#74 Making Friends

(upbeat music) - From Gimlet, this is reply all. I'm Alex Goldman, and I'm P.J. Boat. (upbeat music) And this week we have a story from Laura Clivens, who is a reporter at KQED in San Francisco. Hi, Laura. - Hi. - So this story, it's one you've been working on for a while. - Yes, it is. - Yeah, I've been reporting it for a year and a half now, and it is about this woman. She lives in Missouri. Her name is Shea, and that's not actually her real name, and she has a really big secret. - This is a very mysterious tease. - Yeah, that is. So Shea is right now, she's 30 years old. She is small and thin. She has light brown hair. It's prematurely going gray, and she wears glasses. - I object the idea that a 30-year-old with gray hair is prematurely gray. - Oops. - I'm also going gray. - She's accurately. - She's going gray, exactly. - I prefer really gray. - A human is supposed to. - Okay, to tell you her story, I wanna go back about 10 years ago, when Shea had just graduated from high school. Where were you living or are you doing with each of your days since you'd graduated from high school? - I was living in my parents' basement. I had a very messy bedroom, with like a house full of furniture all crammed into this one bedroom. - Shea was really depressed. She didn't wanna go to college. She didn't want to take one of the jobs. She could see herself getting in her small town on a farm or working in an aluminum factory. And one night in December, the pressure just felt like it was too much to bear. - Do you remember what had happened that day? Was there something that specifically made that day a harder day or? - I think Mom and I had gotten to a fight. A fight about her wanting me to, you know, get out and try and find a job and be just being terrified of the whole prospect. I yelled at her, stormed off to my room. I was just crying. And contemplating suicide. 'Cause I thought I had nothing left. - And then this really weird thing happened. Shea heard a voice. It sounded like a woman's voice, and the voice said, "Get up, we need to talk." There was nobody else in the room, and this voice, it was clear, it sounded real. She didn't know what to do, and so all she could think of doing was just to write down what the voice was saying. - I felt my way over to the writing corner. No lights on, no moon from the one window on the far side of the basement. - She sat down at the table and she started to write. - We listed out all the possibilities between college or get out and find a job, find an apartment far away from where my parents lived, and she reminded me that they were possibilities, that they were possible. - And then the voice said, "I don't care how you feel right now." - This is not the end of your story. This is just the end of one chapter. (soft music) - What were your fears and concerns with that when you first heard her? - Well, at first I was just relieved. Relieved that there was someone who believed in me, and that could say something wise and profound, and you know, kind of shake me out of my funk. But later as I was thinking about it, I realized just how crazy it all sounded, and I worried that I was coming down with some sort of nuts. - Were you concerned about certain mental illnesses? Did you research on those? - I researched schizophrenia. Didn't have persistent delusions of persecution or grandeur, or it had like a fractured sense of reality. Things were consistent, you know, in reality and the actual touching the table was exactly here, reality. - Did you tell anyone right when it happened? - Oh goodness, no. - Why not? - I was scared of what people would think. And also I was scared to admit that I'd let myself get that depressed. - Okay, so wait, I have a question. When this voice talks to her, how real, like is it like me hearing your voice? Like is it that real? - Yes. - Really? - Yeah. But she really felt like this was not schizophrenia. And she also thought she knew where this voice came from. So Shay is a writer, she's a creative person, and when she was 16, she was writing fan fiction about the sci-fi novel called Animorphs. And when she did that, she created this character. Her name was Jasmine. - I remember Animorphs. It's like about kids that can also turn into a very specific animal and on the cover of each one, there's like a picture of a kid morphing into like a sea horse. Did you read a lot of these? - I read a couple. - Well anyway, it was that sci-fi series. And she created this heroine, and she named her Jasmine, or Jazz for short, and she thought really carefully about the quality she wanted Jazz to have. She was like this historian and this peacemaker. - She was the ideal me. Someone very clever and brave. I'm not a particularly brave person. (laughs) When she first started writing about the character, she would imagine how Jasmine would talk or what she would say to her. - But yeah, it never really felt like it was anything, but just me writing words on paper. - But the night she was thinking about killing herself, the voice came alive. Like she couldn't anticipate what it was gonna say. So she went to sleep and she woke up the next morning, and Jasmine kept talking to her like she was saying, what are we gonna do today? And it was like that the next day and the next. And Jasmine didn't go away. So within a couple of months, she moved to this bigger town. She got a job as a nurse this age. She got involved with the church. She started going to Bible study, which is where she met this guy. - Neither of us had ever dated anyone else before. So we were each others first on everything. We went out to the library for our first date. We spent like the whole day walking