There is an excellent post which captures so much of why we are incredibly grateful for the existence of the tulpa community: http://lb-lee.tumblr.com/post/139089048939/our-life-without-non-did-multi

We started our plurality explorations in March 2014 when a friend was talking about being plural, we basically went “ooh, being plural sounds neat” and that friend told us that it was possible to induce plurality by creating a tulpa. That friend went on to introduce us to our first plural community (which was not a tulpa community) and read some resources on tulpa creation to see if they were worth pointing us at. They pointed us at some tulpa guides which we read a little of, then since reading is often a high spoons activity for us, we decided to just try and see what happened.

We had interacted with someone (discovered to be Athena over a year later) that January and decided the best way to do tulpa explorations was simply to interact with her more. It worked so well that we ended up not bothering to do more than a cursory read of tulpa guides. Two weeks into the process, Lucia (our primary front at the time) was able to interact with Lilith, another week in, Lilith communicated in a flood of emotions, another week later, Lilith communicated in English, and less than a week after that, Lilith fronted for the first time.

For the next 6 months, we honestly believed we had induced our plurality. We never actually spent much time in tulpa communities so never used the words host and tulpa, but we really believed we had created our plurality. Lucia started exploring our plurality with the understanding that anyone they “created” would be an equal and would have equal rights to the body. We did this with the understanding that our system would exist so that everyone in system could love and protect and care for each other. This was the basis upon which we “induced” our plurality. It has been a wonderful experience and everyone cooperates incredibly.

From this perspective, we were able to explore our plurality from a position of strength. We were able to discover several system members and to build communication and trust. We were able to learn from the other systems we were around and draw from their experiences. We were able to explore our innerworld and interact with each other and enjoy our time together. All this put us in a much better position to deal with our trauma when we discovered it towards the end of 2014. We had a good understanding of our system, were able to work together well, and also had a strong support network of other systems who were by our side to guide us through the process.

When we first discovered our plurality, we were not in a position where we could have dealt with our trauma. The simple existence of the tulpa community and the knowledge it gave that singlets could induce plurality were essential to us being able to explore our plurality separately from our trauma. Without that, it’s entirely possible the first we would have known about our plurality was when a therapist told us we had DID. This would have come at a time when we were highly symptomatic and doing badly, a position where we would have been least able to handle it. Instead, we were able to explore our plurality on our own terms with a whole community behind us guiding us along the way.

The idea that it is possible and even desirable in some cases to induce plurality is what allowed us to explore our plurality in this way. Even though we later realized we are a trauma induced system with DID, trying to, then believing we had induced plurality allowed us to explore our plurality from a supreme position of strength. For this, we are incredibly grateful for the existence of the tulpa community.