Hey all, so I've been a Dom formally online for about a year or so now. Been an amazing experience met a lot of amazing lovely thoughtful brilliant people through it.

I've also shared and heard a lot of heart breaking stories and been in awe of some of the things my subs and my readers have gone through or overcome or are dealing with.

Helping share moments and find a space with others has helped me forget about hardships I'm dealing with at home as well as other things. Helping others does in many ways help me feel useful or helpful or fulfilled.

(Trigger warning: ideation)

I'm a very empathic Dom. I would say mix between daddy Dom and sadist. I've had an uptick in medium and long running subs online expressing to me their suicidal ideation. Whenever I have a new sub I have a verification and requirements list of criteria more personality driven then anything else about who I am willing to Dom or sext with online.

One of those criteria and is that the person I'm playing with and doting on doesn't have complex mental health problems particularly untreated complex mental health problems.

I always bring this up and I'm upfront but I've bent my rule in the past. I have my own depression anxiety and a lot of baggage from emotional abuse that I continue to have in my personal life.

I'm also hyper empathic, highly neurotic, and very self aware. If someone's genuinely emotionally hurting it hurts me a tremendous amount too and I've found If people spiral I sort of anti spiral to try to help.

My question is the following. How on earth do you enforce strong boundaries about mental health and not being a therapist to your subs?

I am happy to listen and reassure share and connect but the limit I have is

(Trigger warning: ideation) Is when someone says I think I'm going to do X, btw how are you.

I've had a couple situations recently that were really emotionally tough and I didn't know what to do I felt like I was being bullied into being a witness for their mental break. I asked other subs who had ideation or talked people down from dark moments, I consulted the S watch subreddit, I talked to a friend who was training for a assistant psychology role and so on.

And still I don't know how to tell vulnerable people no. I don't know how to limit support when I'm pushed into something I never signed up to being. This is online relationships. I'm not there in person, I can't warn anyone. And I'm finding that the increasing amount of times where someone is pushing me into the

(Trigger warning morbid terminology )

Death witness type position where they're talking about things with me rather than seeking support themselves with a professional or people local to them.

It's exhausting me. And I really try to have a big heart about this but it hurts so much when people tell me something like that. Because I know I'm not in A position to physically be able to change the situation. And it makes me feel powerless and held hostage at the same time.

So that's what I would ask. Please tell me how to have better boundaries with respect to my own mental health when people start to push things on to me that I am not capable of handling in a professional manor.

I have a high capacity for empathy but it's getting to the point where someone says something of that kind and my first feeling is anger because they know at the outset that I'm not able to handle this type of stuff. And yet months later they say it anyway. I don't communicate this anger ofcourse it wouldn't help but I feel it.

And I appreciate and understand that in those dark moments it's not easy to think clearly or rationally. All they want is for their pain to be eased. But also me being pushed into a witness type position is really unfair.

It's happened twice with two online friends. Twice with submissives. And that's people who

(Trigger warning: ideation )

Actively said I'm going to or I think I'm going to X my Y. And thank God they haven't as far as I'm aware. But it's been really difficult every time.

This isn't even including people who've mentioned they struggle with that but just don't formally tell me about it. They go offline I send on check in every so often and sometimes people respond and say hey thanks for still seeing how I'm doing, I was feeling low but I'm better now.

So yeah I am really open to learning from both Doms who've had submissives with this issue, And submissives who have this issue, about how I as a Dom and as someone that is responsible for a sub before during an after a scene to support them without it tipping into becoming a proxy for a psychiatrist or a therapist which I'm absolutely not.

Because the emotional burden is rising and honestly it's making me want to quit the whole thing.

Thanks, and my apologies for anything if worded improperly etc. I really want to understand how to have better limits with respect to my subs and also online friends in general.

Thankyou.