68% of your nervous systems might be working against your fear play

Dear ones,

I posted a poll last night about how people default when they're afraid—fight, flight, freeze, fawn—and the answer that came back hit me harder than I expected. (Not sure how to tell yet? Start Here.)

36% freeze. 32% fawn. That’s 68% of you going into the two fear responses that are hardest to read in a scene.

See, a fawning person will comply because somewhere in their body, there's a calculation that appeasement equals survival. A top who doesn't understand it might think their partner is into something—or even that they aren't experiencing fear at ALL yet, that they could even be pushed further—when really, their bottom is unable to give of themselves in a REAL way… because their instincts are busy trying to give of themselves as a way to get things to STOP.

And a person in freeze, gone quiet and still, can look like they're terrified enough to have been turned into something small... But a top who isn't aiming for a freeze and doesn't know how to detect it is really just encountering a shutdown: the subconscious engaging the instinct to camouflage, instead of revealing the raw emotion many of us are explicitly aiming for.

(Unless you play because you find the authenticity of your person's freeze or fawn the hot part, of course, which—hey, been there on both sides, and when it's intentional... YEP. 🔥)

Neither of these responses is a character flaw. Neither is a sign that someone isn't cut out for fear play. Both of them can be intentional, used for escalation, and even got-damn fun.

But they're both big risks hiding in plain sight, and most people don't know which one they are until they're already in a scene and their body is doing the thing. That's what I think we all need to talk about more.

Fear play isn't some mysterious amalgamation of the ~vibes. It's not something only “naturally brave” people can do. It's not something that requires your response to fear include perfect, outright communication and clarity. Most of ours don't.

But it does require understanding how your specific nervous system works. Not in theory, but in practice.

That's what the class I'm doing a week from today is about. You'll learn how to ID these responses. We'll talk about why some responses make in-scene communication unreliable and what that means for how you negotiate. (Hint: it's not "rule the whole thing out.)

And crucially: we spend a lot of time on the setup. How to design and prep for experiences so that you're targeting the kind of fear everyone there wants.

You don't need prior fear play experience. You don't need to be submissive or dominant. You don't even need to know what scares you/or your bottom (which is the #1 concern people have coming in, and I can promise you'll learn a question that will take you further than “What scares you?” by the end!) You just need to be willing to understand how your nervous system actually works and get curious about what makes it happen.

That's how you can start collaborating on experiences that get there instead of just crossing your fingers and hoping.

Make sure we've got your Zoom link-seat saved by getting your ticket in advance.

xoxo,

v