RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (Full Version)

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cornflakegirl -> RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (8/16/2009 11:13:51 AM)

How is emotional sadomasochism different from the verbal aspects of humiliation play?

In other words, when I think of verbal humiliation play, I think of my Dominant calling me a dirty slut, telling me I am good for nothing but fucking, just his sex toy, like, really degrading, humiliating, hurtful in any other context things to say. Is this emotional sadism on his part and emotional masochism on mine? Or does emotional sadomasochism mean something entirely different?



pyroaquatic -> RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (8/16/2009 11:16:50 AM)

If I am left bare you had better be more than capable of handling me in this barren state.



kiwisub12 -> RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (8/16/2009 11:21:58 AM)

I would think the number of doms who could do the deliberate "tearing away" without it turning into "tearing down" would be few and far between.
I'm not sure that most doms would be even in an emotional\psychological position of stability to even consider doing said "tearing down.

I imagine that some doms do tear down in a positive way without even considering that that is what they are doing.
And there are doms who don't find it necessary to alter their subs in such a way.

Of course, that could be my scarred psyche talking. [:)]




NihilusZero -> RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (8/16/2009 11:23:23 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: LillyoftheVally

I agree, but for me this is something different. The OP is describing the negative affects, the dominant breaking her down and relishing in herself bouncing back up, but what happens if something snaps?

The same thing that would happen if someone rope-suspends someone and something get wound too tight on a limb for too long. The same thing that would happen if the lash of a single-tail misses the intended target and hits something that cannot handle it.

How he chooses to break her down is only different based on whether one person is a more of a physical painslut than the next person. There are certainly gentler way to strip away someone's emotional veils, but that's not a necessarily different topic than whether someone is better at dealing with slow progressive flogging or sharp full-on lashes of a cat-o'.

quote:

ORIGINAL: LillyoftheVally

What if it is tearing someone to pieces and leaving them that way?

What do we find, at our core, that is not,. in the end, just us? If what we see when we are there at the very end scares the shit out of us...it's not the process that's the underlying issue. Also, however, this is why I place so much emphasis on the aftercare...because I would think that a caring dominant would understand that the one strand of solidity the s-type is reaching for at that last vestige of self is the D-types safety and care. I think that's very important at the end of such a process.

quote:

ORIGINAL: LillyoftheVally

See that is what the OP strikes me as, not simply being emotionally vulnerable

I think too many epople distinguish between emotional masochism and emotional vulnerability not by what the end result is, but by who is holding the reins as it's happening. If the individuals themselves is pulling off the veils, most everyone is likely to be superficially fine with it. But, the idea that someone else would peel them off or yank, strip and/or rend them off for the other person is seen more defensively (because we always questions the motivations of hypothetical people).



NihilusZero -> RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (8/16/2009 11:26:29 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: cornflakegirl

How is emotional sadomasochism different from the verbal aspects of humiliation play?

In other words, when I think of verbal humiliation play, I think of my Dominant calling me a dirty slut, telling me I am good for nothing but fucking, just his sex toy, like, really degrading, humiliating, hurtful in any other context things to say. Is this emotional sadism on his part and emotional masochism on mine? Or does emotional sadomasochism mean something entirely different?

It seems to me that degradation and humiliation play is just a means to the emotional masochism. It may trigger that for some and not for others. The emotional masochism by itself is just the process of scalpeling straight to the innermost fears and hopes of someone and leaving them open to the air to be confronted. The more aggressive means of doing so being the active expression/incarnation of whatever triggers would bring about those inner demons and angels.



NihilusZero -> RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (8/16/2009 11:29:05 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: kiwisub12

I would think the number of doms who could do the deliberate "tearing away" without it turning into "tearing down" would be few and far between.
I'm not sure that most doms would be even in an emotional\psychological position of stability to even consider doing said "tearing down.

Why would you surrender any part of yourself to someone who you didn't trust that much in the first place?

I mean, I guess it is something that can be considered on a skill-by-skill basis. Like, I would not expect my girl to implicitly trust me wielding a single tail with the inexperience I have with such a tool. Yet, it could also be said that the Doms capable of properly wielding one may be "few and far between".



cornflakegirl -> RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (8/16/2009 11:30:51 AM)

Thanks, NZ, that makes a lot of sense.

