fear play

23
Jul
2026

Before You Scare Me: 30 Questions and Considerations for Bottoming to Fear Play

One of the weirdest things about fear play is how often the obvious starting question is also one of the least useful ones: “What scares you?”

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes you do know! Maybe it’s spiders or knives or the sense of being watched through windows. Congratulations, you have some nouns! But fear… isn’t just a list of scary things. (And even if it were, “What are you afraid of?” happens to be not exactly the best question for getting to that.)

I’ve seen plenty of negotiation resources handle fear the way they handle everything else: activities, limits, safeword if using or other communication paths if not, aaaand go. Which is fine, as far as it goes. It’s worked for plenty of folks before. But my perspective is that fear is a category of experience that specifically messes with the machinery we usually rely on to keep play working: attention, language, judgment, the ability to notice you want something to stop and then say so, your awareness of where you are in space, how you try to convince the dangerous thing that you are absolutely-no-trouble-whatsoever-no-really-I-won’t-be-a-problem-I-swear. What your typical fear responses are, and if those are things that mean lean in or back off (especially given that the fear we fantasize about is not necessarily identical to what our actualbodies produce once they believe it).

So.

Here are 30 questions I think are worth considering before somebody sets out to scare you on purpose.

Some of them, you may not be able to answer yet. Some you might be able to reverse-engineer from a combination of fantasies, non-kink memory and body-feeling. Some might remain giant question marks for a bit. And that is FINE!!!

What I want you to walk away with is this: better language, better questions, and a sense of where you may want to build more information or capacity. It’s written from a bottom lens but if you’re the one shaping a scene from the top side, I do happen to think it’s worth reading anyway — you’ll get a decent sense of how much you might be assuming, and maybe it’ll give you some new questions to bring up in your negotiations.

Last note before I get to the dang thing: this is NOT meant to be a test of whether you’re Ready For Fear Play™, so please don’t take it that way! I don’t believe readiness for emotional play, especially fear, is ever a threshold you can like, cross once and then stand on the other side of. I think it’s a set of overlapping capacities you develop over a long time and keep developing, and finding a question here you can’t yet answer is meant to be useful, not a disqualification. (Spoilers: “I have no fucking idea” is sometimes an extremely useful answer!!) And even the answers which might initially seem like they’re “wrong” somehow don’t actually have to mean you don’t go ahead with exactly whatever the fuck pushes your buttons (accepting the risk inherent in that). That’s why they’re questions for consideration. You just consider, and then you get to be the one that decides what you do next.

OKAY LET’S GO

I. What kind of scared do I actually want?

This section has questions meant to help you better articulate the experience you actually want, so that you can figure out if what “fear” means to you and someone else is a match.

If you’re side-eyeing this section because it feels like topping from the bottom… Well, good news, it isn’t! This are not a matter of actually defining the content of the scene, which is a different skill entirely — and regardless of what you INTEND to happen, nervous systems are complex and fear can be designed for but not necessarily commanded to look a certain way or occur on a certain schedule.

That said, if you still can’t shake that and it’s a big turn-off for how you play, skipping to section II will still offer plenty of good info for evaluating your own capacity and providing your top with info they need in order to mitigate fear-specific risks.

1. What parts of being afraid are erotic, satisfying, beautiful, cathartic, or otherwise desirable to me when they occur inside play? Which parts of real fear remain unwanted even something I consent to?

(The rush of adrenaline? Helplessness? The urge to survive? A loss of polished self-control? Hyperalertness? Discovering what you really do under pressure? Catharsis? Relief from decision-making? Instinct without analysis? Pure intensity? Being deeply known?)

2. Do I want to be afraid of my play partner, or afraid of what my play partner is doing?

Being afraid of a person you trust is a fundamentally different animal than being afraid of a situation they’ve engineered. What happens to you emotionally in one versus the other?

3. When I imagine the sort of fear that I’d enjoy, what does it make me want to DO? Do I want to actually take that action, or just feel the impulse to? (Wanting to run and being allowed to run are potentially two different scenes.)

That is to say: how would you personally fill in the blank of “I want the kind of fear that makes me try to ___________” (hint: with verbs, but go further than that!) Is it to pull away? To brace? To cover yourself? To kick or struggle? To challenge? To provoke? To plead? To cry? To refuse? Which versions feel exciting? Which absolutely do not?

(Some Examples of Ways to) Go Deeper, depending on your answer:

  • If you want to FREEZE: Is that about invisibility, obedience, self-control, helplessness, terror, something else? Are you envisioning being unable to move, compelled not to move (and scared enough of the threat of what happens if you do for it to actually work), being convinced movement will make things worse, staying still because there’s just no point in running or struggling anymore?
  • If you want the urge to ESCAPE: is that about knowing it’s impossible, trying and discovering whether you can at all, succeeding temporarily only to be caught (or not), the illusion of escape being part of a larger trap the whole time?
  • If you want to RESIST: Should that have a real chance of succeeding, or is it more about not having a chance whatsoever? Do you want to feel powerful when resisting, frightened by your own defiance, humiliated by how little your effort changes?
  • If you want to SURRENDER: Do you want to be asked to surrender, pushed toward it, tricked into it, allowed to discover that you already have?
  • If you want to APPEASE (beg, flatter, bargain, agree, smile, obey, make the scary person like you): Is that because it would feel humiliating, vulnerable, survival-brained, submissive, intimate, something else? If you fawn unintentionally, would you know while it’s happening? (Do you want to?) Would you be able to tell your partner afterward? Would they feel prepared to notice that compliance is not always the same as yes? How will they tell a trauma-fawn-response apart from consent?

4. Is the fear experience I want organized around action at all? What is compelling to me about the way I want to experience fear here?

Sometimes the point of fear play is not what fear makes us do, but what we are forced to experience. (Verb (/phrase)s I personally like to use here include ones like waiting, witnessing, enduring, becoming, losing orientation, realizing something too late, feeling a process become irreversible.)

5. Do I want/need to believe the danger is really real?

There’s a difference between “I know I’m safe and the adrenaline is fun” and “some part of me actually does not know if this is going to turn out okay” — and while there are ways to achieve both at once, learning after the fact that something was feigned or otherwise a “mindfuck” can actually spoil the experience in retrospect for some of us.

Go Deeper: What might you need to believe first in order to believe in the danger? (That the person could overpower you? That your choices have consequences? That your choices don’t matter at all? That they’re enjoying your fear? That they won’t back off easily? That something irreversible is coming? That they’re not mad at you?)

