subspaces

Lately, I’ve been aware that I have different kinds of subspace — it seems to have a different qualities at different times.

Another way to say it is that, for me, there isn’t just one subspace but multiple subspaces.

For those outside the lifestyle, I’ll try to define “subspace,” although it differs from person to person. In general it’s a mental orientation, an altered state, an out-of-body experience. It’s sometimes considered “a natural high.” I experience it as something like a daydream. I have read that there is physical science around this — chemicals and endorphins releasing, causing the mind to respond by going into a different experience of the reality.

If this sounds scary or other-worldly, it isn’t. Nor is it dangerous. It’s natural, much of what our minds do in dreaming at night.

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For me, one flavor of subspace seems to happen in a situation of an overload of pleasures, either submissive or sexual (or both). In my D/s life, my submissiveness is just as intense a feeling as my sexual experience. When both happen at once, it almost always is more than I can naturally consume. And it opens up for me a subspace.

An example of this is when I’m with Kevin in the bondage room. He has me tied to the bondage horse, putting me in an extreme domination, thus tapping into my submissiveness. Eventually, Kevin mounts the bondage table and pushes his cock into me, which combines my intense submissive pleasure with intense sexual pleasure. It’s overwhelming, and a subspace opens up for me.

This subspace is where I “go” to be able to absorb what I’m in and what is being done to me. At least that’s how I understand it.

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A second kind of subspace is less orgasmic but intense in a different way. It happens when I am made to be deeply submissive in a certain social situation. It is not physical or sexual, simply submissive. In such a case, I find myself distanced from much of what is going on around me, but focused on that one thing that prompts me, or controls me, submissively.

One example of this was Saturday morning, in the aftermath of my mini-rebellion. I had risen up oh so indignant, and Amanda had handled me, putting down my little insurrection, conquering me. I stood then for a while at the bay window deep in my submission. In this case, my subspace room was muffling the sounds of everything around me, letting through only Amanda’s voice.

I became deep focused on her and nothing else. In fact, several times Patricia said something to me and I didn’t hear her even though I was just a few feet away. Amanda had to repeat Patricia’s query to me — then I heard it.

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Yet a third subspace for me is when I’m in the reality of intense objectification — being viewed, ogled, by strangers as a sexual object. For some reason, I experience this subspace as a sort of “floating,” like I am drifting in the air above, able to be seen but separate from it.

A good example of this was at the retreat when I was made topless in front of the five dominants. Eventually this became my usual display to them over the second and third days, and I became more capable of it. But the very first times, it put me in a kind of floaty subspace.

My problem here was that I still had to pay keen attention to what Master McKenna was saying. I managed, but in the moment it was not really about my nakedness or about my subspace but about staying coherent enough to respond when spoken to.

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More about that last point: subspace often renders me speechless and incoherent. It seems to separate me from being able to form words. Imagine a scenario in which Amanda is fingering me to orgasm and in the midst of it tells me to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I would not be able to do it. Likewise in some of my subspaces, I become sub-verbal.

Of course, this is exactly where my domme and dom would like me to be a lot of the time — so submissive in body and sex that I literally cannot speak. Well, to be fair, they both like my wit and words, so they want the coherent Shae sometimes. They like the experience of me as an intelligent adult woman whom they can with their dominance reduce to incoherent babbling.

Ultimately, I think they prefer Shae in her subspace, illiterate in her submissive responses.

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There is a fourth kind of subspace, I think.

I said before that subspace is natural and not dangerous, but this one is. It’s a space of complete dissociation. Psychology defines dissociation as a complete separation from reality, often leading to identity disorders and fugue states. Counselors guard against this, and my therapist Jillian checks in with me about this all the time.

I am no expert, so take my thoughts here with grains of salt.

But I think that most subspaces are not dissociations but ways in which the submissive mind filters and focuses reality. My mind is not saying “I don’t want to be here so I’ll create my own completely different reality” (dissociation). My mind is saying, “My submissive being wants to be here but needs to filter out that which is peripheral in order to more deeply experience my submission” (healthy subspace).

Subspace is not a break from reality, but a deeper presence within it.

Or so I think.

Agree or disagree… I welcome the comments of others with such experiences, as well as of those who have a greater knowledge of this than I have.