Rampant Insinuations and Wild Speculation

Building Subject Agency: The Blog Post!

This resource list goes with my @beguiledcon 2023 imposter Syndrome Class (link to presentation notes upcoming). I’m happy to add new resources if you leave me a note in the comments. Articles will be in italics and books in bold. Feel free to repost/reblog!

IMPOSTER SYNDROME 101

Review of the current scientific literature regarding imposter syndrome

Self Test for Imposter Syndrome

Neil Gaiman on Imposter Syndrome (thanks @dommestic!) 

Psychology Today’s Imposter Syndrome articles directory

Imposterism by @ultinath

Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges by Amy Cuddy

The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance—What Women Should Know by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman 

IMPOSTER SYNDROME AS A SOCIAL PHENOMENON

Stop Telling Women They Have imposter Syndrome 

How Do I Overcome Imposter Syndrome? tiktok

(resources and inspiration for this section by the lovely Velvetine_Rabbit- thank you!)

SELF HELP FOR CONFIDENCE STRUGGLES

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy(CBT):

More information about cognitive distortions and strategies for questioning them

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT):

Information on using defusion strategies to address negative thinking

Mental Health “Monster” Illustrations

The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT):

More information on opposite action

 The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook: by Matthew McKay, Jeffrey C. Wood, Jeffrey Brantley 

TIPS ON SHAME/SELF KINDNESS

Article on why self compassion is effective

Additional articles/exercises on self compassion by Dr Kristen Neff

Brene Brown video on shame/vulnerability

I Thought it Was Just Me by Brene Brown

TIPS FOR STARTING THERAPY

Kink Aware Professionals Therapist Directory

How I Found a Kink-Positive, Polyamory-Savvy Therapist by Kate Sloan

Fundamentals of Therapy #3: The First Session by Ryan Howes

RESOURCES FOR BEGINNING (AND IMPROVING!) HYPNOTISTS

@binaural-histolog‘s Tumblr especially From Newbie to Hypnotist

Learn Hypnokink website- by @h-sleepingirl and @gleefulabandon

Setting Your Subject Up For Success class notes from @sex-obsessed-lesbian

A Study in Kink blog

@notthesecretsubject‘s educational playlist (especially How YOU Can Become a Better Hypnotist, How to Do Erotic Hypnosis, An Introduction to Hypnotic Inductions)

Beginner’s Introduction to Erotic Hypnosis class by Mesmerotic UK

Hypnokink 101 with Hypnostory and panda ($ video but with lots of hours of content)

Two Hyp Chicks podcast (especially Where to Start?, Improving as Subjects and Hypnotists, and Utlization)

@h-sleepingirl‘s article archive

Trancing in the Sheets video series by Kaz Riley

James Tripp’s Hypnosis Without Trance videos

My Resisting the Top file (combo resistance play with toppy confidence file)

You Know More Than You Think file - by @tennfan2- For switches learning to lean into their top side

Video on working with people with ADHD from @sweettist

Zebu cards - Playing cards with Eriksonian hypnotic phrases- helpful for people learning to speak hypnotically (See also - Salad cards).

Mindplay by Mark Wiseman 

RESOURCES FOR BEGINNING (AND IMPROVING!) SUBJECTS

On Becoming a Skilled Subject by @h-sleepingirl

Learn Hypnokink website- by @h-sleepingirl and @gleefulabandon

Beginner’s Introduction to Erotic Hypnosis class by Mesmerotic UK

@arihi‘s posts on improving as a subject here and here

A Message for Hypnokinky Submissives by @jukeboxemcsa

Some Thoughts on the Acting Dilemma

Hypnosis for People Who Want to Be Hypnotized bu @ultinath

Two Hyp Chicks podcast (especially What Does Trance feel like?, Where to Start?, Improving as Subjects and Hypnotists, and Subject Skills and NLP reframing)

@notthesecretsubject‘s educational playlist

Hypnokink 101 with Hypnostory and panda ($ video but with lots of hours of content)

@wellgnawed has some files focused on gradually improving hypnotic skills here

Test Hypnosis Game by @h-sleepingirl 

Six Days Asleep by @h-sleepingirl (self hypnosis zine)

Train Your Hypnokink Subject Agency by Annalisedefere

Here and Now by @tennfan2 File to help build suggestibility as well as the ability to accept/reject suggestions

Mindplay by Mark Wiseman

KINK 101/CONFIDENCE FOR NEW TOPS/BOTTOMS

Also @deeperforme has this essay about a similar idea called competency threat that is well worth reading!

@charmedhypno is doing an online mini hypnocon ENTIRELY for free on Saturday August 9. I'm presenting my Imposter Syndrome class* at 7pm and there are a lot of other great presenters (Secret Subject! gothsocks! Faeryseelie!) and activities (movie night! Mario Kart! Hypno improv!) lined up on the schedule. If you are curious about what happens at a hypnosis convention or even want to know what the whole community is about, this is an excellent, low-risk way to dip your toes in the water.

The only catch is that REGISTRATION CLOSES THIS FRIDAY August 1. If you don't register in time, you won't be able to come.

For more information, you can join the Chamed Discord here:

Official registration link is here: (You'll need a Discord name and access to Zoom- both are free programs):

If you're seeing this, I would really appreciate it if you reblogged. I think this is a really cool opportunity especially for new/nervous people to see what we're all about!

The writing has been on the wall for years, but now it’s in the boldest of fonts: if there is porn that you like, games with even remotely adult or queer content that you enjoy, queer art you appreciate that features nudity or discussions of bodies, works of fiction that you love that features controversial subjects or themes, or any queer historical records that you think should continue existing, now is the time to build an archive of them. If you are panicked by the growing libricide of LGBTQ and NSFW records from the internet, this is one very impactful thing that you can do right now to help.

