Benefits Of BDSM In The Bedroom

From bedroom to boardroom...

Benefits Of BDSM In The Bedroom

What’s staring down your boss when you’re used to the wrath of a black leather whip?

Study after study has shown that BDSM can have positive effects on everything from your mental health to your relationship. However, it’s rarely mentioned as a way to further your career. In fact, sleeping around the office is seen as a sure fire way to cause you problems, not solve them.

But that’s not the sort of sex what we’re talking about. No. What we’re discussing today is how BDSM outside of the world of work can teach you valuable skills—and give you the confidence to—amongst other things, successfully negotiate a pay rise.

Forget a satisfying love life—journalist Isabelle Kohn recently revealed how “whips and blindfolds are the unseen force behind a lucrative career.” Specifically, that of a mother of two, the anonymous subject of Kohn’s Harpers Bazaar feature.

“Claudia wasn’t sure if it was nerves or the night before that had given her the confidence to ask her boss for a raise. Either way, negotiating her salary was easier than expected. She’d been practicing, after all… just on something a little less G-Rated,” the article begins.

“The 36-year-old… had spent the past few days negotiating with her husband about how she could flex her longtime fantasy of dominating him in a way they’d both enjoy.”

“Afterward,” she told Harpers Bazaar, “The experience had made her feel confident, valued, secure and pleased at their ability to compromise—feelings which she was surprised to find lasted into the the following day.”

“When she arrived at work, still swimming in the satisfaction of a fantasy realized, she decided this was it. Raise day.”

An isolated phenomenon? As the vast numbers of Reddit threads, forums and BDSM communities dedicated to helping people realise the joys of pain, submission and domination: perhaps not. Which might explain why BDSM porn search rates are on the rise—along with BDSM’s mainstream appeal.

So, what’s going on here? How does getting tied up and spanked improve your career performance? Well, according to the latest research, it seems engaging in BDSM has positive psychological effects that carry over into other aspects of your life—career included.

As reported by Psychology Today, studies have shown that BDSM practitioners have lower levels of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), psychological sadism, psychological masochism, borderline pathology, and paranoia than the overall population norm.

They also showed equal levels of obsessive-compulsive disorder and higher levels of dissociation and narcissism—but we aren’t here to argue BDSM can’t be negative (or indicative of negative traits). Only that, in some circumstances, it can be extremely positive.

Psychology Today went on to say, “BDSM practitioners exhibited… lower levels of neuroticism and rejection sensitivity,” (which has got to help your confidence in a salary negotiation), as well as “lower levels of agreeableness” than non-practitioners.

As an ABC report pointed out last year, being too agreeable can significantly slow career advancement, which only adds to the idea that fluffy handcuffs can indeed help you achieve greater success.

The more you know…

Scientists also believe BDSM can be of psychological benefit because it teaches you to disassociate physiological stress from psychological stress. This has been dubbed “transient hypofrontality” and is associated with “reductions in pain, feelings of floating, feelings of peacefulness, feelings of living in the here and now and time distortions,” (Psychology Today).

While you often need to do the opposite at work (not let inevitable psychological stresses impact you on a physical or emotional level), this disassociation would appear to work both ways.

BDSM has also been found to promote “flow”, a phenomenon associated with greater powers of concentration, a loss of self-consciousness and greater efficiency. And while practising this in a BDSM environment is somewhat different to applying it in a board meeting—it’s hard to deny it’s a useful skill.

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