suffering is all around us, we need not summon it

As part of my existential kink work I have been reconnecting with the inner Sadist... the part of me that resonates with the evil, the oppressor, the dominator. The ways I was treated cruelly and internalized it as a way to survive in this world.

Increasingly, I learn how none of us are really spared from this unconscious societal programming.

As part of our survival, we learn to accept pain in childhood, even to love it (hello, masochism, people-pleasing, self-betrayal), and in this adaptation we also gain a shadowy superpower: Intimate knowledge on the expression of cruelty.

Sadism is an under-appreciated response to stress or trauma. It is instinctual and protective to be in-tune with the ways a fellow human is vulnerable to pain. This is so common, and yet it is so taboo to recognize: the desire for intimacy through shared suffering is shoved to the shadow.

Naming and owning this can be a challenge. Egoic programming, societal pressures, internal beliefs about ourselves as good and kind people are likely to induce all sorts of protest at the idea of having an inner sadistic streak. How could a "good person" enjoy suffering, desire it, want to inflict it on others?

It can be uncomfortable to accept the ways our entire nervous system has been trained to be thrilled by cruelty (and often numbed to pleasure).

Rejecting any part of ourselves makes it come out sideways, more often than not. Instead of holding compassion for the complexities of conflict, or compassion for ourselves in protecting our energy and boundaries... we lean into righteousness, arrogance, saviorship, crusading.

It feels good to revel in the security of making someone else "wrong."

It feels good to start fights, take a stand, and refuse to budge.

Just as long as we're the one in control...

In short term, this is how humans have survived. In our longterm, it's what has led to a culture of domination and oppression, of fighting to get your hits in before someone else can knock you down. It is a mindset that is hard to unlearn, but will never lead to collective safety or liberation– only hard-hearted individualistic wins.

Integrating this very human quality of sadism– making it conscious– frees us to soften and tenderly hold the realities of ignorance and suffering.

It frees us to grieve knowing that these patterns were laid in our subconscious psyche when we were small, as what it meant to be a powerful adult.

How freeing to realize the behavior people display has nothing to do with you personally, and everything to do with their own pain.

How freeing for a sadist to know suffering is all around us, we need not summon it, need not perpetuate it.

It's our responsibility to simply compassionately hold space for the pain we encounter.

We don't have to lash out. We don't have to be righteous.

We don't have to do anything except feel the resonance of own dear pain, sink into the sensation of what our body needs, and choose our own pleasure instead of seeking it in the pain of someone else.