Emotion

Yesterday, after i finished posting, i read a piece that Dauntless Vitality had posted a while ago.  It’s called Submissive Emotions and the Dominant.    You can find it on his blog here. 

Yesterday, i was struck with how it connected,  for me, with my post on self control.  Today, i read Little Monkey’s post and saw more connection.

DV says, in part:

“From personal experience, I can tell you that no woman, no matter what or how you try to explain to her, can grasp how her emotions will become involved.  How her need will grow.  How this will become an addiction for her.  She has no way to know.  She has no reference point as of now.  I can drill into a sub how intense this can be.  How emotional it will become.  But until she is actually there and feeling it, she really can’t know and understand.”

L.M. says:  “…the actuality of what I have been doing is exponentially more intimate than I understood it was going to be.”

Which all spirals around itself ~ the emotion, the intimacy, the intensity ~ and the vulnerability, which is so frightening and powerful.  It creates deep devotion, and love.

We can spend a lot of time trying to define that ~ love, devotion, and so on.  And it’s worth exploring ~ it’s important to wander around in it, looking and touching.

 i think it is all love.  Not necessarily romantic, happily-ever-after love, but deep compassion, tenderness, and devotion, all stemming from the same root.  

If i can peel an orange with love, then it becomes easier to receive love in its infinite forms.  

So, ok, i might be heading down a weird path here.  But you know, once i spot a psychic trail, i gotta follow it.  And yet, it’s not weird at all.

When are we most vulnerable?  Most dependent?  Capable of the most intense devotion?  

Yeah.  As infants and toddlers.

And who suffers, completely, intensely and in the moment?  Only to be all smiles and joy moments later.

Yep.  Two year olds.  Babies.  Little ones.

Even if we have a wonderful family, the pain of a two-year old can be intense and powerful.  And they can be distracted by bright, sparkly and forget the pain pretty quickly too.

A two-year old with an ice cream cone is the picture of joy.  

A two-year old whose ice cream has fallen off the cone is a picture of despair.

Over time, that intense joy/pain level gets muted.  We learn to be more guarded.  We know our ice cream can fall off the cone and melt away before our eyes.  We are no longer totally surprised when it happens.

We learn to blame.  “i should have been more careful,” we say.  Or, “Look what you made me do!!”  

We see patterns. “Bad things always happen to me.”  “I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

No matter what things we say to ourselves, getting an ice cream cone as a ten-year-old carries a lot more anxiety than it does when we’re 2.  At ten we know we’re not supposed to make a mess, we need to be careful or it will fall, lick carefully and evenly, don’t let it drip.

At 40, when we get an ice cream cone, we may also think, “Omg, i shouldn’t be eating this, it’ll go straight to my hips, i wonder if i’m lactose intolerant, should i check my blood sugar now?”  and that’s on top of  the ten-year old’s concerns about neatness.

We’ve lost the pure joy of a two-year old with an ice cream cone.

We’ve learned to be guarded and cautious and self-protective. And that’s not bad, there’s nothing wrong with that, it helps us feel safe.

In a D/s relationship, we give up the “feeling safe.”  Hopefully, we don’t give up being safe, but we give up feeling safe.  We make ourselves vulnerable and dependent.

Don’t we?  Yeah.  

Like toddlers or infants.

i think ~ when we are in physical situations that recreate the experience of being helpless and dependent, then it opens the door to the depth of feeling we had in childhood.

For some people, that becomes connected to age play.  Which makes sense in a lot of different ways.  But i don’t think age play has to be part of it.

i think ~ emphasis on think ~ what we’re looking for is that ocean of feelings that we learned not to show, and really, not to feel, when we were little.  So that flood of emotion that DV talks about ~ that’s it.  That’s where our joy has been hiding all these years.

Mindfulness can take us there.  Mindfulness, being able to be fully present in the moment, allows us to get in touch with that intense joy.

And so does BDSM.

i’ve been reading some Buddhist stuff lately.   i’m particularly noticing the idea {already familiar from psychology} that when you have a rush of strong, unpleasant emotion, there is something that needs  attention and psychic work.  Healing maybe, of some sort.

And i’ve got more thoughts here, you already know i do.  But i’m taking a leaf from Smilingsoul’s book, i’m gonna let this all simmer for a while.  

Just holding the thought that our kink creates vulnerability, dependence, intensity, and intimacy.  That this experience allows us to tap into the deep joy and pain of early childhood.   

And that is a gift.  Submission and Dominance are our gifts to each other because thy create the potential for that emotional experience in a safe way…