BDSM Starts With You

Before You Decide To Jump In Head First

Please take a breath and spend some time understanding you first. If you don’t take the necessary time to do some self reflection before you dive into BDSM you will find yourself in for a shockingly painful ride.

Think of jumping into BDSM without ever figuring out you, like trying to find a piece of equipment at night in your backyard work shed. First off its pitch black, you can’t see a thing and honestly you don’t even know what it is that you’re looking for. All you’ll end up doing is stumbling around with your hands out as you desperately try to orientate yourself. You will end up stubbing your toe a few times, banging your knees, maybe cut yourself once or twice and probably land on your face more times then you would like. I’m sure you’ll believe you have found what it is you were hoping to find a few times only to realize that it wasn’t. Because you didn’t know what it was you were looking for in the first place, you just had a vague idea it was a tool which means it was likely to be in the work shed. In the end, you will leave the work shed, frustrated, exhausted, beat up and worst off than you had started.

Now if a friend of yours said they were going to head to the work shed at night, I’m sure you would tell them two things.
1) figure out what it is you need from the shed
2) wait until morning so you can actually see where it is.

Which I would say is some pretty sound advice and it is exactly what I am suggestion you do as well. Figure out who are you, and what you require before you step into the work shed (ie dungeon). Having that light may not reveal everything or exactly where you need to go, but it will help to light your path.

Here are some crucial questions to ask yourself

So you can really dig down into what it is that you need/desire and who you are

• What does submission/slavery look like to you?
• What does Domination look like to you?
• What is the outcome you are looking for and want?
• In three to five years what do you want to be different?
• What are the obstacles you are currently facing to stop you from having the outcome you want?
• What do you have control of that can help you to make the change you want?

Answering these questions should really force you to think. There are no wrong answers, however, it should not take a minute to answer them either. This is your life, does it not deserve the time and energy to discover how you are meant to live it?

At the same time don’t put too much pressure on yourself, as the answers to these questions will always be changing as you grow and evolve in life. Keep these answers some place safe, and refer back to them so you see how far you have come and how you have changed. It also allows you to see where you might have been sidetracked and if you need to make any changes to get yourself where you want to be.

That Is Just The Start

Many people when trying to understand something only focus on the what. To focus on the what and only on how things make us feel, we only ever just scratch the surface and never understand the why of the matter. However, it is the why that will show you your purpose and reveal all the unknown. Understanding the why gives us the power over the what. So without understanding the why we become lost and powerless to everything else.

Here is an example:

You get together with one of your friends for coffee, they see you are down. So they ask the typical question, “Whats wrong?”

You reply “I’m just really stressed.”

You can leave the conversation there and neither one of you try to uncover more about the situation. Stress can then lead to anxiety, depression and a number of other problems. In essence you have become powerless to the problem, to your feeling stressed and to the what of the matter.

Now lets say your friend being the concerned and caring friend they are asks “Well, WHY are you so stressed?”

This allows you to dig deeper into the root cause of the situation. It allows you to vocalize a better understanding of the matter. Once you understand why you are stressed, you now have power over that which has controlled you. Now you are able to determine how you will dictate your future. Even if understanding why does not help you to resolve things, it still helps you to better understand the matter at hand.

Is the stress coming from an overly demanding jerk of a boss? Once you know, you can work the solution, like getting a new job, talking to HR, transferring to a different department, etc.

If you only focus on the fact that you are stressed, you never truly find the root cause and therefore lose any ability to do anything about.

Understanding the why, allows us to better understand ourselves and gives us the freedom we need to grow.

As famous philosopher Benedict Spinoza said (let me paraphrase) happiness comes from an increase in understanding. Even understanding unhappiness can create happiness.

So ignorance is not bliss, especially when it comes to yourself.

Once We Know The What, Understand The Why?

• Why do I want this? Why do I need this? Why do I desire this?
• Why do I avoid, ignore or refuse this?
• Why do I want this particular outcome?
• Why do I allow these obstacles to block my path?

When answering these question it is very easy to resort back to the what over the why. The majority of the time when I ask someone “Why do you want to be submissive/Dominant?” nine times out of ten I hear because it turns me on. That actually isn’t an answer to why, it is the answer to the what.

“What do you like about being submissive/Dominant?”

“It turns me on.”

When asking these questions you need to dig deeper. Why does it turn you on? Why does it arouse you in such a way?

“Because I like someone telling me what to do.” Again, why do you like someone telling you what to do?

Write your answers out on a piece of paper and on every line, ask yourself “why” until you break down your answer to the point where you can no longer ask why. Even better, if you have a friend or a partner, write out your answers to the what and have them take notes on your why answers. They can then keep asking you why, until they can no longer ask.

By not taking the time to dig into yourself, you are essentially putting on a blindfold and just desperately throwing darts at a board hoping you might get lucky and hit the bullseye. Instead, take the blindfold off and take aim at what it is your truly desire. You may not hit it immediately but you are far more likely to get it in the end and with far fewer tries. And who knows you may find out you enjoy being blindfolded and that is when you should put it on.

Do you have a better way of figuring out who you are and what it is your desire? Or do you just want to share a story of how you discover your desires? How did you figure out who you were? Do you have a better way to figure out your kinks? Do you have a horror story of things going wrong that allowed you to figure out what you don’t want? Please feel free to share it in the comment section below.

W/we can all grow when W/we share what W/we know.

To your journey