PTSD Strategies

by pais

This essay is about working with a slave who has symptoms of PTSD. First, i'll talk a little bit about myself, my qualifications, and a little bit about my viewpoints on mental health and slavery. Next i'll discuss PTSD in general and how to recognize the symptoms. Then, i will try to give some practical "tips and tricks" on working through some of those symptoms, geared towards working with a slave. Since this is the focus of the site in general, the "you" in this essay is usually aimed at owners, which is not at all to say that some owners will not recognize themselves as struggling with some of the same issues.

As of this writing, i have been a slave for less than three years and a licensed clinician (LCSW) for just a few months. In other words, i am not particularly experienced in either area, so please bear that in mind if you hear conflicting information or advice from other sources. READING THIS ESSAY IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR SEEKING ADVICE FROM A PROFESSIONAL IN PERSON. Much of what's in this essay is my *opinion* and may not apply to you or your situation. (The rest is material that, were this a paper for a scholarly journal, would be heavily footnoted. My goal is absolutely not to take credit for work that is not my own. If you are interested in reading my sources, please email me at paisoftearmainn@gmail.com and i will strive to provide them.)

On the other hand, i have been aware of submissive tendencies in myself literally as long as i can remember; i have been involved in various BDSM communities in real life since 1999; i have worked as a professional submissive; and in addition to two and a half years as a TPE slave i have been in about eight years' worth of more-or-less D/s relationships. In my work life i have spent two years as clinical intern, the second year working with women and children impacted by domestic violence, and my coursework and training was largely geared towards doing trauma work in that setting. For the last six months I have been working professionally with adolescents, many or most of whom have trauma histories.

So, with that background, here are some things i believe about slavery and about mental health.

First, our society (and perhaps all human societies) is quick to pathologize whatever isn't "normal," and often seems to have a very rigid and narrow conception as to what "normal" is. Our society (or at least parts of it) is quick to label all kinds of actions and feelings as symptoms of disorders or conditions or addictions that need to be "cured." We are quick to view any deviation in a negative light, rather than as a valid alternative. We see the natural human state of interdependence as unhealthy "enmeshment" or "co-dependence". We idolize a kind of bland emotional strength rather than celebrating the full range of human responses, and for some people their first response to any unpleasant emotional sensation is to attempt to medicate it away.

This is not to say that i disapprove of medication. Far from it. In many situations i think medication is an extremely vital tool for helping individuals lead the lives they want to lead. However, i want to start from a place of accepting that as human beings we are capable of experiencing not just low-key feelings but intense peaks. Rage, anguish, despair, terror, guilt -- these are all as much a part of a healthy emotional responses as joy and contentment. There is nothing wrong with having these feelings in and of themselves. Masochism, sadism, an intense desire to control others, an intense desire to surrender and/or serve -- these are also valid human paths, regardless of what our society teaches us about being "strong and independent" or "kind and respectful." All of these are healthy and appropriate in the right context.

However ... if these desires and emotions and patterns of behavior are getting the way of you (or your slave) leading the life you want to lead, being successful in your chosen career or maintaining relationships that fulfill you, there is nothing shameful or wrong about seeking out "professional help." Because of the way our society is set up, most people do not have a support network of friends, spiritual advisors, mentors or what-have-you who will be completely accepting, completely confidential, and completely dedicated to your well-being. Developing a relationship with a counselor or therapist who can provide those qualities -- regardless of their preferred "treatment modality" -- can be beneficial no matter what your struggle.

Now, in some ways the same thing goes for M/s. It seems that various individuals and communities get these ideas about what "normal" M/s relationships "should" look like. Where is the line between M/s and abuse? How does a real true slave (tm) behave? What are the ethics of the Real True MASTER (tm)? There are plenty of opinions out there about how communication should work, how much control or service is required for a relationship to qualify as M/s, etc. Now, i have my own opinions, of course, and they are going to color this essay. It is not at all my intention to come across as judgmental or exclusionary, even when i choose to use the label M/s to refer to one subset of relationships that may or may not include relationships their participants call M/s. Primarily, i am concerned with individuals getting their needs met. However, this essay is aimed at individuals who are participating in M/s relationships that are fairly all-encompassing. In other words, if an individual considers her or himself an owner or master but the property retains control over healthcare/therapy decisions, when and whether to discuss certain issues, how much time and when to spend time together, this essay may be less helpful.

