Pain is not always punishment.
Sometimes it is presence.
Sometimes it is possibility.
For those of us who live with chronic pain—or who play at the edge of sensation—there’s a kind of alchemy in learning how to meet pain not with resistance, but with attention. This is not just survival. This is art. This is kink. This is healing.
And sometimes… this is erotic.
The Body is a Site of Reclamation
Chronic pain teaches you to live in negotiation. Your body becomes a terrain of both resistance and resilience. And in that negotiation, we can begin to ask:
What if pain didn’t just have to be endured—but explored? Witnessed? Eroticized?
This is not to romanticize pain. But it is to recognize that power lives in the stories we tell about it.
That erotic power may not come from the pain itself—but from our relationship to it.
11 Ways to Turn Toward Pain (and Possibly, Toward Pleasure)
Based on Dr. Andrew Block’s chronic pain coping methods, with a sensual, kink-informed lens.
1. Altered Focus
Shift your attention.
Focus on your fingertips.
Imagine warmth blooming from the inside out—like candle wax pooling in your palm.
Where the mind goes, sensation follows.
This is edging without touching. Seduction by redirection.
2. Dissociation
Place your pain in a chair across the room. Give it a name.
Tell it: you may exist, but you do not get to lead.
Watch it. Study it. Undress its urgency.
Even in pain, you are the one in control.
3. Sensory Splitting
Can you separate the burn from the ache?
The throb from the sting?
Dissect the sensations. Get curious.
What’s sharp? What’s dull? What’s almost… delicious?
Like teasing apart pleasure from pain—until you no longer care which is which.
4. Mental Anesthesia
Picture a cool numbing mist washing over your skin.
A gloved hand administering a slow Novocain drip to your lower back.
Let the sting go silent.
A ritual of quiet. A consensual mute button.
5. Mental Analgesia
Imagine your body flooding itself with morphine.
Or perhaps, endorphins—your own homegrown high.
The drip is internal. The rush is sacred.
Pain becomes the invitation. Relief, the climax.
6. Transfer
Warm one hand between your thighs.
Place it over your aching hip.
Let your body believe the warmth is medicine.
This is self-sorcery. This is energy play.
7. Age Regression/Progression
Time travel to a moment before the pain.
Or after the pain.
Dwell there.
Act as if this body were already whole.
Fantasy is the kink. And sometimes, fantasy heals.
8. Symbolic Imagery
Pain as a red light.
A blaring siren.
Now dim it. Mute it.
Turn the dial until it becomes nothing more than background.
Your pain is a playlist. You are the DJ.
9. Positive Imagery
Picture a place where your body feels sacred.
A sun-warmed rock. A bed draped in silk.
A partner whispering “yes” against your shoulder.
Let your nervous system believe it.
Eroticism begins with safety.
10. Counting
Count your breaths.
Count your exhales.
Count the seconds it takes for the pain to crest—and then recede.
Build a rhythm. Build a scene.
This is a metronome for the masochist. A cadence of control.
11. Pain Movement
Move the ache from your lower back into your wrist.
From your wrist to your fingertips.
From your fingertips into the room.
Release it.
Pain is not fixed. It is fluid. Like desire.
What If the Pain Is Not the Problem?
What if the pain is the portal?
Not to suffering, but to sensation?
Not to punishment, but to presence?
There is erotic power in reframing the body—not as broken, but as brilliant. As adaptive. As responsive.
Kink practitioners have known this for centuries: pain can be information. It can be intimacy. It can be sacred.
Final Note: Pain Is Not Always Sexy. And That’s Okay.
This isn’t about glorifying trauma or dismissing the reality of suffering. Not all pain is erotic. Not all pain should be.
But in the quiet moments—when you’re practicing breathwork, or visualization, or lying still while heat pools in your spine—there’s a chance to relate to your body not with shame, but with reverence.
To ask not, “Why is this happening to me?”
But rather, “What is this sensation asking of me?”
And sometimes, the answer might be:
“To listen. To slow down. To touch myself gently.
To fantasize about what healing might feel like—
and then breathe into that image
until it becomes real.”