Go Deeper: What would break your immersion in fear? What would break your immersion in a way the scene can’t recover from (which is likely not exactly the same question!)? (Bad acting? The dog barking? Inconsistency? Laughter? Excessive talking? Hesitation? Non-kinky pain? Something else?)

6. Are there real-life experiences, phobias, or fears of mine that I’m explicitly trying to engage with? If so, how aware is my play partner of the origin of the fear and of what could trigger a possible trauma response?

Because sometimes engaging with a long-standing fear is the point, yes, but not for everyone, not always, and not without risk.

Go Deeper: Also if so, what makes this container different from the thing that caused the initial fear? What will keep the fear from becoming associated with this person (or even the concept of your agency/consent as a whole), if something goes wrong or doesn’t feel like you imagine it will?

7. Are there things I’ve trusted my play partner with which I would NOT want to enter into fear play? Or is this a case where “you know exactly how to scare me” means “I have consented to you using anything you know”?

(Private insecurities? Trauma history? Family information? Medical fears? Secrets? Real-world vulnerabilities?)

8. What am I excited NOT to know, and what needs to remain knowable? Where’s the line between immersive uncertainty and uncertainty that could stop me from meaningfully participating?

(Things people often enjoy not knowing: the order of events, which of several agreed-upon options is actually happening, the timing, where they are, whether something is “real” within the scene, what a given object will turn out to mean.

Things people often need to stay outside any kind of uncertainty: who is actually in the building, whether a real injury or emergency has occurred (vs being a mindfucks and/or part of a story), whether this can actually be stopped.)

— NOTE: Fear, for many people, does include information they don’t have. But uncertainty works differently when I trust the container versus when I am uncertain whether the container itself still even exists. Information control is one handy popular element that can go into the “design” of a fear play scene—we’ll talk about how horror movies use information control to create different kinds of fear in this weekend (July 25, 2026)’s Fear by Design scenecraft class—but doing it via misdirection isn’t the only possibility, and it’s totally possible to create a fear play scene without that.

II. What does fear actually do to me?

Fear can, in fact, often look like a negative thing. I’d even argue that’s sometimes the entire fucking point!! But what does your play partner need to know about how fear affects YOU to follow your mental state as accurately as possible, and what extra risks might fear create for you in particular?

This section is not meant to be about declaring a behavior definitely safe because it’s “normal for you.” Instead, think of this as flagging what might be worth your play partner paying a bit of extra attention to, rather than leaving them make assumptions about what your behaviors mean based on people they’ve played with or observed in the past (who also happen to not be YOU). The more info you can give your top here, the more they can know where you’re at mid-scene (and what your different signals do or don’t mean), which means the less they have to guess at while you’re least able to explain yourself, which means all the more focus they can put on being present with you and creating the experience you both want.

9. When I’m truly frightened, what happens to my ATTENTION?

(Do you start scanning? (Do your eyes keep checking doors, hands, objects, exits?) Does your attention narrow until one thing becomes almost impossible to look away from? Do you become hyper-aware of tiny changes? Do you develop an inability to recall information? Do you start missing things that would otherwise be obvious? Do you lose track of pain, temperature, circulation, footing, or time?)

— NOTE: If your attention is already non-neurotypical on a regular day or otherwise complicated by chronic health factors, fear may likewise change it in ways that don’t match standard “hypervigilance” descriptions. Consider sharing what YOUR version of both normal and fear-attention might look like. (A partner who doesn’t know your baseline can’t detect your deviation from it!)

10. When I’m truly frightened, what happens to my SPEECH?

(Do you become quieter? Louder? Repetitive? More literal? Less verbally fluent? More argumentative? Unable to explain complicated things? Very good at saying whatever seems most likely to make the threat happy? How much access do you still have to the vocabulary and cognition you normally use to communicate about play?)

— NOTE: Consider- there’s a biiiiig difference between “I can technically still speak” and “I can calmly analyze what is happening to me and advocate for what I need.”))

11. When I’m truly frightened, what happens to my MOVEMENT?

(Do you back away? Turn your body? Hold your breath? Get clumsy? Go limp? Cover vulnerable areas? Start taking swings? Clench jaw or hands? Pace? Go unusually still? Become restless and start moving before you’ve consciously decided where you’re going?)

Go Deeper: Though this is in part so that your play partner has more information they can use to assess where you’re at mentally, it’s also worth considering through the lens of physical risk assessment and, consequently, may be useful to them in terms of shaping what happens in the scene. What physical fear responses could present extra risks relating to the space, furniture, restraints, another person’s positioning/movements, etc.?

12. When I’m truly frightened, what happens to the way I MAKE DECISIONS?

(Can you assess options accurately? Do you default to the easiest path? Does everything feel urgent? Do you lose the ability to weigh one thing against another? Does “yes” come out faster than you mean it to? Are you more likely to stick with a decision you already made whether or not you still feel that way because it’s easier than explaining you changed your mind?)

13. When I’m truly frightened, what happens to how I INTERACT?

(Can you make eye contact? Do you tend to joke around? Laugh nervously? Apologize more than usual? Do people say you act rudely without realizing it? Do you become extremely polite? Seek reassurance? Get confrontational? Start trying to take care of the other person’s feelings? Do you become easier or harder to direct (can you follow instructions)? Do you disconnect in ways that make outward behavior become -less– obvious rather than more?)

14. Does fear put me further inside my body or further outside it, and what might that do to the accuracy of anything physical I might report while it’s happening? What could that mean as far as what a top might need to watch from the outside, rather than relying on me to share it myself?

Adrenaline is an analgesic. Fear narrows attention. Between those things, some people may not register a cramp, a need to urinate, a compromised limb, a joint doing something it shouldn’t, or the somatic signs of a limit being reached in the same way they would at other times.

15. What else does fear make easier for me, and what else does it make harder?

(Does fear make it easier to surrender, stop overthinking, access emotion, act instinctively, lose composure? Does it make it harder to evaluate risk, notice pain, track time, remember agreements, say no?)

16. Does fear make me more honest, less honest, or honest in a different way/about different things? What should a partner understand about the credibility of my responses in a fear-state?

While this can go a number of different directions, fear can make some people admit things they would usually conceal, say whatever seems most likely to help, agree too quickly, exaggerate distress, minimize distress, etc. in ways can that matter as far as how you and your top communicate in the moment. Knowing you may not be honest and upfront if you’re in fear can be plenty workable for many tops as long as that’s known in advance.

