Negative Emotions

How do you handle negative emotions like anger, jealousy, and fear now?

My past four years have been nothing but negative emotions honestly.  My daughter’s addiction to heroin was revealed in December of 2014.  2015, getting her clean.  2016, keeping her clean and healthy.  2017, still working on getting my daughter on track, the end of my 15 year relationship and the loss of my beautiful farm and horses, etc.  2018, the death of my second father and supporting my mother and the possible end of my D/s relationship as my Dom struggles to figure out his situation.  Nothing but negative.

By all accounts, I should be in the fetal position in a padded room somewhere.  I have had a lot of loss and negative things in my life.  I am a pleaser.  I make sure everyone else is ok and then I try and determine what I need if there is anything left.  There is rarely anything left.  It seems the second I decide to focus on me, the universe decides I have had enough time to rest and throws something else at me.  It has been hell.  As a pleaser and submissive in most parts of my life, I rally to make sure everyone else is OK.  It started when I was 15 and our family home caught fire.  I saw my family slowly fall apart.  My sister moved in with a friend and basically checked out.  My Dad (first Dad) felt like a failure and worked and drank and that was about it.  My Mom threw herself into rebuilding the structure of the home.  Dealing with insurance and recovery companies.  My role was not defined.  I was 15.  I still had to go to school and realized I needed to get a job to help out.  I realized my role was to continue in school, get a job, and do my best to pull my family back together to try and get some kind of normal life back.  I handled my emotions with food.  I wouldn’t drink because I saw what that did to Dad.  I wouldn’t do drugs because back then, well, it was weed mostly and that made me out of control and I couldn’t do that.  Plus, I was a good girl.  A rule follower.  Drugs were illegal.  I couldn’t do more than try it and the guilt almost killed me.  So I ate.  I then would feel bad about the weight gain.  I even tried to make myself through up but I wasn’t good at that.  So I just ate my emotions.  I smiled, and went to school and work, and helped Mom, and kept an eye on Dad, never letting him think we didn’t love him, and I kept after my sister to come home to visit while we were rebuilding the house.  It was a horrible time.  It defined me.  I can look at that moment as the point where whoever I was before, I would never be her again.  I would be responsible.  I would be helpful.  I would not be the cause of an issue.

Life had struggles here and there going forward.  The death of my first father, the end of my marriage to my daughter’s father (failure feelings were a struggle), breaking the rules by falling in love with a woman, my sisters journey into a religion I hadn’t heard of and didn’t understand.  Each event was a defining moment.  All negative, that carried negative emotions.  I ate.

When my daughter told me about her heroin addiction, my whole world stopped.  Anything that had happened in the past was nowhere near as bad as this.  Negative emotions, guilt, fear, sadness, loneliness, regret, it was all there.  When you go through something that stops the world from spinning and sends you into a place so dark you don’t think you will ever see light, there is nothing you can do.  Nothing but fight.  All the negative things that had happened to me faded in comparison to the news I had just gotten.  I stopped eating.  Literally.  My body decided that this kind of negative, this kind of stress, even food couldn’t help.  I went from eating junk food and drinking soda to eating nothing and only drinking water and coffee to survive.

Anger – I rarely get angry.  I literally said yesterday that I was feeling so weird and I didn’t know why and then just said out loud, “I’m just so angry”.  That surprised me because I never feel anger.  I feel hurt and betrayal and all those emotions but I think because of the way people in my life had shown anger, I never wanted to claim that emotion.  I also think that some people prefer you to be angry than hurt because anger can be explained away somehow, easier than other emotions.  This recent admission had me puzzled.  But I handled it the same way, I pushed it inside and went on taking care of the flooded bathroom, neighbors horrible trash can smell, and all the other little things that apparently had me angry.

Jealousy – I also have a hard time admitting I’m jealous.  I don’t know why because I know this is a normal emotion.  It has such a negative connotation.  It always is met with the thought that you are either being ridiculous, or you are catty and petty.  I am jealous though.  I am jealous of those with nice bodies, great hair, always seems to have their shit together.  I am jealous of people that have long-term successful relationships that started in high school.  Those people who knew what they wanted and went for it.  And were successful in getting what they wanted.  I am jealous of the women that have my Dom’s attention and focus, even though she is pretty horrible to him.  I am jealous of people who started professions early on and knew what they wanted to be when they grew up, became that and are now happy in that profession.  I am jealous of people my age looking at retirement when in reality, I will never be able to retire and travel and do the things I want to do.  I am a jealous person.  But in that jealousy, I always consider the source and I always come back to I had choices and made them, and that is why I am where I am.  So I guess I handle jealousy by rationalizing that we all had choices to make and make them.

Fear – Everything scares me.  Being alone, getting into another relationship of any kind and being afraid I will mess it up again.  Not being able to pay my bills.  Not being able to retire.  Not being able to stay the woman I want to be.  Not being able to trust people again.  My daughter dying again. (yes, heroine tried to take her three times, and three times she came back).  Me having another medical issue when now there is no one with me to help me and I won’t get paid if I don’t work.  Fear of my mom dying, and what the fuck will I do without her in my life.  How do I handle fear?  I run from it.  I hide from it.  I don’t face it.

 How do you expect that to be different in D/s?

I believe this is why my Dom is so important to me.  Once we met, anything I went through he was there to guild me through it.  He is calm.  He is rational.  He is usually right.  He is my best friend.  He has my best interest at heart.  Proven by telling me in this hard time between he and I he wants me to be happy even if that means finding someone else.  He has given me the tools that I need to be open about how I am feeling.  Not only as a sub but as a person.  He has helped me see my strengths.  He recognizes my weaknesses and vulnerabilities in all aspects of my life and forces me to face all those fears that I would usually avoid and run from.  He is not an emotional person so he can give me the rational and calm side of things.  He has taught me not only as a sub but as a woman what I am capable of and still be the woman I want to be.

A D/s relationship with anyone other than him terrifies me.  My Dom and I have built trust and I rely and depend on it immensely.  Sometimes too intensely for him.  Too much for him.  I recognize this and pull back as best as I can.  To trust someone else with this is inconceivable.  I know others do it and some even say it is just like ending a regular relationship, but it is more than that.  It is hard for me to think about how I would handle my negative emotions in any other D/s relationship because that concept is so hard for me to grasp.

I am a strong woman.  I’ve been through a lot and have survived a lot.  Some things I never imagined I would survive.  My current Dom wasn’t there for a lot of it, so I am not saying he is the only way I can survive.  It is a choice that I lean on him.  I am capable of surviving and handling my negative emotions without him, better now because part of what he has shown me what I can do, and partly because I am a survivor by character and genetics from my Mom.  But handling the negative emotions will always be a struggle.  I assume that in a different D/s relationship, I will have to communicate and speak more openly.  Face the fears and jealousy and anger as I have in the past with an expectation of the same in return.  I will think things through.  I will find ways to stay calm when I’m feeling these things and have conversations about my feelings.

I still can’t imagine having these conversations with anyone other than Daddy.

Thoughts provoked by Loving BDSM