If you ask any sadist what they enjoy out of pain play, it’s likely going to be watching the bottom respond to the pain. The more response, the higher the enjoyment for the top. Why is this important? Well, if the method of pain management doesn’t allow you to respond well to the pain, then the play will be less fulfilling for at least one, if not both of you. Ultimately we want to be able to have a wonderful responsive play time.

Typically a person will use many methods of pain management in one play session. Some combinations lead to subspace and an enjoyable scene and others lead to frustration and shorter less fulfilling scenes.

When we enter into a play session the goal is the positive experience so we'll talk about the negative ways we try to process pain that will be a detriment to your enjoyment of the scene and may cause your sadist partner to not enjoy themselves as much either.

Detachment

When you detach from the pain you are dividing your mind from your body when it comes to the pain. A lot of people describe this of being out-of-body or above the action. Detachment is what a lot of bottoms do during subspace, but that isn't how you get there. If you detach you can't get the feel-good chemicals flowing through your body and aiding your accent to subspace. If subspace is not your goal, using this method will keep you from really feeling anything and your responses to the stimulus will be far less for your partner to enjoy.

Compression

With compression, you try to internalize the pain and push it deep down inside. It happens most in emotional pain such as depression or grief but can also come out in physical pain stimulations as well. Common ways people bury the pain is by clenching muscles such as jaws, hands and other large muscle masses. It’s also easy to notice compression when someone holds their breath.

With compression, the bottom doesn’t get most of the benefit of the pain experience and because of this the sadist also gets denied pleasure from feeding on the reactions of the bottom. What can be worse is that the unreleased, compressed pain turns into stress that will build over time until it is released.

Fight and Extinguish

The last negative pain management method is when you forcefully fight the pain. Someone using this method will still feel the pain more than through compression but you don’t get the long-term stress build up of compression. You do however feel immediate exhaustion and stress from the effort of fighting the pain. Someone who is fighting the pain is very compact, focused and probably breathing through clenched teeth. Their eyes might be wide open as well as they force the pain away. You won't get the benefits from this technique and neither will the sadist.

Do you recognize some of you in these descriptions? Are there other negative forms of pain processing that you are aware of?