17. What does compliance look like on me when I’m afraid versus when I’m choosing to submit? Can I tell the difference from the inside? Can anyone tell the difference from the outside?

Go Deeper: If fear makes you quiet, compliant, appeasing, or even just difficult to read, what might your top do to get around that when they need honest information? Is there anything you know is likely to snap you out of this if needed? Or is fawning a desired possible response (with the extra risks that entails)?

18. When I’m truly frightened, what might I do that another person could easily misread as a problem but which actually represents exactly the right direction for me?

(Crying? Shaking? Struggling? Begging? Going entirely still? Getting angry? Stimming? Laughing?)

19. What might I do when something actually is going wrong that another person could mistakenly read as “they’re just really in it”? What changes in me are easy to overlook precisely because they do not look dramatic or like “typical” fear responses?

Go Deeper: What could make you feel pressured to pretend the fear is “working” more or differently than it really is? What might that look like?

20. How trustworthy is my -own- interpretation of what I need while fear is actively happening and immediately afterward?

(Do you tend to know quickly when something was too much? Do you sometimes not realize that until later? Are you prone towards “I can handle it, keep going” in the moment and then feeling very differently once you come down? Do you need alone time before you know whether an experience landed well — like, does debriefing too soon keep you too activated to actually regulate? Does relief after the frightening part ends make everything temporarily feel fucking awesome no matter what, but before more complicated and truthful processing appears?)

Go Deeper: Will you be able to evaluate this experience honestly the same day/night, or do you need a few days? If the answer is “a few days” (and for a lot of people who play withfear, it is), do you and your play partner have a plan and a timeline for any needed later check-ins?

III. What’s true for THIS scene, today?

These questions are meant to be more about what could help you get where you want today, with this particular person, as you currently are.

21. When I’m truly frightened in play, which ways of communicating are most likely to remain accessible to me?

(Clear normal speech? Yes/no answers? Answers to direct questions? Choosing between multiple options that have been presented to me? Safewords? Writing/texting? A physical signal? Something else?)

Go Deeper: Are there ways in which fear might change your ability to communicate before it changes your desire to continue?

—NOTE: I’ve written before about how safewords are sometimes structurally weak in emotional play, and fear has a related problem: a safeword requires you to notice, decide, and speak — three capacities which fear can eat in exactly that order. Systems that don’t require all three (a scheduled check-in, an object you drop, a question you only have to answer yes or no to) tend to hold up better and it may be worth having a backup even if you do rely on a safeword, which brings me to…

22. What tends to become unavailable to me first when I’m afraid, and what is our backup when it does? Are we relying on scared-me to perform a fairly sophisticated cognitive task at exactly the moment we’re intentionally making sophisticated cognition harder?

If you lose complex language, what remains as a way of communicating complex thought? If you become highly compliant, what remains as a way of insisting on a no? If you stop initiating communication, does the scene have any way of noticing that change?

(Candidates for what goes first might include: language, initiative, motor planning, spatial awareness, pain recognition, the ability to say no to something you don’t want, the ability to accurately gauge how long something has been happening, etc.)

23. What events or circumstances in my life right now might make fear harder to compartmentalize than usual?

(Job stress? Health issues? Relationship instability? Grief?) This isn’t a “don’t play” list, more about knowing what you’re working with and how it could impact your capacity.

24. What do I still need to trust about this person or relationship while I’m experiencing them as a threat?

You may want to believe, temporarily, that they are dangerous, cruel, deceptive, impossible to reason with, unwilling to rescue you, absolutely going to do the terrible thing, etc. But underneath that, what still needs to remain?

(Their care underneath? Their mindfulness about certain limits? That you can react however you react without disappointing them? Your belief that they will choose you over the scene going perfectly?)

25. Are there things that might normally be okay in other scenes but which need to be excluded from fear play, just in case fear leaves a residue on them after the scene is done? If something that currently feels neutral becomes a fear cue after we play, what would disrupt my life too much to be worth it?

(A room? A toy? A phrase? Certain background music? Darkness? A person you see every day?)

—NOTE: Fear is unusually good at contaminating context. Something that was present during a frightening experience can become a trigger in ways that catch people off guard. (Consider your risk profile and remember it’s okay to have different standards for how you’d play with fear versus something else.)

26. How well does this play partner know what my fear looks like versus what my enjoyment looks like versus what my distress looks like? What does this person know about ME specifically (not about bottoms, trauma responses, or fear in general), and where are they relying on theory instead of knowledge?

(Do they know your common stress behaviors? How you speak when overloaded? What makes you feel abandoned? What you tend to only understand after reflection time?)

—NOTE: If the answer is “they haven’t seen most of those things yet,” that doesn’t have to be a disqualifier, but it does mean that the first few times you try this might be better if they involve more pre-discussion and/or more checking in than either of you thinks is sexy, and that you may need to be the one to ask for that rather than hoping they’ll volunteer it.

27. What does the person scaring me need to be able to handle emotionally? Has my play partner actually seen my fear responses before, or are they imagining something without context?

(Some folks may find it difficult to see someone they care about be truly afraid of them or what they’re doing. Are they prepared for the version of you that: cries, shrinks away fromtthem, shudders at their touch, goes silent, gets angry?)

Go Deeper: If they ultimately feel guilty during or after this play, how will they manage that guilt? How much can you reasonably assist with reassuring them (both in terms of what capacity you have in those moments and in terms of what they’ll actually believe)? Who else might be able to provide them that support if you cannot?

28. If this scene works exactly as well as I hope, what might become harder afterward?

(Might yoy feel more vulnerable around this person? More attached? More wary? More aroused by fear? More likely to seek fear when I am already emotionally raw? More confused about what is play versus what is real? More in need of reassurance, solitude, repair, laughter, food, sleep, or outside perspective?)

Go Deeper: Are there any of these where if they occur, that changes what you need in terms of the aftermath?

29. What does the come-down look like for me specifically after fear, as opposed to after other intense play? What does the rest of my day or night actually look like? Am I driving home? Am I working tomorrow? Is someone expecting a normal version of me within a few hours?

Adrenaline has a tail. How will that affect what the rest of your day or night actually looks like, in terms of driving home, working tomorrow, what those in your life might expect from you a few hours from now? (Do you: crash, get wired, get weepy hours later, sleep badly?) Is there a different framework worth using for aftercare than what you might use for less emotional play?

30. What do I already know about my fear desires, needs, or how I process that I haven’t told anyone yet, and what’s stopping me? What do I still need to know, and what would help me answer it?