around town and talking and I'm walking, he's walking me home at like nine something o'clock at night and mom calls me up so how'd it go? We're walking home now. And yeah, we just clicked. - So this guy is a big part of the story, but when I reached out, he didn't wanna talk. And actually he didn't want me to use any identifying details about him. So for this story, we're gonna call him John. Shay loved so many things about him. Like she loved how funny he was and how goofy he was. So he would keep a total straight face when he was telling a joke and then just kill at the punchline. So they fell for each other. They got married a few years after meeting and he was her best friend. But she couldn't tell him about this other best friend, the one she had in her head, Jasmine. Shay really didn't know how to say it and she didn't know how John would react to it. And then one day six years after they got married, Shay was poking around on her computer and she saw this list of the weirdest subreddits on Reddit. One of the groups was called Tophas, intelligent companions imagined into existence. And it looked actually kind of interesting and then as I looked into it more, I was like, oh my gosh, this explains so much about me and Jess. The people in this subreddit were describing voices, like their own personal jazmens, their own friendly characters that help them through their day to day. They said, these are called Tophas, T-U-L-P-A-S. She spent the whole day glued to her computer. 10, 20 hours just reading through prominent threads. I did wonder for a while, does this make me crazy? Maybe I'm less crazy because there's lots of other people doing this. These were people from all over the world who are basically saying, no, you are not crazy. We have Tophas too. And so actually in the last year, I've reached out to a bunch of these folks. Hi, I'm Kid and my topos are red and new key. I'm from Houston, Texas. Hi, I go by Chronicle. I have two Tulpas named Allison and Lillian, and I am from Utah. My name is Tamara, and I have a Tulpa named Forty. And how long have you had a Quarty? Just over three years now. There's this one guy on the forum named Oswald, and he agreed to help me try to understand what it's like to actually live with a Tulpa. Oswald's in his mid-twenties, living in Maryland. His Tulpa is called Tamber. Can you tell me a bit about Tamber? Tamber? Tamber. I suppose I can tell you a little bit about Tamber. He's hard to pin down. For the most part, he's pretty calm and tends to be rather direct, I guess. So where is Tamber right now? It's sort of. Like is he hearing this conversation? Yes, I suppose that is kind of important to say, isn't it? But yeah, he's what we would call present. Is he always present? Not always, although more often than not, yes. So it's more just his own presence, you know, looking out through my eyes, I guess, connected to the senses, you could say. So Shay's meeting people like Oswald, and she's learning about this little world, like their glossary of terms. For instance, the word "Tulpa," according to the internet, it comes from a Tibetan word that means to build. And then the humans who hear the voices, they're called "Tulpa Mansors." Wait, Tulpa Mansors? Yeah. It's very. it is all like the language of a fantasy or a sci-fi book. Right. And with all these people I've talked to, they are huge sci-fi fan fantasy fans. And they're also these people with like big imaginations. Okay. Hello, hello. So after a few weeks of lurking, Shay introduced herself on the forum, and in no time, she's Skyping with her new "Tulpa Mansors" friends. Well, you are crazy, but it's not to do with that. You are crazy. And so they are sharing tips with each other. They're teaching each other new things. And one of these things that they're teaching is something that they call "fronting." And that is when you allow the "Tulpa" to take control of your body or your voice, and you let it use those things as though they belong to it. And where do you go? Is it like being John Malchovitch? It's a good question. So I've asked people where they go. They're like observing a lot of the times from the back, but it's not like they're there. They're still there. They can jump in and they can take control at any time. It's sort of like a driver's ed car. You've got the "Tulpa" and the driver's seat. But over in your seat, in the instructor's seat, you've got gas and brakes and steering wheel. One of the people who does it is Oswald. He says he lets Tamber take over his body. I'm kind of curious, like, ultimately, who has veto power, who has control? That depends on the situation. And we've actually had a little bit of fun testing this out. We'll have arms out, and I'll try to be putting them together, and he'll try to be pulling them apart. And nine times out of ten, I'll be the one who wins out on that one. Do you think he might be able to talk to us briefly? I think so. Oswald closed his eyes. He sat up straighter than he exhaled and he opened his eyes. Should I greet you? Yeah. Hi, I'm Laura. I'm with you again. My name's Tamber. Physically, how do you think, like, if you were describing, you know, to people listening on the radio, how are you different than Oswald? How am I different? I wasn't born human. I don't think I'd call myself born. You sound kind of like one of those characters, like the guy who announced his movies, scary movies where you're like, "All of a sudden, it all went down." You know, like, do you get that a lot? In a world we do. Os has been told a lot that he'd be doing voice work. Do people who hear telpas, like, do they tend to be people who are isolated? Like, is it people who are alone? Yes. And