The following interchange between Tim/Suzi and me occurred after I posted my Counselling Manifesto. I've been thinking about it and wanted to add further thoughts so moved dialogue into main blog.

I am fascinated to find out that you have been a counsellor. In my experience counsellors have a very ambivalent view of spanking possibly classifying it, at best, in with your 'something more damaging' i.e a risky form of escapism and at worst as a symptom of the personal problems that led you to seek them out in the first place.
It is not treated in the same way that, for example, bisexuality is.
I guess there are lots of reasons for this, one being that counselling is part of the caring professions which is underpinned by a soft left political viewpoint and spanking is seen as reactionary and right wing with its associations with discipline,hierachies, batty old Colonels and disgraced Conservative m.ps.
Bisexuality is seen as being much more radical and transgressive in a good way, something we all should be if we only had the courage to own up to it.

My current counsellor claims to be open minded about spanking but in her heart I think she really feels that if she can crack my depression and anxiety then my desire to be spanked by a firm but loving, strong woman will just fade away.

When I was practicing as a counsellor I was firmly in the closet as spankee, so I was as confused/confusing as the rest of us/them!

I honestly don't think the why/wherefore of being into spanking matters. I hope we get to a point where it's just seen as a facet of many of us and just 'is'. I think some of us are that way as a reaction to something, and others are not. I think the same about being gay, about other fetishes; about being monogomous, polygamous, strait-laced, adventurous; about trans-gender, trans-sexualism, cross-dressing etc, etc. So what? if one's nature is not harmful to others why pathologise?

Your view of where counselling 'sits' is spot on I think. That's why some of us with the desire probably feel so confused and why I was nearly fifty before I 'came out'!

One of the further thoughts I had is that we only seek to pathologise behaviour that is a deviation of what is claimed to be the norm. If I was a monogamous heterosexual who only wanted 'straight' sex with my partner and sought to please him and keep the relationship conventially sexy no psychiatrist or similar would wonder why I was 'like that'and whether I could be different.

Now if I was like that there are at least two readings of such behaviour. I could be a very contented, confident woman with a partner who suited me. Or I could be an insecure damaged and fragile individual who sees sex as the only way of keeping my man and warding off the terrors of facing life alone...

it seems to me that if somebody's nature is a 'deviation' from the sexual norm it could make him or her desperately unhappy and be the true cause of that person's emotional distress. (Although things have improved there is a history of this for gay people, especially those whose religious community, family or culture disapproves)On the other hand one could be a 'kink' who happens to have other traumas in one's life!

I was happy with life when in the kink closet, but I was not true to myself and so I feel more fulfilled now I'm out. The dis/approval issue was a huge barrier though. As a feminist who hates power abuse and has been active in equality issues it was hard to square my odd but powerful fantasies - I didn't dare label them as desires for a long time... I have had dialogues with lovely caring men who also feel odd that despite liking and respecting women they have this fantasy/desire to spank - and of course there are Dommes, male subs and gay people with their own complex issues to try and reframe...

For me, delineating between having masochistic tendencies as part of my sexuality, but not my everyday persona was important. As was exploring cyber and realising that being a spankee was not such a big deal.