Within BDSM fear is usually seen as a bad thing. After all, in a healthy and loving BDSM relationship, be that M/s or D/s or whatever form or name you give it, one should please their partner out of love and a desire to make the other person as happy as they can be. To act out of fear, would be a very unhealthy situation for a submissive to be in. As such the word fear in relationships hold a very negative definition.
However I have found that fear does not always need to be a negative thing but can either be healthy, or even down right exciting and arousing. If handed out in the right way, dealt with it in the right way, by the right person, fear can be a wonderful tool to a dominants arsenal of toys and a delicious feeling for a submissive to become overwhelmed in. I know that this sounds entirely paradoxical: How can you be attracted to fear, and how can fear have a place in a loving and trusting bdsm relationship?
However there are many gradations of fear so perhaps it is not all that bad. However if you are in relation where you act purely because you are afraid of being hit or scolded at. Then really, I have only one advice for you: Get the hell out of there. Right now, just run. Because that is not healthy. That is the negative side of fear I talked about earlier. There is a fast difference between fear as a tool for a scene (with a loving after-care) and fear as a status quo in your relationship.
Okay, lets take a deep breath and calm down and take for granted that I am not talking here about fear in the unhealthy or abusive kind or perhaps, fear as a phobia. But fear to be used as a toy, as a tool for mutual gratification. Sure, it’s not something that is for everyone and there are some people who would rather wrinkle their nose at me, but this is how BDSM works, we all have thing we like and we all have things we do not like and that don’t really make us tick.
One of the ways that fear works within a bdsm relationship is as a part of stick behind the door. How often have we not seen or heard a submissive say; “I fear being punished”. But what is fear here? After all, I have said something I am sure with similar sentiment. Do I fear Mistress? I don’t think she would ever inflict permanent and/or long lasting damage on me. But the fear is an internal one. Not just perhaps for the pain of the punishment (which in some ways can be fearful, but just as welcome), but most of all, I fear knowing that I have disappointed her. That is something that is quite scary to deal with. Knowing that fear, makes it a boundary to pushing beyond where I should go, or perhaps in this context, push no further than Mistress wants me to go.
So the above showed us that fear can be either an internal factor, or an external factor. Now what if we put our self consensually and willingly that creates fear. Why would we do that? The same question could really be asked why people would go on roller-coasters (no way, you will get me up there), or watch horror-movies. Fear in the right amount causes the creation of adrenaline and that gives a rush, a kick, a high. The human body is quite adapt at creating the right chemicals suited for us. After all which submissive is not familiar with the feelings of endorphins being released in the body, creating the so called subspace?
It is well known that both adrenaline and endorphins can stimulate and heighten the feelings of sexual arousal. So it is not a far stretch of the imagination that both chemicals flooding the body can make even the most stoic submissive feel a wobbly in the knees. Which means that when applied correctly and skilfully, fear in the right way can act as an powerful aphrodisiac for a submissive.
Often people think that fear play is too hard for them. But I believe there is a lot more `fear play’ involved then people realise. Who has not felt nervous if they see their dominant grin at them in that special way, where you know that they are planning something and you are going to be on the receiving end of it? That nervous feeling when they are seizing you up like a cat ready to pounce on a the bacon. Or that feeling when you know where there fingers are trailing over your body and you exactly (or you are guessing desperately) what those fingers will do. That to an extend is fear play.
And what about activities such as humiliation? I am of the opinion that there is an awful lot of playing with fear and emotions in general. Even bondage to an extend can be argued cooperates light elements of this. Such as take away the ability for sight, for speech. Ever seen a submissive wriggling in bondage? I am sure there is an element of fear, of being out of control there. Of course we also revel in that feeling but hey, nobody said we had to make hundred percent sense in this.
And I haven’t even touched on some of the actual harder areas of play such as knive-play or breath play that actually include large amounts of needed trust, skill and depends by and large on fear being applied. And I am sure there are plenty of people who have been into kidnappings o play-rape. All activities that in themselves carry a certain amount of being fearful in nature, be that psychological or physical.
But above all, there is one aspect of BDSM I haven’t touched upon yet and I think this is one of the most common area where submissives are confronted with fear. We all have heard about pushing limits. Or taking a submissive up to her limits. Pushing a limit within BDSM is making the submissive open up to new areas and as always human beings to an extend are rather resistant to change and thus taking steps into the unknown can be very scary.