Ok, on to the point. If you are having problems in your M/s relationship, how can you tell if the problems may be linked to the slave's PTSD, and how can you handle them if they are?

The name of the disorder gives the first clue: post-traumatic stress disorder is a condition that occurs after and as a result of trauma. If your slave has experienced trauma and now has certain emotional and behavioral symptoms, he or she may be suffering from PTSD.

For the purpose of this essay, we will call trauma an overwhelming experience of being in danger and helpless.

First, overwhelming: by definition trauma is an experience which the individual is unable to live through, process, and integrate into his or her understanding of the world using his or her normal coping mechanisms.

Second, experience: this could be a one-shot event, such as being under-anesthetized and waking up during a medical procedure, or a long period of time, such as growing up in an unsafe neighborhood, but what is less important than what actually happened is how it was perceived and interpreted on both conscious and unconscious levels. That is, it matters less whether the individual really was helpless or in danger from an objective viewpoint; what matters is that he or she felt helpless and in danger, or believed profoundly and viscerally that he or she was helpless and in danger. Some individuals are certainly more prone to PTSD, for reasons that are not fully understood. This might be part of that vulnerability: a greater likelihood to interpret events as threatening or dangerous, for whatever reason (genetic, physical factors in the environment from pre-natal on up, social/emotional environmental factors, etc.)

Third, danger: perhaps on a subconscious level, the experience challenged the individual's belief that he or she would emerge on the other side whole and unscathed, the same person as before, either physically or emotionally. Even if the individual was not aware of this process, in some deep place he or she registered the experience as threatening to damage them in some drastic way as they experienced themselves, which includes their experiences of both their physical body and their psyche. (This is how loss of a loved one, emotional abuse, hate crimes, and even just hearing about somebody else's trauma can be traumatic, even if the individual is not afraid of physical harm: by inflicting damage to a person's self-image or understanding of self within the social or physical environment).

Finally, helpless: the experience was out of the individual's control. He or she felt or was powerless or ineffective. Here our own physiological responses can get in our way. The fight-or-flight mechanism is more accurately called a fight, flight or freeze response. Our brains automatically evaluate the level of threat. If it appears to be one that we would be able to escape or overcome with force, we are flooded with adrenaline. If our brain assesses the threat to be unavoidable and beyond our strength, we become paralyzed, no matter how much we may want to try to run or fight back. This experience of paralysis often adds to the trauma, increasing feelings of helplessness, shame, and guilt.

As a result of the trauma, a great deal of the individual's energy, which is already compromised by the long-term physiological effects of trauma, is channeled into repeatedly attempting, and failing, to integrate the experience into the person's worldview and selfview -- the understandings he or she has about the way people interact, the safety and/or fairness of the universe, and his or her own efficacy, worth, spirituality, and even identity. This struggle for integrated meaning is challenging enough if the trauma consisted of a single event that occurred when the individual already had formed strong, mature "schemas" or attitudes about life and self. It is far more problematic if the trauma occurred over a long period of time, repeatedly deforming these attitudes, and potentially devastating if it occurred over a long period of time when the individual was a child, so that the attitudes are formed initially with the experience of trauma as a core component. (Clinicians' and researchers' understandings of the differences in after-affects of long-term versus unique and adult versus childhood trauma are growing, and it is likely that as a result the diagnosis of PTSD will be split into two or more separate disorders fairly soon.) Unpleasant or unsafe events are also more likely to be experienced as traumatic if they are result of directed human malice rather than impersonal forces. Thus, a rape is more likely to be traumatic, or to have more long-term and intenser after-effects, than a car crash. The key word here is "likely." Certain non-malicious, force-of-nature experiences such as being buried by an avalanche or earthquake are also extremely likely to result in more severe symptoms.

Typically, there are three types of symptoms evident when someone is struggling with PTSD. The more "psychiatric" symptoms are the "avoidant" symptoms and the "re-experiencing" symptoms. Roughly, avoidant symptoms might look like:

• · not wanting to talk about the trauma
• · not remembering the trauma fully
• · being able to talk about the trauma, but without experiencing the emotions that go along with it (laughing while telling the story, or looking completely blank and "flat")
• · avoiding the place the trauma happened, or other physical reminders (people, vehicles, etc; this can eventually progress to not wanting to leave the house at all)
• · dissociation -- which might look like "zoning out," or a feeling of being "disconnected," or the experience of "losing time" (in extreme cases, this is part of what used to be called "multiple personality disorder")
• · some symptoms that look like depression: detachment from others, feelings of hopelessness, loss of interest in prior hobbies, etc.

