I am NOT a licensed health professional
…and the tips I share simply are my experience as someone who has PTSD. But PTSD is a medical diagnosis and no suggestions I offer should replace reaching out to a therapist, psychiatrist and/or medical professional who can help you, and your partner or partners along in the healing journey. If you feel you are at risk of harming yourself due to your PTSD please reach out to the PTSD and suicide hotline by pressing 988 on your mobile phone.
Caring Is Sharing
Living the Lifestyle
One of the best ways I combatted my PTSD while doing BDSM is by truly living out the lifestyle. Not just doing kinky stuff, but truly living in unison with my partner. Finding discrete ways to serve him or show obedience in public, even if it was simply letting him open doors. It took away any fear in the lifestyle and kept my focus on him instead of on my past, or on my flashbacks.
The discrete ways of service for me entailed: letting him order for me, allowing him to open doors for me, walking on his right side and slightly behind him, and using our titles in public. The use of titles was a big thing for me. Knowing my Sir/Daddy was there by my side helped heal me from the hypervigilance (fear that someone might hurt you), which is a commonality amongst PTSD sufferers.
Another important thing was incorporating vanilla lifestyle components into BDSM. It kept the focus off of the discipline, bondage, and darker sides of kink. Incorporating date nights both at home and away, created a bond which helped me feel safe and which kicked my PTSD to the curb.
Our lifestyle bond was now not simply about sex, tying me up, or being spanked; it was about building a lifelong bond together. Even just holding hands, or the simple grab of a butt cheek, or peck on the face cheek, meant the world to me as I healed from PTSD. Sure, at first I would jump any time my partner came near my cheek, as I feared him striking me. Or I jumped when he would reach for my butt, not because I feared a spanking, but simply because I had become that scared of physical touch. But we kept at it. We pushed past the jumpiness. We bonded, truly and completely, and that bond broke the chains PTSD kept me locked in.
I will put a word of caution out there for those overcoming PTSD. There can be times you don’t want someone to touch you at all. Or that you want to hide away. These are the times you should cuddle even more. Cry even more. And be around another caring, loving person even more.
Do not give into the part of your brain telling you the world is no longer safe for you, or that your partner is not safe for you. Push past those thoughts, and embrace your partner. You may cry, I certainly did, but those tears will stop and you will realize you are in the arms of someone who truly loves you.
Discipline & PTSD
During the heights of my PTSD flares, when flashbacks were a daily occurrence and I had begun to fear pain which seemed never-ending in a past relationship, there were a lot of REDS that came from fear, not from the pain. I would be far from the limit of what I could handle during a spanking (I’m talking the discipline ones, not fun ones, but even those a few times too), and suddenly this crippling fear would come.
The best way I can explain it, is a sudden, paralyzing fear that the next swat would be too much and my whole body would break. And I would quickly, frantically cry out red. Both Dominants in my life were my heroes during this time.
They would throw aside whatever implement was being used and the sound of either the belt or paddle hitting the ground would send my tears flowing. I knew I was safe. That the pain had ended, and that I had nothing to fear. They would start aftercare and hold me as I cried, and then sometimes we would keep going, other times we would call it quits, depending on how our talks went.
As time progressed, the talks got shorter, and I started to want to finish the discipline even after redding. It was a way of taking back what my abusers in the past had tried to take from me: my courage.
As I said before, after a while I could push through my reds. I would start to use “yellow”, but even if I called “red” as before, we would only put a pause on discipline. We would talk about my fear calmly, while tears were stroked from my face, and then my disciplinarian or my Dominant (depending on who was disciplining me), would have me go stand in the corner and prepare to continue with the discipline. And we would.
This is the time when the most healing happened. I would have respected my fear by calling a safe word, but my PTSD and my fear from the past would not hold me back from discipline I had earned in the present. I was no longer captive to the fear.
Instead I was respectful of its presence, dealt with it in the moment, then pushed past it. This is what eventually allowed me to not even have to call a safe word but to be able to mentally tell myself during punishment, “I can get through this. A few more strokes then corner time. I need to focus on what I did wrong so I am not in this position or dealing with this fear again.”
I am proud to say in the past year I have only called my safe word once, and we continued with the punishment. Other times, I just talked myself down, but mostly, I have gotten back to learning my lesson from punishments, and booting PTSD into the corner. I am back to growing and serving in better and better ways as a result of BDSM, and no longer fearing more and more as a result of PTSD.
The Power of Pillow Talks
The other powerful tool we used to battle my PTSD is pillow talks. I would keep a journal handy and write in it any time I felt a PTSD flare up coming on. Whether writing about fear of abandonment, fear of discipline, or just fear I couldn’t place a label on, I would write out all of my feelings in the moment, just to get them out of my head. At first I wrote them as letters to my Dominant, but over time I could get all my feelings out with them just being short journal entries.
