Dealing With Abuse
and other forms of Damage...

by Mistress Steel

(Please note - If you have a serious mental illness relating to ABUSE in ANY form that you should IMMEDIATELY seek out EXCELLENT professional assistance and work through, process or otherwise reach a point of mental stability. This should occur PRIOR to seeking out or engaging in a D/s relationship. A D/s relationship requires mental health or competence as part of it's fundamental ideal of consent! You should NOT look for a relationship to RESCUE or HEAL your abuse!)

This article is written about 'some' submissives who are mentally healthy yet who continue to MAINTAIN or use their past as part of habits created in the past and thoughts about what those habits might be and possibly how to deal with them!

Damage occurs. Each us carries a history forward from the moment of birth that is a compilation of our life experiences. Some of these experiences are good and some are bad. Both can actually damage. I will describe damage here for this article as being anything which can limit or inhibit forward or positive growth or movement in an individual's life.

Good events can damage in peculiar ways. If you were born into great wealth you may carry with you 'expectations' of entitlement which make you lazy and somewhat unwilling to put forth great effort since this may never have been demanded of you in the past. This may also encourage an attitude of disposability when dealing with other people in a relationship.

Bad events can damage in graphic ways. Mutilation, assault, emotional battery, verbal abuse, death etc. The list of things which happen which seem to be negative can be quite long. Within the BDSM community the survivor's of extreme circumstances tend to gather in force. They bring with them the events and damage of their pasts. Dealing with this damage is important.

It is essential to remember that each of us was pre-programmed with tools to aid us in dealing with events of extreme crisis or stress. These tools are mental tools, responses that kick in that allow us to cope and SURVIVE. At the MOMENT that any event occurs this programming kicks in and DOES IT'S JOB. We ALL handle events. Some people get hung up in evaluating how 'well' we deal with things but that can be a trap. The simplest truth is that I KNOW you handled it ok because YOU survived. YOU are alive. YOU are here. Some people will immediately say that survival is NOT ENOUGH. At the moment that an event occurs there can be EXTREME pain, terror, agony, sadness and a host of other sensations and feelings. The sensations are sharp and brutal. With some people there is an instinctive 'sheltering' of vulnerability which may include detaching from the event or seeming to experience it from an external perspective. With others there is a 'drawing to' or a period of time where every tiny emotion is felt in it's entirety. No matter which form of coping you carry inside of you what is MOST important is that YOU ALREADY did it. The event is gone. The perpetrator of intense pain and anguish is GONE.

Within the aftermath of an event many other things may occur. The individual may be showered with sympathetic attention, comfort and the buffering of family and friends. The individual may wall off the event so that it drops out of their memory almost entirely. Or the individual may simply set aside the event to deal with later at a time when they believe they are stronger. These types of responses are also part of our mental programming. They are internal decisions in many cases that we as individuals may not be consciously aware making of at the time.

From the perspective of a Dominant it becomes important to think about former abuse and damage in different ways. With some people abuse and the memory of graphic events may become a habitual tool which can or may be used to gather continuing sympathetic attention and energy, limit the range that the individual 'should' be pressed to, and offer justifiable reasons for non-performance. This individual may actually get to the point of 'feeding' or 'maintaining' the memory of an event.

The simple truth is that the mind has an enormous capacity to heal. When someone we love dies the pain can be excruciating and debilitating. Then over the course of time these sensations begin to diminish. This diminishment can make us feel guilty when in actuality it is merely our pre-programming handling the event in a healthy way to allow us to move forward again. We may 'cling' to this pain as a way of 'feeling something', or 'keeping that person alive'. But, the pain does diminish. We cannot summon the intensity of that first moment of agony. Reliving the event in our memory actually de-sensitizes us. What was once sharp and vivid becomes somewhat faded out and pallid.

This is equally true for virtually ALL kinds of events. We heal. New events can and may trigger a momentary return of memory and feeling but each time that will ease slightly. All of this becomes important when you begin to deal with a submissive who has many of these events in their history or past. Some people cling to events as a crutch. They learn to wield their 'pain' and 'damage' like a weapon to propel those around them into accepting certain limitations due to this damage. The truth is sometimes harder for them to face. In some cases the survivor becomes the sustainer of the perpetrator. By 'maintaining' their 'damage' they keep the imagery and memory of the event ALIVE. They quite literally 'feed' energy into the maintenance of horror. What few of us seem to truly grasp is the simple truth that we have OVERCOME the event. We are still here. Still standing. If we feed our life energy into a past negative event then where are we robbing that energy from? Our present. We rob our loved ones, our children, our hobbies or careers and pour that energy into something that is GONE.

