Angst And BDSM

Living With The BDSM Secret

Over the last few decades BDSM has become almost main-stream and vastly more accepted that ever before. Now Youtube videos abound with information about so many topics in the BDSM arena. Not only that, mistresses are advertizing their dungeons and showing off themselves and their toys. Retail stores are doing advertorial pieces on items, and all these would a few decades ago have been considered pornographic.

This is all remarkably to the better for those of us struggliung with their inner feelings of BDSM and have not come to terms with it. The information available, the far greater acceptance of BDSM play between consenting players, and the whole genre has moved forward immeasurably.

So why feel Angst?

For me there were a number of reasons. Firstly it was and is because my BDSM needs manifested themselves fifty years ago when information and acceptance was not happening. I was on my own trying during my adolescent years to come to terms with what I needed. The feeling that I was a pervert, a degenerate would not go away.

Wrapped up with my BDSM was a fairly strong fetish that fed the BDSM and vice versa. This just reinforced the feelings of angst.

Worst of all, I felt isolated, alone and unloved. This was in the 1970’s, the internet did not exist and I had no interaction with any forums, groups, play parties or any other kind of support network. Since I was so wrapped up in my own situation and couldn’t talk about this to anyone, no friends or anyone else, it just festered.

It was only nearly four decades later that I came to understand that my feelings were not correct when I had counselling sessions. I learned that my feelings were not true and correct. Not representative of the facts. It took another person to point this out to me that, ‘by doing this does not make me a bad person or make me less than I am.’

Where To Now

Like anything, this mental health thing of finding acceptance and from that self-love and self soothing takes work. It is easy to slide backward into self fulfilling introspective driven feelings of guilt. I find it too easy to be precious about the whole thing. I know I should be saying the mantra, ‘this is how I am and it changes nothing‘ but it is difficult in the face of all the vanilla people out there.

Now I regularly, every year or two, visit a psychologist and talk through issues and try to get a fresh perspective on life. I try to get a top-up of my feelings of self worth from a professional.

If you have a support network around you, Doms or Subs or other professional colleagues who you can open up to and talk things through – well done. I envy you. The only requirement, and I find it hard, is self honesty. The full truth comes hard in BDSM I’ve found.