Depression, Anxiety and other Fun Stuff

Currently emmie and mitda are visiting emmie's new pdoc (psychiatrist). I am waiting at home, hoping things go well and that emmie can get a more viable treatment plan for her depression and anxiety issues. While she is bipolar other than blips mania hasn't been an issue for a long while. I am bipolar myself and having two bipolar slaves is an interesting, if somewhat difficult, task to put to oneself. While mitda was diagnosed years ago (myself hundreds of years ago) it is all very new to emmie, who was just diagnosed formally this year. We do attend a local support group on Monday's (although emmie and I were too tired to go last night, mitda did meet up with E. there – as the only normie in the quad it's great of E. to bother showing up to support the family).

Crrrriiiitttic !

During a conversation Saturday night a Master friend of mine brought up the “Master's inner critic”, in the sense of the following situation. When living 24/7 in an absolute enslavement relationship it can be easy for the Master to get lazy at times. Suddenly there's a “wait a minute, s/he didn't do ... while s/he was doing ... - ah well, let it go this time, the game's on ...”, and this happens a few times in a day, maybe multiply that by a few days, and you've suddenly let a few dozen “ little things” slide.

Then suddenly you decide you have to correct him/her and set things straight. But the “inner critic” is saying “oh yea, come down on him/her NOW after you were too lazy to do it the other three dozen times”, and it becomes a difficult thing to do. And if it keeps on going the AE dynamic is lost completely, the slave no longer expects correction, and the Master loses the ability to do it and just lets the relationship lapse.

Ironically that very thing happened to me seemingly directly afterwards. Having been faced with two slaves suffering from the muted grays, browns and blacks of the depressive end of the bipolar spectrum, and having been home to take care of some things that I wouldn't normally have time for, I found that all of a sudden E. was making dinner every night (or scrounging McD's or KFC for the family), the bedroom, master bathroom, kitchen and closets all looked like thermonuclear test sites and at 7:30am the only person even close to being awake and prepared to leave the house was myself, so I was taking the kidlet to school while E. got ready for work, and my two slaves snored peacefully in bed.

Time to bring out the heavy guns! Yep, I sent an EMAIL, lol. Detailing what wasn't done and that it had to be done from now on.

Or else!!!!

Or else what?

The inner critic was hounding me on that one but I went ahead anyway. Tonight the kitchen, bedroom, master bathroom and closet have all been cleaned and nitpicked over, we had a wonderful birthday dessertfest with mitda's mother, and while these sorts of things are not a cure for bipolar depression we've discussed emmie's situation in particular and come up with what I think is a workable plan to help her learn some new coping skills, as well as get her medications sorted out in a short amount of time, all without taking her near a hospital.

Critic, be damned.

Self-Identity

Self-identification is a mysterious thing to me. People self-identify in all kinds of ways. For me it can be Master in an M/s relationship, bipolar, software architect, English-Canadian living in the US, all kinds of things that have overlapping and contradictory features.

For instance the English-Canadian background I have tends me towards socialist ideas. It can be difficult working out human ownership when one doesn't fundamentally believe in private property. And the bipolar throws a huge curve into everything, especially when both of my slaves are also bipolar. But being a Dominant is obviously not a bipolar tendency, if only proven by the fact that my two slaves ARE also bipolar.

So we tell ourselves our self-identifying stories and try to make the best of our possibilities. I am enjoying things the way they are going and I very much credit my family (current) for that.

On a day when ...

... my back is killing me, I'm working from home and not getting much accomplished ... the girls are out at the doctor/drug store/market ... and wev else, I'm thinking about the issue of Mentally Interesting persons involved in D/s type relationships.

I had someone (a submissive) yesterday telling me why their husband couldn't dominate them them (whisper: he is bipolar). Ahem. So am I. In discussing it with her, though, it came out that he also has BPD. This is a very different matter as BPD's have emotional and not just mood issues. Let me clarify a bit as to what I mean by this.

Mood is defined by a philosopher of note to me as the self-disclosure of the current "how" of one's being. This is as much as to say, that when one asks how one "is", i.e. the question about the how of one's being, one is really asking about mood. Which is, in fact, pretty accurate. Emotions are different than moods from the get-go, because we have emotions in reaction to things, events, people, that are in-the-world.

Someone with emotional issues, then, is reactive to the world (and to him/herself) in a problematic way. This is not good for a Dominant. In terms of dominating someone one first has to be in control of one's reactions, and to a greater degree than most, because one's own actions and those of one's submissives will both tend to push one's buttons, assuming one has buttons to push.

There can be issues with having a bipolar Master, to be sure, such as inconsistency in different moods, and a tendency to be extreme and to expect extremes from one's submissives. But these issues can be dealt with, particularly if the submissives involved know mood extremes themselves and have similar tendencies. BPD is problematic, though, and I would expect that a BPD would have to have explored themselves to a very high degree, and probably in specific form have had very successful dialectical therapy, before one would wish to submit to their overly reactive personalities.

Slaves on the Downward Spiral

I went to bed in a bad mood last night and woke up in a worse one.  So I've spent from 2am till now pretty much working on my RS/6000 server and feeling pissy.

I'm not the only one.  Both through conversations and reading their blogs I have been well apprised that both of my slaves are down, depressed, suicidal, etc.  Not that this is the first time such things have happened, they both by chance are bipolar, as am I, and handling moodiness is a sine qua non of this relationship.

Unfortunately when it's all of us it becomes difficult to look to each other for the support we so desperately need.  emelina feels like a third wheel, mitda feels "not good enough", and me, well, I feel like I'm neither doing my job as their master nor helping myself in any way.

Mitdasein