Re-experiencing symptoms might include:

• · flashbacks, nightmares and other sudden "intrusive thoughts"
• · obsessive rumination about the trauma
• · putting one's self in dangerous situations
• · wanting to re-enact the trauma
• · intense emotional or physiological responses when confronted with reminders of the trauma

However, although trauma has a huge effect on our thoughts and emotions, trauma is clearly not simply a mental phenomenon. Our physical bodies also react to the stimuli of perceptions, emotions and interpretations that comprise the overall traumatic experience. Trauma seems to have a profound effect on the system that sets off the famous "fight or flight" response. As a result, the physiological symptoms include:

• · "hypervigilance" -- constant, obsessive awareness of one's surroundings
• · sleep problems, primarily difficulty falling or staying asleep
• · difficulty managing emotions, particularly anger
• · problems with focus
• · "exaggerated startle response" -- jumpiness, flinching at sudden noises or movement, etc.

Here is a generalized picture of PTSD, putting the three sets of symptoms together:

First, your system is full of chemicals that amplify your reactions to normal events going on around you, every moment. Second, your understanding of these events is colored by your experience, making them seem more threatening and making your responses and emotions even more unpredictably intense. At the same time, your brain is still trying to integrate that experience, so you have flashbacks or intrusive thoughts as you struggle to understand how current events fit together with past events, as perhaps seemingly unrelated, perhaps tiny reminders are all around, dialing up the intensity still more. However, your body cannot cope with this intensity. Your cognitive functioning SHUTS DOWN. (This is actually a physical process -- the neurons in the frontal lobe fire at a hugely reduced rate in response to chemical changes in the brain). You become either "emotionally dysregulated" -- exhibiting a sudden intense spike of emotion such as panic or anger which perhaps causes you to act in unsafe ways and over which you literally have no conscious control -- or you dissociate, becoming largely unresponsive to what's going on around you, and later wonder why it's suddenly an hour later and you have no idea what happened during that period.

Now you've got these really scary reactions and emotional states you don't fully understand. Rather than chugging along with normal peaks and valleys, your emotional state is all over the place, swinging from uncontrollable, utterly overwhelming intensity to emotional deadness. You already know how terribly unsafe it is to lose control. In addition, you're having trouble sleeping, so you're even less in control of your emotions and unable to keep things in perspective. Finally, you feel like you can't relate to your friends anymore and, really, what's the point of even trying? Life is short and bleak. You don't trust people with little things but are careless about trusting people in big ways (maybe you don't even deserve to be safe or protected or treated well, after all), so you repeatedly find yourself in sticky situations. You snap at people, and your friends start losing their patience with you. Maybe people are starting to tell you that you're paranoid, or you're just afraid they're going to tell you that. Maybe your loved ones are telling you to "just get over it," leaving you feeling guilty and even more isolated. Alternatively, maybe you've shut out thoughts about the trauma so effectively that you can't understand why people keep asking you what's wrong.

Now, this picture certainly doesn't apply to everybody who's experienced trauma, or even everybody with PTSD. In order to be officially diagnosed with PTSD, a person needs to have only a certain number of each type of symptom, not all of them. Hopefully this essay can also be helpful to slaves who may have what is called "features" of the disorder -- fewer than the minimum symptoms for meeting the official diagnostic criteria. These features on their own can be debilitating to greater or lesser degree, and at the very least are extremely unpleasant to endure; even if the experience doesn't seem as "severe" as full-blown PTSD, you may still improve your slave's quality of life by addressing his or her trauma history. You may want to reassure your slave that he or she deserves this quality of life no less than someone who seems more profoundly "traumatized."

This is also not to say that PTSD symptomology is the only possible outcome from trauma, but discussing all the possible effects of trauma is clearly beyond the scope of this essay. This is not to invalidate or minimize the very diverse experience of individuals who have experienced trauma -- on the contrary. There are other very serious mental health conditions (for example, Dissociative Identity Disorder or the personality disorders) which also seem to be linked to long-term and/or childhood experiences of trauma. If your slave has been impacted by trauma but these symptoms don't describe the problem, a mental health clinician can assess whether your slave may be dealing with one of these other conditions, and help you figure out what you need to do to address them.

