A Journey in Kink

The author of this research article entitled, A Journey in Kink (Domingue, 2019), reminds us that it was only 2013 when kinky behaviour was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) which is used by clinicians to diagnose mental health disorders. All of this language is controversial to me, as I tend to lean more towards the school of thinking that "disorders" are often reasonable responses to past trauma. For the purpose of context this date is an important signpost.

Our friend Cal, the author, used EMDR and Hakomi methodologies which are both somatically oriented therapies, to work with an individual which eventually allowed the client freedom to enter into a collared relationship. Somatic therapies are ones that use the awareness of the body to process unresolved experiences. It's an interesting article and if you have access to academic literature you can find it in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology.

I'm not personally trained in these modalities, though I have some level of familiarity with them. One exercise that really stood out for me was the client identified that he would experience discomfort in his abdomen region and an urge to wrap his arms around himself and curl up to create protection. The therapist, with consent, wrapped a blanket around the client's abdomen and pulling from behind in order to mimic the sensation of his arms. This allowed the client to feel like he was being supported in an entirely new way. I want to be the client in this scenario!

Another aspect of the article that was significant was the client's interpretation of BDSM as a spiritual activity. I believe that, like sex, BDSM is also spiritual. I haven't yet achieved this headspace in my personal play as yet, but stay tuned for perhaps that is the direction I will be heading. A book that I'm adding to my reading list, and will likely show up in a future post is Sacred Kink: The Eightfold Paths of BDSM and Beyond written by Lee Harrington in 2016. Super excited to take a peak and if you made it this far in reading, then you're excited for me as well :)

Wrapping up because I'm exhausted after a day of working quite hard supporting others, if this is another self-care activity to add to my repertoire then I'm in! I'm done with feeling pain in my stomach because of unexpressed emotions. I feel like BDSM scenes for healing are like Hakomi on crack XD More like different strokes for different folks. They are both tapping into the nervous system and repairing through regulation, but with a different flavour of achieving that regulation. Tired Røzsa out!

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