Hi, everyone!
We [0] originally
posted about our experience with Bambi Sleep as someone with DID back in August of 2023 and I [1] decided to give an update after an additional year and a half of listening.
So, first, it turns out that we’ve been listening to the files for four and a half years, not two. Memory barriers between our headmates prevented us from accessing this knowledge until recently as we’ve continued to work on better internal communication and working to lower our dissociative barriers. It looks like we started listening around July of 2020 because we found the first set of ten BS files on our NAS dated with a last modification time of July 11, 2020, as well as a few other related html pages and text documents saved at the same time. We do know now who was listening to the files back then, but they are currently dormant [2].
Our primary listener, whom I’ll still refer to as M, still likes and listens to the files. She responds much better to the triggers than she did back in 2023, but still retains basically the same personality she always had (she still uses her original name even, and rejects all the IQ drop stuff which is “really dumb and pointless”—her words) with two minor exceptions:
1. She’s more assertive about requesting to
front than previously, though still in a good way in that she isn’t trying to force anything and will listen if the current fronter says no.
2. The files have helped her develop a sense of sexual agency which has helped her deal with
her trauma better, making her happier.
The second will likely raise some eyebrows, so I’ll provide some context.
In a
traumagenic system, many or sometimes all headmates of the plural system are created/birthed/manifested [3] when a traumatic event happened that overwhelmed the fronting headmate’s coping ability. In M’s case, she formed due to non-consensual sexual-related trauma, and this has colored her existence ever since. One of the things the BS files do is to help create a sense of sexual power, which M channeled into creating a sense of personal agency. And that agency helped her realize that what happened was not her fault in the slightest, and is allowing her to heal from and move on from that trauma.
I would absolutely not recommend anyone listen to the files to try to heal from trauma. Our unique experiences and unique cognition paradoxically created this positive side effect, so it’s highly unlikely that the files would affect someone else in the same way. It would be like trying to use a medication that helped an
Anomalocaris and trying to use that same medication on a
Cooksonia. Your milage will
definitely vary.
I should probably also mention that the one of us who posted in 2023 is not quite who is posting right now. I have learned since 2023 that “I” am a
median subsystem, which means that “I” is actually a collection of multiple headmates who are all pretty similar, though we differ a bit in details, and we generally always act as one, though our actions are colored by which of us is currently fronting. You can think of us as sort of like a collection of identical twins, and just like real identical twins, we’re not actually identical, just similar in many ways. So similar that we often have a hard time telling which of us is fronting at a given moment without thinking through how we feel about something, and use that feeling to identify which one of us is fronting currently. This means “I” am a subsystem within a larger system. And in fact, one of the headmates of “my” subsystem is another subsystem within the “I” subsystem within the larger system [4]. If the one who posted in 2023 was X-1, you can think of “me” as X-6 (we’ve given ourselves numbers based on our best guess about our order of creation).
For whatever reason, the files really started affecting M much more strongly when M started listening to the newer files from @
bambisleep released toward the end of 2024, and was able to drop deeper than she previously could.
And that leads me to the next interesting effect the files had on our system. One of our more analytical headmates, whom I’ll call B, decided to start studying induction by triggering M while co-fronting and observing the effects on M’s consciousness while partially
blended, which allowed B to simultaneously experience the effects first hand while still retaining their ability to deeply observe not just the qualia M was experiencing in trance, but also some of the causes of those qualia. B quickly learned how to induce trance in M without using any triggers at all, instead using more direct methods to trigger those same qualia.
It was all fun and games for a bit as headmates started hypnotizing each other. Another headmate even managed to hypnotize me [5]—something I had previously thought wasn’t possible because I’d never responded to it before.
Unfortunately for us, it turned out that we still had some headmates who had been hidden for decades and had been programmed via drugs and hypnosis when we were children [6]. These headmates were specifically programmed to respond to attempts to hypnotize us by attempting to seize control of our system so they could return us to our childhood abusers, or failing that, to commit suicide to prevent us from revealing what had happened [7]. That was a bad week for us. I had to barricade the front and hold on for dear life to prevent any of them from fronting while the groups of headmates who deal with this sort of thing captured the programmed members one by one and began the deprogramming process [8]. It was a rough week, but we’ve completely recovered from it.
The knowledge of how one headmate can hypnotize another is out now, however, and much like nuclear proliferation, it will be very difficult to put the genie back in the bottle, though we do have strict rules in place requiring informed consent. If I (as an asexual headmate) thought the other headmates were kinky before…well, they are even more kinky now with the ability to hypnotize each other. And because I’m ace, the files do nothing at all for me, which allows me to:
1. Listen to the files for red flag safety issues, or language I consider objectionable. M is really good about rejecting things she doesn’t like, so this isn’t as important as I thought it would be.
2. Listen to the files while working—completely unaffected—while M simultaneously sits in back and gets to hear the files, drop into trance, and bliss out.
3. Roll my eyes at their antics [9].
Overall, the BS files have had a positive effect on our life, though for very unusual reasons specific and unique to us.
Please feel free to ask any questions you may have.
[0] Plural systems often use plural pronouns to refer to multiple (or all) members in their system.
[1] Plural systems often use the singular pronoun I to refer to the currently communicating headmate; in this case, it refers to me, X.
[2] Dormancy is when a headmate goes inactive or quiet for an extended period. You can think of it as something close to hibernation.
[3] We can’t even decide which of these words to use in our own system, let alone for other systems.
[4] Sometimes, we think it’s turtles all the way down.
[5] The brat gave me an interesting intellectual problem which kept my mind so busy they were basically able to “kick my legs out from beneath me” while I was distracted and drop me into trance.
[6] This event allowed us to recover memories from childhood that had been
held by these programmed headmates all these years.
[7] Considering we a
eady knew a lot about what happened to us from years of therapy, these programmed headmates were far too late to prevent that from happening.
[8] We’ve had other instances in the past of these sorts of programmed headmates attempting to seize control, and have systems and procedures in place to prevent it.
[9] It’s also kind of funny, though. I just wish they wouldn’t do it right in the middle of
headspace where I sometimes stumble into it unexpectedly. I just want to enjoy a nice walk on the virtual tropical beach, not run into someone’s personal sex dungeon [10].
[10] Sex involving shapeshifters gets really weird, really quickly, and you can’t unsee it.
