I was asked a whole bunch of questions else-net. I will put the answer in both places because I think that this person is not the only one who will want this information from me in the future. First and foremost: whereas my experience has been broad I am just one person. Your personal experiences are going to be different from mine in ways I cannot predict in advance. Take everything I say as very gentle guidance and not as an order. I am not the boss of you. Even though I speak in absolutes and I am a HUGE bossypants. How do you find people? Well I started on the internet because I am a lucky duck and I came of age in that era. I went to www.bondage.com, www.alt.com, www.match.com (ironically where I met my first “online dom”–that’s a lame story if ever there was one), and IRC. I was pre-www.fetlife.com. I don’t actually recommend fetlife as a good place to meet people. Go to munches. (Yes, I know people in NJ. Let me get in touch with people and I’ll see what I can find out about your area.) When you go to munches go with the expectation that most people will be really old, very over weight and fairly ugly. Of course that will not be even remotely true of a lot of people you meet. But if you go with that expectation then you will be prepared for the reality of the bdsm community. We are not the beautiful people. But we are real people. We are creepy sometimes. We are overly intense. People who find there way to the bdsm community have almost certainly spent a lot of their lives feeling rejected, wrong, and disliked. Not everyone but a large chunk. Go expecting to be your own entertainment when you get to a munch. Getting to know people sucks. It’s awkward and stiff and terror inducing. These are perverts. Many of these people would cheerfully tie you up and beat you until you scream bloody murder. The good ones will only do so if you say “Pretty pretty please with a cherry on top.” There will be predators around though. You will have to keep you safe. That is one of the hardest parts of coming into the bdsm community as someone with significant mental health issues. Trust. Bdsm is ALL about trust. The physical sensations are nice and all but really what we are playing with is power. The sadomasochists are going to string me up from a tree. I’m not talking about Dominance/submission. Not all people are into specific power differentiated roles. You don’t have to be either. Maybe you are just into the physical sensations. But I tell you that it feels different to be hit by a friend you love and trust than by someone who doesn’t like you very much. That trust and power bit are very important. If you are officially diagnosed with mental health problems I can guess that you have a hard time picking people who are really safe to be around. I may not be right but I probably am. When you have mental health problems your perceptions of the world are always a bit at an odd angle. It is hard to develop the conscious ability to be rational in judging whether someone is safe or not. You can’t necessarily go by the clues other people tell you to use. For one thing the most important book you will ever read is The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker. When you have that small icki uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach get away from that person and that activity. That doesn’t mean that a creepy guy at the munch means you never come back to the munch. But if you feel chased off by someone creepy (could be a woman or a person of non-binary gender) then the right choice is to network online and find a buddy for the next munch. You still should go meet people. Munches aren’t for everyone. I have also had great luck hunting for partners on www.okcupid.com. Ostensibly it is a “vanilla” site but yeah right. If you want to top you need to make sure you never inappropriately hit anyone. If that sentence makes you feel vaguely worried, well then you need to spend more time thinking about it. Enthusiastic consent is the only way to begin a consensual bdsm scene. If someone is saying, “I’m not sure” then you don’t start. You have to both be completely sure that you want to be doing what you are doing. (I know a lot of experienced bdsm people who will reply that they start bdsm scenes with murky consent sometimes under some circumstances. The point of this essay is for people with mental health issues who are just starting. No, 301 play just isn’t a good plan.) As a beginner negotiate for what you will do rather than what you won’t do. Creative sadists will make you very sorry you thought you could limit the things you don’t want to have happen to you. Take my word for it. Negotiate the activities.