Can you treat loneliness by creating an imaginary friend?
The origins of tulpamancy, as I understand them, were kind of with the “forever alone” crowd - people who had a hard time getting along in society for whatever reason, and fashioned an alternative reality. Nothing wrong with that, up to the point where you become further disconnected from the more commonly agreed upon norms. Do you carry on conversations with the tulpa in public? Does it result in you being even more isolated? Being alone has its own seductive qualities, quite apart from loneliness, do you just stop trying to make real friends at some point?<p>Do tulpamancers hang out with each other, and do their tuplas come along? It is a problematic dynamic. I’m not sure it’s really doing anyone favors. I could see it being useful as potential practice&#x2F;conditioning to get past social anxiety but I could also see it becoming a crutch and a magnification of underlying mental illness. People can be tough to deal with, is an imaginary friend an exception?