#therapy-thoughts

There are days I crave being hurt so badly it scares me. In recovery, we’re taught to question the things we crave most. We learn that some hungers are smoke signals for destruction. But what if the thing I crave isn’t a substance, but surrender, and the punishment I want isn’t about shame—but healing?

There’s something unnerving about desire in recovery. You’re trained to hold your cravings up to the light: What’s underneath this? What’s it trying to soothe? And for a long time, I thought if I craved something, it must be a red flag. That wanting was dangerous. That to be safe meant to be still.

But submission doesn’t feel still.

Sometimes it feels like fire licking the inside of my ribs. Sometimes it feels like sobbing with my face pressed to the floor, heart cracked open, begging to be seen—even in the parts I’ve always tried to hide.

And sometimes it feels like compulsion. Like I’m reenacting something I promised I’d never do again.

Before I got sober, I used to let men use me because I thought that’s all I was good for. I didn’t negotiate. I didn’t speak up. I thought “please” was too much and “no” would make them leave. And honestly? I didn’t care if they left. I just didn’t want to be alone with myself.

Now, I ask to be used. I choose to give myself. And that choice feels like agency. It feels like power.

But I still wonder: Is this healthy?

Some clinicians argue that kink—especially consensual BDSM—can be healing for survivors. A 2020 article in Psychology Today highlights how “consensual submission may allow trauma survivors to reclaim control over past experiences by recontextualizing pain and surrender in a safe, structured environment.”

For many people, submission becomes a space to rewrite the narrative: I’m not helpless. I’m not broken. I’m choosing this. But the line between healing and reenactment is thin, and sometimes invisible.

Trauma therapist and educator Dr. Jamie Marich writes:

“Trauma lives in the body… and the body often returns to what it knows, even when what it knows is harm. It’s not just about what you do—it’s about whether your nervous system feels safe doing it.”

That’s the part I’m still learning. Not just to say I’m choosing it—but to feel that I am.

Because there are nights when I want to be choked, slapped, told I’m nothing. Not because it turns me on—but because it quiets everything else. Because the pain gives me focus. Because when someone is hurting me, I don’t have to do anything except endure. That’s not submission. That’s surrendering to silence.

So I check myself:

Am I playing out old patterns, or consciously engaging in new ones?

Is this desire born from wholeness—or from the part of me that still believes I’m easiest to love when I’m hurting?

Does the scene make me feel more me, or less?

And the hardest part is, the answer shifts. Sometimes I really am seeking connection, power, transformation. Sometimes, I just want to disappear in a prettier way than I used to.

There’s a certain kind of praise I don’t quite know what to do with. Not the passing, distracted “good job” in the middle of something else — that kind I can shrug off, stash in my pocket like a receipt I’ll throw away later.

I mean the quiet kind. The kind that lingers. The kind where someone looks at me and names something they see — something good — and keeps seeing it. It doesn’t fade after a moment; it’s sustained, steady. They don’t rush to change the subject. They mean it.

And my brain… doesn’t know where to put it.

It’s like being handed a thimble by Tinkerbell. Something so small, so tender, so precise — but I don’t know if it’s a gift or a warning. I don’t know if it’s safe to hold, if I should wear it, or if it will vanish if I stare at it too long. I just stand there, holding it in my palm, afraid to drop it, afraid to believe it belongs to me.

Maybe it’s because praise like that feels… permanent. Like it carves a small door in me and says, “This is yours now.”And I don’t know if I’m ready for the weight of owning something good about myself.

I scribbled this in a journal one afternoon because I was bored out of my mind and annoyed that no one tells you how tedious sobriety can be. I used to think recovery would feel like peace. Like a deep exhale. Like waking up in a life I finally recognized. But mostly, it felt like beige. No drama. No chaos. No dopamine hit from texting someone I shouldn’t or googling whether wine technically counts as a serving of fruit. Just... stillness. Grocery store lighting. Tuesday.

No one warned me that the absence of destruction wouldn’t feel like relief—it would feel like nothing. And after years of numbing everything, that kind of nothing is terrifying. I thought quitting would make me wise. Enlightened. Some gentle, yoga-doing version of myself who sips herbal tea and breathes through her emotions. Instead, I was just twitchy and kind of pissed. I didn’t know how to sit still. I didn’t know how to feel things without assigning them an emergency rating. I didn’t know how to exist without falling apart.

I told myself I wasn’t lying. That I was just… editing. But the truth is, I lied. I lied to everyone.

I lied to my mom. I lied to friends who asked if I was okay. I lied to people who were worried and people who weren’t, because the goal wasn’t honesty—it was invisibility.

And I definitely lied to myself. Constantly. Obsessively. With flair.

Here’s a short list of things I told myself so I wouldn’t have to stop:

• “I just need to cut back.” (What I meant: I need to get better at hiding it.) • “Everyone drinks like this in their 20s.” (If ‘everyone’ means bartenders, the other alcoholics in rehab—who, for the record, seemed way more sure they belonged there than I did.) • “It’s not like I’m drinking in the morning.” (Except when I did. But that was different because it was a mimosa...with vodka.) • “I can’t be an alcoholic—I drink wine.” (Specifically, wine from a gas station, at room temperature, from the bottle.) • “If I really had a problem, someone would say something.” (Spoiler: They did. I just decided they were being dramatic.) • “It helps me sleep.” (And cry. And text people I shouldn’t. And forget things I didn’t want to remember until I did.)

Some lies were small. Some were stupid. Some were clever, rehearsed, desperate.

But the worst one?

“I’m still in control.”

I clung to that one so hard I almost drowned with it.