To some extent this is a masochistic tendency. It would be like sustaining a cut on your arm when you were eleven years old and keeping that cut open enough to drip a drop of blood or two every day for 25 years. That maintenance of pain feeds a need for attention, diminishment of expectation and lack of personal responsibility for non-performance. Part of a Dominant's responsibility is to reflect or direct a submissive into healthier choices. It is also to show them how to remove the blockades they are sustaining on their own lives. By saying (I can't) the individual is actually saying (I won't try). This is a SELF-LIMITATION.

We tend to get COMFORTABLE with the habits we form and many people will support our 'damage' because doing so is currently socially correct. We tend to make excuses for failure to succeed. Demon's DO exist. Horror's DO occur. Whether or not we give them ETERNAL life is up to each of us. Whether or not we allow them to control our present is UP to EACH OF US. Yes, there will be moments when those old feelings or memories wash over us. But, when the brain is healthy and working well these will diminish in time, occur less often, have less impact. If they continue to have ENORMOUS debilitating impact then it is generally because WE are pouring lots of our attention, focus and energy into thinking or obsessing over them. (Again, please note that if you have a SERIOUS problem with severe imagery and feel that you have NOT healed that you should IMMEDIATELY seek out PROFESSIONAL help! A Dominant is NOT a professional. If you believe you are mentally healthy and merely the SURVIVOR of abuse in the past that occasionally is triggered back to momentary life by incidents then this 'may' apply to you...)

The other thing to consider is that ALL of us have these events. None of us is excluded or protected from being near death, being assaulted, seeing horrible things. The primary difference is in how we choose to handle things later in our lives. There is some truth in the old saying that anything that does not destroy you actually makes you stronger. So the individual who has endured great or enormous events over the course of their life and REMAINS standing is actually QUITE STRONG. There is no need to offer this person your pity or endless sympathy. There IS reason to glory in their SURVIVAL. The greatest therapist of all is that program inside of your head comprised of species passed down instincts and responses.

Many submissives 'see' their damage in flashbacks. This is a sudden sharp memory. This is healthy in some ways because often each time it happens it may become a little less sharp. (Some people may have flashbacks that cause them to lose tract of where they are currently - these MUST be dealt with through professional assistance! If you have these types of problems - get HELP!) Creating new responses to replace habits that are negative or non-productive is a series of simple choices. It is deciding that the past is the past, it is understanding that you are the one sustaining the 'demon' with your personal life energy. It is understanding that those memories are robbing you of pleasure in the present and finally being unwilling to allow that to continue. It is creating NEW habits. Actively seeking to break out of the (I can't's), to reach out and find out just HOW STRONG you really are when you stop keeping those cuts open. Resiliency is part of the human spirit. It is important to remember that we teach those around us with our choices. If you want your children to learn to soar and fly after grievous events then you need to show them that they can by showing them that YOU ARE. If you act like events that occur will linger forever then you can set the people you love up with the idea that there is NO HOPE after something bad happens to them. This can be utterly disastrous. This is not to say that YOU alone bear the responsibility for how you teach your children to see life, but you do bear SOME responsibility!

The perpetuation of 'I am hurt' can be enormously selfish. In the end you are hurt and the perpetrator is YOU! I believe that is called 'self-flagellation' or self inflicted pain.

If your submissive is having serious mental health problems, using language of suicide or hopelessness do NOT try to help them yourself or think that you can. Locate GOOD mental health professionals in their local area and direct them to get help immediately. If they refuse then indicate that you are not a professional mental health person and that their refusal may place you in a position of extreme injury should they make choices which are impulsive and extreme and that they are willfully choosing this to occur or voluntarily injuring you which is NOT an action of love and respect toward you. Refusal to seek excellent professional help when necessary can be reverse manipulation. If they are hurt then either they find a bandage for the cut (help and healing) or they bleed all over those they care about the most who allow them to do so.

All Rights Reserved By Mistress Steel
Comments or email steelbfl@sonic.net
Other articles can be found at www.steel-door.com