Submission, domination, and commission

Submission, commission, and domination are not really words we aspire to use a whole lot in psychology. Our cultural framing has led us to a point where submission is viewed as weak, commission a lesser form of work, and domination as a way to be rather than as a function of exercise of specific purpose as dictated by its definition. As you go through the story, stop and read the definitions and consider how they are not bad wrong, or dirty in this context, try to view them as helpful. Think about how your life would be different if you allowed yourself to let go of the weight associated with these words so you could just do the things they describe.

I could tell three stories, each about a submission, a domination, or a commission, but sometimes life hands you what you need. And sometimes you don’t know what you need until you get it.

So it feels more fruitful to discuss something that was complicated, and fast, and slow, and from a moment of crisis, so the energy was flowing. Stories where you can really see the path of least resistance are the easiest to learn from, for me at least. So I will tell you about the man who stopped my (biggest by several miles, literally) meltdown in its tracks when my dad died, only succeeding because I chose to submit.

After my dad died everyone shut down and I was not working because I was pregnant, so everything fell to me. I found myself surrounded by nothing but people dumping on me and I snapped. I put my (now ex) husband on a train to his mother’s house and went to stay with my mom because I couldn’t manage two households anymore. When I got caught up, on Friday night, after rush hour, I drove to Salem like I promised to pick him up.

And truth be told, I needed the drive. You see, my dad used to take me on road trips all the time so I learned the magic that it was for your memory processing young. The fractals at high speeds are hugely beneficial and even if I didn’t have the words for that back then, I knew. It was my plan to do a four-hour drive in under three.

I have this really special skill, that is that I always keep my shit together until the moment I do not have to anymore, and somehow, I just knew. I played my part and kept it together as long as I needed to. Until I didn’t, because somehow I knew I didn’t need to. 

As most of my stories of this nature start, I was listening to The Gambler, and we were both too tired to sleep. Except this time I started bawling and hitting the steering wheel, and speeding. More than I already was.

I was driving too fast and this man in a Viper made eye contact with me while I was passing him. He knew instantly something was up. He saw a 22 year old girl in a remake of a vintage muscle car making bad choices. He sped good to get ahead of me. Then he slowed down. He pissed me off so I tried to pass him and he would not let me. 

Submission. I submitted because I knew his car was more powerful than mine, and because it was exactly how my dad used to act when I would try to race him and he knew the roads out where we were better than I did. I am very good at submitting to authority when the authority is trustworthy, something else that shocks people about me.

I fell back and followed for a while. That was the maddest I have ever been in my life. But all of a sudden with my dad gone and my partner acting like a six-year-old, this dude checked me in a way that was close enough to how my dad used to, that I let it happen because I missed him. I was spiraling out and prescribing myself the symptom so the energy could get loud enough to be processed. Then the Universe handed me, very graciously, a man who knew what I needed next.

I needed someone to remind me that even though these chaotic men threw that energy at me, without a release hatch, my entropy was increasing, and I was not just allowed to take that out on everyone else. Not getting to do what I wanted to do reminded me that my behavior was making everyone else less safe. Domination at the hands of someone compassionate and in control, who knew how to take my energy on the journey it needed was healing.

Shortly after I stopped resisting, he sped up and I stayed close. He got out of my way, and I led for a while. We kept taking turns, he obviously knew the path real well, so I just did what he said. At one point we were yelling out the windows in the dark on the empty highway together and realized we were listening to the same radio station. At first, he released and we agreed to handle this energy together. Commission. Charge.

We saw some good numbers, we saw some good mountains, he reminded me what was allowed and what wasn’t. If I could find him today I’d give him a hug, bead him something ridiculous, and ask to go for a drive because that man held me in the most vulnerable moment of my life so far without even touching me. Then he fell just fell back next to me, saluted, winked, and slowed down to take the exit.

I suppose at some point in the coming decades I’ll have to accept he has passed, but for now, I assume he’s out there and maybe someday our paths will cross and I will get to say thank you and tell him what it meant. What it meant was that Sapling and I lived, because I was pregnant. And my mom had lied to me and told me my dad killed himself on purpose. And I had a fight with him the night before. And it was bad, and I was having a hard time living with myself.

It was a defining moment in my life that taught me I couldn’t rely on what I had known in crisis because it wasn’t good enough. A stranger on the highway played a game with me for two hours and it made me realize everyone in my life was shit to me and no one showed up for me in my crisis the way I did for them. That stranger reminded me that while life wasn’t supposed to be easy, it wasn’t supposed to be that hard.

I still remember how much my brain processed off of that one trip. It taught me that I like being around safe men because I can explore and they will correct me. They will literally pull me down like you would a child when I start getting into shit I am too impulsive to deal with. It is reflective of the trust in my formative relationship with my father and of the safety my friends and strangers have continued to provide.

This may seem like a very non-self-possessed position for me to take here, and I see the arguments to be made for that, but I have spent a lot of time considering it over the years. I did give up on that though when I found research that said submitting to traumatic experiences lessens the impacts, which makes sense intuitively to me because I can see the electricity in my brain, my thought patterns, I know that the times I surrendered to were less difficult to clean up afterwards because the introduction of chaotic fighting energy is hard to clean up. Sitting still is sitting still.

When I do this kind of stuff consciously, playing my little corrective emotional experience games in community, I play with the idea someone is mom or dad because research shows attachment is the key to success. There is also research that shows the ability to display social submission is neuroprotective to the point of giving them a cognitive edge. It’s because you when you do, you are being considerate, thoughtful, using your brain.

There are many concerns people could have about engaging like this, and that is good. Research shows that when submission is defined by “social defeat” then it causes cognitive issues. If it’s coming at you like that, it is not healthy. The chances are that you are exactly what the person in front of you needs are slim, if you feel the urge to do stuff like this to people all the time, you are out of line. Like with everything though, when you do it right, it matters.

Do we all notice how at no point was I ever trapped? He was preventing me from doing something irresponsible, but not making me do anything. He was stopping me from doing something, but not forcing me to do anything. He was following the rules. We existed in a little system we consented to with our continued presence. There is an important lesson there, especially for the time we live in.

The moment force enters the discussion, it is something else entirely. Unless you are endangering others, force has no place without you asking for it. The point is to leave someone freer than they started.