What a great meeting we had last week! Our topic was "Self Esteem", something many of us struggle with. Below is a synopsis of what we discussed, and then....a dare, for any submissives who are struggling with a low self-esteem.

Simply put, self esteem is your opinion of yourself. Your self-esteem affects how you think, act and even how you relate to other people. It allows you to live life to your potential. Self-esteem is something that's learned, not inherited.

Low self-esteem is a negative opinion of oneself. Low self esteem means poor confidence and causes negative thoughts which makes you likely to give up easily rather than face challenges. It has a direct bearing on your happiness and well being.

Your self esteem depends on many questions: Do others respect what you do? Do you respect yourself? Do you believe you are successful? How do you see yourself (your self image)? How do you feel about your strengths and weaknesses? Are you comparing yourself to others and ignoring the unique value that you have? What do you think of your social status? How do you relate to others? Can you make your own decisions? A lack of choices leads to low self esteem.

Positive self-esteem means thinking as highly of yourself as you think of others. It's such a shame that we are usually more aware of our weaknesses than our strengths. A positive self-esteem makes it possible to face life problems and bounce back from them.

So, how do we raise our self-esteem. How do we work on what might be a lifelong problem?

Identify triggers to low self-esteem - What sets us off? Is it criticism, stressful situations, or misfortunes? We often personalize these things and turn it into a negative meaning about ourselves. That's often followed by a self-defeating though or action. Instead, let each "event" be a chance to learn about ourselves, if we face our fear of doing so and the negative beliefs about ourselves that sustain the negative meanings.

Stop personalizing. This will help to stop the impulsive responses. Try using relaxation and stress management techniques to help with the automatic overreactions. This allows us to interrupt the otherwise inevitable automatic reaction and put into play a way to begin to face the unacknowledged fears at the root of low self-esteem.

Stop and take notice our reactions to different stresses and situations. We often overreact in the same way to the same things. Noticing and being aware of the similarity can help slow our negative reactions.

Acknowledge the reaction. Verbalize, "Here I go again!" The result is to slow the impulse and give ourselves a choice about how we want to respond, instead of automatically responding in our usual way.

So, let's try something different! Instead of dwelling on the negatives, celebrate your strengths and achievements. Forgive yourself for your mistakes. Don't dwell on your weaknesses; every human has them. Change the way you talk to yourself--stop putting yourself down! Be sure that you are not judging yourself against unreasonable standards.

And now, the dare! One of our members came up with this idea and we thought it was great. So here it is...

We dare you for the next 6 weeks to do two things.
1) Write down 5 good thing that happened to you today.
2) Look in the mirror and write down five good things about yourself.Do this dailey. Make yourself write them down so you can look back on them when you do have a bad day.

We've been calling this, "retraining your brain"; looking at and celebrating the positives in our life instead of dwelling on the negatives. Believe it or not, it works! Just as low self-esteem is something learned because we've conditioned ourselves to see our shortcomings instead of our strengths, postive self-esteem can also be learned. What better time to start than now??

If you'd like....add your list to the comment section. Let us help you embrace the good and postive things about yourself and your life. As submissives, we get our pleasure from serving others. It's our nature to reach out and help with a kind word or deed. Perhaps we can do this for each other by reaching out and acknowledging each others strengths. Hearing it from others just might be that added affirmation needed to keep us on the right track!

I want to thank everyone that came out to the group discussion last night. We covered a lot of topics and really had a good time discussing issues with each other.

One topic that came up that I believe is such an important concept within the lifestyle was self control. Quite often as submissives we get so involved in the process, lost in our submission that we become too excited and eager. I have been guilty of this more than once.

When a submissive is uncollared we refer to this state sub-frenzy.  I found an excellent article on sub-frenzy that explains sub-frenzy so well. Here a couple quotes from the article but I encourage you to read it in its entirety.

Submissive Frenzies are a state or condition that many if not all submissives will experience at one time or another. Many aspects of BDSM are similar to addictions in how they play out in the mind. From that perspective the Frenzies can be considered to be the 'withdrawal' stage.

This is an increasing and progressive sensation of 'need'. Fairly quickly the submissive may discover that 'getting their fix', becomes supremely important in their lives. It can leave them irrational, willing to make poor decisions, rash, impulsive and generally stupid. A submissive in a frenzied state is at their most vulnerable to succumbing to the ploys of those less than admirable. They may become easily enthralled, believe themselves 'in love', willing to give over anything (almost literally) in order to fill that enormous void in their life.

So as beautiful, strong submissives what can we do to control ourselves during these feelings of frenzy? At the discussion there was a lot of great suggestions.

Exercise is a great way to burn off some of that excess energy and clear our minds. Yoga, walking, running, tai chi whatever you enjoy and can really get into. Not only is is great to calm us, we are empowering ourselves by taking care of our well being both physically and emotionally.

Masturbation is another way to release some of that excess sexual energy that occurs during submissive acts. As submissives we are quite often much more in tune to our sexuality causing an overflow of sexual energy. In order to control this and not become frenzied, masturbation can release some of that energy and help us become even more in touch with ourselves.

Attending discussions and classes and surrounding ourselves with other submissives. As discussed in the article mentioned above, quite often a submissive's need for knowledge, to do more, to learn more, experience everything can get them into trouble. By educating ourselves, we empower ourselves and strengthen our submission. By going to submissive only discussions, and heanging otu with like minded submissives we can release some of that pent up energy through talking.  I have attended some pretty lively discussions where submissives truly are letting off excess energy.

Lastly, I think it is important to mention stepping back. Take a breather, do something that is not related to the lifestyle, knit, draw, take some pictures, explore. When in Second Life, if you begin to feel frenzied, IM a friend, someone in our group, shop (though careful not to over spend!) explore or even log out.  Our emotional well being is strongly linked to our submission. When uncollared it is especially important to take care of ourselves and be mindful of our feelings and emotions. Self control is something everyone can work on, and I believe is an ongoing goal.

Please feel free to add in comments any additional tools we as submissives can use to control our excess energy, in order to be the strong, beautiful submissives that we all are.