Nekkid Feelings

There is something about Thursdays that make me want to share myself. Of course, it helps that my sleep schedule this week has been hectic and I just don’t have the clarity of mind to write the story I am thinking about. Either way, you get a big old dose of Shon today. To keep Half-Nekkid where people can find it easily, I’m going to ask you to click Whole Post to see the rest of my thoughts today.

I have a social anxiety disorder. Odds are I have always had it but in the last three years it has really escalated. Apparently this is normal among social anxiety sufferers as something happens in a person’s thirties that cause them to loose a lot of self confidence. My theory is that the fictions of teenage invulnerability finally wear off and the reality of day to day life takes over. For a while I suspected it was 9/11 but after examining my life and doing more research on the disorder, I see that I have had it all my life.

The definition of my disorder is that I develop irrational anxiety in situations where I feel like I am being judged. I could be in a store and suddenly get terrified that people are looking at my hair, my weight, and my clothes and making judgments about myself. I get nervous, start to stutter and fidget. Then people really are looking at me because I am so nervous and it just reinforces my fears.

The frustrating thing is these emotional states come and go. I can go two weeks just fine and then one day have to pick up the phone and order dinner and I am terrified that I will screw it up, embarrass myself and somehow make the poor delivery person think less of me. It’s not a rational thing, and there aren’t any clear triggers of what will cause an episode. But when an episode strikes, it makes me feel like I am ten years old and helpless.

As my anxiety became more and more frequent, it spilled over into everything I did. I stopped writing because I felt nothing I wrote would be good enough to be free of criticism. Which is true, but to my irrational mind, it meant I was a bad writer with too many flaws to keep writing. My anxiety froze me from looking for a job because I could rationalize myself out of why anyone should hire me. Socializing was out of the question and something I never initiated.

When I try to explain this to my friends, they are always surprised. That is because people with this disorder tend to bond to a support person, and when they are around that support person, they have greatly expanded courage. For me, it’s my wife or whomever is my submissive at the time. I can still have an episode of anxiety but when I have one, I can usually work through it without becoming a nervous wreck.

One time the husband of a sub I was dating told me that I was the most out going fearless person he had ever met. This was before I was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder and I thought he was crazy. Now I see that he was right, but it was only when I was around his wife, someone I trusted and knew would be there to support me in anything.

Now I am much better but still deal with it too often for my tastes. I take some herbal medication that has gone a long way to keeping me from freaking out but the most important thing I have done is just be aware of what is happening to me. Now when I have an anxiety attack, I am aware of it and I can apply some cognitive techniques to calm down. Best of all, just knowing that it’s a disorder helps me not get depressed about what is happening. I no longer sit around wondering what kind of coward I am.

Obviously my writing has returned and I can thank the positive responses I have gotten from readers for that. Being able to write something every day has gone a long way to repairing my self-esteem. I still have my moments of dread but those are far between. When my output is this high, I feel like a bad story is quickly covered over by the next good thing I write.

I have a job where I can work from home. I’m not sure if that isn’t giving in to my anxiety a bit, but at the same time it’s a huge boost to be working again. I feel less like a freak and more like a normal person.

The only thing I really regret is that I do not know if I can ever have another submissive again. My insecurities strike and I go from Cool Ruthless Dom Guy and turn into Needy Wanted to be Loved guy. Sometimes I think that my needs would be attractive to a submissive because they would know I needed them not only on a sexual level but on an emotional support level too. Other times I realize that this is a lot to ask when a lot of submissives look to their Dom to be their rock and their support and here I am in danger of an anxiety attack at any moment.

It doesn’t help that my last submissive broke up with me before I realized I had social anxiety. I don’t blame her for leaving me because all the things she said were true. I wasn’t in control of myself, much less her. I didn’t always follow through with things because I doubted my reasoning and worried that something I did would make her upset with me. In very polite ways, she told me I was a crappy dom, or at least that’s what I heard.

Now I think I would do much better but I can’t deny that I am definitely a Dom with issues. Considering that I am already married, I would be fulfilling a recreational role for someone, and having issues does not up my value. I don’t consider myself completely hopeless, but I have yet to encounter BDSM stories about a submissive who dreams of being dominated by a guy who sometimes needs to be reassured and calmed down when he is sitting in a restaurant.

There is also a lot willpower involved in domination and I doubt myself there. I can develop the same anxiety about a long relationship that I can about total strangers. A sigh or an annoyed frown can sometimes trigger me into ‘Oh my God, I’m sorry, please love me!’ mode as my wife calls them. Again I am better at identifying it now but man, when they happen, I can’t help but worry that I would lose the respect of my submissive.

Time will tell if I can have a successful domination relationship again. I just find it funny that I could be upset about so many things with my disorder but it’s the fear of never having a woman on her knees before me, completely bent to my will again that worries me the most. I think that fear drives my writing right now. The thought of never having a woman to use as my creative canvas again really makes me think of the thousand and one things I would miss. I want to write it all down. I want to spell out scenes I may never have again in the hope that a reader out there will take that scene and live it for me. I feel like if I can’t do, I can at least be the improper teacher.