This is the seventh essay of my series about "Internal Enslavement". This time I picked the subject "The Healthy Submissive". Most of what i am going to present here was inspired by an essay of a submissive with the nickname Yaldahtovh that was published on the website http://www.enslavement.org.uk. This website provides many interesting essays, a huge part of them was written by Master Tanos who runs a poly D/s household in the UK.
0. Introduction
The concept of "Internal Enslavement" deals with the question if a radical consensual slavery is possible in an M/s context that is based on the pillars of safety, sanity, consensual and mutual trust, respect and commitment, in the physical, emotional and mental area of relationship. According to Tanos the answer is yes. Radical consensual slavery is possible (-> TPE = Total Power Exchange). It is a goal you can work towards to step by step, and you can make more and more achievements towards this goal. This process of a submissive step by step becoming slave and owned possession of her Master, is called enslavement.
Tanos also believes that there are certain techniques derived from psychological knowledge that help with the "examination of a female slave's thoughts, emotions and past experiences to establish and maintain a solid and inescapable state of ownership". As the focus is on the mental and emotional condition and development inside of the submissive, they speak of "internal" enslavement. When the authors of the IE website speak of a "natural slave" they mean someone who is a slave by nature ... someone who has an innate or inborn character trait which predisposes them to slavery in some way. This means that while some people are said to be predisposed to feeling comfortable under conditions of consentual slavery in D/s context, others are not. So not every submissive is going to feel comfortable and "at home" in a Master-slave-relationship.
To feel comfortable and "at home" in a Master-slave-relationship. There we have an important component of health - the emotional wellbeing. The principle of "Safe sane and consentual" BDSM postulates care for the health, the sanity of the partner(s). This does not only comprise the physical health, but also the psychological and emotional health. Body, mind and emotion are to be prevented from harm by words and activities in BDSM context, and the welfare, fulfillment of needs and enjoyment of the partners involved is a goal for many people endulging in BDSM related activities.
1. "I have these submissive needs - Am I sick?"
Some women who are newly aware of their submissive needs endure a period of self doubt around the troubling question: Am I sick? Yaldahtovh who composed the essay "The Healthy Submissive" that was published on the Internal Enslavemet website writes: "After reading the psychiatric diagnostic manual (DSM-IV) some might wonder if they maybe have borderline personality disorder". Why? ... People with borderline personality are known to be overly dependant on relationships and can be extremely emotional, and some submissives might identifiy with these two single traits picked out of the wide spectrum that would make up a borderline personality. Another example could be the question of a submissive if she is codependent. There are various examples of self doubt of a submissive who might think she is "not normal" .. "not mentally healthy", being faced with her needs and with what is fun to her.
Yaldahtovh does not only relate to the sexual aspects: "Am I sick because I get turned on by images of being taken, used, forced, swept away by masculine energy more powerful than my own?" She also relates to the nonsexual aspects of being submissive: "Am I sick because I yearn to depend on, and follow the lead of, a man stronger than myself?" Let us further think about these two aspects. What might induce a submissive woman to ask herself if she is probably sick, judging the "language of her nature" (expression by Yaldahtovh) as mental disorder? Society's general attitudes might come to mind. The feminist movement. The values of personal freedom, independency and strength ...
2. A path to self-acceptance
Self-acceptance with all that belongs to self, which might include submissive needs, is important for emotional welfare. A person that does not feel complete, a person that cannot integrate all that belongs to him/her into her self image, might not manage to remain healthy and happy. Yaldatovh sees the field of relationship as primary source of help for a submissive who is struggling with self acceptance: "A submissive discovers, or more properly, realizes and acknowledges that she functions at her best in relation to another. And the more intimate, holding, containing that relationship, the better she feels and the better she performs in cardinal areas of adult life: work, friendships, and parenting. " I guess most if not all of you would agree on this typical experience of a submissive who is happy in a relationship with a responsible Dominant. So far so good. But tthe submissive might then start to mentally process this experience. "Realizing she is at her best in such relation makes her wonder why she can't do it for herself? Why does she need such a relationship to accomplish what she should be able to do for herself?" And again, the cultural priming, or if You want, Freud's superego, begins to play a role again: It is good to be independent, why am I desiring to be under a Dominant's control? Yaldahtovh describes it so nicely: "pull yourself up by the bootstraps", on the lone pioneer, the trailblazer, the less needy and more self sufficient".
Every submissive has internalized voices of her culture inside, same as the Dominants have. It is a task for a newly aware submissive to separate her BEING/Self from the internalized voices of her culture. Well, and isn't it a task for every adolescent? Isn't this how moral development normally goes? Voices that might say: "You are too needy, too dependent, too focused on the others in Your life". When the sub can identify such voices inside of her, she can also bring herself in some distance to them and measure for herself which one she wants to accept as being in line with her true being and which one's she might judge as non productive for self actualization and personal happiness.
Yaldatovh draws as conclusion: "We tend to ask the wrong questions: 'Am I bad, sick, weak?', when we should be asking, 'is there something missing from the yardstick I use to measure myself?'" With a short and narrow-minded yardstick, they could miss, for example, that society also very much appreciates behavior of people who put needs of others higher than their own, up to self neglectance. And yes, finding a healthy balance is not easy sometimes. And it is a task noone will take off Your shoulders. When relatedness is seen as strength, it becomes clear that submissives have a special talent for this.It is a matter of perspective. A sub can decide which perspective to take on herself ... and she can learn to take different perspectives , and her Dominant might assist her with this. "If we begin our analysis without the cultural assumptions about what is of "higher" value, we can begin to understand that it is possible for a woman to be submissive, and to be healthy. And we can try to imagine what a healthy submissive functions like, and how she developed her adult personality. " (Yaldahtovh)
3. The Healthy Submissive
In the following You will find a list of 14 traits of a "healthy submissive", as Yaldahtovh presented them in her essay on the Internal Enslavement website. Please use them as inspiration, wrap Your mind around them and critically reflect.
