Join Alt.com - largest BDSM/Alternative Lifestyle Personals!
This essay and all site contents Copyright L. Goodwin 1990 -2001
Helping our people with their emotional and spiritual pain is the most important part of my work as a Priestess. I believe that only someone who understands BDSM and the possible pure good it can do can really help heal the kind of mental and emotional suffering that is particular to our people.
Certainly sadomasochism performed skillfully and with compassion can be profoundly healing, but just as you can with other kinds of therapy, it's possible to use it to do great harm. Much of my counseling work involves healing our people of the harm that has been done to them by past lovers and playmates. It isn't just the opposition and rejection we get from vanillas that hurts so bad. Sometimes other BDSM practitioners do incredible damage to their partners or to themselves, ignorantly, or due to unfortunate compulsions or disorders, or even with genuine malice. Those wounds are the ones I end up dealing with the most.
It's one thing to shrug off vanilla society's condemnation of our way of life, and another to undo the damage done by a toxic ex-master's hurtful words, acts and training. I have personally met and counseled hundreds of devastated subs, male and female, who had serious psychic scars to learn to live with, before they could play, much less love again. Dozens of tops, male and female, have sat alone with me in a sealed room and cried with indescribable agony of spirit because of the manipulations of a heartless, even criminal submissive they had unwisely trusted. Helping them to regain their confidence sometimes takes months, even years.
Although I have no degree and no professional training, I'm very successful in my healing ministry, partly because the people who consult me believe in my power to help, largely because they know I understand. Since health is the natural state of being which Our Divine Lady decreed, the real healing is done by Her and the person themselves, but I help, and you can too.
HOW TO be a healer:
1) First, do no harm. You have to be willing to bolster your people, and to be solidly consistent in this. Do what helps and don't do what harms or drains them. Although you can explain that you have been there and that's how you know, avoid burdening them with your troubles.
2) Be patient. Remain sensitive to the fact that if they seem all right, they are being brave...do not push them too hard to hurry up and be OK. Let them talk about what hurts and feel sorry for themselves for a while.
3) Be firmly in favor of progress. Remind them to move through the healing process, not to get stuck in a self-pity or angry-at-everyone wallow. Catch them in the act of self-defeating words and acts, and remind them to substitute better ones. Point always to the way out from under the cloud.
4) Emphasize the positive. Look for signs of health and progress and celebrate them. If there is any sign that the person is feeling a bit more daring and trusting, let it happen, and praise them for their strength.
5) Don't be thrown by relapses. It's natural for a person in progress to falter once or twice, and they should be assured that it doesn't mean they have forgotten how to succeed. If they are being brave and don't want to be reminded of painful things, let that happen, but find ways to remind them that you are there even if they are shaky.
6) When they're ready, let them go. Once your person is off and running, they may forget about you, avoiding the company of their once indispensable counselor. Don't take it personally. See it as a good sign, since this renewed independence of theirs is evidence of your effectiveness. Forget all the messy private stuff they told you and treat them like anybody else you care about when you meet again.
Some herbs which help:
These herbal remedies are readily available in standardized encapsulated doses, but although they are very helpful, they do not replace the loving attention of a caring healer.
May Our Lady of the Good Life bless you with perfect health and happiness.
Join Alt.com - largest BDSM/Alternative Lifestyle Personals!
This essay and all site contents Copyright L. Goodwin 1990 -2001