The Making of a Masochist: coda to “Changing Your Relationship with Pain”

[This was imparted directly from my class notes; please forgive typos or things that don’t make perfect sense at the moment.]

A few years ago, I wrote Changing Your Relationship with Pain, and I’ve been lucky enough to present on it a time or two since then. At a class in the fall, I was approached after by a kind gentleman who said, “Okay, you taught us how to process pain, but how to I learn to enjoy it?” I didn’t have a good answer for him, and have been thinking about it since–how I perceive my Owner as reinforcing my masochism, how I see others doing/not doing it, and so forth. In the initial writing, I put that actually, I can’t make you a masochist; I can just teach you to process better. I think I have an answer now, or at least something to try.

In thinking about classical conditioning, we work to create responses that are automatically associated with a stimulus. Pavlov rings a bell when the dog gets food, and eventually, it salivates by the bell alone. Pavlov doesn’t ring the bell after they eat. If he did, they would associate the bell with feeling full.

I think where most people go wrong with this in inducing masochism is in giving rewards.

This isn’t to say that rewards aren’t an important part of many of our dynamics; they are. But they won’t achieve this particular effect.

Whether the intention of a scene you set earlier is sexual, pride, etc, there’s a desired outcome, and far too often we give that outcome as a reward, by which we mean after the scene. “Endure ten zaps with the cattle prod, and I’ll give you an orgasm.” “If you stay in that position for two more minutes, I’ll be very proud of you.” That’s great, and can be a great dynamic and is definitely a way I play a lot—but what it is teaching your body and brain is that the reward comes from being done with pain, when what you really want is for your brain to see them as the same thing. To that end, I think the best way of getting there is to ensure that the reward (whether that’s sexual, romantic, a “you’ve pleased me,” “you look so hot right now,” or whatelse) happens at the moment right before and continuing into during the highest moment of the scene. That whatever causes the good feeling you want out of a scene happens at what would normally be the hardest to endure. Eventually, this should turn the hardest thing into the good feeling. And as per what we know about conditioning and when it works best… these rewards should be a random, not-all-the-time guaranteed thing. Now, work within the confines of your dynamics and limits, of course. But that’s what makes sense based on the science.

I’m not a psychologist; I’m not even a sadist. I can’t guarantee this will work for you. If you’re a bottom looking to increase this, this might seem like something strange to communicate in your negotiations. But maybe, just maybe, it’s something to try.