Brace yourselves. A text wall is coming. I recommend splitscreening the thread with my reply >.> Though I might fiddle and add in quotes, to make it easier?
BML-20XX: I’d love to put text to some images; I hadn’t considered that. Are there any rules about which images are okay/not okay to appropriate?
Metals: I wouldn’t recommend sleepychat as your first port of call, as its UI allows for complete anonymity (no IP addresses) and consequently, complete lack of accountability. As far as your anxieties go, I /personally/ am not convinced your anxieties have necessarily been holding you back from becoming hypnotized. I’ve known some terribly anxious and overanalytical types, and those traits ultimately did not prevent any of those subjects from experiencing profound hypnosis. However, being analytical does come with the territory of /appearing/ to be a difficult subject, or a subject with a block. I’ll tell you a secret. I’m an impressively subby hypnoslut, sometimes. Hypersuggestible to boot. Despite this, I have often been called a difficult subject.
I will illuminate. You see, suggestion is a wonderfully powerful tool. So powerful, in fact, one does not even need a hypnotic state to experience hypnotic effects, if the suggestion is delivered with sufficiently dissociative language (
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810011002753). However, many hypnotists prefer to use imperatives, authority, and instruction in their trances. And it can work! But neurologically speaking, it’s far more similar to guided meditation (with sexy fetish awesomeness, perhaps :D) than a state in which a person feels themselves being compelled to sink into a trance.
Some people interface with suggestion in such a way that it doesn’t matter whether or not objectively dissociative language is used – what matters to them more is that they are being given the signal to go into trance. Other people, /especially/ analytic sorts, do not experience hypnosis in response to this style because the signal does not translate to anything. Because even ‘You must obey’ ultimately means ‘You must carry out these actions at my behest’. In dissociative language, you are not given the time of day to dream of carrying out those actions – they just happen, of themselves. And it is possible to be a very good hypnotist and not use that style! But it does mean that subjects like us can be, to the more unfortunately egotistical hypnotists, labelled as ‘difficult’ when we are in fact responding exactly right.
We are not forcing anything, and we are not fighting anything that seems to take. We can get nervous about it, but ultimately that doesn’t have to matter.
If I may be so bold, I invite you to entertain the notion that it’s not you; it’s them. (Not that I’m necessarily the answer to your hypnoprayers myself! I am no saviour.)
Eshie is very right about limits, and knowing what one wants beforehand. I think that explicitly outlining wants and limits is something of great importance not only to the hypnotist, but to the subject. Speaking as someone who has been there and back again at the hands of hypnoabuse, sometimes not being grounded in the foundation of one’s own wishes can have disastrous consequences. It can be fun to be blank, mindless, and unconcerned with what one experiences in the midst of a hypnotized and vulnerable state, of course. But it’s not always as simple as being able to stop if you want to. When one is uncertain about what one wants, sometimes the mind can become dangerously malleable. This isn’t meant to scare anyone off, but is to say that hypnoabuse can happen, and people can do things while hypnotized they later regret, or realize they never /wanted/ to do in the first place. Consider it similar to alcohol – hypnosis can be a gateway to abuse, and even though it doesn’t de facto *make* you drool there and take it, it does make drooling there and taking it far easier, for better or worse.
Back to your writing, Metals, about stopping being nervous and actually trying something; there is no need for you to do anything with any anxiety you might have. The idea is generally to pay attention, and see what happens Hypnosis is about how a person responds; there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.
Eshie: Feel free to message me
JonSmisu: Being hypnotized can be very useful in refining one’s hypnotic techniques, because the first-hand experience can offer a lot of fodder for describing to your subjects what it /feels/ like to become hypnotized. I firmly believe, though, despite my own hypnosluttiness, that being hypnotized is not at all a requirement for being good at hypnosis. Hypnosis is no more intrinsically awesome than *insert random recreational drug here, it doesn’t really matter which*. And yes, the enthusiasts /will/ rave about how incredible it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s something you should want, or even something you are objectively missing out on.
MrGerp gets it. Yesyes.
Strangeperson’s advice brings me to a slightly indulgent mini-tangent :3 Incorporating the knowledge of what a subject has experienced while being hypnotized before can definitely be useful, but if one co-opts this too much, one runs the risk of losing a bit of the authority over the present hypnotic experience due to the effects being based in part on a previous session. The dirty hypnocunt trick I like to employ is to ask my subjects what it was like to be hypnotized before, and describe how the conditions of the previous session weren’t quite ideal for the present session. And then I tend to segue into explicitly suggesting why the present environment is not entirely dissimilar, but ultimately *better*. By doing this, I connect somewhat to the past while having the hypnotic experience be entirely the product of the suggestions I deliver to the subject. (Fun note about dissociative language – it doesn’t really matter if you know how it works, it’s still going to work :P Perhaps even moreso!)
Mindwipe: Personally, I do not put more faith in the man that projects confidence over the man who admits fear; especially considering that more often than not, they are one in the same. I imagine that JonSmisu does not fear his craft, but rather has his own nuances regarding how he /personally/ might have a bad experience due to his own qualities rather than due to the craft itself. And, sometimes, even the deepest fears become irrelevant when a person learns to suspend them for a time, and a purpose
As for saying ‘I doubt it would work’ ensuring that hypnosis won’t work, I must disagree. And, in a way, saying ‘I doubt it would work means it isn’t going to work’ is kind of…meta-digging oneself into a hole :P If we are talking about hypnotic compulsions rather than suggestive meditations, doubt really doesn’t come into it. I encourage my subjects to doubt as much as they like – and in truth, dismissing the power of their doubts can be the first step to a very successful session.
JonSmisu, founder of page 4! Now I feel silly for drawing inferences about what you meant :P But vaguely gratified by not being too far off the mark XD
Dr_Mabuse: To be fair, going back to the drug analogy, people can be scared of trying a drug even when it isn’t dangerous, for many reasons. I don’t think this is too different.
As far as hypnotherapy goes, the hypnoservers on cuff-link.me tend to have more trained hypnotherapists in them than sleepychat.
TheKinkyFinn: Usually, the assholes who would use hypnosis to dishonourable ends don’t have the patience to learn how to do it to any degree that would make them pose a threat. The people who /are/ experienced with hypnosis also tend to not be assholes. But, it does happen. The best way of handling that is honestly by becoming intimately familiar with your own desires, and with living your life in accordance to said desires. By doing this, when (if? I don’t know) you are hypnotized, it will be faaaar more difficult for anyone to take advantage of you, no matter how hard they try.
As far as language patterns go, it is indeed possible to give someone a bad experience, but often it is less about taste and more about unintentionally harmful language (even in therapeutic and well-meaning sessions). Is Finnish your native language? Also, do you play Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2 because there is totally a quote in it about miserable piles of secrets <3
So that’s… just over 1400 words. If you got through to the end of this post, you deserve a medal >.>
