and forth on this and it’ll likely never be fully resolved, but yeah. Now you know.

          • Clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            2 days ago

            Putting effort into making a believable and persistent imaginary person feels like it would disassociate you. Is that not the case?

            I have never had an imaginary friend, but it sounds like self-induced schizophrenia, which doesn’t sound fun.

            • No, it’s plurality and yes we do switch out, which might be dissociation of a sort, but from our experience it’s basically someone/somemany else taking control of the body/mind.

              Dissociation isn’t a problem per se though, most mental differences aren’t unless it causes harm to the individual or group. Though usually there are solutions to this without destroying the others or stopping creating more (if someone or somemany does so safely), usually a therapist trained in plurality without seeing it as something to fix, or someone well versed in other types of trauma therapy etc can be helpful for resolving the underlying problems without causing harm to the group.

              Plurality is still something, sadly, wildly misunderstood and as such many, such as yourself, think it is inherently harmful. We can’t speak for every system (though we have met quite a few) but most of the problems we have come across in other systems have been nothing to do with the others existing per se but the underlying issues that sometimes caused them to either get created or for the person to want to create them.

              We personally are a healthy plural group in terms of our plurality at least in terms of having no fights internally and we don’t dissociate (switch really) in ways that would be not useful or harmful in a plural way (though we do dissociate (but not switch) from certain triggers which we try to avoid and/or work on).

              We hope this helps ease your concerns, though if you have other questions then please do feel free to ask.

  • BroBot9000@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    3 days ago

    Had to look up what a Tulpa is….

    Gosh people are messed up, no wonder the current spread of misinformation and mythical nonsense thinking.