Sleep, Anxiety, and BDSM

With my anxiety disorder, sleep is an important component of my life. I get drained, I need more sleep. But if I am anxious, no matter how much I sleep, I have chronic nightmares all night long. I wake up feeling more stressed and tired than when I went to sleep 12 hours earlier. It makes for a long, grouchy day. Days of bad sleep can turn into weeks and months, which make me depressed and starts a cycle of depression.

Not good.

The last few days, I haven't felt particularly anxious during the day. In fact, I've been having a perfectly nice week. But I started having horrible nightmares. Disaster after disaster overtakes me in my sleep. People shoot at me with guns. Savage animals attack me. Family members make me cry. Snowstorms erupt. I am lost, afraid, alone. Cell phones don't work or people don't answer. In all these dreams, I feel helpless.

I've tried the medicines the doctor gave me -- Xanax and Ambien. Xanax makes me feel calm before falling asleep, but it doesn't keep me from having nightmares. Ambien doesn't make me calmer, but it knocks me out so I don't keep waking up from my nightmares. But both are getting less effective. I am careful not to use them every day, but it seems my body is getting used to them, anyway.

Last night, my Dom pinned me down and had sex with me and called me names and talked dirty to me. He choked me at the end. I hated/loved it. Ahhh, the complexities of BDSM.

But afterward, after the anger and fight in me had subsided, I felt that nice rush of endorphins and I relaxed.

And you know what? I didn't have nightmares!

Or if I did, the Ambien knocked me out enough that I don't remember them.

For me, kinky, rough sex is a great way to work through some really negative emotions in a way that is not socially acceptable in most situations. It allows me to feel and experience those negative emotions, and then gives me a rush of calm and peace at the end that helps me sleep better. It is a kind of anxiety medication for a very anxious girl.

Maybe I'll need to start taking a "dose" every day.

The BDSM Community

One thing I have found about the BDSM community is that it is very, very open minded.  I get the feeling it wasn't always this way, that a few decades ago if you weren't into black leather and gay sex (the two most stereotypical facets of BDSM originally), you were sort of shunned since mainstream society had shunned them.

But the community grew, and now any kink is okay. There is a community-wide openmindedness that is perfectly described by the half-joking acronym YKINMKBYKIOK, Your Kink Is Not My Kink But Your Kink Is OK.



It is something I really, really like about this community. I'm in somewhat of a minority in the BDSM community, one because my Dom and I are monogamous and two because I am Christian. It is easy to shun others who aren't like you, but because the BDSM community is pretty much comprised of people who have sexual practices that are shunned by mainstream society, and that is a huge umbrella of kinks and proclivities, the community has really reached out to all sexual outsiders with the message, Come on in. We won't judge.

And for the most part, people don't. Sure, I see a few FetLife forums where Wiccans and Christians get into it, or the occasional rant about how monogamy is unnatural (ironic, no?), but mostly, people respect your boundaries and they respect your kink.

You're into being a dog or a horse or a kitty cat? An adult baby? A slave? Weird. But cool.

You're into Christian Domestic Discipline? You're polyamorous? You're a man who likes to be dominated by women? You fantasize about being raped? You're gay or straight or bi? Cool.

And I really, really like that mentality.

One, it has helped me grow into an individual who is a lot less judgmental of others' sexual desires. A friend confided in me that his fiancee likes to be slapped. I sort of shrugged. That might have been weird for me five years ago, but that's nothing compared to the stuff I read on FetLife, and I've gotten to know some of those people and they are serious cool, normal people whom I would be happy to hang out with. Another friend recently confided in me that his wife is interested in having a threesome. Sure, that's not my kink (as a Christian, I'd think that's a sin, but he's not a Christian and does not hold himself to the same moral values I do, and besides, I'm not living his life and what he does in his marriage is not my concern). Thanks to my experience with way more poly relationships than a one-time hookup, I was able to give him unbiased advice about a safe way to possibly meet someone with those interests, without going through something sketchy and potentially unsafe like Craigslist or a prostitute.

I like that through FetLife, I have relationships with people who are Christian and a dozen other faiths, people who are M/s, people who are CDD, people who are gay or straight or single or married. I like that this community says, "Welcome in. You'll find a place for yourself here. And if you don't, you can make one."

I think that's very cool.

How Far Would You Go?

How far would you go to make your partner enjoy your sex life? Not just nod and smile through it, but really enjoy it?

Would you be mean and dominating, if that's what it took to turn her on?

Would you pin her down, talk dirty to her, bite her hard? Would you read D/s blogs and discuss with her what you liked, didn't like, agreed with, and thought was a turn-on?

Would you pray with her for a better sex life?

Would you dust off the old toys and handcuff her, whip her, frighten her, make her cry, and then hold and comfort her while you brought her to orgasm?

I wish someone would do that for me.

BDSM without the Accoutrements

BDSM without the toys... is it still BDSM?

Well, yes, you can make an argument that BDSM is more about the relationship between two people-- is one in control? Is the other submissive? You can create the allusion of control without the bangs and whistles, without the whips and gags and rope and handcuffs. It is possible through the positions, the words, the way he holds her down, even where he holds her (I, for instance, am a big fan of having my neck grabbed).

But while the accoutrements do not make the experience, they certainly enhance it. That's why every sex store has a BDSM section with canes, whips, ball gags, handcuffs, and bondage rope. That's why all the pictures you look up with the keyword "submission" have either a photo including some kind of bondage or pain, or a caption with words. You just can't get a real snapshot of dominance and submission without one or the other. Something makes the experience dominating. It's not just having the guy be on top, because vanilla people do that. It's not just declaring yourself to be in charge and then proceeding to have vanilla sex. There must be some other quality, something ethereal and hard to define,  something about the way he handles you or the tone he uses, something about the toys you incorporate or the pain he inflicts.

 

Otherwise... it's just vanilla.