I feel like there are tiers of where I can go. I can fool around on a first or second date, sleep with someone some time after that, get into BDSM physical play sometime after that, and somewhere way down the road open myself up for that emotional side of things. I do think that's somewhere I'd like to go, but man it's scary to contemplate giving someone that kind of power. Especially because the "wounds" in that case are invisible, and therefore easier to overlook and get all icky and fester and cause problems.



cornflakegirl -> RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (8/16/2009 11:35:23 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: NihilusZero
Why would you surrender any part of yourself to someone who you didn't trust that much in the first place?


We surrender small and large parts of ourselves to others all the time. It's a spectrum, not a line.

Example: For me, touch is a Very Big Deal. I don't touch people I don't know except to shake hands. If I go for a hug, that's surrendering a part of me, that's allowing myself some vulnerability. Way down on the other end of the scale I want a guy to tie me up, call me names, and smack the hell out of me. There is a vast amount of subtlety between where I am barely ok with a handshake and where I am ok with leaving myself wide open. i could definitely see me playing with a guy that I trusted to flog my back but not to call me names or dive into my deepest emotional stuff.



Prinsexx -> RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (8/16/2009 11:35:42 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: LillyoftheVally

So Prins, i am wondering are you saying that emotional masochism is something you enjoy?

Lils: that's like asking does someone enjoy pain. Pain is pain.
Now I'm very clear on the difference between 'good' pain and 'bad' pain for example. Take needles. I HATE needles in a real edical setting. Have to look away. Am likely to faint.
But needles in the hands of an experienced dom? The nearest thing to love.
With regard to emotional masochism. Y had no distinction between 'bad' emotional hurt and 'good'. That is to say of course I recognised emotional pain as hurtful. I was aware it was bad during childhood...just wasn't tquippped as the child to know how to stop it.
But in D/s I kept experiencing 'bad' hurt...wondering oh here we go again...more insults, more negation, more put fown, more abandonment...another dominant bites the dust.
Then one day...look it was only about two years ago...I had a real breakthrough. I was crying at the end of a phone call. The tears came and it was an amzing release. It just turned me on. Guilt kind of came at me...and with that i relaised that I had in the most part always been turned on by tears. This time two years ago was different and I phoned him back crying and laughing at the same time daying you bastard you know you do this to me. He said yes and you fucking love it. I did.
BUT it's an effort to work out the difference between bad emotional pain and good emotional pain, because unlike the sensation of pain, there are fewer contextual differences. Emotional sadists work within the parameters of everyday life, not different play settings. It doesn't take any equipment to inflict emotional sadism.



NihilusZero -> RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (8/16/2009 11:38:31 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: cornflakegirl

We surrender small and large parts of ourselves to others all the time. It's a spectrum, not a line.

Example: For me, touch is a Very Big Deal. I don't touch people I don't know except to shake hands. If I go for a hug, that's surrendering a part of me, that's allowing myself some vulnerability. Way down on the other end of the scale I want a guy to tie me up, call me names, and smack the hell out of me. There is a vast amount of subtlety between where I am barely ok with a handshake and where I am ok with leaving myself wide open. i could definitely see me playing with a guy that I trusted to flog my back but not to call me names or dive into my deepest emotional stuff.

*nods* [:)]



LillyoftheVally -> RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (8/16/2009 11:39:17 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: NihilusZero
What do we find, at our core, that is not,. in the end, just us? If what we see when we are there at the very end scares the shit out of us...it's not the process that's the underlying issue. Also, however, this is why I place so much emphasis on the aftercare...because I would think that a caring dominant would understand that the one strand of solidity the s-type is reaching for at that last vestige of self is the D-types safety and care. I think that's very important at the end of such a process.