What would you need in order to say what you haven’t said? What would you need to move “I don’t know” to something better? (More experience? A specific conversation? Time with a kink-aware therapist? A smaller-scale scene to experiment with? More trust with a particular person? A better understanding of your own nervous system?)

Obviously, everyone experiences fear differently. Though I hope it goes without saying, playing with fear can be very hard on a person and on a relationship (whatever that relationship is), and it benefits enormously from being carefully thought through. Both when a scene goes wrong AND when it works exactly as planned. But with the right partner… I also think it’s one of the most extraordinary, intimate, and goddamn alive experiences available to us.

The goal of theses kinds of questions is not to make fear perfectly safe, perfectly predictable, or perfectly contained. That would rather miss the whole point. These questions are meant as thought-starters and conversation-starters. What you do next with them is up to you.

The skills and capacities we approach as bottoms and expect from tops are different. This can help with the what and the why, but not so much the how: what’s actually behind a scene that can produce this sort of thing, shape it, and adapt without dropping what you’re doing entirely. That’s a separate craft, with its own questions, and I’ll be teaching it this weekend as a debut class using horror movies as a lens.

If that’s your style and you’re seeing this in time, I hope you’ll consider checking it out:
❤️ Fear By Design: Crafting Cinematic Horror Scenes with Intention (✨ a BRAND NEW CLASS! ✨) is virtual with Black Thorn on Saturday, July 25, 2026 from 2:00-4:00 PM ET (11AM-1 PM PT).

Be sure to save your seat by getting your ticket HERE, or you can Fet RSVP to tell friends you’re coming here (but you’ll still need a ticket to get your Zoom link!)

want to join in on the conversation in the comments? you can do so on the Fetlife version of the post by clicking here.

Posted by vahavta
12
Apr
2026

How do you play with fear if you don’t know what scares you/them?

If you’ve ever had an interest in exploring fear play but drawn a pretty LOUD damn blank when asked “what are you afraid of?”, you’re in very good company.

That is probably the most common question I got when I first started teaching my “Playing with Fear” class. And to be quite honest with you… I get why, because I didn’t know the answer to it either. I’m not sure I do even now.

That’s not because nothing scares me. I don’t have *phobias* per se, these days, but I’ve had plenty of experiences that leave me shaking, both in and out of kink. Trust me.

And I’ve also had plenty of scenes where what leaves me too terrified to meet the Love of my life’s eyes are the same sorts of words and touches as I encounter every day, just with something… else that’s added on top. But can I put I to words exactly what does it, what that something else *IS*?

Sometimes. Sure, in discrete moments. In general, though? …no, not really. Not in a solid reliable answer to “what are you afraid of?”

And not in a way that covers what a lot of us are really asking when we struggle with that question: “If what scares me is a sort of danger that I know for a fact this human who cares for me is never gonna put me in, given their desire to not kill me and/or end up traumatizing me and breaking our trust forever… Then what? How can I forget for long enough to feel actually threatened?”

(And no, the answer is not “get a top who can convince you they’ve lost it entirely” — mindfucks like that can be hot and fun and interesting for a lotta folks and are ONE possible solution to this whole thing, but they also can be a breach of the faith we put in our play partners and absolutely need to be negotiated for explicitly as not everyone is at all interested in having to ask those questions about their tops’ stability. Anyway, I’ll get off this soapbox FOR NOW, that’s another writing for another day, but boy am I tired of seeing mindfucks be treated as something everyone who likes fear play is automatically also interested in and consenting to!!!!)

Still, I do have one strategy that I’ve found really helpful. And it lies in realizing that the problem was never in the lack of answer.

“What scares you?” is a question that expects a noun. What I had—what lots of us have—in thinking about fear was a lot more about verbs. A flinch. A pull away. A sped-up breath. A shaking thigh.

Our threat systems aren’t built around things. They’re built around behaviors.

Fear, at its most primal, is a survival instinct. And in nature, knowing exactly what causes that fear really just… doesn’t matter all that much?

See, threat detection happens subcortically. Your amygdala fires, your defensive systems activate, your posture changes, all of this before the cortex has finished processing what the threat actually is. You’ve likely experienced this: the jolt when you’re startled before you know *what* startled you, the flinch or dread before you can say *why.* Your body already organizing a response while your conscious mind was still loading up, basically. Sometimes it never loads at all.

And the beautiful thing is it happens anyway. Your nervous system doesn’t wait for you to answer that question. It registers and prepares for danger regardless: increased vigilance, scanning, readiness-to-run, an uneasy sense of apprehension that doesn’t point anywhere specific but turns something analytic on in us, and so forth.

These things get easily dismissed as “intuition”and brushed aside as if they’re useless (which is in part a gendered thing that I’ll also avoid soapboxing on right now but JUST KNOW THAT SOAP BOX IS THERE, LIVIN’ IN MY HEAD), but that’s not useless. At all. That’s a whole damn survival instinct! Picking up on something being a danger, even without the ability to articulate what… that’s what keeps animals alive.

So when someone asks “what are you afraid of?” and you go blank, that blank isn’t as empty as it may seem. It’s full of information. It just isn’t information your verbal brain can always articulate.

That’s not to say it can’t be super useful in negotiation if you DO have a solid answer to that question, and if you do, by all means, use it! But the reality of what underlies fear is danger and how it registers in your nervous system. And the reality of danger is that it is often ambiguous.

Why else it can be so tough to answer this

There are several research-based reasons behind the “I don’t know what I’m scared of” problem, and they aren’t mutually exclusive, because real people are complex and nuanced. So in real people, these things often stack. This is hardly all-inclusive as is. But just for a few:

Fear generalizes. When we learn that something is dangerous, that learning doesn’t usually get to stay neatly contained in the fear folder in our brains. It can spread to similar cues, adjacent contexts, loosely related situations, etc. until the original trigger is buried under a broad wash of “this feels bad.” (Which is worth keeping in mind as far as the context of where you plan your fear scenes and what sensory elements might be involved, which is one part of what we talk about in the design portion of fear play class!) The further fear generalizes, the harder it is to point back to the source. Which means we are sometimes left with a lot of readiness and very little specificity.

