BDSM AS THERAPY – OR NOT

A year ago I had a session of such brutal intensity that I broke down and cried, sobbing into Mistress Elita’s shoulder as she held me. I described how my British reserves had been “stripped away by Elita’s whip, as efficiently as a steamer strips away old wallpaper, leaving what’s underneath seeming fresh and new.”

Lately, my life has become rather complicated, leaving my mind constantly a jumble of thoughts about divorce, moving house, helping my boys, and saving both my job and those of the people who depend on me for theirs. I decided that I needed to experience the emotional catharsis of that earlier session and feel the beautiful clarity that it had left behind. I wanted to be “fresh and new” again. That is how I came to be standing nervously outside the superb basement playspace of Elita’s friend Mistress A, knowing full well that I had told Elita that she could push me over the edge once again and almost hoped that she would do so.

The 90 minutes that followed was, at the hands of the two experienced Mistresses, as intense a BDSM session as I’ve ever had. They worked me over with a riding crop, two floggers, various canes and Mistress A’s whip. And that was just the corporal punishment element.

It nearly worked.

I nearly broke down under Mistress A’s single-tail whip. Tied to a bench, twisting round to watch her swing the whip, fearing its impact, I started to lose control of my reactions to it. I was unable to process its deep, sharp pain, especially when it strayed onto the top of my thighs. I knew that either tears or the safeword were close, but the whipping stopped just before that final moment.

I nearly broke down under Mistress A’s pinwheel. It was connected to an E-Stim electric shock machine, generating a new, piercing shock each time one of the sharp pins touched my skin. This would have been hard anywhere, but she ran it backwards and forwards over the swollen, hyper-sensitive skin of my newly whipped and caned backside. It was agony and I couldn’t handle it. But I didn’t break down.

I nearly boke down near the end as Mistress A applied her ‘special’ nipple clips; “I’m told these feel just like having your nipples pierced,” she told me helpfully. They did, making my back arch, but, again, I didn’t break down.

I never did break down, finding myself at that edge again and again, yet never quite being thrown off or indeed throwing myself off. At the end I was a little lost, taken deep into my own core by the pain, yet not quite brought back out again; like an explorer guided deep into the jungle and left there. Fortunately I was meeting Elita the following day for an opera trip and felt much better after I had spoken to her about my feelings.

However one day further on, I found myself in a very strange place, all gloomy, dark, self destructive thoughts where, mired in a crisis at work, what I needed was sharpness and focus. “I can’t do this any more,” I told myself, “it’s messing my life up.”  In desperation I wrote a series of tweets:

Folks, I’m going to give the whole sex workers/twitter/blog thing a rest. I need to sort my life out and I’ve been kidding myself that this is helping, but it’s a distraction from what I’m supposed to be doing. I can’t handle it all any more and for now this is what has to go.>>

The emotional highs and lows of extreme BDSM and kinky sex stop me functioning properly for days, at a time when I need all my faculties just to stand still. Also, I’m spending more time writing blog posts and being on twitter than I can afford.>>

You’ve all been lovely so I hope I make it back here one day

I paused, realising this was Day 3, “The Day After The Day After”, exactly the time when, as I have written before, I can often expect to feel disturbed. I eyed what I had written suspiciously and saved the text rather than tweeted it. One more day passed and I felt clear and calm again, almost as if I had just walked out of the dungeon.

So what had gone wrong with this session to cause me to contemplate giving up my kinky persona, after so long spent exploring it? The answer is quite simple: Nothing. Elita and her colleague had done everything I asked, making blow by blow decisions as to how much was enough for me, repeatedly taking me right to the limits of my tolerance and doing their jobs with great skill and precision. Yes, longer aftercare would have been nice, but I had deliberately booked a 90 minute session rather than two hours, partly to manage the cost and partly because I knew I was seeing Elita for an opera trip the following day and would be able to work out any post session feelings under her thoughtful guidance.

No. If there was an error here, it was mine.

The fact is, that, suffering from lots of stress and perhaps even a little depression, I went to a Dominatrix for a cure for how I was feeling, rather than to a therapist. There is a world of difference between enjoying the mind-clearing effects of heavy BDSM play and seeing it, as I had done, as a treatment. Treating mental health conditions is not Elita’s job and it is unreasonable to see it as such. Sex Workers complain on Twitter about clients who come to them seeking therapy rather than relaxation or stimulation, and I had slipped into that thought process myself.

So looking back from a greater distance, and eliminating its inevitable failure miraculously to cure all my stress induced ailments, what was this session to me?:

• It was an erotically perfect slice of Female Dominant BDSM play. To become the creature of these two beautiful Mistress as they joked over my writihing body was a wonderful experience.
• It was a tantalizing glimpse at how the next level of  this game I’m playing might look, and the new and frightening monsters that might be found there.

Mostly though, what this session represented to me was growth: growth in BDSM; growth in my understanding of my body and what it is capable of; growth in my masochism. For all these things and many more, it was wonderful; a truly memorable experience for which I owe both Mistresses a debt of gratitude.

I’m currently looking for someone to help me work through the various complexities in my life and deal with the stresses and strains they cause. It will be interesting to see if such a person would diagnose BDSM as part of the cause of my issues or part of the solution to them.

More Wednesday wickedness here: