this last week or two has cause me to do a lot of thinking about being submissive and the nature of punishment... and it has caused me to wonder about how other subs react to punishment and what exactly, to them, constitutes punishment.

so, perhaps a little back-story is in order... Master was helping me with a class project... because i have fairly severe ADD and need the help focusing... we spent several days running around putting together all the contacts that i would need to put together a presentation for my disabilities studies class (ddst 310) the project was to be a lecture panel discussion, where the guests spoke about disabilities and the LGBT culture and how the two interacted and intersected...

the problem came when it came time for the presentation to actually happen... Master had been warning me for weeks that i would be punished if i did not follow through and complete the project because we had used friends and associates that we knew in the community as the experts that we were to use in class... no one showed up however because of my procrastination

this of course and rightly so... made Master very angry, the "punishment that was given was a mere 20 lashes with the paddle... nothing huge and rather tame... but for some reason the pain was unbearable and the thought of having had disappointed Master was even worse... after my punishment i was ordered to take a nap out of Masters sight for a while so that he could calm down (he wanted to punish me further)...

i spent the next 2 and a half hours trying to get asleep but failing due to being so completely upset that i eventually ran out of tears... long after the pain had faded and i had calmed down i was still incredibly upset and would burst into tears at the slightest thing...

this caused me to wonder how many other subs out there find that the real punishment... and the real pain, come not from having a punishment administered... but rather from the knowledge that you have somehow upset or disappointed your Dom. And, if this is a common sentiment with other subs... how do you go about correcting your behavior so that you do not disappoint your Master again, and what if anything can you do to calm your tears before you'd normally be done with them (trying to stop them earlier because it upset my Master to see that i was crying so long afterward)