A word about triggers: This term gets used all the time to mean something like "something that really bothers or upset me." That is NOT how i'm using it. For the purpose of this essay, a "trigger" is an event or thought that sends the individual straight out of control, whether it be rage, panic attack, black out, etc. In general, if there is not a) intense sudden change of emotion, b) intense sudden change of behavior, AND c) an objective experience of being out of control or lack of awareness of what's going on or what has just happened. This is not something that "feels intolerable." This is something that IS intolerable and the person who is triggered CANNOT control his or her response. That said, yes, some people may claim to be triggered when in fact they are exaggerating their reactions. In that case, as a clinician my response is to assume they are doing the best they can (i try to assume that about everybody) and that this behavior is the only way or the best way they have of asking for help for whatever else may be going on with them. But "whatever else may be going on" is probably some kind of emotional regulation problem -- quite possibly not being able to tell within themselves whether an emotion is tolerable or intolerable, or feeling unable to control tolerable emotions and thus afraid that at any moment a tolerable emotion will become intolerable, both of which are common for survivors of trauma. Therefore, some of the emotional regulation skills discussed below are perfect for them too, and it doesn't really matter except in keeping an open mind as to what skills are likely to be most useful for any particular individual.

Ok, so we've got a pretty good idea of what we're dealing with. Now what?

1. One possible helpful step is to find a good clinician -- in fact, i highly recommend this, but as a clinician myself i'm possibly biased (oh, just maybe a little bit). By "good" i mean one who is a good match for the individual struggling to deal with the symptoms. For starters it may be beneficial to work with one who has experience working with survivors of trauma. Look for some kind of trauma certification, or ask if they use a "trauma framework". EMDR (Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) is a technique with proven results, although not necessarily the only technique that works, and certification in EMDR does not necessarily make a good clinician, either. More important is the relationship the client can build with the therapist: the rapport your slave feels, and the level to which he or she feels able to trust and be honest with the therapist. Owners may want to be more involved in the therapeutic process than many clinicians may be comfortable with or used to; a good match for you means a therapist who is willing to work with you the way you want to work.

2. Medication can also be a helpful tool. It is easier to live life, let alone process difficult material, when well-rested and not chemically primed for a panic attack! Medication can only treat the physiological symptoms, however, so don't expect it to be a magic pill that is going to fix everything.

3. Establish safety within reason. PEOPLE CANNOT BEGIN TO PROCESS TRAUMA WHILE THEY ARE STILL IN A TRAUMATIC SITUATION. Really. For would-be slaves reading this essay: if you are in an abusive relationship, call a domestic violence agency (yes, after leaving is the most dangerous time, and yes, there are often good reasons to stay -- but if there are also good reasons to leave, talk to somebody who can help you plan the best way to keep yourself safe.)

This does not mean locking your slave in the house with a shotgun to repel all intruders. Normal life has some risks. If you experienced a traumatic car accident, you may want to use public transportation for a while, but eventually you're probably going to want to start driving again, because driving in itself is not traumatic -- the crash was traumatic. Establish safety means drive carefully and avoid further crashes. The park where your slave was raped is not traumatic, unless she is so triggered that she experiences her uncontrolled emotional response as traumatic. If she can handle it, it's ok to go to the park. Find the balance that works for your slave.

Some specific behaviors for the owner:

• · Find out, through asking and observing, what is triggering for your slave. At this point in the process, try to avoid those triggers. If your slave still cringes every time his alcoholic mother calls him, think about ways to support him in letting her know he needs some space to heal, and set up a schedule of phone calls so they don't suddenly happen out of the blue -- or talk with him about cutting off contact altogether, if you think that might be what's healthiest for him. (This is emphatically not to suggest you unilaterally isolate your slave from negative relationships.) DON'T push your slave to talk about the trauma yet -- just the triggers.
• · Try to keep any activity that you think might even possibly maybe be triggering within a specific framework, whether that means "Friday night is play time and is the only time we'll do these things" or "I will tell you immediately before I hurt you and I will tell you when we're done."
• · Try to specify the extent of types of play you'll do, and don't try to do a lot of boundary pushing yet. Breath play, bondage, certain positions, noises, smells -- any sensory input can be a trigger, and it may be as surprising to your slave as it is to you if what seemed like a potentially fun new activity becomes a huge scene -- not in a good way.
• · Decide whether corporal punishment is a method that works for you and your slave, or whether it's better to correct your slave by talking through the problem.
• · Be trustworthy. Keep your word. To the extent that you can, be predictable.
• · This should go without saying, or at least fit into the above point, but -- don't make idle threats. Don't threaten to remove the collar or end the relationship for behavior that displeases you unless you really want to end the relationship. For that matter, don't bother trying to help your slave work through PTSD unless you're committed to see the process through.
• · Respect your slave. Listen to what your slave says and read body language. Show with your actions that your slave is a valued and valuable person to you.

