The 5 Types of Fear

Reading time: 8 minutes

According to psychologist, Dr. Karl Albrecht, there are 5 main categories of fear that we all share. I see these fears manifest in my BDSM scenes all the time and regularly walk people through their unanticipated and often irrational reactions. Logic and fear don’t often go hand in hand and pragmatic, controlled folks are often shocked at their nonsensical responses to certain experiences or seemingly irrational attraction to certain, scary seeming, kinks.

I’m very accustomed to going slow with new folks because these fears will sneak the fuck up on you, believe me. Things like breath play, bondage and humiliation play can illicit all kinds of feelings, whether they make sense to you or not.

Fears are visceral and often out of our control, but, they can be exciting too, like a scary movie or a roller coaster. In BDSM, oftentimes, fear is used as a fuel source, a form of sexual nitro. I always think of it like when you were a kid and your friend would dare you to run into the dark basement, just to the bottom of the stairs, then run back up. It’s terrifying but, ultimately, safe and that’s what makes it so exhilarating. BDSM is the adult version of that.

The following listicle is taken from this article by Dr. Albrecht titled “The (Only) 5 Fears We All Share” and, in it, he defines fear as: “An anxious feeling, caused by our anticipation of some imagined event or experience.” In a way, the last bit of that sentence feels like a summary of my work. Fantasy and fear intertwine and I’m constantly managing the expectations of those who seek my services which ultimately involves a lot of emotional management, including feelings of anxiety and fear.

Sometimes, I think I could write a whole book called The Logic of Illogical Feelings.

In the article he also proposes that there is a hierarchy of fear types. The first being the fear of physical death and the last being the fear of ego death or social death. The majority of the fears I see manifest as kinks can be housed under the latter category but I can immediately think of examples for all 5. I also think it’s interesting that kinks manifest in the same way that fears do, ranging in the exact same way from physical kinks into social kinks. Let’s get into it!

How the fear of extinction manifests in BDSM sessions would be, primarily, in physical experiences such as bondage and breath play. I often tell people who are new to bondage that about 1 in 10 people (including those who fantasize heavily about it) will have a panic attack during bondage. It’s not a logical thing, it’s your body going into fight or flight and it becomes evident fairly quickly if you’re one of those people. If you’ve been tied up before and enjoyed it, it’s very important for me to know.

That’s why folks being tied up or put in some other form of bondage for the first time usually need an explanation of what’s happening and shown how quickly they can be released. It helps assuage the fear and helps build trust but, ultimately, those people generally don’t bother with bondage in sessions because the level of panic is just unenjoyable.

I’ve had so many folks try to rush me through this cursory warning and my slow approach with newbies only to discover - surprise! You’re one of those people! You’re starting to panic! This is why it’s great to see a professional for these types of things. It only takes a few extra minutes and can make the difference between tapping out and potentially derailing a session or simply being uncomfortable for a few minutes and calmly finding a new boundary.

Breath play, trampling and pain play are other examples. In fact, smothering (a form of breath play) is so viscerally panic inducing that it often takes years of practice to get to the point where the pleasure outweighs the fear. It’s such a visually appealing kink that is very scary to actually experience. Not having control of your own breath is… so scawy.

Another way that I see the fear of extinction tangentially manifest in my work is that a lot of older folks come to see me as a bucket list experience. People from older generations suffered through such horseshit, repressive social expectations and only when faced with their own mortality are they able to shed some of the entirely senseless shame and finally fulfill some of their lifelong fantasies. I love those people and it’s very cool to chat with folks at that stage of their life who are dealing with very real existential issues that we’ll all have to face at some point.

A side note about breath play and vac beds, in particular: There are real dangers involved in these forms of play and they should never be done alone. Google that shit at your own risk.

There’s a reason you see a glaring lack of needles in my work - I have a huge fear of needles, broken bones or anything else that involves things that are outside of the body being inside and vice versa. I mean this in the non butthole / vaginal way. For me, this manifests as any type of breaking the skin.

The most penetrative kink I perform in sessions is urethral sounding and that is edge play for me. I get a little woozy high from it (while still being safe) and that is the last stop on the train for me, I can’t go further than that. Sounding doesn’t even break the skin either! It wobbles my brain just enough for me to enjoy it and, of course, there’s the incentive for me to see the look on the guy’s face who I’m cock fucking :)

Also, I’ve never watched a UFC fight for fear of seeing a broken bone or dislocated limb and I literally cover my eyes when there is gore of any kind on shows or movies that I’m watching. An exception for me would be Mistress Jill on Twitter who performs these absolutely beautiful, medical play, genital torture scenes. Here’s some pictures of her using my ball crusher on Twitter. Looking through her pictures gives me that same feeling you get when you look over the edge of a building and your knees get a weird feeling in them, but, they are so artfully executed that I can manage to actually look at them and enjoy them.

Other examples in kink include, use of speculums, spanking, knife play, amputee fetish, body mods, feeder / feedee, inflation, nipple torture, catheter play, castration fantasies, chastity, figging and most other types of pain play. The dirty talk that accompanies these types of play usually involves some version of I’m going to do so much ______ to you that your ______ will never work again / be sore for days / be stretched for days / useless, etc.

