Rage in Scene

By Unknown Author

Rage is a state that bottoms sometimes get into, sometimes accidentally, sometimes in therapeutic play, or sometimes during breaking scenes. The depth of the person's rage varies. Sometimes the bottom has a vague awareness that this is a scene, but either feels safe enough to let go to strike wildly at the top or to struggle wildly in the chains. Other times the bottom completely loses the sense of where he or she is or what is going on.

Rage is sometimes cathartic for individuals to let out of themselves in the context of a scene with a conscientious, watchful top. The experience of extreme challenge to the point of being broken to uncontrollable crying or driven to rage is appealing to some bottoms. However, dealing with rage in scene is risky for both partners. While all extreme states require alertness on the part of the top, rage entails some special considerations.

If the bottom goes into a rage there is often no time to consider unexpected safety concerns. The top instantly has to look to physical safety issues for both partners. People who are raging do not always respond to pain in ordinary ways. A bottom who ordinarily might stop from a sharp smack, a joint twist, or pressing on a pressure point may not respond at all while in a rage.

Although physical accidents in well-considered scenes are amazingly rare in my experience, dislocated shoulders, cracked ribs, and frightening head-banging can happen in seconds in scenes if the bottom goes into an uncontrollable rage. Unconsciousness is also possible. The top as well as the bottom can be at risk, either because of the bottom's flailing or attack, or because of the top's own bending over backwards to protect the bottom from self-harm.

In terms of emotional safety, more often than not, the wisest thing for the top is to press into or at least not draw back from the situation. Suddenly jerking the bottom out of a flashback or extreme state of rage, panic, or emotional distance is almost never emotionally ideal for the bottom. Although what is happening may be frightening to the top, such states are moments for the top to set aside his or her own fears and focus on what the bottom needs, weighing both emotional and physical safety factors. Sometimes, the safest thing to do is to wind the scene down gently or to redirect it. But the observation of many experienced tops based on their experiences and ex-post discussions with their bottoms is that if the top has the physical safety issues more or less under control, the top's courage to stick with the bottom and come out the other side is usually the better choice. Suddenly calling an end to the scene often turns out to be the poorest choice. Bottoms who are suddenly yanked out of extreme states can come back feeling disorientation, humiliation that they caused such "problems" for the top, panic at what they could not complete, and incapacitation by what they cannot begin to explain in words in the near-extreme state they are still in.

Every scene is different. Faced with a raging, hysterical, or curled-up bottom, you just go by the seat of your pants. If you are the top, then the bottom is your entrusted responsibility, with no one but you to make the right decisions. You weigh all the information you have got and do the best you can.