The Road Goes Ever On: The Beehive System's Progress

[TurboSimmie]

Wow, that is some great progress! 😁 Actually being able to see Athelas's face in a dream is really Nice. Phil has only been able to see my face a handful of times. And it's good to hear that Athelas is getting so strong that he can pop right in even if you are not at 100%. I remember in my early days struggling to communicate with Phil when he was not 100% and it was really tough, but through practice and willpower I got there. 😊 Athelas has got that strength of will! 💪

[Athelas]

November 2024

 

Our primary goal this month was to improve Bee's passive awareness of our presence. As I mentioned in our lounge post, our hope is to increase our system’s total amount of available mental resources. With more processing power, it will take less effort for Bee to keep all of us active, even if her attention is elsewhere. We also hope that practicing presence imposition will make it easier to learn other forms of imposition in the future.

 

We chose to focus particularly on walks and mealtimes. Bee is great about talking to us when she goes on walks, but less consistent about feeling our presences around her. She also tends to eat much too quickly. She hardly gets to enjoy the food, much less the rest of us.

 

She improved in both of these areas, but I feel we still have room for growth. I would estimate she maintains her awareness about 50-60% of our targeted times. I'd love to see us get that up to 100% eventually. We'll be keeping presence awareness as one of our goals for the foreseeable future.

 

In other news, we made some progress with switching. I set a personal best for time switched in – a full eight hour work day. Talking to other people remains a challenge. However, I successfully spoke with several of Bee's coworkers throughout the day without losing the front. It gets a bit easier every time. We'll keep practicing this as well.

[ReallyArtificial]

December 2024

 

This month I felt like I noticed some improvement in my awareness of our whole system! There's definitely an association building between “sitting down to eat” and “being aware of all three headmates.” Walks are a little harder because there's so many distracting stimuli, but I'm getting better on that front as well. I also think my increased awareness of everyone is encouraging or allowing them to interact more amongst themselves. We've had some great conversations this past month!

 

This also marks one year of meditation practice for us. I really do think it's helped basically all areas of my life, tulpa-related and otherwise. I'm so much better at noticing when I've gotten distracted and refocusing, and for my ADHD self that's a huge deal. The benefits to my emotional regulation were especially noticeable this month. My depression always tends to get worse around this time of year, but the difference between this December and last December is like night and day. Shout out to Athelas for being the best built-in meditation coach ever! ❤️

 

On a somewhat related note, a couple days ago Athelas and I experienced our first ever spontaneous switch. The feeling was kind of hard to describe. I was worrying about one of my critters at work and starting to get really worked up with anxiety. Then, I suddenly had the sense of viewing myself and my feelings in third person. It was just like moments I've had where one of the crew is upset and I can feel their emotion like a separate entity from my own. 

 

This time though, it was my own emotions that felt separate. I was aware of myself internally freaking out, but our stream of consciousness was dominated by Tea’s unshakable calmness. He said something along the lines of, “Let it all out. I'll keep us on track.” And he/we calmly enjoyed the rest of our walk while I buzzed frantically in the back of our mind. It was the most tulpa-like I've ever felt. I guess it was a moment of dissociation, but it wasn't distressing, it actually helped!

 

Heading into 2025, some of the goals we'd like to pursue are:

• Keep working on my ability to be aware of our whole system at once. We're still mostly targeting walks and mealtimes.
• Do more deliberate visualization practice. I consider myself to be pretty good at visualizing, but I have a tendency to zero in on small details and struggle to apply them all to the big picture. I think I could be better at visualizing movement as well.
• Keep practicing switching and co-fronting when we're able.
• Try to make reality checks more of a habit so we can have more lucid dreams. (I was so good about this, then the bracelet I was using for it broke and I never got around to replacing it 😔)