Emotional granularity and detection skills vary too, especially in our modern lives, which often try and distract us from sitting and quietly feeling things in a way that makes all of us a little worse at ID-ing things with particular specificity. It’s why I made tools like the Emotional S/m Feeling Wheel, but the tool *existing* doesn’t make it easy for everyone to actually tell these words apart in their experience. Some people experience “feels bad, man” as one single undifferentiated signal; others can instantly parse it into fear, shame, grief, overwhelm, anger, disgust, etc.; most of us are somewhere in-between. Like most skills, it can be trained. But if you *don’t* intentionally work on that, it doesn’t just come naturally for everyone, and that’s okay!

Sometimes the “threat” really is entirely internal or nebulous. What I’ve been trying to get across is fear simply doesn’t require a clear external object all the time. Fear doesn’t require a noun. A body sensation (tight chest, nausea, sudden heat), a memory fragment, a meaning your nervous system assigned to something, these can all activate your threat system without a School House Rock person-place-or-thing to point to.

And even when you can, in most cases, it isn’t the whole story. You’re not reallu afraid of the dark *itself*. You’re not afraid of what you do logically know is just the Laundry Chair in the corner of your room (though you might be scared of the workload; fellow ADHD kinksters I see you, and lemme tell you, you’re never sitting in that chair again and as long as it’s there to toss stuff on, you will keep tossing the stuff there). You’re not afraid of the fact that when you flip the light switch, it does the same thing as every other person’s light switch.

You’re afraid of what you don’t know is there or not.

Or, put another way, your heart and breathing do something when the light goes out and in the end, we call that fear. The verb of what your body did. Not the noun of what isn’t there.

Not knowing the noun to answer “what are you scared of?” with doesn’t change that the fear is real. Not knowing the noun may sometimes even be the REASON that it’s real.

So the problem isn’t your lack of answer. The problem is that “what are you afraid of?” has always been the wrong question.

See, ethologists (researchers who study behavior in natural contexts) don’t study fear by asking animals what they’re afraid of. They study it by watching what animals prepare to DO.

And that’s because fear isn’t just an emotion. Fear is a motivational state. It functions to make us do *something* as a way to survive.

An animal has a “flight distance” (the point at which it runs) and a smaller “critical distance” (the point at which, if it can’t run, it turns and fights). These things can be studied. They might also freeze (decide they can’t run *or* fight and their best bet is to try and blend into the tall grass, so-to-speak), flop (not *quite* as common in humans but does exist; we can essentially think of this as fainting or going rag-doll to “play dead”), or fawn (a largely-human instinct to appease the threat instead of fight or avoid it). These can be studied too. We can’t ask the gazelle why it freezes in tall grass. But we have a pretty damn good guess, if a lion is nearby.

Regardless of what your actual personal fear responses tend toward (which is worth knowing also, especially because tops can use that to dial intensity up or down and because each response comes with risks of its own), my suggestion for those who struggle with this question is to focus on just how fear is studied in *any* animal: fear is a motivational state that gives rise to behaviors that serve as attempts to defend yourself, blend in, or escape the threat in some way.

And… that’s the reframe. That’s what it comes down to. “What scares you?” is always gonna be limited. But these are the questions that might unlock something slightly more useful, or simply provide another angle to thinking about it all:

What makes you want to defend yourself?

What makes you want to be small and unseen?

What makes you want to escape?

If you struggle to know what scares you, let go of the word “scared.” Point instead at the thing your body is already doing: the action tendency, not the label. The state you’re actually trying to evoke of fear is a motivational one—and so what causes that motivation is the answer, even if it’s not always what you can cleanly connect to words like “panic” or “dread” when you think about it logically.

Other ways of answering

If those reframe questions still draw a blank, that’s okay! Really, this stuff can be tough.

So here are a few other possible handles to hold on to to try and open this particular sticky drawer in your brain up:

  1. Track the action urge. This is a different approach to the same idea of reframing the “what scares you” question to asking what causes your body to want to DO something, just via actually taking notes over time as opposed to some innate self-knowing. Even if you can’t notice these signs internally yourself, you can track them with help: I outsourced noticing some of mine to watching a video we took of a scene, and I’ve seen some friends do cool stuff by pairing that idea with a Fitbit. Or you can ask for help from your play partner(s), or even just an observant voyeuristic friend. Can they help you notice what sorts of things cause you to step or turn away, or when your eyes flit toward the exits? These signal that desire for escape, even though most of us don’t run out of the room while we are playing. When do you brace yourself, ball your fists, or offer more physical resistance? That’s the defense urge. What about going more *still* than usual? Or wrapping your arms around yourself in a way that would cover your vital organs (which we nearly never consciously think of ourselves as doing when we cross our arms over our chest defiantly, but yet is what a LOT of folks do in times of fear)? These physical things may be trackable even when the “why” isn’t, and if you can take some notes each time, the patterns that come out of it will eventually give you/your play partner(s) something real to work with.
  2. Track the bodily sensation. A lot of fear is interoceptive, which means it lives in internally-detected sensation. Tight chest. Heat. Nausea. Buzzing. Chattering teeth. The heaviness in your limbs that you might mistake for tiredness. Interoception isn’t easy for everyone but if you ARE able to notice these things, you can track when those occur without having to alwaystry to explain them. The sensation *itself* is the data, and this still can be something that eventually leads to a usable pattern.
  3. Name the uncertainty itself as the fear. Sometimes the trigger of fear genuinely IS as simple as not knowing what’s coming. “Intolerance of uncertainty” is a pretty well-documented phenomenon: the difficulty of enduring missing information. If ambiguity itself is what activates your threat system, that’s not a dead end, and can actually be a pretty powerful tool for tops to utilize.

And those are just a few of the possible approaches. Don’t get me wrong, depending who you are, they may take some time to produce usable information. But if just one of those leads to any sort of answer for you repeatedly, even a single fuzzy one, now you’ve moved from “I don’t know what I’m scared of” to something more negotiable.

And FWIW, all of this can come out as titrated, choiceful exploration. Which isn’t to say you HAVE to go slow—it’s the safer option, but lord knows I didn’t, so it’d be pretty hypocritical for me to say you’ve gotta—only that being interested in fear play does NOT *have* to mean an interest in forced catharsis, nor “facing your demons,” nor that you need be able to produce insight on command. This is all something you can warm up to and build on over time. Ultimately, whatever the speed, the goal is building trackable patterns you can share with trusted partners, revisit over time, and adjust as you learn more.




Here’s what I want you to take from all this: the door to fear play isn’t locked behind some mysterious self-knowledge you personally are somehow missing out on. There is nothing you are lacking if you have no irrational phobias or can’t name what could scare you in this context.

