Emotional BDSM

[pinkstarfish]

When I was younger I watched the movie Sybil with my parents. What has specifically stuck out in my mind is the sexual arousal I experienced during the scenes where she was being punished by her mother. From making her hold an enema while her mother played piano, the knives on the huge cutting board, and the box that she kept her in high in the attic.

As an adult, I have noticed I have done similar things. Mixing pleasure with pain life a cocktail for contentment. Going for one extreme to another. Forcing myself to work on and relive some of the most abusive and tragic times in my life, and then switching to over stimulating myself to a constant state of ecstasy, only to repeat the process again, but inducing self guilt, and punishment and repentance.

Stages of my life with the reliance on pain as medication, burning myself, cutting, sticking needles in my arm, seeing my own blood, and crying into it, knowing something beautiful was lurking and wondering when it would visit me.

Helplessly hoping...


I love the way this famous writer speaks of pain -- It seems to tell the story of my life.

On Pain ~

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses
your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its
heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the
daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem
less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart,
even as you have always accepted the seasons that
pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the
winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within
you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy
in silence and tranquillity:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by
the tender hand of the Unseen,

And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has
been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has
moistened with His own sacred tears.

~ Khalil Gibran

 

[rosco rathbone]

Thought-provoking.

 

[pinkstarfish]

It is isn't it?

Stages of my life with the reliance on pain as medication, burning myself, cutting, sticking needles in my arm, seeing my own blood, and crying into it, knowing something beautiful was lurking and wondering when it would visit me.

I wanted to expand on this quote a little.

Every one of those things brought intense pain and pleasure in the same beat, but today I only do this emotionally. I no longer injure myself, or stick needles in my veins, but the mentality, the seed, it still very alive. I just plant my garden in difference places and find more long lasting soothing comfort now.

For years, after many years of abuse and mental torture, I began doing it to myself to find familiarly and comfort. Now, life looks differently to me, emotional pain has been a catalyst for pleasure, even sexual pleasure, and I love it. Sort of a lemons to lemonade experience.

I know I'm being vague, but I'm not trying to tell my life story here so I hope it's okay. I was just thinking this morning with my coffee, and decided to write down a few words.

I'd love to hear others experiences too.

 

[rosco rathbone]

Emotional bdsm is on the mind lately.

 

[Taezlie]

Emotional Masochism

While, I might never have sought to scar myself physically as you did; emotional pains are my drug of choice. I become addicted to the emotional bondage & discipline in a BDSM relationship, craving the discomfort at times; for it is felt just as deeply as the bliss. The high brings pride, & a feeling of real feminity for me; it is a rebellion against the me I hide from.

I need to be told when my attitude, as well as my behavior, does not meet a man's standards immediately. As a female I understand emotional issues well; & it is not my actions, but my intent, that shows my good training. I have caotic emotions; without one to control my inner mindset, he cannot find good use in me either.

I am not a blind follower; but I will do most all to feel a belonging, even if fleeting. Service is about sacrifice, & accepting what is; unable to change reality, I accept what they have deemed is best for them, not necessarily best for me. My pleasure increases the more I am taken; it is about faith & devotion, & I crave the wave.

It is "shame;" & it is erotic.

 

[TaintedB]

I dont' think I have ever tried intentionally to bring any sort of pain upon myself except erotic pain. Life has thrown enough at me all by itself, and each time it does, I feel weaker from the experience, closer the pit of despair and insanity, not stronger. The only "sweetness" I experience in sorrow (and it's a dessert I'd gladly forego if ever given a choice) is the rememberance of something very good in the awareness of its loss.

I know people that do consciously choose pain. One is a good friend of mine and she did it as a child because she knew that if she could face the extreme physical pain she gave herself, she'd be strong enough to handle anything her sadistic parents dished out. It worked for her.

Sometimes a person, through simply being who they are, being true to themselves, has no choice but to suffer pain for it, particularly if who they are is a sort shunned or disliked by whatever culture or society they are born into. That kind of pain, hard as it can be, is much easier to bear than other sorts because you're always aware that it's the result of a self-affirming choice you have made and you consider the alternative (faking it or being something more acceptable to others around you) to be worse.

Gibran, like many published sufis, was pretty damn smart, although in my opinion, it is curious that, unlike others of his ilk, he doesn't include the usual and routine (at least for that type of writer) safeguards and "bringdowns" for the emotionally indulgent in his writings. As a result, it's very easy to go emotionally overboard when reading him without even realizing one is wallowing. Normally, when reading sufi works, the moment one starts the emotional wallowing, a sharp sarcastic observation counteracts your float into the ozone and brings you right back to earth before such indulgence gets destructive or extreme. Gibran's curious lack of curative contermeasures or safeguards to the exteme emotions he evokes has made him intensely more popular than writers with a similar style (Sanai comes to mind), but I don't know if that is such a good thing. I'm not sure what he was attempting with this style, perhaps it was meant to demonstrate to others how easily they can be led down a garden path by words, but I've got to assume based on the way his works affected me and affect others that this point is too subtle for most of us.

Anyway, the key to this excerpt, to me, is in the first line: "your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding." To me, that doesn't say "pain is good, seek more pain and you will automatically reap benefits from it." It says, "Pain, like almost anything else in life, is a tool. Tools differ and are meant for different jobs, and if the job at hand is a particularly tough excresesence or exoskeleton (aka one's false personality) that an individual has mistaken for his or her true essence, than pain might be the right (tough enough) hammer to break through that crust.

To get the expected result, a tool has to be used correctly, however. Without a clear understanding of what you are doing and why and how or what the expected results should be, it's extremely easy to misuse self-inflicted pain or confuse the self-indulgent desire for noble feelings that bring such excesses on with an increase in understanding. That's been my personal experience as well as obeservation of others, anyway. People can use pain as a drug and become dependent upon it and need more and more, and, like any addiction, it can come to control them rather than the other way around. At that point, understanding is decreasing, not increasing. Sometimes the only way to bring habitual self-flagellators, of either the physical or emotional variety, back to sanity and reality is with an excess of unwanted and enforced pleasure and joy.

Overall, that first statement is a message of hope: it helps reassure those of us who are lost in darkness that maybe the horror is not all not in vain, so I'm glad you posted it.

 

[SweetLolita]

While, I might never have sought to scar myself physically as you did; emotional pains are my drug of choice. I become addicted to the emotional bondage & discipline in a BDSM relationship, craving the discomfort at times; for it is felt just as deeply as the bliss. The high brings pride, & a feeling of real feminity for me; it is a rebellion against the me I hide from.

I need to be told when my attitude, as well as my behavior, does not meet a man's standards immediately. As a female I understand emotional issues well; & it is not my actions, but my intent, that shows my good training. I have caotic emotions; without one to control my inner mindset, he cannot find good use in me either.

I am not a blind follower; but I will do most all to feel a belonging, even if fleeting. Service is about sacrifice, & accepting what is; unable to change reality, I accept what they have deemed is best for them, not necessarily best for me. My pleasure increases the more I am taken; it is about faith & devotion, & I crave the wave.

It is "shame;" & it is erotic.

Phrased perfectly. I think that for me, whilst I do enjoy the sexual controlling of BDSM, I much prefer emotional discipline.