Recently I saw a post about Top drop which for me is that feeling of melancholy that sometimes overtakes you after a really good scene.

It caught me at a wrong moment and I posted that yeh, everyone knows about it. I was expecting someone to take issue with the tone of my response or criticise me for ever being exasperated by the endless repetition of the same questions, any display of less than perfect temper or humanity. Something along those lines. I was pretty surprised therefore to see a reply that didn’t make any of those complaints but instead insisted that not everyone had or was aware of this experience.  I will quote the response exactly here.

No, WykD_Dave, not everyone already knows about it. The great thing about this group is that we have a wide variety of experiences and skills. I would like to hear positive and constructive information from experts like you about how to recognize top drop coming on and how to deal with the feelings.

What most struck me is the asinine assumption that human emotions are some unique experience or out of the ordinary feeling somehow unique because they were triggered by rope or kink.

You do something emotionally and or physically intense and you have a natural high from it, then you have a low to a greater or lesser extent afterwards. This pretty much happens to most people.

Yes we’re all a bit different and have greater or lesser responses and some come down sooner or more steeply than others but surely this is a common human experience anyone who’s ever done anything intense, euphoric, joyous. To anyone who’s triumphed on the sports field, been in love, had great sex, strive and overcome!

The thing is that what we do is an adult activity and as adults I would have to wonder how you went through your life without experiencing natural highs and lows? How do you not recognise these normal human reactions? How did you live without encountering the high and the come down? How could you not have recognised and learned to deal with melancholic emotions?

How we arrive at these feelings may not be considered typical but I have to ask how does anyone not know what these feelings are?

I know that people want to think of the things that we do as special and unique, some of them are but ultimately we are doing them for very human reasons and that is to stimulate the feelings that we enjoy. We seek a high from what we are doing. The high itself is a very natural thing it’s a common thing  generally it’s common between us all. The low that follows a high is also common, affects some people more than others and is something that we all experience in our lives.

So how do you learn to recognise your natural feelings that are common to everyone? How do you learn that you are experiencing the natural come down which is the counterpoint to the natural high?

Well for a first step I’d recommend living and I’d recommend a certain amount of paying attention to your own reactions while living.

I think that for this even to be a question some people must go through life without paying the slightest attention to their own reactions and feelings. Assuming that people can be utterly oblivious to their reactions. We, as human beings need to observe our reactions and be somewhat informed by them as to how we react positively and negatively.

I know everyone’s reactions are a little bit different but on average people have common reactions and the particular one here, the low after a high is so common people are blogging about it and how to deal with it all the time.

I didn’t just want to say, ‘Hey you know how you have a big high and sometimes you have that really down feeling after? Yeh, that!’ as my response to this thought. I wanted to point out that the feelings and emotional reactions we have with shibari/kinbaku are normal human feelings, we all have these feelings and we all need to be able to recognise those feelings and be able to deal with them.

For me knowing what the feelings are and why are a great help in dealing with them. If you can recognise what’s happening and understand it you stand a much better chance of dealing with any circumstance.

Relax. It’s only human to feel these things. You’ve felt them before many times before. If you haven’t then I’d feel very sorry for you because that would mean you simply haven’t lived and I hope you have.