You may be asking the wrong questions, however. So if this is a thing you, too, struggle with, try out some of the reframes instead. And if those other questions still give you nothing, then see if you or someone who is willing to help you out here can begin to notice what your body seems to want to DO—escape, defend, freeze, scan, appease—and start to take a few notes. Take a few more next time. Once you find a pattern, now you have a stronger starting point than you did in the past.

You don’t need to know what scares you or why to play with fear. And you don’t need a tidy narrative or a perfectly articulated fantasy with clear-cut boundaries. You just need something to start from. Add a bit of curiosity, someone you trust, and some willingness to iterate (which means understanding that scenes which don’t land perfectly are still data that can make future scenes better), and you’re already doing the work.

The rest is practice.

Go do something hot.

If you’re reading this and this tends to be the kind of play you’re into, I hope you’ll consider joining me on Zoom with @Praxium next week.

Playing with Fear: Empowered Navigation of Thrills and Risks is virtual on Tuesday, April 14 from 7:45 – 9:45 PM ET (4:45-6:45 PM PT).

Whether you’re topping or bottoming, whether you’re experienced here or just curious, and whether you can name what you or your person are scared of at all or not.

❤️ Be sure to save your seat and receive your Zoom link by getting your ticket HERE ❤️

Posted by vahavta
28
Jan
2025

Fear Responses: Risks, mitigation, and/or use in escalation

Fear play is one of those topics I’m lucky enough to get to approach on multiple levels. There’s what I have learned and experienced as a bottom to some pretty intense stuff here, but there are two other layers for me, too: one where I’ve coached horror writers and written horror myself, giving me a different lens on the storycrafting of it all and how fear can be created in the mind of another, and one where I’m a creator of remote immersive horror experiences and where with basically two exceptions, every person on my “I talk to them nearly daily” list of friends is either a creator of or actor in an extreme haunt or immersive terror experience, or they’re someone who attends every one of those they can possibly get a ticket to.

Though the people in this latter category are, importantly, not engaging in kink, there’s still lots to learn from what they’re doing: in creating a for-profit immersive terror experience, they have legalities and publicity to contend with that kinksters don’t always have to approach, which means that they often put much more into the training of the actors, the considerations of safety and ethics, and the care that goes into the creation of the experiences.

On all levels, I’ve seen the incredible power of consensual fear experiences to push comfort zones in exciting ways, explore intimate depths of our psyches, and create profound connections between people… and I’ve also witnessed how easily things can go awry when fear is misunderstood or mishandled.

Fear is powerful, and delicious, and hard. And I love it. But something that has come up again and again and again when I discuss and teach about these things ~~(like I’m doing this weekend)~~ is the way that different fear responses might change interactions, especially as pertains to risk, communication, and consent — and so that’s what I’ve created a little resource on below.

NOTE: That class has passed, but there may be another coming up! if I have a fear play class scheduled in the near future, I’ll mention it at the bottom of this writing ❤

Some fear responses are very physical in nature.

There are different types of fear, and some are more individual. (I’ll get to those in a second.) Others are engrained in most humans. It’s well-acknowledged in the extreme haunt sphere, for example, that water is often used to “break” participants and that drowning and waterboarding scenes are where many hit their limit – and though the risk on it should not be understated (in either case, really), many of us do “enjoy” drowning or waterboarding in kink. But I happen to think of it as a culmination of a scene, in my fantasies, and not an entire scene… once it begins, it ends up being “over” relatively quickly if not handled within a larger “narrative,” so-to-speak.

This is because survival-based panic is an instinct, one that can only be thought its way out of and “managed” for so long. Mindfulness techniques can help some, and there are things I can teach bottoms in this class about how to manage these reactions a bit better… but ultimately, our bodies are built to respond in such a way that keeps us alive. And so, when a core function like breathing is compromised, there’s often a very strong panic response.

On a physical level, this can be one of the most risky moments in a scene because bodies are likely to writhe, buck, and flail in efforts to get out of the moment. Tops who are playing with conscientious bottoms that are usually quite unlikely to behave or move in ways that put themselves in greater danger may suddenly need to take more physical precautions to avoid someone hitting their head on porcelain, for example.

But then there’s another kind of fear, and that’s what most people are asking about when they ask me about this question:

The psychological fear responses of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn

When we’re confronted with intense fear, our bodies and minds instinctively react in certain ways, and these are four that I see discussed semi-regularly. These are where things get really tricky, as each can display in ways that are highly individual and have their own effects on communication and consent. The below information is not meant to be all-inclusive or comprehensive – not on how it can be recognized, how to de-escalate, or even how to escalate! – and as in near every other realm I teach in, I’ll say that communicating for in-scene enjoyment and safety begins long before your scene and continues long after.

But vahavta, isn’t the solution to all of this “use a safeword”?

Well… not quite. I say that partially because I don’t (which doesn’t mean I don’t communicate!), and I know there are many who follow me or come to my classes who also don’t.

But even if you *do* use safwords, it’s important to realize that’s a tool, not a sure thing, and that fear responses inherently impede rational thoughts and actions. Add to that how emotional S/m play of any kind (including fear) can impede their use and it’s clear that while a safeword in your toolbox for the scene can HELP you stay aware of needs…it should never be the only thing you keep in mind, or you’re setting yourself up for trouble.

But! There are *some* broad-strokes guidelines I can give you for each response here, so that’s what I’m going to do.

Below, you’ll find a few different ways to recognize and respond to each of these categories.

Keep in mind that we rarely ever end up engaging in *only* one fear response all the time, and it’s a good idea to have a watchful eye on the way they might shift over the course of the scene. Even if you know what you or your bottom tends to default to, that doesn’t mean that another won’t pop up, so it behooves everyone to learn about each possible direction things might go.

The first two of these are what I’ll call “active” fear responses. These are ways we try to regain power in a situation where we feel threatened.

Fight

Recognizing: When someone goes into fight mode, they may become aggressive, confrontational, or physically resistant. They might lash out verbally, try to push the threat away, or even attempt to “take control” of the scene. Some, not all, will show signs first that are similar to an animal raising its hackles, with tensed shoulders and clenched fists. This also might look like “bratting.”

Heightened risks: Similar to the physical danger panic response, there is a greater amount of risk to play when someone is physically fighting back because there is less control the top can have over the situation. From a consent perspective, a fight response can make communication harder whether it’s a physical or an emotional fight, as the bottom may be so caught up in their own emotional state of fight that rational thought is impaired and the defense becomes more important to them than simply articulating needs and/or boundaries.