they say that telpas help them with loneliness. A lot of people who are lonely people or don't have a lot of friends normally will create telpas. Wait, create telpas. That's another thing that Shay learns that you can do on the forum is you can create more telpas intentionally. And how does one do that? So here's how you make a telpa. Here's the recipe, right? So you think about all the traits that you want the telpa to have and then you spend time basically with it in your imagination. You imagine it doing things. You imagine having conversations with it. You imagine how it would react in certain situations. And then you spend, let's say, an hour every day for six months on this and suddenly it starts to feel real just the same way that Jasmine started to feel real for Shay. And so Shay's world starts to split into two. Right? She has this one world with her husband where they're trying to have a baby. And then she has this other world with her telpomans or friends where they're creating their own kind of life in the telpa world online and offline. And so Shay is waiting till John goes to work. And when she is alone in the apartment, she is focusing like crazy on creating more telpas. And within a period of months, she creates three more. We've got Jazz who is a normal humanoid looking young lady. You've got Doc who is a British fellow who loves suits and ties and McCain and he has a huge obsession with hats. You've got Veren who is a little songbird. Then we have Arrea who is a hologram of a cat. [laughs] Shay told me that her new voices were great. They were keeping her company every day. But I was wondering if that might actually be like a brief honeymoon period before something more serious with her mental health could happen. That fear encompasses everything that kind of unsettles me about telpas. It's like what happens when they start telling you to drive off the road or hurt somebody or hurt yourself or set cats on fire. Right. And I did actually hear some stories like this, like not sitting cats on fire. But I talked to a family member of a telpa mancer who said the telpa mancer started driving erratically. The telpa took the wheel and was kind of like, "Woo!" and sort of driving in a way that was frightening. Oh my god. Yeah. And I started wondering if this form is just a bunch of people who are predisposed to mental illness or have mental illness and it's undiagnosed and they're encouraging each other to go further from reality. And you know, you do see these warnings on the forum once in a while that say, "Don't tell your therapist. Don't tell your family. They won't understand." This, it kind of scared me. So I started asking mental health professionals what they thought. For example, there's this guy, Richard J. Lowenstein. He runs a trauma disorders program in Baltimore. And he said, "Obviously deciding what is and isn't mental illness is complicated. But one tool you can use is just to ask, is it causing distress? Like in schizophrenia." Skits of phrenics think the voices are real and they have an effulusional explanations for why they're there. You know, the CIA put them there. You know, the CIA built a machine above my head and that produces all these things. Or they, you know, they're not really sure, but it's some bad thing that someone's doing to them. So none of the people that I talked to had this paranoid type of feeling that he's describing with Skits of phrenia. But Lowenstein said the disorder that does come to mind for him is actually dissociative identity disorder, which used to be called multiple personality disorder. And that's when people have this feeling like different personalities are fighting for control of their mind. In our program where we tend to see people who are very clinically ill and have failed treatment in many other programs, including other trauma programs, they are often, it's kind of like the Middle East in somebody's mind in terms of how much conflict there is. You know, it's Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Israel, you know, Boku, Haram, that kind of internal war. She's not having that kind of war in her head, but some people can present milder symptoms of DID. So I was just curious, not for a diagnosis, but what Dr. Lowenstein might think about Shea? I explained how she now has four voices and how she's teaching them to front. Does that set off any flags for you when you think about the type of people that you work with? What you're describing is much more somebody who. is a meeting, symptoms consistent with the sociative identity disorder. And without interviewing her, I would wonder if that's what's occurring. And this creates a kind of way that she can experience herself without the stress. But again, if she is not distressed by definition, it's not a disorder. I asked Shay what she thought about this. Like, do your tub was hurt you? Or do they abuse you? Like you feel like you can't function in your day to day? I know. The worst verbal stuff we get is like the constant bickering and. Erie calling me lazy. Just silly stuff like that. We don't bash each other or hate on each other. We're all. You know, we're the way family is supposed to be. I didn't just talk to Lowenstein. I also talked to four other mental health professionals, both psychiatrists and psychologists, from these really reputable institutions. And they echoed what Lowenstein said. They said, "If there's not distress, it's not a mental illness. It just doesn't fit any of the DSM definitions." It's. it sounds crazy. So it's very surprising to me to hear you say that it's not mental illness. Hearing voices sounds like textbook mental illness to me. Well, all I can say is that I