In general, people with trauma backgrounds are better at spotting danger than at looking for safety. Coach your slave to make a serious effort to look for safety. Have your slave look for trustworthy people, and encourage relationships with people who seem safe to you and who your slave agrees feel safe. Look for places that might feel a little calmer or more relaxing -- that means, yes, go out looking. Take him/her places and ask about how it feels. The library? A particular quiet coffee shop? It doesn't matter. Help your slave look for and establish all the safety you can.

• · Maintain structure. In general, familiarity feels safer. This doesn't mean you have to be rigid or micro-manage, but some predictability of routine might be helpful.
• · Determine what level of control helps your slave feel safe. This varies from person to person. Remember, lack of control and feelings of helplessness are a huge part of what makes an event traumatic. For some people, though, that feeling of lack of control actually feels safer, protected, and cherished. The key is that the person who does have the control must be somebody who understands and is willing and able to meet the slave's needs. Sometimes your slave may need to feel that your needs come first, but if you're trying to work through trauma i believe the slave must have the foundation of knowing that his or her needs are also valid and important and that you are looking out not only for his or her best interest, but also his or her happiness and comfort. This might be difficult for some slaves to handle, but in the long run it is very important, i believe vital. On the other hand, your slave may tell you, or you may believe, that he or she needs a little more power in the relationship in order to feel safe. Can you negotiate a reduction in the power exchange, perhaps temporarily? (We'll come back to this later)

4. Get control of out-of-control emotions. Piece of cake, right?

Ok, maybe not. This is somewhere a good owner can really help a lot. This is a complicated, multi-step process. Since it's a vital skill for a lot of people, not just those with PTSD, and because it's also related somewhat to getting control of uncontrollable thoughts and behaviors, which seem of even broader interest in the context of D/s and M/s, i wrote a separate essay. Before becoming a social worker, i spent a year in direct care using an Applied Behavioral Analysis model; i've also studied and used Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. So i have a fair amount to say about modifying thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, much of it based on direct personal experience, although again i'm certainly not the end-all and be-all of behavioral training. Read more about it here.

5. Once the individual is feeling reasonably safe and secure, and is able to maintain physical safety and return quickly to emotional stability when triggered, it's time to process the trauma. There are many ways of doing this, and it's where i have the least experience. Most of the trauma processing i have done was relatively minimal and went pretty smoothly. However, it can be a very tricky time. If safety and emotional control have not been established, there is a huge, huge likelihood that "decompensation" will occur. This is the fancy clinical term for "everything falling to shit." All the symptoms may intensify; new symptoms and even whole new mental health disorders may develop. Scared yet? Maybe you should head back up to 1. Find a therapist!

Here are some points to think about if the owner does want to do the processing:

