Dealing with Anger and Rage -- a question

Once again, a question from a comment has me thinking at a level that is more complex than I want to respond to in the comment area of the last post. Here's what kaya asked in response to the post about paddling:

"I'm curious how you work through that period of bitterness and rage?"

It is an interesting question. The truth is that I really don't think that I DO anything to work through the sense of anger and fury that often comes up for me in session. I believe that response is rooted deep in early childhood traumas that have nothing at all to do with what is going on at the moment -- exactly. Anytime I am dropped into a position of helplessness, powerlessness, and perceived "aloneness," I experience a reaction which goes very quickly to black rage. Our early play brought forward memories that helped me reconstruct maternal abuse and neglect that I had endured when I was very small. I still react in a very visceral way at the edge where control is surrendered. It is a difficult passage for me.

What I find is that I need to be taken through that place. It is one of the reasons that I often am more comfortable with restraints than without them. I know that there will be a place, if things get intense, where I will have to battle to stay (physically and emotionally). Restraints take some of the responsibility for all of that off of me. If He will stay with me, hold on to me, and simply go where He intends to go even in the face of my fury, I most often will find a peaceful place on the other side of it all. My rages very seldom last through the session, unless somehow it is aborted in the middle of it all. It is only when that happens that I can get stuck in a pouty and unhappy dark place.

I do think that the difficulty with that bit of the dynamic is that there are often very bitter places in mid-session that are sometimes quite hard for Master. It is one thing for a sadist to want to inflict pain. It is quite another to have the one you love spitting and hissing like a wild animal ready to gnaw your arms off.

That is a difficult balance: for Him to push in the way that gives Him (and ultimately me) deep pleasure, knowing that when He gets me there, He will likely have to manage a slave that is not entirely soft, sweet or gentle in the passage.

swan