# What if I get emotional? > Crying, laughing, going quiet, floating off, feeling nothing at all. All of these are ordinary responses, and none of them means you have done this wrong. - Canonical URL: https://consensualspanking.co.uk/questions/what-if-i-get-emotional/ - Section: Questions - Updated: November 2026 (2026-11-01) - Audience: consenting adults over 18 only. Everything on this site concerns consenting adults over 18. People rehearse this in advance and dread it: the fear of doing something embarrassing in front of someone they barely know. The reactions people are most ashamed of are the ones any experienced partner has seen many times before. --- ## In short - Crying, laughing, shaking, going silent and floating are all ordinary responses. None of them is a failure. - Tears during a session are usually release rather than distress, and often arrive with no feeling of sadness attached. - Altered states of attention during sustained consensual pain are documented in research, including Ambler et al. (2017). - Whatever comes up, the practical rule is the same: nobody leaves alone, and nobody drives until their head has cleared. Then you get emotional, and it is fine. Crying, laughing, shaking, going completely silent, floating somewhere else, or feeling flatly nothing at all are all inside the ordinary range, and none of them means you have done this badly. I would go further. The fear of reacting embarrassingly stops more people trying this than the pain does. So I will go through what actually happens, because once you know the list is short and boring the dread tends to go out of it. ## Crying Very common, and rarely what people expect. It often turns up with no feeling of sadness attached, which is the part that confuses people afterwards. You are not upset. Your eyes are simply going, and there is a kind of relief underneath it. For some people tears are the point, or close to it. A week of holding everything together comes apart and there is enormous relief in that. For others it happens once and never again. Both patterns are normal, and a partner worth having neither aims for tears nor panics at them. What a good partner does is check briefly and keep going or stop as you direct. "Colour?" is the whole intervention. Someone who stops dead and apologises at the first tear can be almost as unhelpful as someone who ignores it, because it makes the crying into a problem you now have to manage for them. ## Laughing Also very common, and almost never means what people fear it means. Nervous laughter is a stress response. It arrives most often in the first two minutes of a first session, when the situation is absurd and enormous at the same time and the body picks something to do with the tension. It is not mockery, and it does not mean you are not taking it seriously. If you are the one being laughed at and it stings, say so afterwards rather than hardening the session in response. Turning up the intensity to wipe the grin off someone is how good evenings go wrong. ## Going quiet Some people get louder. Others go completely silent, stop responding, and look from outside as though something has gone wrong. Usually nothing has. Attention has narrowed to the point where speech is too much work. This is the reason non-verbal signals matter. Agree one in advance, an object to drop or a hand to squeeze, so that silence never has to mean consent. It is covered properly on [safe words](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/safe-words/), and it is the part of that page most people skip. ## Floating Sustained rhythmic pain, in a setting your body has decided is safe, produces a state that is genuinely altered rather than metaphorically so. Ambler and colleagues, publishing in *Psychology of Consciousness* in 2017, documented measurable changes in participants during BDSM activity consistent with reduced self-awareness and a narrowed, present-focused attention. Described from inside it feels like floating, or warmth, or a very pleasant absence of the running commentary in your head. It clears over half an hour or so, and while it is clearing your judgement is not fully back. There is a fuller account on [headspace](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/headspace/). > **The practical consequence.** Do not drive, do not make decisions, do not agree to anything new and do not go home alone while you are still floating. Sort out how you are getting home before the session starts, not after. This is the single most useful line in the whole of aftercare. ## Feeling nothing Worth naming because people find it deflating. Some sessions produce no catharsis at all. You feel the sensation, it ends, you have a cup of tea and you go home more or less as you arrived. That is not a failure and it does not mean this is not for you. First sessions in particular are often too busy with logistics and self-consciousness to produce much. If it happens repeatedly, something in the setup is probably wrong rather than something in you. ## Afterwards, including two days afterwards The reaction that catches people out is not the one in the room. It is the low, flat, tearful patch that turns up a day or two later with no obvious cause, and it happens to both sides. There is a page each on [sub drop](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/sub-drop/) and [top drop](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/top-drop/), and knowing it exists in advance takes most of the alarm out of it. Tell whoever you did this with that it is happening. That is what the contact afterwards is for, and any decent partner would far rather get a message on Tuesday than find out weeks later. > ### If it went somewhere darker than that > > > > Occasionally something comes up that is not about the spanking at all. Samaritans, **116 123**, free, any hour. Mind has plain information on shame, anxiety and finding a therapist at [mind.org.uk](https://www.mind.org.uk). ## Read next - [Aftercare, and what it is actually for](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/aftercare/) - [Headspace and altered states](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/headspace/) - [Sub drop](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/sub-drop/) - [Safe words and non-verbal signals](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/safe-words/) ## Sources 1. Ambler, J. et al. (2017). "Consensual BDSM Facilitates Role-Specific Altered States of Consciousness." *Psychology of Consciousness*, 4(1). [doi:10.1037/cns0000097](https://doi.org/10.1037/cns0000097) ## Common questions ### Is it normal to cry after a spanking when I am not upset? Yes, and it is common enough that experienced partners expect it as one of the ordinary outcomes. Crying during or after consensual spanking is usually a release rather than a distress signal, and it often arrives without any accompanying feeling of sadness. It is not a sign the session went wrong, and it is not something you owe anyone an explanation for. ### Why do I feel spaced out after being spanked? Sustained rhythmic pain in a safe, consensual setting produces altered states of attention that have been documented in research on BDSM participants, including reduced self-awareness and a narrowed focus on the present moment. People describe it as floating, or as going quiet inside. It usually clears over half an hour or so, and you should not drive, make decisions or leave alone until it has.