CN: We talk about sexuality, pain, BDSM, (organized) abuse and explicit problems with masochism that can happen after extreme abuse and offer interventions that include sex education and experiments with sexual pleasure. Please don’t read this when you are unstable and stop reading when you get triggered too much. Like, now. If you are already clearly triggered by this overview, don’t continue reading. This is not work you should consider if you are still in the stabilization phase. It will also not be needed in every system. If it is not a problem for you, that is normal too.

 

Masochism as role

When we look up masochism in connection to trauma, the scientific articles will usually tell us something about low self-esteem and the feeling of being undeserving of love and belonging. We might find parts like that inside. They front to take the burden of sexuality on themselves. To be able to do that they have to make themselves believe that this is what they deserve or what they are meant for. They hate it and they hate themselves but their inner blueprint of relationships makes them return to abusers repeatedly.

It will need safety, love, a change of mindsets and the new experience of boundaries and choices to help them to develop better feelings about themselves. It is important to remove them from their past role and allow them to experience a life that is unrelated to sexuality. They don’t have to do this anymore. Other parts will take over and develop healthy sexuality for the system.

This is how quite a lot of articles define masochism and it gets difficult to find information beyond that.

 

Masochism in the brain

When I read these articles, I get frustrated. They fail to address the truly difficult problems my system experiences: the inability to tell the difference between pain and pleasure. Whenever there is a certain quality to the pain, we switch and the masochistic part will experience sexual arousal instead of pain. That is, no doubt, an excellent defense against overwhelm and pain. Harm gets turned into something very different. It is also a deeply confusing experience and hard to handle for younger parts. They are not mature enough to manage sexual arousal of this intensity and duration well. They will manage it however they can, which inevitably leads to more problems.

To get answers, we have to leave trauma literature behind and look into neuroscience. Pain and pleasure are located closely together in the brain. Even healthy people get them mixed up at times. We probably had experiences as children where we were sexually stimulated while we were being hurt. Sometimes that is the result of violent abuse and sometimes it is intentional and planned. Our brain is shaped to connect these experiences. Neurons that fire together wire together. We end up with an inability to tell pain and pleasure apart. Our brain activation will make us switch when the pain-pleasure set is experienced. It automatically draws the masochistic parts to the front. They might also not be able to feel pleasure unless there is pain.

That puts us into a serious situation. It looks like we either have to give up our sexuality and be safe or we start reenacting our trauma with someone willing to hurt us.

 

Sensitization

There is a third option that might or might not work out for individual people. Sometimes it is possible to separate the things that are wired together again. For that, we make sure that the existing connection does not get reinforced by repetition (no more pain + pleasure pairings to help us feel pleasure) and we create a new connection that gets reinforced all the time (intentionally doing things that cause sexual pleasure, but in a new context). Then we make an effort to notice every tiny bit of good feeling we can sense, no matter how small. Repeat for about 200 days/times (not a joke, this is a realistic estimate of how long it can take to see clear change). It is best to include toys because they are made to increase pleasure and are more reliable. An invested partner can change the context with us. It takes time and it is boring at first, even weird. But we might be able to teach our brain to notice pleasure as something that can stand alone and does not have to be paired with pain. It will not start with the intense orgasms that we could get if we added pain. But there could still be orgasms. And it wouldn’t need anything that is triggering the rest of the system even more than sex probably already does. We wouldn’t reenact trauma directly. Maybe knowing that there is a third option can help navigate inner negotiations. Basic needs might not have to be denied for anyone. There is middle ground between the extremes. And it gets more satisfying the more it is used.

 

These exercises to teach our brain to notice differences take a lot of time and patience and they are challenging. It might not be necessary to explore pain the same way unless a part is accidentally causing harm because they don’t realize what they are doing. It feels so good, how can it be wrong! Then we can use equal patience to help them notice pain sensations and if they feel good or not so good. Adult parts might have to join in and add feedback about the way they experience a situation. We recalibrate these parts’ evaluation of sensations and sensitize ourselves for pain that stands alone. There might be the need for a safeword to tell our part that they need to stop right away. It is tedious work but it might be necessary for personal safety.