"1. The healthy submissive is capable of, and thrives on, intense, intimate, emotionally open relationships. This is often evident in the number of nourishing, sustaining, and life affirming friendships she makes over the years."
"2. The healthy submissive is a giver. She often needs help to ration herself because her impulses nearly always lead her to want to do good for others."
"3. The healthy submissive is capable of intense joy, especially in the context of a sustaining relationship."
"4. The healthy submissive finds significant relaxation when properly related. She is at ease in that place."
"5. The healthy submissive has finely tuned interpersonal sensitivity. She is reactive to subtle shifts in the emotional tone of others."
"6. The healthy submissive has a fluidity of self, a flexibility that enables her to adapt to changing circumstances."
"7. The healthy submissive is playful."
"8. The healthy submissive has no more than the usual cultural conflicts about her body, and its goodness and beauty."
"9. The healthy submissive takes pride in her accomplishments."
"10. The healthy submissive accepts herself as she is, knowing that while her culture values independence and self sufficiency, she has strong dependency needs and that there is no inherent "wrongness" about those needs."
"11. The healthy submissive seeks nourishing relationships."
"12. The healthy submissive, in accepting herself 'as is' is tolerant of others. But neither will she allow anyone to tell her what her truth should be."
"13. The healthy submissive has a reasonable self concept, aware of her difficulties as well as her strengths.
"14. The healthy submissive hungers to be the object of an intense and penetrating understanding. When her nature is understood and she is held in a loving and firm frame, her devotion is almost limitless. The healthy submissive has an enormous capacity for devotion, from which springs her service."
4. What makes a woman submissive?
In order to evaluate and care for the physical and psychological wellbeing of a submissive well, it is important to reflect on possible motivations and reasons why a woman might be or might have become a submissive. According to the concept of "Internal Enslavement", becoming submissive is a combination of nature and nurture, biology and environment, like any other way of human development. Various temperaments already show in early infancy and are well covered in research and literature. For example, there are noticeable differences of sleep regularity of babies. Responsiveness is different in individual childs, for example some infants "will find novelty and intense stimulation aversive, and will withdraw or become irritable when presented with those." (Yaldahtovh)
"The sum total of these innate, biologically founded responses make up temperament. It is easy to see what people mean by an "easy" baby: one who sleeps, eats, and eliminates regularly and predictably; one who has a moderate response to stimulation, neither withdrawing nor reacting intensely; one who is drawn easily into social exchanges, and provides pleasurable reinforcement of socialization with their caregivers, one who is easily "read" and easily comforted, one who accepts change without undue distress." (Yaldahtovh). Yaldahtovh's hypothesis is, that the social responsiveness is a biologically grounded trait in submissives that already manifested in early childhood. A baby "that will search the environment for a human face; who will be attuned to, and very responsive to the human voice; who will preferentially and selectively attend to, and process, human interaction" (Yaldahtovh) might be predisposed for becoming a submissive later. As a little girl or boy this child will be exquisitely sensitive to criticism and correction, to disapproval, to praise. Rather than requiring a raised voice to correct, a raised eyebrow will often do. Depending on the experiences with certain behavior during childhood a submissive behavior might be conditioned in a person with such a biological disposition, or it might be unlearned.
Yaldahtovh writes further: "As children do, she requires the adults in her life to validate her perceptions when appropriate." It is not uncommon that some submissives desperately need and seek this validation in a D/s relationship when they are adults. It also makes clear that submissives who are usually sensitive with their "social antennas" and empathical might easily feel not validated and said if not treated according to their nature. This now closes the circle to the "Healthy Submissive". How can "unhealthyness" enter the door to a submissive's psychological world, we wonder?
5. Service-orientation and protection
"The submissive female learns to scan the social environment for signs of trouble, seeks to "fix" the trouble, and all too often, believes herself to be the cause of the trouble. If someone important is tired, the submissive has exhausted them. If someone important is angry, the submissive must have angered them. If someone important is disappointed, the submissive must have failed them." (Yaldahtovh). As said, this is mostly a matter of nature and nurture, such perceptions can be conditioned by reaction of family and other social environment and they can be unconditioned as well.
Now, what would be healthy for the submissive? According to Yaldatovh, the "submissive trait of interpersonal sensitivity in its highest expression is when the submissive accurately registers interpersonal nuance, and responds to it with a minimum of self-referral, recognizing that other's emotional states may have nothing to do with the submissive herself." The most important words here are "Minimum of self referral", I think. Is this "typically submissive"? Is this the key to the door that opens up towards unhealthyness? Yaldatovh adds: "Because of her intense awareness of interpersonal nuance, she is highly sensitive to both criticism and praise. When criticized, she is likely to feel intense shame; when praised, intense pleasure. Since the shame feels so bad, and the praise so pleasurable, she becomes a people-pleaser. [... She] bases her self assessment (am I good or bad?) on factors outside herself. The female submissive defines herself based on what others tell her she is."
I think it is very important for a Dominant to be aware of this "natural tendency" of a submissive if He/she wants to help the sub to become and stay healthy. They basically need protection from possible negative outcome of one of their typically submissive traits - the service orientation, their external locus of control. There is also the question if the Dom thinks He/She can deal with such behavior and perceptions of the submissive. And yes, it might cost energies to deal with such nature of Your partner.
Wake up. oh Dominant who thinks that Dominance is easy and allows a comfortable life with a servant at Your feet. You have a responsibility in ensuring and protecting the health of Your submissive.
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This essay is based on http://www.enslavement.org.uk/yld-healthy