I see what you are saying, but then I think all the layers are us also. They may have been built by knowledge or pain or happiness or whatever they are still a map of who we are and how we got there. I do not think that abusing someone verbally will always be 'getting to the core' but may simply be stripping the confident levels and leaving only insecurity.

quote:


I think too many epople distinguish between emotional masochism and emotional vulnerability not by what the end result is, but by who is holding the reins as it's happening. If the individuals themselves is pulling off the veils, most everyone is likely to be superficially fine with it. But, the idea that someone else would peel them off or yank, strip and/or rend them off for the other person is seen more defensively (because we always questions the motivations of hypothetical people).



I have no problem with 'pulling' my layers off, and it is as you say very dependent on who does it. The problem is bullies use emotional sadism, they are not tearing them off for anything other than pain.



Prinsexx -> RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (8/16/2009 11:42:11 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: petmonkey

Sadly, the Wipipedia link did not work for me and i very much wanted to read it. The page claimed there was no article.


Try:
http://www.londonfetishscene.com/wipi/index.php/Special:Search?search=emotional+sadism&go=Go
Maybe copy and paste?



LillyoftheVally -> RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (8/16/2009 11:43:17 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Prinsexx
BUT it's an effort to work out the difference between bad emotional pain and good emotional pain, because unlike the sensation of pain, there are fewer contextual differences. Emotional sadists work within the parameters of everyday life, not different play settings. It doesn't take any equipment to inflict emotional sadism.


And there I think is the issue. I think self discovery whether alone of walked through/forced through with another can be so so so painful but also liberating or rewarding.

I think it is the invisibility of emotional pain that is the most scary, I can see a bruise, I can say how I got it (normally) and I can watch it heal. A woman in the street could call me a whore, I can't see the pain, I may not even realise that she has caused any, but the wound may still be there, and its healing harder to chart.



NihilusZero -> RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (8/16/2009 11:50:20 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: LillyoftheVally

I see what you are saying, but then I think all the layers are us also. They may have been built by knowledge or pain or happiness or whatever they are still a map of who we are and how we got there. I do not think that abusing someone verbally will always be 'getting to the core' but may simply be stripping the confident levels and leaving only insecurity.

Possibly. I do have a nihilistic/taoist approach to humans...to where the layers are just distractions...masks. I guess that would be an interesting topic to compare: the procilivity for a person to need the walls they've built for themselves in contrast to how complementary that is to being in certain D/s dynamics. *ponders*

quote:

ORIGINAL: LillyoftheVally

I have no problem with 'pulling' my layers off, and it is as you say very dependent on who does it. The problem is bullies use emotional sadism, they are not tearing them off for anything other than pain.

It depends. This is not different than saying that every D-type who straps an s-type to a St. Andrews cross to whip is not doing so "for anything other than pain".

This can be done well and positively, regardless of whether many would do it for other reasons. Again, we are just questioning the motivations of hypothetical people.



LillyoftheVally -> RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (8/16/2009 11:55:07 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: NihilusZero
Possibly. I do have a nihilistic/taoist approach to humans...to where the layers are just distractions...masks. I guess that would be an interesting topic to compare: the procilivity for a person to need the walls they've built for themselves in contrast to how complementary that is to being in certain D/s dynamics. *ponders*


First, bolded part I had to mutter well duh [8D]

Yeah I think it is interesting how our personal philosophies carry so much weight in our personal relationships. I think one reason that I now am pretty keen to discover a potential partners ideologies prior to any real attachment.

quote:


It depends. This is not different than saying that every D-type who straps an s-type to a St. Andrews cross to whip is not doing so "for anything other than pain".

This can be done well and positively, regardless of whether many would do it for other reasons. Again, we are just questioning the motivations of hypothetical people.



I am sure that it can, but as you say it is about circumstance, how it is done. But I would also assume to really get to the core, as you suggest, would require a real level of trust in the first place. The barriers/layers or masks that we put up can be fairly bullet proof when we need them to be.



Prinsexx -> RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (8/16/2009 11:59:13 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: petmonkey


It might be helpful to me if you describe the difference between how you view the marriage you once had as abusive versus how you view emotional masochism as you mean it in the context of BDSM play.

Furthermore, like leaving partners who denigrate me, i try to expunge self-deprecating thoughts from my mind. Apologising for my presence on Earth does not aid me in my quest to move through life with aplume. Like i said, hard limit.