• · First of all, go slow. Start processing with the least traumatic event or aspect of an event. Work your way up over the course of time to more difficult memories.
• · If something seems too difficult to process, don't. Trust your gut, and your slave's gut. Work up to it. We have "defense mechanisms" for a reason. We don't plow through them until we've got something to take their place. Hopefully the work you've done on helping your slave get in control of emotions will have helped him or her develop some coping skills. If your slave still doesn't feel ready, have him or her practice coping skills some more.
• · Don't expect to necessarily process something fully the first time. It may require repetition. At the same time, you may find that processing one memory releases the pain and trauma from other memories as well so that they require less processing.
• · This applies to both the owner and the slave: take care during the whole time. Be gentle with yourself. Keep tabs on how your functioning is impacted in other areas -- sleep, job, relationships. Keep remembering your grounding and coping skills. Owners, have someone else to lean on -- and discuss with your slave how you're going to handle their confidential information when you need to turn to somebody else for support. Remember what i said above about being traumatized just by hearing about somebody else's trauma? It really does happen. Know your limits, and don't try to push past them for the sake of the work. The work will happen.
• · The goal is to integrate. It does no good simply to narrate events. Have your slave go slowly. Coach him or her to describe physical sensations and to feel the emotions throughout the retelling.
• · Keep asking, "What happened next?" Don't get stuck in the trauma. You survived. How? Who helped you? How did you get out of the situation? How did you get to where you are now, safe and healing?
• · Expect to recover emotions possibly long-buried. Most common are fear, sadness, anger, and guilt/shame. Accept these emotions, and show your slave that you accept him or her and all these emotions. Remember they all have their purpose. Fear teaches us to take care of ourselves. Give your slave permission to mourn losses -- of innocence, time living with unresolved trauma, the person he or she might have been or the choices he or she might have made. Let your slave rage against the unfairness or against the person or people who caused her or his suffering. And explore the guilt and shame so that your slave can find self-forgiveness. None of these emotions are wrong. Believe that, and help your slave believe it.
• · Remember that trauma is not simply a mental/emotional phenomenon. Trauma affects us in physical ways. The body remembers trauma. Often this may be the case because the trauma was something physical that happened to the body. Triggers are often physical cues such as body positioning, and the body reacts by cringing or startling to triggers without necessarily any conscious awareness. Therefore, the body has to overcome the trauma as well. Just talking about the trauma is not going to help. Include physical movement such as tai chi, qi gong, yoga, self defense classes, etc. EMDR seems to work by helping the two sides of the brain integrate the trauma together by moving your eyes back and forth. Some research seems to imply that other repeated cross-body movement has a similar therapeutic effect. One of the physical effects of childhood trauma is actually a reduction in the size of the structure that links the two hemispheres of the brain.
• · Read this article: If You Simply Must Use BDSM Scenes as Therapy. I didn't write it, but i think it's excellent.
• · Do not expect your slave to be "fixed" or "cured." Trauma changes us irrevocably and we cannot turn back time, but just because we are different than we otherwise would have been does not mean we are sick or ruined. We are just different. We have learned, we have grown, we have (hopefully) become wiser and stronger.
• · Finally, trauma recovery has a great deal to do with developmental stages. Trauma processed and dealt with for one stage may need to be processed again at later major life milestones and transitional stages, times when our identity and our place in the world are shifting. In other words, trauma processed as a teenager may need to be dealt with upon hitting the leaving-home-becoming-an-adult stage. Trauma processed as a free person may need to be re-covered on entering a stage of slavery.

6. Assess what further work needs to be done. This is especially important when trauma began in early childhood and/or lasted over a long period of time. There are certain "developmental tasks" that we all go have to master (no pun intended.) They build on each other, and if earlier tasks are not mastered, later stages of development will be askew even if no trauma takes place during those periods. Even if trauma occurred as an adult, some of those earlier-mastered developmental tasks may become more difficult again. This might lead to problems in areas such as:

• · Trust, for example:
• · Difficulty trusting people, even those who have demonstrated trustworthiness
• · Continuing to trust, or even feeling greater trust for, people who have demonstrated untrustworthiness
• · Trusting complete strangers, which can lead to placing one's self in dangerous situations -- the classic "walking in the park at night" symptom
• · Self-esteem, for example:
• · Excessive feelings of shame, guilt, and doubt
• · Doubting one's self-efficacy or competence; feeling incapable
• · Craving positive reinforcement, constantly hungry for attention and praise
• · Difficulty initiating or following through on tasks
• · Constantly second-guessing oneself
• · Doubt about identity or role in life, feelings of lack of purpose or place
• · Intimacy, for example:
• · Extreme independence, emotional distance
• · Extreme dependence, not feeling sufficient or comfortable when alone
• · Difficulty empathizing with others
• · Seeing people in black and white terms, either all-good or all-bad
• · Difficulty maintaining attachment once the "new" has worn off

The way to work on any of these issues is to start by becoming aware of them. Notice specific interactions and the positive and negative effects your slave's thoughts, emotions, words and behaviors may have on relationships, job performance, and overall well-being. Decide if there are specific emotions, thoughts, verbal patterns, relational patterns, behaviors, etc. that you want to change, and go on back here.