Therapy-by-Dominant is Edge Play

We’ve all met a guy like Jack – The dominant who uses kink to cure his sub’s problems.
Feeling unhappy? Jack can cure you through BDSM.
Struggling to get a hold of your eating disorder? Jack can fix it.
Suffering from clinical depression? Grief? A personality disorder? Jack can heal that, too. Think of him as a sexy life coach. He doesn’t know what a “psychodynamic theory” is, but he’s pretty sure he can cure your PTSD.

It’s tempting to make your sub’s entire psychiatric makeup a part of your kink. People tell me it is a kink every time I write about this—and I’ve done so often, because I, too, knew a guy like Jack once. He froze me in my trauma for five years. I know this practice can kill people because it almost killed me.

Let’s assume for a moment that therapy-by-dominant is a kink. If it is, you’re required to assess and mitigate its risks. You should funnel it through your favourite safety acronym with your eyes wide open. Is therapy by dominant safe, sane, and risk aware? It hurts me to say that maybe it can be, but that doesn’t make me any less terrified of the practice.

It is edge play.

A study of 1000 patients who’d become sexually involved with their therapists showed that after the relationships ended:

• 90% were harmed by sex with their therapists

• 11% needed to be hospitalised

• 14% attempted suicide

• 1% killed themselves.

Only 17% of those patients recovered completely. That is why psychologists separate sex and therapy.

Therapy-by-dominant removes the boundaries of a therapeutic relationship. The most important of those is the capacity to leave when therapy isn’t working—and not to leave simply because your “therapist” has lost interest in your vagina. That makes it inherently unsafe, and patients need safety, if they’re working through severe psychiatric problems. Enmeshment and therapy should never, ever mix. The last thing we, as trauma survivors, need is to submit to the person who’s trying to heal us. Empowerment is crucial to recovery.

You might leave a therapist for inefficacy, but you wouldn’t leave the man you love for the same reason. It’s not as though you’re having any problems in your relationship. I mean, it’s not as though he’s your therapist or anything.

If you’re trying to give your sub therapy and both of you are unaware of the dangers, that’s not informed consent. It isn’t RACK, and it isn't SSC. Dominants are fallible people who have as many weaknesses as their partners do. They aren't necessarily more evolved, sane, and knowledgeable than their subs, much less their psychologists.

Edge play should always come with stringent controls. You don’t suspend a bottom unless you have safety shears and a working knowledge of nerve damage. You don’t choke someone out unless you have a comprehensive knowledge of anatomy and the skill to prevent a fatal outcome. Hell, you don’t even engage in impact play unless you know which places are safe to hit and which are not.

The trouble with therapy-by-dominant is the therapist/dom and patient/sub rarely understand the risks or how to diminish them. It’s not as though you’re hanging your sub by the neck, so it can’t possibly be edge play.

The trouble is it is. It is dangerous. If you feel certain that your play is safe, it’s a sign that you might know less than you think you do.