Why You've Got To Eliminate Triggers From Your BDSM Experience

In mid-March, I managed to walk into a wall with so much confidence I broke a bone. Ever the responsible patient, I continued my regular walking schedule. I decided it was just a sprain and insisted it would heal in time. Every time I made progress, though, I reinjured the foot. Weeks later, I dragged myself to the doctor, who told me I had a broken bone that I had to immobilise for five weeks.

It turns out that immobilisation is its own special kind of magic. With my bones in a moonboot, I got better every day. The body repairs and remodels itself. First, a clot forms. This becomes a soft callus, which hardens into a strong bone. The two sides of the fracture must be held in position for this to happen. That’s why taking Bosco for hikes every day was a terrible idea.

This is a metaphor for BDSM.

As a traumatised bottom, I had my own special kind of broken bone. PTSD triggers and BDSM were like broken feet and long hikes. Every time I shifted my brokenness out of place with a flashback, I had to start the healing process all over again. Every time I was exposed to trauma, I disrupted my body’s healing process. I couldn’t get better until I “immobilised” the injury.

This is why it was a terrible idea for me to incorporate trauma triggers into my kink life.

PTSD is more than just an emotional response. Your hippocampus shrinks. Your amygdala becomes reactive. Your prefrontal cortex becomes less responsive. These three things make up the aetiology of a flashback. Every trigger comes with traumatic stress. This response pumps cortisol and norepinephrine through your system, creating its own kind of damage. I became stuck in an infinite cycle.

I kept destroying the callus my body had created to heal me.

I’m not going to tell you traumatised humans should avoid BDSM entirely. I certainly didn’t, but I knew my triggers. I kept them very far away from my BDSM experience, so I could keep healing while simultaneously enjoying my over-sexed, kinky life. We're all different, but that was my story.

I’m not a therapist, just an enthusiastic Googler who’s had her own experience of kink and trauma. I can only tell you that triggers were highly destructive to my healing process. As a volunteer, I work with traumatised dogs, so I’ve learned how sensitive they are to triggers. Just one wrong move and the dog returns to its most “fractured” self. We have to identify and eliminate every trigger. Given enough time and serenity, the dog will ultimately recover and become less sensitive to the triggers that once traumatised it.

For many years, I exposed myself to my triggers, so I simply stayed sick. When I finally eliminated the flashbacks, I healed. These days, I can barely recall what those triggers even were. I remember how they felt, but the rest of the memories have been relegated to a library nobody ever visits.

And they don’t visit because they don’t need to. My trauma has become irrelevant. That’s what happens when you immobilise the figurative fracture.

This matters. Our bodies will heal themselves if we only give them the opportunity. If you’re displacing the callus every time you have kinky, triggering sex, you might be freezing yourself in trauma.