Journal Post #11 - Fear Overload

It’s been quite some time since I’ve written a journal post and there is a good reason for that – We have been taking things very slowly.

One of the main reasons is that Snowpaw has had some bad experiences, before we met, during random encounters with “not so serious” Dominants, which basically ended with an abuse that continued even when the safeword was cried out.

In other words, I have to do certain things very slowly because I want to avoid, at least for now, to create flashbacks to these experiences. What I have basically been doing for quite some time is a conditioning of Snowpaw with a single purpose; To make her realize that no matter how hard and emotional our BDSM sessions are, she will always come out safely on the other end. I’ve had to put some work into make her realize that I will always be there to guide her out of the emotional turmoil that BDSM creates when I “fuck with her brain”.

It’s also about trust, which Snowpaw has given me when we started our relationship, but continuous trust is a fickle thing as transference comes into play. Experiences from old relationships are used to draw conclusions in new relationships and that can sometimes get in the way when you need to have a continuous trust in place. When I trigger, unexpectedly, things that Snowpaw might recognize from an old experience or relationship then she will undoubtedly use that to make assumptions about what is going to happen to her. These assumptions are usually inaccurate as they are based on emotional reactions that are encoded into emotional DNA rather than a logical analysis of the situation.

This is her transference and it is usually a big challenge that we have to work our way through.

So what I have been doing is to push her emotional boundaries slowly and when she has lost the grip of things a bit, then I have gradually brought her back again by defusing the emotional turmoil that she has created based on her transference.

I have also gradually made small advancements in the type of play that we have been carrying out in order to increase her submissive self-esteem. Snowpaw was quite new to a lot of things when we started out in our relationship. Her submissive spirit was definitely there, but she didn’t have a lot of experience which enabled her to put herself in a mindset that would make her to end up in subspace quite effortlessly. She got used to physical stimuli and whipping was one of the things that made her hit subspace like a ton of bricks. It should be noted that Snowpaw isn’t a pain slut, she actually hates the pain itself – But she loves where the pain takes her.

She got used to flogging and whipping, then I decided to progress things a little bit, so I introduced small elements of humiliation play. This basically means that I am talking to her, exposing and mirroring her reactions and defenses as she is fighting to keep her face and emotional posture when I am working on her. My goal has always been to make her lose her sense of control, ability to make predictions and her transference, because when she does then she ends up in subspace with big bang.

It turns out that this wasn’t as easy as I thought, because Snowpaw doesn’t know how to process the new things that I’m gradually introducing and this makes her self-aware and she becomes afraid of exposing herself. I’ve discovered this recently when we were attending a couple of different play parties where I’ve initiated a couple of public scenes between me and her. During these public scenes she has become extremely self-aware that other people are watching and her need for control has taken over as she doesn’t want to expose her true free-flowing emotions in front of other people.

I would say, without any doubt in my mind, that Snowpaw is a beautiful submissive who has learnt a lot. When she relaxes then her emotional repertoire is quite vast and she has a natural ability to externalize her emotions. She cries, she lets the anger come out in the open as she is fighting against me when I am trying to dismantle her defenses – And when she finally gives in then she becomes very lucid and free-flowing. In other words, she is usually in touch with her emotions when I am pushing her boundaries and that is a very beautiful submissive spirit to me which I appreciate, love and cherish.

Her ability to express her emotions, when she is relaxed, creates a security which I benefit from as well. It makes it easier for me to read her when we play and when I feel secure about my ability to read her, then I feel secure about myself. The opposite has happened when she has become insecure, something that have made me insecure in the situation during our play session and I was surprised when I discovered that I reacted this way and it has probably made me back off a little too much a couple of times because I’ve been afraid of pushing Snowpaw too far or even jeopardizing our relationship.

I’ve come to the conclusion that fear that rubs of on the Dominant can definitely create a vicious circle where one fear creates another fear between the partners and it just goes around being reinterpreted over and over again until you can’t make anything out of it.

Fear overload can make things grind to a brutal halt.

I believe that I’ve solved situation of fear overload that we’ve had and that it’s necessary for me to expose and meet my fears as well while we continue our journey, otherwise I won’t be able to handle all the fears that Snowpaw has to deal with.