Dominatrix Therapists

What is dom therapy? Glad you asked.

It’s a new form of psychotherapy, concocted by people who usually work as dominatrixes, that serves clients who have discovered that traditional talk therapy does not serve their needs.

In a way it mixes BDSM with therapy. It may not be to your taste. I am not recommending it. But I am reporting on it out of ethical duty. A blog called “Had Enough Therapy?” owes it to readers to keep them on top of the latest trends in therapy. OK, perhaps not on top… but you get the idea.

Anyway, the New York Post has the tantalizing story:

Five years in, traditional therapy wasn’t cutting it for David.

“I was thinking too much,” the 45-year-old, who suffers from depression, works in film and declined to share his last name, tells The Post. On the couch, trying to work through his problems, he felt trapped in his own head. “Is this guy listening to me? Am I whining too much? You’re hearing your own thoughts a lot.”

Like many frustrated talk-therapy patients, he was sick of digging into his childhood and being prodded for answers. He just wanted someone to tell him what to do.

In effect, David’s experience explains why many therapy patients have turned off from traditional, Freud-based practices. He was lying on the couch, exploring his childhood, talking to the walls… and his therapist was unresponsive. His therapist would not even look him in the eye. Evidently, the experience made him more depressed. Duh.

What did David do?

So he found a dominatrix.

The kinky and curious have long turned to dominatrixes for sexual satisfaction. But these days, it’s not just leather-clad ladies bossing around submissives in the boudoir. Now, doms tell The Post, they’re playing therapist between their dungeon sessions — and sometimes during. Though techniques vary, the goal is the same: to help clients sort through their emotional and mental health issues in a nontraditional setting.

David’s dom, Natasha Rabin, thinks this makes perfect sense.

“When you see a dom, it’s a physical and mental experience,” says the Brooklyn-based Rabin, who charges “in the hundreds per hour” for both kink and talk sessions. She says many of her clients turned to her after “not getting anything out of” traditional therapy. Although emotional epiphany isn’t the focus of traditional sexual domination, “overlaps and catharsis can happen, and often do,” she says.

As I said, I am not recommending this. If people want to gain direction and purpose in their lives they would do better to find a coach. In truth, dom therapy mixes meditation with cognitive behavioral approaches. And yet, the interesting part, that the dom therapy works better to produce emotional equanimity, should not be overlooked.

In David’s appointments with Rabin — that’s Ma’am, to him — there are no whips or chains. Instead, he turns his mind over to the Brooklyn-based dom. She combines hypnosis and nonphysical domination techniques to help him quiet his racing mind. Sometimes, she issues nonsensical demands, like ordering him to speak in Chinese. (David speaks neither Mandarin nor Cantonese, but Rabin says he responded with convincing gibberish.)

It’s hardly Freudian, but something about it “clicks” for David, who likens the experience to a kind of “cognitive behavioral therapy.”

Or else, it resembles meditation:

“You’re so in the present. It’s similar to meditation in that you’re able to quiet your brain and focus on one thing, even if the one thing is a power dynamic,” says the patient, who has been seeing Rabin for four years. He finds himself leaving the sessions feeling sharpened: his brain is working more efficiently, and he finds it easier to self-analyze.

A session with Rabin “kills two birds with one stone,” he says. “You can get a fun experience and change yourself for the better.”

As for the other side of BDSM, this is a family blog, so I will follow the fine example set by the Post and ignore it.