I’m learning so I have no personal experience, but I came up with a strategy working through it in my own mind which I thought might be useful for other subs to acclimate to safewording easily – get used to calling “yellow” frequently. There’s a lot of pressure when it feels like you’re making an all-or-nothing choice. It’s much easier to say “This is the max I can take,” or “I need this to slow down/ease up.” If after the Dom does that you still feel distressed, you can always call “red” after.

instructor144:

I completely agree with this. There is a tendency – and I am as guilty of this as the next person – to write about this stuff as if it is a binary On/Off switch: Safeword is invoked. Scene ends. Aftercare ensues. Real scenes aren’t like that. I should get better about working that into the things I write about safeword, since in the real world I always put a big emphasis on using “Yellow” frequently. For precisely the reasons you outline, especially that pressure re: safewords. Safewords are freighted with a lot of psychological and emotional baggage for submissives; my piece “The Safeword Minefield” gets into that baggage at length.

Submissives: use “Yellow” in any of the situations this Anon describes, or any situation where you’re in distress but don’t feel it’s a scene-stopper.

Dominants: when your submissive Yellows: Stop. Communicate. Regroup. Take a breather. Then determine as a team how and when to continue.