Healing Pain With Pain

When BDSM became my remedy

— Woman leaves verbally abusive marriage; finds refuge in sexual domination and spanking.

Any psychotherapist would surely have a lot of fun with me.

But I don’t need someone to tell me about my daddy issues. I know all about my daddy issues…

That’s how I plan to open my first stand-up comedy set (TBA). Because I do see the obvious irony in my story: Why the hell would someone, especially after living through years of emotional abuse, decide to nosedive into the world of BDSM and willingly let themselves be beaten blue?

I use the term nosedive because I didn’t exactly dip my toes in. I went deep. Real deep.

— How deep? you ask.

I burned myself in my own flame

The time I let myself be tied by the wrists to the ceiling of a dungeon, whipped bloody, electrocuted, and literally lit on fire by an ex-military interrogator (from a country I won’t mention, but one that isn’t known for sending their hostages home with their heads still attached) might deserve a story of its own…

— That’s how deep.

I’m aware of how it sounds

— That’s crazy! you might say. How could that possibly have been healthy?

I know it comes across a bit nuts. But, in fact, it was the sanest I’d felt in years.

— Still not convinced? Hear me out:

A lot of what I was actually doing at that time didn’t occur to me until months after when it became apparent to me that I was healing pain with pain. I then learned about what’s called trauma reenactment. In this article from the Journal of Psychotherapy, Dr. Michael S. Levy writes:

It has been suggested that actively reenacting a past trauma can provide an opportunity for an individual to integrate and work through the terror, helplessness, and other feelings and beliefs surrounding the original trauma. Freud posited that mastery could be achieved by actively repeating a past uncontrollable and unpleasurable experience. Control can slowly be reestablished by repeatedly experiencing what once had to be endured.

I confronted my trauma through conscious reenactment

I realized that what I was doing was mastering my trauma by actively repeating it—on my own terms. Instead of throwing myself into yet another abusive relationship, I threw my ass under the bullwhip — and believe me, it did wonders.

BDSM let me reclaim my story and flip it on its head

After having lived as a submissive, under an emotional sadist, in a 24/7 power exchange relationship, that I hadn’t consented to, masochism became a means to reclaim those experiences.

You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes? ―Friedrich Nietzsche

I’ve written a few articles about verbal abuse, where I discuss its elusiveness, and how, because it can’t be seen, you doubt whether it’s even real, which is nothing short of maddening.

I took something that didn’t look violent but was, and replaced it with something that looks violent but isn’t.

I ushered my own pain to the surface

While neither conventional nor the kind of treatment the doctor would prescribe, allowing myself to feel on the outside what I felt on the inside, gave me something concrete to relate to.

By concrete, I mean that beyond feeling it, I saw it, painted on my body in the deepest purples, brightest blues, which after being numb for so long, made me feel alive again.

I needed to burn in my own flame in order to rise anew.

The following passage from back then, was something I wrote when I started to make sense of my process:

Beat for a decade, with the kind of whip that leaves no marks, the cane that leaves no bruises. Stabbed with the sharpest of knives, which cuts go unseen, yet never heal. An ocean of pain; you may drown in the depth of her anguish. His weapons see her, in ways she has never been seen. Like buds blooming in spring, like sunsets bathing at sea; her wounds made visible in all their splendor.

It made me feel seen

Apart from making my pain visible, my experiences made me feel seen again, whereas for so long I’d gone unnoticed. Playing with pain requires a keen awareness of each other’s bodies, and it especially demands that the one inflicting pain pays close attention to the receiver.

If you desire healing, let yourself fall ill. ― Rumi

Fearless, foolish, or both?

Surely, I had concerned parties worry. Others told me I was brave. A few suggested my boundaries were low; that I was simply a leaf at the mercy of the currents.

This was (and is) far from the truth. I may have been experiencing a case of the sub frenzy, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t curate every single one of my most extreme experiences.

I knew what I wanted and went for it

Fiercely and unapologetically, I got what I came for, which in the case of the sadist ex-interrogator was three sessions that left me with welts and bruises — that caused a slight stir in the shower at my gym—a few of which I still have scars from.

Still, the marks were secondary; they were simply conscious manifestations of the inconspicuous wounds from my past. The whole thing beat my healing process into motion. It was as if I needed to see my own pain in order to trust that it was real before I could start mending.

The pain of the mind is worse than the pain of the body — Publilius Syrus

BDSM disentangled my entire chakra system

It rocked my core and roused the snake from its slumber, releasing a mighty dam of stagnant energy to surge through me. Moving up, the stream burst my heart wide open, and then unblocked my throat to give me the courage to speak. Rising yet, it cleared the scales from my eyes and gave me my sight back, allowing harmony to emerge from discord. In other words:

It put me back in touch with my sensuality

Through BDSM I found confidence in myself and in my body. I’ll even say that I only really came into my sexuality after I embarked on this journey. Before it was merely there, ripening; I could smell the fruits, but had yet to sink my teeth in.

It made me feel safe to love again

This is still a battle, after having poured years of unwavering love into a cold and dark void. Nonetheless, daring to give up control and put myself, mind and body, in the hands of someone else was an exercise in vulnerability and trust. Through it, I re-learned that it can, in fact, be safe to bare it all, literally and metaphorically.

It gave me the courage to speak

Not only did BDSM, which culture is deeply concerned with direct and honest communication around sexual preferences, consent, boundaries, and limits, challenge me to communicate clearly about all of these things, I partially blame my sexual awakening for my fearlessness to start speaking — and writing my truth.

It connected me to (my) spirit

Further severed had been my connection to the divine; the divine in myself and in all things. My awakening put things into perspective; I started noticing connections and synchronicities all around me, in a way where everything suddenly made sense; I gained new clarity and started seeing a sense of direction in my life as well.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding — Khalil Gibran

While I may have snapped out of the initial brouhaha; while I’ve taken a step back from the most hardcore edge-play, simply because I don’t crave that level of intensity anymore, I continue to find power exchange and sensory play to be some of the most intimate and profound ways to connect with a partner.

As I find my own niche, which is moving towards what I’ll call conscious kink or sensual BDSM, with a focus on spiritual and energetic connection, I continue to heal and grow, sexually and as a person.

[WARNING: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME] In the end, I’d like to add that BDSM might not be for everyone, and my way of healing, certainly not. Some of the things I’ve experimented with can go awfully wrong if not approached with extreme caution, and I credit my keen intuition for guiding me through healthily. What I do want to communicate is, that apart from the fact that healing can be messy and there are many different ways of going about it, BDSM is so much more multifaceted and precocious than how it’s often perceived through media’s portrayal of it. Much more than Christian Gray and latex-clad Dominas clutching floggers, it can be a vehicle for connecting with yourself and your partner(s) in heartfelt and profound ways.