Response to the response:

Tops, you have a few options when you identify a fight response.

If you want to escalate the fear, you can meet their aggression with your own, pushing back against their attempts to gain control (maybe physically; maybe via verbal taunts or something else). This can create an intense power struggle that heightens the adrenaline and the sense of danger.

If you simply want to mitigate risk as far as what comes with this, this might be time to add (or increase) restraints, particularly if you are planning to use anything that requires precision as to location on the body (like blades, for example!) You can also refuse to continue a scene without the bottom giving you some kind of check-in that requires they actually take a breath and respond verbally and with thought, perhaps with some kind of count-down or limit, which can add its own fun fearplay pressure while still serving to allow them to opt-in to continuing (“if you don’t tell me you’re good to continue before I count from 10 to 1, we don’t go forward”).

And if you want to de-escalate without ending the scene, remove any aggression coming from your end. Speak in a calm, soothing voice, and back off from anything combative. This might be a time to leave the bottom to think for a bit and play into one of the TYPES of fear we’ll also discuss Sunday, dread. (Of course, if there’s any kind of restraint, you’ll want a way to also keep monitoring what’s happening with the bottom and remain within earshot either way.) You could also empower them to see the scene as a challenge and redirect the fight impulse away from you and toward their own willpower – “You’re so aggressive, surely you must be strong enough to keep going” – but this should be done with caution, as it can shift some into a fawn response and get messy as far as consent.

Flight

Recognizing: We often think of flight mode as simply “escape,” but that’s not always physical, nor does it always actually result in an escape *attempt.* Someone in flight mode may start towards an exit or back away from the danger, but they also might have eyes darting around looking for exits (whether they’re conscious of that or not!), become restless or agitated, or start to dissociate from their surroundings – this last one, particularly, will happen with psychological fear and this gets tricky as it is not *exactly* the same as a freeze response but can look that way. This response, however it presents, is rooted in an effort to get away from the perceived danger and find safety.

Heightened risks: A flight response can *also* increase physical risk, depending how they attempt to “escape,” and can make it harder for a participant to communicate their needs (sensing a pattern?). They may be so focused on escaping that they don’t take the time to check in with themselves or express their boundaries. While this is a very different kind of risk, someone in flight mode may also end a scene out of panic in a way that they will regret later (and this is why I don’t personally play with safewords!)

Response to the response:

If you want to use a flight response to escalate the fear, you can play into their desire to escape. Block their exits, corner them, or create a sense of being trapped. This can heighten their panic and make the experience feel more intense. Maybe you add restraints, if they aren’t already there… or, if you are confident you can express greater strength and control a situation, you might even challenge them to go ahead and *try* to move while holding them in place.

To mitigate risk, figure out what is making them feel a need to escape and respond accordingly: remove restraints, take a physical step backwards so they feel less cornered, or even move to a larger room. Maybe you can open a door. Maybe this is taking a metaphorical step backward, if the scene is more emotional. Make continuing the scene require an active opt-in of following you somewhere or making a choice (discussed more in the Freeze section). If they’re escaping via disassociating, demand eye contact or ask open-ended questions that require thought to answer.

To de-escalate, both remove anything that makes them feel restrained or cornered and provide reassurance that they can stop any time they want (assuming that’s how you play) and that any sense of being “trapped” is only within the confines of the theme. Remind them that when the scene is over, it’ll be over: this *will* end. Breathe calmly and encourage them to follow your breathing to reduce panic. Set up situations that require them to *approach* (both physically and emotionally) to continue. If they’re disassociating, a gentle hand on the back or the knee can be grounding for some, but can make this worse for others – so discuss first, if possible.

The second two responses here are the more “passive” ones, and these come when someone no longer believes that a threat is escapable. In fact, switching from active to passive fear response may be a way to monitor the pacing of how fear is escalating for a bottom — they’re signs of acceptance, in a way!

Freeze

Recognizing: When a participant freezes, they may become silent, unresponsive, or appear to “check out” of the experience. They might stop engaging with the scene entirely, become passive, or seem emotionally distant. They may become very still, end up with a blank face void of emotion, or fail to respond to stimuli. Though the lines can blur, the difference between dissociation here vs. in the flight response is that this isn’t really dissociating; it’s freezing without responding in a way that seeks to camoflauge (which sometimes also looks like not reacting), but often still involves fully experiencing the moment under that facade – for some, not all.

Heightened risks: From a consent perspective, a freeze response can be particularly challenging because a bottom may go nonverbal. A freeze response is one that literally exists for prey to try and *not* be perceived by a predator, so the cues a bottom gives may decrease here and they’re unlikely to be able to communicate needs at all. Tops need to be very attentive to their nonverbal cues and err on the side of caution, and bottoms who do freeze and know they freeze should do themselves a favor by paying close attention to what happens in their head in those moments, communicating to your top before the scene what your freeze response means and what, historically, has snapped you out of it.

Response to the response:

If you want to use a freeze response to escalate the fear, you can capitalize on the sense of helplessness. Take control of the bottom’s body, move them around like a doll, or put them in positions that make them feel vulnerable. This can create a sense of powerlessness that heightens the fear. To this end, much in the “flight” section for this applies.

To mitigate risk without stopping the scene, this might be a good moment to give them some sense of autonomy via choices that they have to respond to, even if both choices are “bad” as in predicament play. I’d suggest requiring a verbal response along with whatever physically is required from a choice that is given, myself, with the same approach that I recommended above: not making a choice is the same as opting out and the scene ends. You might also ask yes/no questions until you can get them to a place where they’re able to articulate needs and boundaries more clearly.

To de-escalate, slow down the pace of the scene to give opportunities to process, removing the tension of time pressure and reminding them you’ll wait for them to respond – “When you’re ready, let me know how you’re feeling.” You might remind them they’re in control and can choose to end the scene at any time, if that’s a choice given. In general, freeze responses seem common when there’s a stimulus overload, so slowing down the onslaught of events in the scene or reducing stimuli (like bright lights or music) can help de-escalate this one, too.

Fawn

Recognizing and heightened risks: Fawn response is a coping mechanism that aims to decrease a perceived threat by doing what it wants, more or less. In short, it’s when someone in danger becomes particularly submissive. It’s the answer to when people ask the (incredibly naïve) question of “but if you were being abused/raped, why did you say yes and keep going along with it?” and that’s what makes it one of the most difficult parts of fearplay: the things that characterize it are inherently also heightened risks. In fawn mode, someone may become overly compliant, agreeing to things they normally wouldn’t, or trying to appease the threat to avoid further fear and danger. They may be more concerned with pleasing the top than advocating for their own needs or boundaries.

