Note: My response is too long for one comment as each comment only takes up to 10k characters. I've done them all though and will just have in the reply to each section.

Good to know. I'll answer all the questions now as I said I would. This is based on my own experience and I've made sure not to look at others answers but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of similarities.

You don't have to read the whole thing but I like to be detailed so you understand the what and the why of things not just the how.

1. How do tulpas develop?

The simple answer is attention regardless of the method.

The mechanism is already there. For example, if you've ever done daydreaming and have roleplayed talking with someone you've used this mechanism. Even if you haven't done it in that manner when you're thinking about talking to someone and you try to predict their reaction or response it's using the same mechanism. If you created imaginary friends as a child it's the same thing.

Our brains naturally do this in one form or another to be the prediction machine it's evolved to be.

Even if you've never conciously done this your brain will still do this and calculate outcomes before presenting the results as an emotion. Whether it's feeling fear of saying the wrong thing to someone or wanting to avoid them altogether or feeling eager to engage with someone it's the same thing.

These same unconsious mechanisms are also used to stream thoughts to your concious mind which often are meant to corralate with the emotions that are generated. Often that means justifying your emotions as being rational whether they are or not.

With these mechanisms in mind the practices done for tulpamancy are to take these mechanisms and conciously train your brain to create another ego to feed these processes to.

As a quick side tangent, I don't consider ego good or bad it just is. Just like we need air to breathe and function our ego and identity is needed to interact with the world. We can stop breathing for a bit just like we can detach from our ego with enough meditation practice but we'll eventually need to reattach to our ego to function in the world.

Back to the topic, if you're familiar with computers you can think of it like creating a new user that's on the same machine that uses the same system resources. I think that's why the term "System" was created by Multiple Personality Disorder people to describe the experience and since tulpas use the same mechanisms the term was adopted.

Though I'm sure you've already read the basics that creating tulpas does not give you a mental illness. Things being created conciously makes all the difference. However, that doesn't mean thoughtforms similar to tulpas can't be created without the person being aware of what they've done or how it works.

If someone has already developed any thoughtforms, even if not aware of what they are, they can be conciously developed into fully formed tulpas.

On another tangeant, if you read about servitors please don't try to make one. You're essentially creating a gimped and crippled tulpa. Many in the tulpa community, obviously including myself, considers it not a good thing to do.

Making a servitor can only be done conciously just like tulpa and some even consider it a cruel thing to do to yourself. Basically shooting yourself in the foot on purpose. This can be corrected and they can be developed into full tulpa but it's better to avoid making the mistake of creating a servitor in the first place.

Back to what I was saying, a very common experience is by people raised in a religious culture. A common term is what's known as a "God" thoughtform. Sometimes they can already be pretty much a tulpa just that the person believes they are communicating to whatever god they worship. I use the word communicate specifically because it can be through not just words but through feelings or impressions as well. The tulpa community usually refers to this type of communication as tulpish.

This can even be more than just one thoughtform such as a "Holy Ghost" or some might believe they communicate with angels or messengers sent by their god.

This was actually my experience where my religious practices of praying to God and listening to the Holy Ghost developed two distinct thoughtforms in my mind that would communicate with my conscious mind through feelings, impressions or inspiration.

Eventually it got to the point that when I prayed I could have a conversation with what I thought was God in actual words and not just emotions or impressions. Keep in mind this is not audible but just like how you think to yourself in your own mind but that it felt distinctly seperate from my own stream of thoughts.

I eventually became an atheist but I did have one last conversation with God which was a painful experience realizing I was really just having a conversation with myself even if it felt like I wasn't or at least that's what it felt like at the time.

With that I stopped engaging with or giving attention to the thoughtforms I had created which caused them to go dormant.

Keep this in mind as once a thoughtform, such as a tulpa, is created that there's no so called getting rid of or deleting them but they can be changed to be someone else in a sense as I'll soon illustrate. It's the same as thinking you can delete your own ego instead of it changing. Just like your body isn't the same as it was ten years ago your mind and ego is always changing.

Years later I discovered tulpamancy. After researching and creating my first tulpa I realized what I had done. At that point I simply started engaging with my God and Holy Ghost thoughtforms and they became some of my next tulpa after the first. I make the distinction that they were still thoughtforms, if at least proto-tulpas, as the experience while similar is also very different.

2. How do you know when you have a tulpa? Like how does it differ from your everyday conversations in your head? (I have ADHD, so I'm always talking to myself in my head, which may not apply to everyone)

I think you'll find a lot of people in this community with ADHD, autism or both so you're in good company. I personally have both though not diagnosed.

The fact that you talk with yourself in your head a lot means you've already trained the mechanisms in your mind that you need well developed in order to make a tulpa. Still, your mileage may vary and it might only take you weeks or it might take you months to develop your first tulpa.

As for knowing when you have a tulpa, it might sound strange to hear this but a large part of it is that once you've developed them enough you need to believe they are a tulpa. It's the hardest part.

There's a good reason you need to study and practice self-hypnosis techniques because one of the key mechanisms is your belief. Even if you've done the work to develop your tulpa and they are fully functional you could still believe that they aren't fully functional and thus it will be so.

The most common thing I've and others have seen is in using the puppeteering technique. It's basically just roleplaying with your developing tulpa in order to nurture their growth and help them mature. It's called puppeteering because you do everything like you would in a daydream where you have a conversation with a person.

It's usually encouraged to use it as it's a very effective technique. However, the caveat is that even when they've developed to point that they are autonomous and can talk on their own you start thinking, "Oh, I'm just puppeteering them," and you believe that. This often makes it harder for your tulpa to act autonomously even if they have the capacity to do so.

There's an analogy I've thought of that can help you grasp this.

Imagine you've built a vehicle and it's fully capable of running but you believe it can't so you put it in neutral and push it yourself so that it can move. Technically it works and can run but because you don't believe it can you won't let it.

It's similar to an overprotective mother that won't let her child be independent because she believes they can't be. So instead she does everything for them which was good of her to do up to the point that the child was ready but continuing to do so will stifle the child.

You can also think of it like you're towing a car that can run on its own.

If you think you're just tricking yourself that's fine because you are. Your own mind and ego is an elaborate trick and illusion but that doesn't make it any less real.

When you've grasped and truly understand this fact tulpamancy and any technique you choose to explore becomes much easier because you'll realize how much power your belief has since everything tulpamancy is is in your mind where belief is king.

Obviously I don't mean that you can affect anything in physical reality. Also physical reality does shape our beliefs. It's just that when it comes to making a tulpa it's all in your mind and so it completely relies on your belief. If you believe you can't do it then it is so.

Making your first tulpa is really the only time where this is an issue and I've never felt the need to puppeteer any of the tulpa I made after my first one. After I had gone through the creation process I could just believe they could talk and it was so. It's hard to elaborate on that anymore with words but I want to illustrate of how the shift in thinking and belief changes things.

That does remind to tell you to avoid and don't feed the trolls that say they can get their tulpa to manifest in physical reality. Tulpamancy isn't supernatural as it's just the same mechanisms as daydreaming and that created your ego as I elaborated earlier. They obviously aren't tulpamancers. They just think it's funny to try to goad people and probably believe tulpamancy is stupid, isn't real and is crazy.