At the end of the week (or sooner if needed), we would pull the journal out and read over the entries, my head propped on his shoulders and oh so many tears being wiped. It helped my Dom to see what was going on in my head,and helped me not to feel ashamed of my sometimes out of control feelings.
It also was a great way for us to look back on the past and see how far we both had come. We would cuddle, sometimes do a fun spanking, and then I would write out all we had discussed (usually in a different color), and use that as a reference in the future.
Even with my PTSD at bay these days, I still use my journaling to connect with not just my Dominant, but my inner self. To grow as a submissive and to get overwhelming emotions, flashbacks, and fears out of my head and onto paper where they don’t get in the way of my service to my Dominant.
DDLG and Childhood Trauma
A lot of people who are drawn to the DDLG lifestyle have suffered some sort of childhood trauma from abuse, neglect, or both. And DDLG can and should be healing for both parties included. But it can give rise to flashbacks, especially if it gets sexual.
This is why, for me, little space became a sacred, nonsexual place where I could be a kid safely for the first time. My voice and mannerisms change when I got into little space, and rarely am I in little space without Uni, my stuffed unicorn, by my side. This signaled to my Dominant that my headspace had changed, and I needed him to be my Daddy, not my Sir or Master.
And my adorable cuteness helped his walls to come down and the softer side of him to come out. We colored together, played games together, laughed together, and shared oh so many Disney nights together, healing the child in me the whole way through. Sometimes there would be discipline while I was in little space, but he adjusted it for my little age (which is between 3 and 6, but mostly 3 years old), so they were much less intense than in big space, but always involved a corner time.
At one point, my partner and I devoted a certain time of the day to little time, because he noticed my PTSD would sometimes keep me from being a little, because of fear of judgment or something bad happening to me. I also struggled with shame and guilt that comes from the judgment of the world on DDLG, and he knew I needed that time each day to be little.
We put the time right before bedtime, when he would read me a story, give me my pacifier or bottle, and hold me till I fell asleep. Sometimes I would get to cuddle and watch cartoons with him, other times we were up so late talking (see pillow talks above) and laughing, that it was past my bedtime and there would be no movie or show time.
Which brings me to another point: bed times and sleep hygiene in PTSD. It is crucial to set up routines around bedtime, which allows the littles brain to slow down and stop processing the scary world around. This could be a show before bed, pillow talks around bedtime, or simply setting a bedtime and a time when electronics must be off. Reading a book before bed while cuddling was the simplest way for me and my Dominant to establish a bedtime routine, and also having a set time to do teeth brushing, taking out contacts, taking medicines, and doing anything else needed to get myself ready for bed, helped my brain know these steps meant to settle down and begin to quiet from the worries of the day.
This helped me fall asleep faster, and kept my nightmares at bay. Of course, if you or your little are suffering from overwhelming flashbacks or nightmares, it is crucial you see a professional to help you get through PTSD and realize full freedom from PTSD.
Wrapping It Up
Through patience, honesty, and time taken to simply enjoy life, you can see your PTSD put into a corner and kept there in chains it once bound you in. No longer will you feel flashbacks coming on, feel the overwhelming fear holding you back, or feel emotions overcome you. You will be in the place of control again, living out your life’s dreams on your own terms.
By incorporating vanilla lifestyle components into your kink, taking discipline slower, using pillow talks to talk through the days struggles, and simply bonding together between Dominant and submissive, will help you overcome your worries and fears of the day and move onto brighter tomorrows. If you practice DDLG, there is so much being a kid again in a safe space that is non-sexual can do to heal you, and bring the inner child out in a safe, caring, loving, healing way.
With your Dominant by your side (and any healthcare providers you may need to help work out the deeper feelings), you will feel your tears wiped away and keep getting stronger. Just keep your focus on your bond, on intimate moments sharing your emotions or just sharing life together, and know you will get through any hard moments in between.Your abusers can no longer control you, and you will get to a place where the emotions you still feel from what they did, no longer define your life or your actions.
You will simply feel the feelings, breathe through them, and then realize those are the past, and your present is bright, kinky, and in need of you. Keep fighting on mighty warriors, and know you got your PTSD by the collar and it can’t control you anymore. Much love.
By Bratty Ann
Bratty Ann has been in the Dominant/submissive lifestyle for 4 years serving as a slave, a pet, a submissive, and, of course, a brat. She has developed a deep passion for the lifestyle and for educating others on keeping it safe, sane, and consensual. Her favorite topics to educate on include domestic discipline, taming brats, and mental health in BDSM.
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