A side note about my affinity for ballbusting: I think the reason I love ballbusting so much is because it plays on my mutilation fear but is non penetrative, in the skin-breaking sense. Therefore, it hits just the right amount of fear / edge play for me while still remaining safe. It’s the right amount of ‘turn the lights off at the bottom of the stairs and run up in the dark’ adrenaline for me.

What is that last sentence doing? Trying to turn me on? I jest, sort of. My mommy roleplay revolves heavily around playing with the loss of autonomy. People who enjoy my version of that kink are familiar with my methodical process of taking away their opinions, thoughts and attempts at autonomy in place of Mommy’s superior ideas and decisions. Obviously it is just erotic play so it is safe, but, it’s certainly playing in this fear category.

This would include many forms of slave play, like sex slavery, toilet slavery, domestic servitude, as well as hypnosis, chastity, cuckoldry and blackmail.

The physical manifestation would, obviously, be all forms of bondage. I would say the primary reason that people love bondage is because it effectively strips the person of decision making. You don’t have to participate in any body language, physical social cues or reactions if you’re completely bound. If you’re wearing a hood, you don’t even have to think about your facial expressions and if you’re wearing a gag, you don’t even have to form sentences.

Folks who like extreme bondage are often people who feel very responsible and overwhelmed in life. I wrote a whole blog post about objectification and dehumanization kinks here and how it’s an entirely common (and healthy) coping mechanism for people who feel overly accountable in their lives. I’ve had lots of people reach out and say that that blog post made them tear up because I had accurately articulated their experience, not to toot my horn, but, TOOT TOOT.

Ah, here we are at the BDSM section.

The fear of rejection is basically a part of all kinks (oftentimes, a part of all of sexuality) and it definitely encompasses all humiliation based kinks. This is a lot of fucking kinks. Examples include some manifestations of: Bimbification, sissification, cuckoldry, ABDL play, slut training, wedgie fetish, slavedom, CNC and probably sexual submission itself.

In a way, the terms ‘consent’ and ‘boundaries’ are a polite and sterile way to talk about rejection and acceptance. I recently had a revelation about what my ideal submissive is and it’s not what you’d think. I talk about it in depth in this episode of The Trust & Thrust podcast called “The Perfect Submissive”. In it, I basically say that my ideal submissive is a person who finds acceptance in rejection, another way of saying, a person who is independent and confident in themselves.

Acceptance through rejection roleplay is utterly intoxicating because we are walking through (and surviving!) the debilitating fear of social isolation.

Plus, to consensually engage with someone sexually, despite all sense and logic, is often viscerally validating on a cellular level. It is saying to that person that they are so acceptable that their genes are worth passing on. I accept you so much that I want more of you in the world. This is, of course, despite the fact that in kink, we are rarely doing things that might result in procreation. I believe that our lizard brains don’t care and they go right ahead and receive the same level of acceptance that a vanilla sex act might elicit.

This is an intoxicating offer and it’s the bread and butter of sex work. Acceptance and rejection is the binary language and the translation back and forth between fantasy and reality is the code that we are writing, it’s the bulk of the work. For this reason, a responsible Dominatrix might just be the most ethical version of a drug dealer that exists.

This transcends the scenes themselves and manifests in many ways outside of the session. Sex work is often 10% the requested act and 90% expectation and boundary management outside of the scene. The hit of acceptance given in a sexual exchange, whether it’s within BDSM or not, is intoxicating.

The person giving this acceptance bears quite the load. They must take care of the person receiving the ‘high’ as well as their own mental and physical wellbeing. Sex workers can be awesome people who provide a really important service and it sucks that we’re so often demonized. We are often left providing acceptance to others in secret while we are routinely rejected in the larger society. Tis rife with hypocrisy and quite the mindfuck.

Anyways, I digress.

I often view my role within the binary of rejection and acceptance as simply The Witness. Often times I’m not doing much, I’m merely witnessing. I’m watching someone play in social rejection by stepping into something vulnerable, embarrassing or humiliating. It’s like a kinky version of the observer effect. The act of watching changes from something passive into something active that changes the subject that is being observed.

Like watching someone float into space, only to snap them back to safety at the last minute. In kink, this manifests in dehumanization fantasies where social rejection is fetishized and, sometimes, used as an inoculation against the real thing. When you hear people talk about their BDSM experiences in a euphoric, almost spiritual way, this is usually what they’re referring to. Again, I describe the function of these often shameful fantasies in a blog post called “Sexual Objectification and Dehumanization Kinks.”

This leads us to the last category of fear.

I’m almost at a loss for words.

That last paragraph sums up precisely what we are doing in BDSM. Ego death is particularly present in the pursuit of sexual submission. Through experimenting with our own identities, we often find a fluidity and a surprising amount of dexterity. Once we realize that we have the capacity to transcend the confines of our egos, we become lucid and our pain and fear snaps into perspective. It’s like simply opening a door that you always assumed was locked and finding a whole new section to your own house.

In BDSM we get to role play as different people, we get to have a little break from our egos and the confines of our identities in safety. We often realize that we are far more vast in character than regular life allows and that mastery makes us feel at peace. We often gain a feeling of agency over our fears and it’s such a lovely experience that I’ve made it my whole job. It’s a complex conundrum, it’s counterintuitive while simultaneously being laughably obvious. For me, it really deals with the very essence of what it is to be human.

Bravery is not a lack of fear, it’s being afraid and doing it anyways. The only way out is through and I love being the hand that guides people through the dark. Good luck out there :)