When Kink Becomes a Coping Mechanism: Addiction, Avoidance, and Mental Health in BDSM

Commentaries

Apr 2

written by Micah Brown

Can Kink Be Bad for Your Mental Health?

We have spent a good deal of time in this space discussing the ways in which kink can be healthy for the psyche. Whether it’s working through past trauma or learning better ways of communication, kink has been shown in many instances to provide a benefit for those who practice kink and BDSM. But can kink be bad for you?

The short answer is, of course, a resounding yes. And while I could throw out a platitude like “Anything can be bad for you depending on circumstances,” it’s just not that simple (and things like this rarely are).

The Positive Side of BDSM: Healing, Communication, and Control

Mental health is an essential part of kink. This doesn’t mean you need to be perfect or that you have to be “normal,” but it does mean you need to know yourself well enough to set your boundaries when you need to. Kink has helped people take back their power after a sexual assault by putting them in the driver’s seat of the scene they are participating in with their partner. The unique requirements for communication between partners in kink could be used as a basis for communication within any relationship, whether or not it’s kinky.

Maintaining your mental health while being in a kink dynamic is incredibly important. Making certain that you aren’t falling into bad habits or cycling into negative routines is important, which is why I will point back to the communication piece and reiterate, yet again, the importance of clear communication between partners.

When Kink Becomes Avoidance Instead of Expression

Avoidance can take many forms. Substance abuse often begins as self-medication to help escape parts of a person’s life they don’t like. A combination of tolerance and the need to remain in limbo increases the likelihood of dependence forming.

What people don’t always talk about when it comes to dependence is that it isn’t always drugs or alcohol. Dependence can form in relation to just about anything in your life. Eating disorders are a type of dependence, sex addiction, porn addiction, Internet addiction, exercise addiction… the list is seemingly endless.

But as a society, we tend to focus on the tangible things we become addicted to. Drugs, alcohol. These are physical things with physical properties that we put into our bodies for a specific result. We don’t talk about the others often because something like sex addiction isn’t viewed as something that can be a “real problem.” Who doesn’t want to have a ton of sex all the time, right?

Addiction in Kink: Understanding Behavioral Dependence

Generally speaking, addiction occurs when an individual’s life is adversely affected by the behavior, whether that’s using drugs and hurting others in the process, or sleeping with anything that has a pulse so you can let the endorphins from each orgasm help you forget about the bad parts of your life. Banging your co-workers in the supply closet isn’t healthy and will almost certainly get you fired.

Kink falls under the same umbrella. Kink activities that you partake in to get away from parts of your life can turn addictive and begin to interfere with your life. Sometimes we all need an escape from the world for a little while, and kink can be a great escape from the horrors of the news. When kink goes from being an occasional escape from your problems to becoming a need as a way to not have to think about your problems, it starts to look more like a dependence.

Unlike dependence on drugs or alcohol, dependence on what amounts to a social interaction is not often viewed as something serious by the average citizen. Again, the idea of somebody who doesn’t want sex all the time is completely foreign to those who maybe don’t get sex as often as they’d like.

Speaking in broad strokes, sex isn’t like most other drugs. You don’t build up a tolerance for it. In fact, partners who have more sex generally feel as though they need it far less than somebody who isn’t getting sex as often or at all. While it’s possible to get addicted to heroin from a single dose (a fact that is often not discussed), social addictions tend to take time to build to their crescendo.

Escalation and Risk

You’re not going to be going through a tough time in your life, get kinky with somebody, and then suddenly crave kinky interactions all day, all night, to the point where you are propositioning strangers for kink scenes. What is far more likely to happen is that you have a powerful scene that fills you with endorphins and allows your mind to forget the troubles you’re experiencing outside this singular experience. Maybe some time goes by before your next session of kink, but the result is the same: you are able to forget about all the negative things in your life and simply exist in the moment. As time goes on, it becomes more and more imperative that you find ways to avoid having to deal with the various issues that are piling up around you. The only way you can relax now is by taking part in a kink scene that allows you to completely forget about your life and focus just on the endorphins that flood your system with every strike of the flogger or every slap of the palm against your ass.

What’s more, it’s possible that the usual scenes may begin to lose their potency which may then cause you to start abandoning firm boundaries you had set for yourself in the past and begin to experiment with edge play when such play wasn’t an option before. Some people grow toward edge play in their kink journey, but that’s different than moving from light spanking to having needles shoved through your tits or your dick so you can forget about the upcoming foreclosure on your house.

Some people cut themselves just so they can feel something, but in this case, the individual would be taking part in edge play to avoid feeling what’s truly going on in their life, replacing the emotional pain with physical pain. Moreover, they would be involving a person who didn’t consent to this.

Healthy Kink Requires Self-Awareness and Care

As with any sort of dependence, there are ways for you to find help. Talking to your doctor, calling a hotline, or finding a therapist are great first steps. While not all kink involves sex, perhaps joining a sex-addict support group could prove to be useful for you as well.

We are social creatures, and trying to manage any of this in isolation isn’t healthy. The first step, as they say, is to realize that something has gotten out of control in your life that it is tearing apart your ability to function. What that means is that it is having an adverse effect on your ability to function and maintain relationships. If it’s outside what is normal for you then it is time to seek some help.