While fear play comes in many gradations and levels, most of the time when we are talking about fear-play as an activity it tends to gravitate towards the edge-play kind of scenarios. This makes it clear that hard core fear play is not something that is done willy-nilly and requires that the dominant knows his submissive very well and can adequately predict her reactions and/or knows how to improvise, adapt and look after his charge.
The worst thing that could happen is that a fear play could lead to a trauma if not handled well by the dominant. It does mean that fear play is not something that you do with someone you hardly know. There must be trust in the submissive that if the need for a safe-word arises, the dominant will stop the scene immediately and make sure first and above all that the submissive is cared for.
Thus one again have reached the paradoxical aspects of BDSM. Fear is a tool to be played with, but only if you have absolute trust that the fear is not abused. It sounds almost strange and unworkable but trust me, it does work, and I would not let anyone mess with my mind and emotions that I did not have absolute and complete trust in.
One of the elements of fear play that I have not talked about in this post is the mind-fuck. The mind-fuck is, simply explained; “making the submissive believe that something is happening, while in reality it is not”. The most common forms of this are fear of pain, fear of falling. However mind fucks are not limited to these alone. One mind-fuck that was pulled on me a long long long time ago, was that one person was thanking my then dominant and of course, being the curious kitty, I could not ask what was going on. Curiosity, cat .. you know the story. And this went on for a while. Turns out in the end, it was an exchange of some meaningless information and my curiosity started it and everyone was clued in on the way. The only person making it worse and worse was my own mind convincing itself that something was planned for me and that everyone was in on it. The feeling when I found out that there was actually nothing is not something I think I ever forget.
However to give an example of a more elaborate mind-fuck, I have found the following text which I have seen in various forms. I think it highlight both fear-play and mind-fuck in one swoop:
As I prepare the table for our scene, I ask her once more if she is sure about following through with the scene. She nods at me hesitantly, looking from me to the table. There is a butane torch on the table along with my other toys. I reach into my toy-bag and remove a branding iron with my initial on it. I place it next to the torch. I reach into the bag again and take out a blindfold.
She is positioned on bench, restraints securely in place. I walk over and remove the blanket covering her bare ass, lightly swatting her while chuckling at her startled look. I light the torch and place the iron with the tip of it in the flame, watching as my monogram slowly begins to glow. I smile at her again as I brush the hair from her eyes, giving her one last opportunity to bow out of the events that are about to unfold. She nods that she is ready.
I place the blindfold on her. I arrange the table so that everything is within reach. She trembles as I touch her one last time. I tell her to take a deep breath and exhale. I tell her to take another deep breath. As she does so, I press metal to flesh. She screams in agony. I remove the metal from her ass. Her scream changes to a deep sobbing cry. I turn the torch off and lean close to her, speaking softly to her as I embrace her shoulders. As her sobbing begins to subside I take the blindfold and restraints off. I ask her how she feels. She says that it burns. I nod and ask if she wants to see the brand. She nods with a whimper. I take the mirror and hand it to her. She holds the mirror so that she can see the brand site. She looks with disbelief. She lightly touches the brand spot. There is nothing there, not a single mark.
She tells me that she felt the searing pain, heard the torch, saw the flame. I laugh as I hold up the metal pipe that I had removed from the freezer a short time ago. Ice and flame can have the same intensity with the right setup and notions planted.
I have seen the above scene as I mentioned played out several ways. Even up to and including the pressing of the brand in some cheap steak to further the illusion of seared and burned flesh. Perhaps pork is the best for this since porkskin shows much similarity to human skin .. I am not sure I should know these kind of things! *laughs*
But remember, always, always always make sure your submissive safety is your first and foremost priority. Because the harmful effects of psychological play can be far more damaging and longer lasting than physical scenes.If you are going to engage in head games and mind fucks you need to know your partner very well, have a great deal of trust built up and take precautions to minimise any actual negative effects.
Negotiate what you are going to do. Make sure you know she can handle it. Don’t push further than you know you can make it. And be ready to throw your meticulous planned scene and carefully crafted script straight out of the window when required and be there to comfort and soothe the submissive. Yes, I know power is intoxicating and the fantasy of having a submissive in a wet puddle on the floor is a most attractive one (from the dominants point of view at least), but make sure you can always bring her back to normality.
At the same time, as submissives we have a responsibility to ourselves and our dominants to communicate our needs. Explain what we want, why we want it, what we get out of it, why things are the way they are. If there is something that is a potential trauma or untreated sores from the past, the dominant needs to know. They are no mind-readers, well most of them are not. And make sure you trust them.
As with anything else in this lifestyle, communication is often the difference between begging for more and screaming to stop.
Stay safe, have fun.
lex
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