heard again and again from telepomansors things like "My telpa saved my life. My telpa is my biggest ally. I don't know what I would do without my telpa." She had done her homework and personally it was convinced that it was not mental illness. But she knew John and she knew that he wouldn't agree. And that terrified her. But at this point, in March of 2015, she had been hiding this secret from John for nine years. And she felt really bad about the whole thing. So finally, she decided she had no alternative and she had to tell him. Coming up after the break, a very difficult conversation that you have probably not ever had to have with your spouse. [Music] Welcome back to the show. So in March of 2015, Laura was traveling to Missouri to see Shea. And when she got there, Shea said, "I've got news for you. Last night, after a movie, John and I were sitting in the car. And I told him about my telpas." Well, it was not a very comfortable conversation with him. Yeah, what was what happened with that conversation? I got very panicky. I got very shaky. Well, from the start with, we were in the car and I was like, "We need. There's something I really need to talk to you about." What did he say after you said you wanted to talk about something? Okay. About what? He really didn't understand. He was like, "So, you're multiple personality? No, and it's not a disorder." He was like, "But you've never acted like you were a bunch of different people." Yeah, we try not to. Because I would freak people out. He asked, "What do you want from me? What do you need from me?" And I just want to be honest. I want to be truthful. I don't want to hide us from you anymore. He says he doesn't think I'm crazy. He says he still loves me. But I wonder what he really thinks. I obviously can't get rid of my telpus to me. That would be killing them. And it would be really traumatic. I would have a really hard time with a lot of things that I associate them with. Without jazz, writing would be super painful. Varan art would be super painful. I would have a hard time reading the books that I love because I shared a lot of them with my telpus and with my friends in the community. They're really pretty instrumental in your life. I mean, can you imagine losing several of your most important friends and not only just losing them but having to be the one to push them away? We talked for two days and I didn't see John once. And it seems like he was avoiding the house. And then I left and I went back home to California and I checked in with Shay on Skype over the next several months. Hi. Hey Laura. Hey how's it going? Oh, it's a slow difficult process. He definitely does not accept them at all right now. He sees them as being something that's only in my mind, you know. Something that draws me away from the real tangible world when they draw me out into it. The last thing I need is to end up in a mental facility, you know. Are you worried about that? Yeah. Why? If I can't convince my husband that all is well with us, I may end up having to go to a therapist just to have someone to talk to and to help me help work through things with him. And if I do, that's probably going to get us on the dysfunctional side of things, which is going to be a diagnosis of dissociative identity. Dissociative disorder non otherwise specified. Having that diagnosis, what would it, what would that mean? What do you think that would lead to? If I ever wanted to adopt a kid in the future, I probably wouldn't be able to. If it ever came out in my community, oh my gosh, I don't even want to think about how people in my church community might start to view me. You are. Hey. Are you it? I'm surviving. The big news is probably sometime in the next month, my divorce will be final. I have a lot of things to do with my family. It's hard to deal with because he's my best friend, you know. You just couldn't understand. That's okay. I gave up my best shot and you know, not everyone's going to understand. She says that the end of the relationship was a mess. At one point, her husband even took away her computer when she was out of the house. And she felt like that was a way to prevent her from talking to her topl friends. And about a year after she told John about her toplas, their divorce was finalized. I still really wanted to talk to John. I wanted to hear his side of the story. And I knew he didn't want to talk to me, but I kept reaching out and I got nothing. And then just in the final stages of us putting the story together, producer Fia Benin wrote to him and he wrote back. Oh, did he say anything? Besides I don't want to talk to you? Yeah, he said three times. pages worth of things. Oh, wow. And it was this really well-written chronological telling of events from his perspective. And it was pretty heartbreaking. He says, I will try and show my perspective without shaming Shay. He goes on to say that to him, he felt like the top was were basically self-inflicted multiple personality disorder. And that he did not have interest in getting to know any of them and encouraging this behavior. So let me read a little bit of it for you. I married Shay. I loved Shay, not Jasmine, or Varan, or Doc, or any other of the imaginary things that she thought up in her mind. John wrote about feeling like she was on faithful to him. Like her telpas were forming strong bonds, way too intimate with other telpas. Shay told him that if two telpas fell in love, that didn't mean that the telpa mancers would be cheating. And he wrote that towards the end of the relationship, he said, quote, let me play devil's advocate. Say I accept the telpas. What does Christmas look like? Do I have Christmas with my wife? And then