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Headspace drop, and aftercare 🎀

by: phae#7777 | category: BDSM

During a regular day, your body releases happy chemicals from your brain at a normal rate, keeping you content and functioning. During a scene where you go deep into headspace, however, it can flood you with higher than usual amounts of them, and your body can only replace them at the normal rate. Your body then has to take time to rebuild your store of these chemicals, and if you’ve used up more of them than your body can reproduce, that’s when drop can kick in. This may be due to a withdrawal effect while your body attempts to make enough of the happy chemicals it needs, which were all mostly dumped into your system and depleted during the scene. Some people never experience it, while it is quite strong in others.

🎀 Drop may feel like: 🎀

• Guilt, shame, self-disgust, self-loathing, loneliness, insecurity, clinginess
• Seemingly reasonless emotional responses (irrational irritation, crying for no reason, random anxiety attacks, etc)
• Low energy, apathy and dysphoria
• Feeling disoriented, confused, or "out of it"
• Physical fatigue, tremors, excessive soreness

 🩹  What are some ways to help drop?  🩹 

• Good aftercare seriously helps lower the risk of drop happening! Drop can occur anywhere from right after a scene to up to 2-3 days afterwards. Always tell your partner as soon as possible if you are struggling after a scene. If this happens to you, remind yourself that drop is normal, and that your partner cares for you and appreciates the time you spend together in a scene.

Things that may help if your partner is struggling with drop:

• Telling your partner that you enjoy doing these things with them, including what parts of the scene felt good and made you happy
• Talking to each other and about the scene with each other afterwards, especially when trying new things or for particularly rough scenes
• Some people will want to be alone, but more often then not, people experiencing drop will want to not be left alone to feel abandoned. Assume they don't want to be left alone until they tell you otherwise
• If they want to, spend some quality time together. This could mean watching some funny movies, playing video games, or just talking casually together
• Treat them/have them treat themselves to some sweets/snacks, a bath, warm drinks, soothing music, a walk, a blanket, whatever brings them to their happy place
• Most often, the most helpful thing for people tends to be affirmations of love, such as telling them how happy they make you and how much you care about them. Identifying yourself as someone who wants your partner to feel happy is often enough to help begin to cheer them up

Remember, some things that work for people struggling with this may not work for others.