Crash Report

Well, it's been an exciting couple of days, which came to a head with a bit of an emotional meltdown last night for my owner and I.

It started, basically, with my owner having a personal emotional issue over something that neither of us have any ability to fix at the present moment. However ridiculous it may sound, the fact that there is something that I really can't do for him no matter how hard I try, something that is completely realistically impossible for me to make better, hurts me deeper than you could ever imagine.

So, after I'd done my best to help him feel better, I kind of lost it.

I don't remember what set me off exactly, I think it must have been when he told me that I really am indispensable to him and I'm the thing in his life that makes him the most happy, I started sobbing and saying 'thank you' repetitively. Somehow that brought out a whole ton of other issues for me and we talked for a long time about a lot of things, beginning with how he gave me the exact thing that I want and need the most in order to be comfortable with myself, and that's the knowledge that I really am making an impact on someone, really helping, really doing the right thing, really being important. However much I'm aware of this, though, I know I could be doing better.

There's something you need to know about the way my mind works. I am one hundred percent devoted to my owner, and his happiness and well being is highly integral to my own, more so than making sure I eat enough or get to paint or crochet regularly, or do anything else that might make me feel happy or secure. That probably sounds terrifying to some people, but the simplicity of it is such a comfort - I take care of the wants and needs of one person to the best of my ability, and in exchange I get all the love and security I need, and more. The dark side of that, though, is any little mistake I make or anything that he needs that I actually can't do hurts me terribly, for no reason other than feeling horribly inadequate and worried sick for my owner. I know he's not going to leave me if I mess up, I know he's not going to love me any less, but I am so personally hellbent on being the absolute best submissive in the world, and more importantly, the absolute best submissive for him, that I beat myself up relentlessly when something happens to remind me that I'm not perfect, or even the best I can be, yet. It completely cripples me, for a while, when I make a mistake.

Here's what happens to me when I make a mistake: He corrects me. He doesn't do it in an unpleasant manner, he's really quite reasonable about correcting me. But once I've been corrected, no matter what sort of tone of voice he uses or the severity of my mistake, I spiral into this terrible self-deprecating loop and get completely absorbed in how I've done this positively horrible thing and I should have just known better and gotten it right the first time. Sometimes this comes with an instinctive, and really terrible, attempt to make it not my fault by any means necessary, mostly by making excuses. When I finally manage to stop doing that, it's worse - I feel like an absolute failure, for being an idiot, for doing he wrong thing in the first place, for trying to get out of it no matter how unintentional the attempt is, and for making him feel bad by feeling so horrible myself. I know it hurts him when he has to correct me, which is a large part of why it hurts me so much when I realize I've done something wrong.

Now, this all happens BEFORE I even manage to get up and fix whatever I'd done wrong, if it is indeed something that can be immediately set right. That's how fast it happens. It's instantaneous.

Eventually I do manage to come down and fix the mistake, but the guilt takes a long time to go away.

Anyway, that's part of what I was freaking out about last night. Overall, my major issue is that I'm not perfect, and I very desperately want to be, because if I was perfect, my owner's life would be that much better. The events that triggered my episode were very different from what I ended up actually beating myself up over, but that's generally how it works sometimes.

So now that I've rambled on a while, we did come to some conclusions, and it ended up being a productive conversation however emotional I was being. We decided that what I should start trying to do is to just switch modes, basically. When I get corrected, turn off the guilty conscience part of my head and go into compliant subspace and just do it, and have my issues later, and possibly that'll minimize the guilt once I've done that. My owner assures me that after I've completed correcting the mistake he'll be there if I need emotional support afterwards. We also discussed how it's not my responsibility to punish myself, it's his, and I should leave it to him, and therefore this massive amount of guilt for being not perfect is pretty useless. Also, we discussed the necessity and realities of training - if people could just instantly do everything exactly right there would be no need for training. It's pretty much exactly like training puppies - they don't come out all well behaved and housebroken, that takes work on part of both the owner and the puppy. I WILL eventually be as good as I want to be, because I really want to be, and I'm already pretty good.

My owner just finished writing my new schedule tonight, and I feel that that'll help immensely, since I'll know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing at any moment and will probably eliminate my anxiety about messing up at least a little bit.

All in all I feel that while it was not fun at all to fall apart like that, it was necessary and helpful in the end. Hopefully, more structure will minimize the frequency of my self-deprecating meltdowns.