The difference, in a nut shell between emotional sadism as 'use' of me and 'abuse of me' was that there was no necessary different context for the emotional sado-masochism, (it took place within the context fo daily ife) there was an entirely expected different outcome.
In my marriage picking myself up and out of it was not expected, it was not granted, there was no end to it and it did not make my husbamd te perpetrator feel powerful. Has there been any aspect of those things I would have realised it, he might have realised it and no doubt given my predilaction for tough guys, we perhaps could have saved the marriage. i was victimised. Beaten. Terrorised at times. And he found no pleasure in that (which would not alone have ben enough for me to remain), he had no parameters, was covert and hidden about it..never discussed it as 'use' of me, never had it in an erotic context of any sort. Indeed it was fater sex that he got triggered into UNCONTROLLABLE emotional and psychogical ab-use.
I played my part. I will not have it that perpetrator-victim relationships are one sidied. It took me two years of group thera[y to finally admit that I had an erotic attachment to emotional use.
Now the other difference of course lies in the differentiation between the terms use and abuse.
If we put thus in the context of substance abuse. Abuse is not something that a user necessarily does to someone else. it is something that they do t themselves. Avuse is defines as that point at which the user can no longer function. During my abusive marriage my husband bever once recognised the inner strength I had to pick myself up (as mother of two very young children), he rarely ever acknowledged or praised. it was monotone, random and its purpose was not to strengthen me it was to destroy me. And he almost succeeded to the point at which I was 'abusing' the relationship...to the point almost of my faulure to be able to have the strength to drag me the hell out of that mariage.
The British Consulate (praise be) with  the help of nuns smuggled me out of Italy in the end..me and the kids. I had to be smuggled because of course they had an Italian father.
I'm very clear on the difference betwen the two. I know the difference from hard won experience. sorry for any typos that all came out in a rush.



Prinsexx -> RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (8/16/2009 12:02:44 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: petmonkey

What was missing for many of us may be appropriate "aftercare".  What would appropriate aftercare possibly be, even? i can't think of anything.  Obviously, responses like "I didn't really mean it.", "Huh? What are you talking about? I did no such thing.", and "Whatever." wouldn't do at all.


Yes you are absolutely right about the after-care.
But I would shun that and still do.
Physical time spent sumply being, coming down off the high of it, being together I think within a range of different emotions. That's what's worked in the past.



cornflakegirl -> RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (8/16/2009 12:10:23 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: petmonkey

What was missing for many of us may be appropriate "aftercare".  What would appropriate aftercare possibly be, even? i can't think of anything.  Obviously, responses like "I didn't really mean it.", "Huh? What are you talking about? I did no such thing.", and "Whatever." wouldn't do at all.



For me, aftercare was physical comfort and emotional reassurance from my Dominant. "You are a good girl, you did a good job, I am happy." Mostly repeating simple phrases like that. It was not denying what went on in the scene, but reassuring me that I could still exist as a decent person outside the scene. He didn't want me to walk away from the scene headspace still in it. It worked really well.



Prinsexx -> RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (8/16/2009 12:18:58 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: pyroaquatic

Emotional Masochism must mean there is an Emotional Sadist around right?


No not necessarily (and no there's no sadist near at hand at the moment).
I keep needles right. When there isn't someone willing and able to stick them in me I will stick them in myself. Into acupuncture sites. Into painful areas.
If there's no emotional sadist around, in my opinion, an emotional masochist can do a very good job of 'stabbing themselves' emotionally.
I played with a pain pig. Her capacity for being whipped by her D was incredible. It made me squirm just watching. Her back was lacerated and bleeding and she still got up, packed up te toys and carried the kit to the car for him as if nothing had happened.
I may not like it...but who the hell am i to pass judgment on another?
And yet I think it is the area of emotional s/m that gets judged so frequently.



Prinsexx -> RE: Being an emotional masochist: how does that work? (8/16/2009 12:21:58 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: NihilusZero


In the same way, using more aggressive means to bare open the emotional innards of someone isn't meant for the intentional negative connotations that many people are prone to attach to such an act.

Thank you for these words.
I wish I had been able to express it as clearly.



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