by Ayzad While physical practices allow fantasy to run wild, what really thrills BDSM connoisseurs is the opportunity to take advantage of the full-time regime to push the envelope of the most cerebral forms of domination. Few things can prove one’s ownership of a slave more than taking complete control over their life: when they…
Category: Being Broken
BDSM Might Not Be Therapy, But It Can Help
Can BDSM be a form of therapy? Is it therapeutic? What do we actually mean when we use the words “therapy” and “therapeutic”? Therapy means different things to different people. For individuals dealing with mental illness, therapy can be akin to physiotherapy, except happening in the mind. We need to stretch the mind in a correct…
How to Avoid Hurting the One We Love
by Hermes Solenzol It is quite ironic that the person who loves you the best is also the person who is able to hurt you most deeply. Apparently, romantic relationships entail a great deal of suffering. Everybody seems to think that this is unavoidable, that suffering is just the price of admission for being loved….
Do People Get Involved in BDSM Because They’re Broken?
It’s a commonly held opinion that a lot of people become involved in BDSM or an M/s or D/s lifestyle because they are mentally unstable, broken or are working through childhood trauma. Not just by people outside the community who “don’t know any better”, but by people who are actually involved in BDSM, M/s and…
A Letter to a Younger Me – and Any Other Young Doms
by SimonShroud I have been in the D/s lifestyle for coming up on a decade. So much has changed in me during that time. I wish that I could go back ten years and sit down with my younger self and have a little chat about what it means to be a Dominant. I did…
Turning Pain Into Pleasure
Pain is a huge part of BDSM. We seem to talk about it all the time. But, language being the blunt instrument that it is, do we really understand each other when we say things like “hit me” or “i love pain”? For some people, pain directly equates to “abuse” or “self harm”, and there…
The Complex Relationship Between BDSM and Mental Illness
The relationship between BDSM and mental health is complex, and can be confusing. Take, for example, depression. For those in the BDSM community who suffer from depression, is there any relationship? And if there is, was there an attraction to BDSM because of (diagnosed or undiagnosed) depression? Does the BDSM make it better or worse?…
Erotic Humiliation and Degradation
Technically speaking, erotic humiliation and erotic degradation are not quite the same thing, though they are often spoken about interchangably or lumped together as “humilation and degradation”. Humiliation is a mental state, and what humiliates one person may not humiliate another. For example, telling a man he has a small penis may be humiliating, if…
How Kink Heals
by tydominic INTRODUCTION I remember hearing rhetoric over the years such as “What is going to happen when all these kids grow up without active parents? Or in broken homes? Or in difficult times?” Well, here we are and we hurt. We hurt so bad inside that we have to do something about it. But,…
What is Self-Harm?
Most resources will tell you that people who self-harm are seeking emotional relief by self-inflicting pain. Through the presence of pain sensations on your physical level, nerves send signals to the brain and take the mental energy or mental focus away from the intense emotional disturbance from mental issues that one is dealing with. The…