Survivors of trauma find many different, varied and creative ways to process their trauma; to regain control in their lives; to integrate and to live fully.

This healing often involves somatic practices. Some people turn to yoga, others dance all night long to techno (yes, that can be a somatic practice!), some join a choir.

And some people like to get tied up and flogged.

And these are all valid processes that deserve to be honoured for the healing they do.

How do we define trauma?

For many, the word “trauma” signifies a list of things. If you experienced something on the list, you experienced trauma, if not – you didn’t.

Let’s reframe that.

Trauma is too much of something for too long but it’s also too little of something for too long. It’s what happens when the nervous system gets stuck in survival.

This definition is much more expansive because it encompasses not only what happened to us but also our capacity to tolerate the things that happened (or didn’t happen).

If you were sensitive as a child and grew up in a noisy area or with noisy family – they did their best; but maybe that wasn’t enough. Too much of something, for too long.

If your parents were busy when you were growing up – busy putting food on the table, working long hours – they did the best they could; but maybe that wasn’t enough for you. Too little of something, for too long.

Of course, in with this definition are traumatic experiences – violence, including sexual violence. Growing up around abuse, or alcoholism. These can be too much and too little, all at once.

There is also space in this definition to allow for differences between what is traumatic for you vs. what is traumatic for someone else. Neurodivergent people have more sensitive nervous systems than our neurotypical counterparts, leading to an experience of too much of something for too long. (I’ll be doing a future series on neurodivergence and kink, so watch this space).

The key here is that the nervous system gets stuck in survival: we get stuck in a place of fear. We stay hypervigilant to threat. We are ready to fight or flight or freeze or fawn at the sniff of danger.

The Oedipus Complex?

So, where does kink fit into the picture? Are kinky people more traumatised? Are traumatised people more kinky? Do we all just secretly want to fuck our mum?

Kink has been pathologized as “repetition compulsion” – where we are driven to relive our traumas – and as “perversion” for decades.

Even before modern scientific ways of thinking about human behaviour, behaviours, especially behaviours centred around the body, that are not normative, have been frowned upon and turned into taboos.

So, of course, when psychoanalysis and Freud came along, the tone was set for “scientific” research that pathologized kink in the same way that homosexuality was once considered a “disorder”.

The main area studied was Childhood Sexual Abuse (CSA), probably because framing what people deem as sexual behaviour in terms of sexual abuse “made sense” to those studying it.

It wasn’t until 1988 that masochism was viewed as anything other than a “perversion”, when Baumeister suggested it was actually an escape from self-awareness through focusing on the present moment and bodily sensations (which sounds pretty somatic to me…)

How Did We Get Here?

The pathologizing of kink and assumption that it was linked to CSA means that we actually have little information on other forms of trauma and how they relate to kink and BDSM.

When we reframe trauma as a “stuck” nervous system state, I would find it more interesting to look at kink and trauma in general in terms of nervous system states, rather than repeating the same old tropes about CSA.

We cannot say that CSA causes someone to be kinky, because the majority of BDSM practitioners report no history of CSA, and BDSM practitioners are no more traumatised than the general population.

Moreover, kink interests often emerge before someone understands sex or sexuality. Of course, kink isn’t necessarily sexual, and for many never is. People typically develop fantasies or kink interests between the ages of 5 and 10, and don’t develop these into inherently sexual fantasies until they’re older, if at all.

However, there is a correlation between trauma and BDSM, especially submission. That is to say, while the majority of kinky people have no experience of childhood trauma, the exposure to CSA can lead someone to find kink.

Seen through an attachment style lens, individuals with an anxious attachment style are more likely to be submissive, and those with a secure or dismissive attachment style are more likely to be dominant. When we map attachment styles onto our nervous system, an interpretation of this might be: someone with an anxious attachment style may feel safe and regulated being told what to do, completing challenging, painful or uncomfortable tasks well – and being praised for it. Meanwhile, someone with a secure or dismissive attachment style may feel regulated when they’re in control of the situation.

But the why is more interesting. Why might the experience of trauma lead someone to kink? Is it nature, nurture, or something else? Or are we looking in the wrong place, simply attributing the cause to CSA when it’s something else completely?

So, Why?

Once we step away from the Freud-inspired trope of fancying your mum or a compulsion to relive something awful that happened to you, we can see a much more beautifully complex relationship between trauma and kink. To quote one study:

Many describe their practices as spiritually meaningful, avenues for personal growth, or sources of therapeutic benefit. For some, BDSM offers a structured and safe space to process past trauma or explore complex aspects of the self. These diverse motivations highlight the potential for healing, coping, and self-development within the BDSM community.

For some, the relationship is not between trauma and kink, but between trauma and sex. Vanilla sex can feel threatening to someone who has experienced consent violations. In contrast, the clear consent culture of kink can feel like a safe haven.

Knowing what is going to happen, through a negotiation. Having explicit communication around safe words and check-ins and ending a scene. Knowing there will be aftercare to regulate. These all provide a structured framework that can feel soothing and safe for someone whose consent was once stripped away. This gives people a real sense of autonomy and agency: I had my control taken from me, now I regain it in a kink setting, for example.

Other survivors of trauma may have found kink through different means and, when they got here, realised it’s a pretty good way of processing their trauma.

For example, I was pretty vanilla before I worked part time in an LGBTQ+ kink-friendly sex shop, where my eyes were opened to the wonders of kink. Now I look back on the 12+ years I have been kinky, I can see the ways that it was a somatic practice for me and helped me to process trauma and learn to embody myself. I found community; I found my voice; I found somatic practices – and I’m still here, still discovering.

Many people find the kink community to be healing; after all, we cannot heal in isolation, and finding your people can help you to feel less alone and to develop resilience against stigma.

For some, kink helps the nervous system to become "unstuck" by completing the cycle, much as animals shake or tremble after a traumatic incident. When a deer escapes a predator, it literally shakes the experience out of its body before walking away. Humans lost that instinct somewhere along the way; but intense physical experience, held safely, can offer the nervous system something similar: a chance to move through what got stuck.

Some practitioners do relive their trauma – although not as a “compulsion”, as suggested by Freud, but rather as a way to reclaim power, to rewrite a narrative, to feel strong.

For still others, trauma has altered the way their body and nervous system reacts to stimulation: whether hormonally or in terms of their sensory system, which can lead to seeking a different type of input, such as kink. This is an aspect we will look at in more detail next week.

Whether trauma brought you to kink, or kink helped you make sense of trauma you didn't have words for yet, the relationship between the two is rarely simple or linear. For most people, it isn't one thing, but a constellation of nature, experience, nervous system, community, and chance. And that complexity deserves to be honoured, not flattened into a single story.

Closing

Kinky people do experience distress. However, the clinically significant cause of this distress is the result of society: judgement, exclusion. If kink is at all to be considered disordered, it is society that is responsible for this disordering.

In one survey, 95% of people said they thought they were kinky by nature: that’s just the way they are.

For the 38% of people who are kinky through nurture, many said it is the centring of consent in kink culture that made it healing: “for survivors who become subs, safe words give them total control”.

People find their way to kink through a thousand different doors. What matters less is which door you came through, but rather the possibility of finding something that feels, against all odds, like coming home.

However people arrive at kink, trauma doesn't just disappear. It shows up in our bodies; in our nervous systems; in the ways we respond to intensity and intimacy. Understanding how it shows up — and what to do with that — is where things get really interesting.

It is this side of trauma and kink that I am interested in, and what we are going to be exploring over the next two posts.

Disclaimer: This space centres consent, autonomy, harm reduction, and nervous system awareness. I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice.

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