One thing I have noticed is that responsibility can be a burden. Even in real life (tm). I think everyone goes through a period between being a child/young person who is in education to being an adult who has to take responsibility for themselves and sometimes others. This is especially troublesome if you have a job that involves being a leader of some form. IN those cases, your actions not only impact your own life but potentially the lives of many others and having the guts to make a critical decision in those circumstances can be hard.

Doctors certainly go through this as, to a lesser extent, do teachers. Professions like this have an implicit duty of care - if you don't do your job properly then someone dies/fails exams and it is your fault. When you end up in this situation there are often periods (and I get these all the time in my job) when you stand there thinking 'Why the hell are these people listening to me and doing what I say? I'm no one special.'

I think Doms have a similar duty of care responsibility. When someone puts their entire trust in you, gives you control over every aspect of their life knowing that you can hurt them - and not just hurt them in a BDSM way but possibly accidently injure, maim or kill if they do not do thngs correctly - then you have to feel that responsibility and it probably weighs heavily. And it is not just physical pain you can inflict but social (what if the BDSM activities lose someone their job?), mental (psychological problems) and emotional.

It is this thought which is probably scaring the hell out of your boy. Maybe understanding this will help you? Maybe not. Either way, I agree with all the others that you do need to speak to him at length and without any distractions from play.