As long as there is no harm it could be ok to just leave things the way they are. It is a bit confusing when pain causes pleasure but it isn’t dangerous as long as we know what is happening and how to take care of our health. Painkillers will reduce the sudden sex drive. For our daily life it is more important to be able to feel pleasure without pain than it is to feel pain without pleasure.

 

Masochism as misunderstanding

For some survivors, their trauma memories have great overlap with the outside appearance of BDSM culture. Something with bondage, a master, obedience, punishment and sex. The parts of us with these kinds of trauma experiences might look at BDSM content and feel like this is exactly what they are familiar with and what they feel at home with, where they belong. This is their world.

And the hard truth is, that it is not. It just seems that way on the surface. We might have parts who try to dive into BDSM without any understanding of the culture of that community. They just pick up people online who seem right, familiar somehow. Chances are that they fall for abusers who are only interested in mistreating someone. We end up with reenactments and retraumatization.

When we have parts who feel drawn to this kind of relationship, someone has to support them in learning more about BDSM and how it really works. We need a better understanding of what it is about and clear and simple resources we can share inside. Then we can do a version of a discrimination exercise. We can ask the part what they are reminded of when they think of a certain aspect of BDSM and then we can work on finding the similarities and all the differences. We will stumble over topics like Talking. A lot of talking. About sharing wishes and needs instead of one side just doing whatever they want. Choices and safety. The foreign concept of having the power to make it stop. Trust. Consent. A relationship where who we are matters deeply. Comfort. The list goes on.

 

In my experience, these parts can end up being shocked about how different real BDSM is from their own experiences. In one area after the other we can compare things and help them realize that this is not how they get to recreate memories they have strong feelings about. Every stage of play has a completely different flavor to it, from preparation to reconnection. No responsible partner would assist us in reenacting abuse. Sometimes parts are so shocked about the different nature of the relationship that they end up feeling repelled. True BDSM feels utterly unfamiliar and the intimacy can even be scary. It is hard to admit it, but our longing was for abuse all along. We have an inner blueprint and we try to re-create that subconsciously.

It might be easier to start a conversation with younger parts who are stuck in this longing when we have a story and characters we can talk about. I have done a lot of discrimination work using a BDSM manga that aims to teach basics to young adults through storytelling. Ask within the BDSM community for book recommendations. 50 shades of gray is not a proper representation. Needless to say that this is highly triggering work and only parts who can safely assist should get involved. This is one of those moments where practicing to raise dissociative barriers comes in handy. It is also not work you would typically do in the stabilization phase, unless it is an urgent matter of safety. We need to be able to regulate ourselves, have enough distress tolerance to look at such a difficult topic and to stay co-conscious with masochistic parts, even when they experience the world so differently. It takes a lot. It is also well worth it.

 

Not masochism at all

There are other trauma-related problems that can make aspects of BDSM attractive. We might be so numb and chronically dissociated that we need extreme stimulation to feel anything at all. Maybe we are so scared of losing control over the body that being tied up feels like it will help us to stay inside our body. You know what it is for yourself. You can identify the problem behind it, like chronic dissociation, and work on that for yourself. I trust you to be able to reflect and figure it out. The core problems are usually unrelated to sexuality. That is just where we notice them the most. You get to decide if this is ok for you or if it needs to change. As long as you are not triggering yourself badly or causing problems within the system, you are dealing with a solution you found. There might be more solutions and knowing them would give you the option to choose, which is always helpful. It might not be the kind of reenactment that we all need to avoid to heal.

 

 

Ultimately, I am not here to tell you how to organize your sex life. It is difficult enough to figure out something that works without people handing out rules and judgement. I am aware that there will be different opinions and needs within a system and that the lack of a solution can result in ugly power struggles. All I am here to tell you is that there are ways to approach these problems that add an option to the ones you already know. Nobody is trying to take anything away. It is not a binary of all or nothing. There is middle ground. It just takes a lot of courage and patience to get there.

 

 

This article heavily relies on personal experience due to the lack of literature. If you have any solid resources about the topic you want to share, leave them in the comments below.