Broken Toys is a site for Dom/mes, Masters, Mistresses, and Owners who are coping with subs/slaves with mental illness, severe psychological damage, and/or neurological disorders.

Being in charge of another human being is a great and difficult responsibility. Any parent will tell you that. It's especially difficult when that human being has issues that get in the way of "normal" behavioral functioning, and cause them (and you) pain and difficulty. Much of the standard traditional "slave training" falls down when faced with one of these special needs s-types (submissives, slaves, bottoms, etc), and the current conventional wisdom seems to be "Don't do it. Get a healthy one."

But that's not helpful to the people who are already committed to their partner, already doing power-exchange, and not ready to give in and jettison either their partner or their power-exchange dynamic. The inegalitarian dynamic is hard to talk about in support groups for Partners Of X. And, anyway, if you're supposed to be In Charge, you want to be able to do the best you can with the material you've got.

Why did I call this website Broken Toys? I know that it might hurt the feelings of some s-types who read those words, but this site isn't a support group for the s-types. It's intended to be a help site for the ones in charge of them, who may often feel like a Broken Toy is exactly what they got ... but they value it anyway, and want to do what's best. (Broken Tops are an entirely different and much more complicated problem, and not something we are addressing here.)

Please contribute to this site

We're just getting started with this page, and the more perspectives we can offer, the better. This is what I am looking for:

• · Essays from Dom/mes, Masters, Mistresses, and Owners about dealing with subs or slaves with mental illnesses, severe psychological damage, and/or neurological disorders. Actual experiences with actual people, not theoretical speculation. Discuss what the problems were, what you did about them, what worked and what didn't. Practical tips for specific conditions or diagnoses are most useful.
• · Essays from subs or slaves who have any of these problems, about what you did with Master X and Mistress Y that worked. Again, real examples from real relationships. Keep discussion of everything that went wrong to a minimum, and concentrate on what might be useful for a D-type with an s-type like you.
• · Essays from mental health practitioners who understand power exchange and have counseled such folks. Concentrate on what the D-type can actually do to help, beyond finding a supportive mental health professional. You might discuss ways to effectively work with less supportive mental health practitioners.

We aren't assuming that this information can help the D-type to "heal" the s-type. Instead, we're trying to come up with useful strategies to help the partners function in a healthy power exchange relationship while navigating the attendant difficulties of a Broken Toy. Please submit essays to us at cauldronfarm@hotmail.com.