My words had the required effect.<br/><br/>Quite often in matters of the mind, especially in delicate cases, a patient may come to me espousing their wish to be cured of their burdens but be rather reticent when it came to the actual telling. I had found by prompting a defensive, or even angry reaction from them, it causes the patient to break past the barriers of their reluctance to reveal more details than they might necessarily have felt comfortable with.<br/><br/>Such it had proved in the case of Jaclyn.<br/><br/><em><strong>“I made a business decision for my business,”</strong></em>I echoed her words back to her with a slight smile, looking into her eyes as I repeated them back in a steady, defined manner.<strong><em>“For my employees and our well-being,”</em></strong>I paused a moment, tilting my head, noting the potential contradiction in her following sentence, so skipped over it to the next.<em><strong>“Don’t think for a moment that my own survival and health isn't important to me either.”</strong></em><br/><br/>Breaking off another piece of cookie, I let that lay in the air a little as I nibbled on it, before speaking again.<br/><br/><strong>“I want you to remember you said that, Jaclyn,”</strong>I told her, my voice gentle and calm.<strong>“Whenever we talk of addiction, of being owned, and controlled—when you feel those feelings rushing up inside you, when you think about them—I want you to recall what you have just admitted, because it will help to remind you who could be impacted by your decisions—and who you really are.”<br/></strong><br/>Those words were made more pertinent as she spoke further, and I noted quite plainly the tremble in her arm as she holds the leash aloft, the body language as she described the humiliation she had suffered from her enforced self-love, but it didn’t tell the whole story. Though I might read the answers in her posture, it wasn’t enough; she needed to admit it openly, if we were ever to deal with it.<br/><br/><strong>“Tell me about how you felt being ordered to go into the ladies and masturbate—what emotions were you going through? What feelings, urges, thoughts, were you experiencing? And again, in the toilet stall doing the act, and then finding out your pictures were all over the net. Describe to me in detail about how you felt being collared too. Break it down for me, each of those experiences—leave nothing out.”</strong><br/><br/>Letting her process what I was asking for a moment, knowing the likely response, I added yet another challenge.<br/><br/><strong>“And describe to me how you feel right now, given I could potentially look for an image of you in that cubicle right now, to gaze at as we continue this session.”</strong><br/>