we drive up to California. So Shay's telpa can celebrate Christmas with the telpa's husband. That is an open marriage. That is not what either of us vowed and committed to at our wedding day. And then he says, I am utterly broken by all of this. Wow. I think this has been pretty much a nightmare for both of them. Can I say something that I feel like I'm just relishing right now? I feel like what is uniquely hard about like being a telpa mancer is that unlike a lot of the other things you can do that will like make you different in a way that makes things hard for you. Like harder to be in the relationship you're in, harder to explain yourself to your family, whatever. I don't think there's a real place you can go where everybody is. Like it's not like, oh my god, Chicago's got a great telpa scene. Like there's the internet, but the internet's not the same. Right. I'm worried that I can see a world where telpas puts her out on an iceberg. Right. And that that seems hard. And I'm not saying she shouldn't like telpas or she should or whatever. It just like, there's still like a loneliness to it that feels scary. Yeah. I know exactly what you're saying. And in a lot of ways, that's been true for Shay. I was feeling really worried about her. But that changed for me where it started to on my last trip to C. Shay in Missouri. So in May, Fiya and I went to go C. Shay at her new place. It's this gorgeous spring day. And we're on this treeline street. And we go up to this small two-story house. Hi Shay. How are you doing? Good. How are you? The dogs are coming. This is Fiya. What's your name again? This is Fiya. Hi. [MUSIC PLAYING] Shay's standing in the doorway with a shirt that says, my imaginary friend thinks you have serious mental problems. The house is small. It's a little bit dusty. There are some piles of things in different places. And in the kitchen right before the stairs, there are some bunnies in a cage. And Shay says the couple that she's living with, that they're really great. They have like three dogs. Not before we found the fourth. They are like super down to earth. And in fact, I told them about my tolpas that first day. Before I even agreed to move in here. And I find one of the owners of the house, one of Shay's roommates, sitting on the couch. He goes by Barry. And he's former military. And he's just finished watching Taladega Knights. And he mutes it. And he also mutes his video game, which he's playing on his computer. But he keeps playing it while we talk. Sorry, the house is kind of a mess. And he tells me about the first time that he met Shay. What were your initial thoughts? Well, when I heard tolpas, I thought it was like a disease or something. Because it sounds like something that whenever you're watching commercials on TV, and they're like, if you experienced tolpas, for more than four hours. [LAUGHS] So I'm like, OK, what's tolpas? And then she explained it. And I was like, OK. So Shay's not the only person in this place with tolpas. First, her friend Leia, who she met on the Reddit forum, she moved in. And Shay was so excited that she bought her a futon to sleep on. And they share this loft on the second floor. And then, in March, Oswald, with his tolpa, Tamber, he joined them, too. And it was a big move from Maryland to Missouri. Basically, I was looking for a place to move to. And Shay was the first person to say, hey, you know what's going on with me? I've got a place. So we decided to go for it. And so far, it's been working. And here you are in the Midwest. You're in the Midwest, yeah. And then I chat with Tamber, Oswald's tolpa. And he tells me that he's going to massage therapy classes, as Tamber, as the tolpa, not as Oswald. They've never met that person before, as far as they're concerned, I am that person. They've never met Oswald? No. That's my time. Muslows therapy was my ambition. Could you bring me a water? Or a cup of tea? Something to drink. I'll see you later, Dr. Pepper, because Aerie will kick my ass if I have another one. If it's for Aerie. So Shay's lived in the house for 10 months now. She went to a therapist for a while. And she says she told him about her tolpa's, but he was more concerned with her depression than anything else. But I think she feels equipped to deal with it, like much more so than when she was right out of high school. How does it feel for you to be able to be you Shay and then whoever else at any time? Huge relief. It's like this is what I wanted since the very beginning of finding out on the Oswald tolpa's. They're not just characters, they're real people. They're going to be, you know, I'm going to accept them. They're going to be sharing a life with me. Do you think you're going to have tolpa's 10 years from now? Do you think? I have tolpa's 10 years from now, maybe not the same four. I hope it's the same four because I really love them. But, you know, especially jazz, she's been a part of my life since I was like 16 and she'll death do us part. Revorla Laura Clivans. [Music] Her bio is me, PJ vote, and Owl's Goldman. We're produced this week by Shrewdy Pym and Amy, Fiat Benin, Chloe Prasinos, and Domianne Marquetti. Our executive producer is Tim Howard and our editor is Peter Clowney. Production assistance from Tom Cody. Special thanks this week to the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, KQED, and Assessment Ben Manila and Bill Zeller. We were mixed by Rick Cwan. Matt Lieber is cicada season. Our theme song is by mysterious breakmaster cylinder and our ad music is build buildings. You can find us on our website, replyall.limo, or on iTunes at iTunes.com/replyall. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next Wednesday.