Response to the response:

If you want to use a fawn response to escalate fear, you can take advantage of the bottom’s compliance. Push them, make increasingly extreme demands, and/or put them in situations that feel degrading or humiliating then deepen that by pointing out what they’re saying yes (or not saying no) to. (This is my favorite time for that, probably. Not when it’s happening, though! Brought to you by the number of times I had to repeat “because I’m fucked up” just the other day, until it sounded matter-of-fact enough and no longer like a question or attempt to appease. And make eye contact the whole time. Yeesh.)

Mitigating risk: Tend toward open-ended questions here, “How do you feel about…?” as opposed to the yes/no, red/green, rate from 1-10 types. You can also give them a piece of paper (or keyboard) to write their answer down, which sometimes subverts the “just say yes!!” signals for long enough to get an actual answer. And though I’d normally put something like this in the de-escalating bit, this is a time to remind them that there is no punishment for ending a scene or for speaking up about not wanting to do something. Fawning happens because we see a decreased threat if we please the other party, and so reminding them that going along with things *isn’t* actually necessary to end the threat can help with some of the inherent problems that arise. You might also offer autonomy, like I mentioned with the Freeze response.

De-escalating: Remind them how much you are enjoying what you are doing already and how much you enjoy playing with them in general, making it clear that they have already pleased you and don’t HAVE to keep saying yes in order to have done so. You might want to even let them know they please you when they are clear about their boundaries and say no, that this is a way of helping you make it a good experience. You could also switch to an activity that you know they actually enjoy and feel somewhat less fearful of, de-escalating the actual fear response before you ask those open-ended questions again in an effort to encourage honesty over appeasement. When you do check in again, be sure to do so in a non-threatening way to the extent that you can.

However, I want to underline once more how important it is to be very mindful of the power dynamics at play here. A bottom in fawn mode may not feel able to say no, even if you’re pushing them beyond their limits and even if they are usually a fantastic communicator. It’s not a character flaw; it’s just how this works. They may go along with things that they’re not truly comfortable with out of a desire to please you or avoid punishment.

And so it’s extra, extra important with fear play scenes to debrief several times after play so that you can continue getting and sharing information that arises with more distance from the scene, as both parties are able to reflect without the heightened arousal that comes from the charged environment.

Conclusions

Navigating fear responses isn’t a 101-level task, and it’s not one that I (or anyone) can cover comprehensively — not in a writing, nor in a 2-hour class. So please, use this as a start to your toolbox… but then let the real learning start. This is a skill that requires empathy, attunement, and a willingness to adapt, as well as a great deal of self-awareness (both emotionally and as to where you are in space) – and that entire sentence was directed to both bottoms and tops.

At the same time, fear responses can be a really powerful way to make these scenes and experiences even more intense and transformative. And so for all these reasons and more, learning as much as you can about these fear responses will make scenes both safer and more enjoyable for everyone. Like with any other skill, you’ll do best with patience, practice, ongoing education, and an approach of mutual respect and curiosity.

Housekeeping

Update, April 2026: If this framework resonates, I go deeper into all of it in Playing with Fear: Empowered Navigation of Thrills and Risks, which I’ll be teaching virtually with Praxium on Tuesday, April 14 ❤️ We cover fear response types, how to read them in real time, designing scenes that land, and what to do when things go sideways. If that’s of interest, be sure to save your seat and receive your Zoom link by getting your ticket here.

Want to join in on the conversation in the comments? Find the Fetlife version of this post by clicking here.

Posted by vahavta
18
Jan
2024

When it comes to emotional S&M, safewords don’t really work.


I don’t believe there’s any kind of emotional s&m that isn’t edge-play — because I don’t believe there’s such a thing as emotional s&m for which you can depend on a safeword.

I’ll be clearer, as some of you know how I play: I don’t mean “safeword” when I say “safeword.” I mean “no way that a bottom communicates they want everything to stop can be relied on to work.” I mean “this applies even for those of us who don’t use safewords;” I mean “there is no communication that is adequate;” I mean “this is a thing to be considered before you even start.” Because when we talk about communicating stops to play, we talk about removing what is causing harm. And the second play happens in the head and involves fucking with one’s sense of self, or values, or security, we are no longer talking about what can be so simply stopped.

Say that you need to get out of rope immediately, and the rope can be cut.
Say that you need to get the forty needles out of you, and sure—it can’t be done in an instant, but the process can begin.
Say that you need to stop being degraded or humiliated, and the scene itself, the words being spoken, the whatever is happening can immediately come to an end.

But can the play?

Well, maybe. If you’re especially good at compartmentalizing or if play has only touched on the imaginary and everyone is aware of that, if it’s only been roleplay the whole time and nobody has any doubts to this. But for those of us who play dark enough to touch upon the real, emotional play is planting a seed and burying it deep. And suddenly, it’s there, germinating.

Stop escalating, sure. That you can do. But what happens at the important work presentation next week that requires your confidence? What happens if there’s a rift soon after with your play partner? Will things stay compartmentalized then, or will you wonder if maybe what was said was really true? Will it affect your behavior? How you eat? How you speak? How you move through the world?

When play happens mostly in a bottom’s head, are they able to safeword out of their own ruminations?

All this doesn’t even address that speaking up about when a scene needs to change or end is difficult for many bottoms under the most un-emotional circumstances, making some feel like they’ll be less worthy, less valuable, no matter how entirely not-the-case this is. If a bottom is being degraded effectively and is believing, at least in that moment, that they are dumb, worthless, annoying, any of the above… it may very well make them less likely to speak up the larger that the problem becomes.

So what’s the solution?

In many ways, this is all individual… like anything else.

But start with making sure everyone knows all this. Let there be no doubt as to the possible risks. Discuss and consider. A lot. Lab out just how certain words feel to the bottom. Share videos and stories and ask what the other party thinks of them. Talk about curiosities and concerns. Ask a lot of questions.

What I can tell you is that for me, hard limits I once had around this kind of play have turned into the most rewarding kind of fucked-upedness that I crave more than anything else.

But when they were still limits for me, they needed to be. Because there’s no tool quite as powerful as the imagination. And once that’s started, you can’t just put it back in the box.

Which I suppose, for many of us, is the reason we do it at all.

Posted by vahavta