Fear Works

This post, about Doms and Dommes and what we present versus what we really might be/want, generated a couple of comments.

nina commented, in part

" . . . is the idea of fear itself. Fear of who and what we are and the difficulties in confronting that very thing which makes us essentially who we are."

I thought about this a bit and it's certainly true. Many who want to submit present as Dom/me, and fear is part of the reason for that. Fear of physical or emotional harm, fear of looking foolish, fear of giving offense, fear of insert-your-worst-nightmare here. And I wouldn't necessarily disagree with the notion one might infer from nina's comment, that the more strongly submission represents what one is, the more intense the fear.

Why should this be, though? Why fear? We're talking about embracing one's true self (or at the very least, sorting out a very important aspect of what isn't one's true self). That should be an activity that one approaches with glad anticipation. Fraught with butterflies, surely, but fear?

OK, I asked a question I already knew the answer to. Anything that might touch on the "real us" is of course drenched in fear. But it should it be that way?

In thinking about it, the answer is a somewhat surprising but resounding yes. Much as we might hate it, or feel the burden of it, we need fear. Fear works.

Fear makes us stop and consider angles we wouldn't bother to consider otherwise. Fear steps in and forces us to either summon all our strength and meet the thing we fear, or to reconsider, to think it out some more, to try again another time.

And when the stakes, particularly the emotional stakes, are so high, as they are in D/s, that pause that fear can create in us is a very healthy thing indeed.

There are big negatives of course. Fear can hold us back forever, it can warp us and make us timid, withdrawn. We can end up surrendering to fear in a way that is not at all healthy.

As in most other things in life, the healthy approach is one in which fear is just another item in the inventory -- it's not overpowering nor is it dismissed without a thought. Recklessness might feel better in the moment but in the long run it is as damaging as timidity.

Fear works. Respect it, submit to it, without surrendering to it. Fear is there for compelling reasons. And those reasons matter.