Conclusions: Helplessness

I am a strong believer of what is called "Learned Helplessness". It is the theory in psychology that helplessness is the perceived absence of control over yourself. To link back to the CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) and one of its key pillars the action-belief-consequence system, the belief in learned helplessness is a big support when you try to change your lifestyle.

I have in the past felt comfort in the excuse of being helpless to turn some behaviour off. Take comfort eating. You eat despite not being hungry and it is comfortable. If you feel you should lose weight, you seek comfort in perceiving the helplessness that you are unable to face the challenge. There is a vicious circle waiting to draw its fangs closer around you. If you are in such a circle and manage to break it, then you will realize that you will indeed give up a significant level of comfort that you have accepted and enjoyed over several years.

All around us there are behaviours that society and maybe some friends will try to convince us are not good for us. If we have engaged in these forms of behaviour, we have taken a comfort in them. If there is any doubt in that moment, then it helps to be helpless.

A professional mistress once described to me seeing a mistress as a 'hobby'. I felt devastated, felt I wanted to utterly disagree. If being submissive is a 'hobby', how does that relate to being gay or lesbian? The more I thought about this and reflected on the way I felt when I was truly helplessly bound, the more I realized that I'd agree.

Technically all we want to get in our life are desires. Each person has different hormonal levels and triggers for these desires and hence we are interested in different things. Some desires can be moulded and change over time (substitute tea with coffee) others are non-interchangeable and will persist throughout your life but you can refuse to act them out.

So being a submissive is a 'hobby' just as sailing is then. I might swap sailing for surfing because I learn that it triggers the same emotions, I might struggle finding a substitute for being submissive - but hey who knows.

Now society teaches me that there are many bad things about bdsm and if society fails me then there is my nervous system that might tell me pain is bad. So I am divided between the submission and all that comes with it and it being the right thing to do.

This is where helplessness comes in for me. If I wear shackles that keep me form walking more than a few inches with each step and my hands are behind my back, then I am much more helpless and much less likely to suddenly say, hang on is this really going to make things easier if I do this. That's the cycle I like about bondage and sensory deprivation. I love the emotions that it triggers, I love the feel of the leather, but I also like that if something wants to take over my mind and tell me that there is something not right here, then I cannot help it anyway.