Download the files, store them on an encrypted drive, upload them to a protected server, and communicate with other lovers of sexual art and queer records, so that you can help build a library of it that is accessible to us, and those that come after us in the future. If you have the capability, keep meticulous records of what you have collected — where you found it, who originally made it, what year it comes from, the spaces and communities it was associated with, the names of the people who brought it into existence.

As the burning of the Hirschfeld archives and the catastrophic losses of the AIDs crisis taught us, queer history evaporates quickly when there is no one around to keep circulating it. But you can be a part of what keeps our stories flowing, the blood moving through us that keeps us animated and alive. And you do not have to be a trained historian or especially skillful with technology, though now is also a wonderful time to learn how to be a better archivist. Just begin doing something. Save and document all that you can — in a private space that you control, and that technology companies cannot purge.

It is also important at this time to understand how LGBTQ content bans happen on a tactical level, and resist in kind. Collective Shout pressures platforms into removing NSFW content by contacting payment processors, such as Visa and MasterCard, and convincing those companies to not process any transactions involving sexual works. Collective Shout claims that it only took about a thousand phone calls to get the companies to enforce a NSFW ban. We can also call them in large numbers, and demand that adult & queer content gets put back.

If a game that you paid good money for on Steam or Itch.io has been removed in the NSFW ban, you have grounds to demand a refund.Give your payment processor a call, make a complaint, and get them to issue you a charge back. This may help place pressure on both payment processing companies and game platforms to revise their policies.

It is also important during this time to study the recent history of LGBTQ & NSFW censorship on the internet, and learn from communities that have been able to resist it successfully. One of the very first groups to be targeted by efforts like these was actually the hypnosis kink community, back in the late ’90s and early 2000s. During that time, an avid porn site user reportedly disputed hundreds of dollars in charges, alleging that he had been hypnotized into giving his credit card information away against his will. To avoid future such cases, payment processors like Visa and Mastercard refused to honor any transactions for any content involving hypnosis or mind control, and this has remained their policy ever since.

In spite of harsh repression at the hands of credit card companies and digital platforms, the hypnokink community has continued to thrive, and even grown in popularity and public acceptance in recent years. As many of you know, I am a long-term member of this diverse & queer-affirming community — I spent all of last weekend at an in-person erotic hypnosis convention, which I blogged all about on Instagram — so I know a bit about how we have managed to cope with being attacked and have come out stronger and healthier than we were before.

I think that any of us who are concerned by the stripping of queer and sexual content from the internet can learn from how the hypnokink community has responded to similar censorship over the years, and adopt some of their strategies.

One of the first things that the hypno-kink community learned once it was under attack was not to self-snitch. When we got banned from mainstream porn sites, we found the seedy, poorly regulated platforms that were not as likely to enforce payment processors’ ban on hypnosis content. On sites like Pornhub and Patreon, we learned to use terms like mesmerized and other euphemisms instead of hypnosis or mind control, or to merely reference media properties where hypnosis is featured without saying it outright.

We became data hoarders, snapping up copies of every porn video, erotic audio file, animated gif, and illustration featuring hypnosis that we could find, and then sharing it on forums with our fellow fetishists. We learned to make and share our work in private — in chat rooms, on password-protected servers — and began hosting hypnotic content on shared drives and websites we didn’t widely advertise.

Rather than allowing outside groups to censor us, we took community responsibility for maintaining standards of consent and safety, and gave no quarter to predators. At conventions, we require attendees to complete consent quizzes, and provided dungeons with consent monitors. We offer classes on consent, safety, and developing agency as a hypnotic subject. Many of our events ban the use of substances and require COVID vaccinations and KN95 masks in order to reduce risk. We continually debate how best to navigate riskier kink practices and negotiate encounters with one another.

We have continued gathering in person, and in small virtual conferences, because there are conversations about our shared passion that require an in-depth conversation among people who are at a higher level of understanding. We discuss more complex, nuanced topics in rooms where people are prepared to have them, and we understand that every rule has the power to cause exclusion and damage — and appreciate that even the best guidelines need to be broken sometimes. (For example, plenty of people still benefit from using substances for their mental health, even at a “substance-free” con).

Because the kink we are playing with can be psychologically very risky, we emphasize the importance of being in community with one another and vetting play partners, and speak about our experiences so that we can better understand what we’re going through and what we need. We do what we can to unlearn our shame and stigma, and to bring our feelings and needs out into the open — but not in front of corporations and social media platforms that will only punish and censor us.

We come out to one another, and commune to build better art, more responsible and effective hypnotic files, to write hotter smut, to have better scenes, to be able to play at the edges of consent and consciousness with intention and responsibility. This does not erase all of the risk, but it allows us to be informed of it, and to accept what difficulties and costs we take on. Nearly everyone finishes a scene by asking who needs aftercare. We prepare for the emotional drops of having seen and experienced intense shit — and for the most part, we are grateful that we get to dive with such strong parachutes.

It is this combination of privacy, technological shrewdness, dedicated archival and resource-building work, and loving community responsibility that has made us robust. Though so many outside forces have attempted to silence us and portray us as a group of perverted predators, we’ve continued spreading the truth about who we are and helping people who share our desires to find one another, and revel in our passions as safely as we can.

We have escaped the fear mongering and corporate pressure, and made something completely our own. All queer people and all makers of sexual or erotic art can do the same. We will get through this, but we will have to be more than just passive consumers of content.

We will have to become archivists, librarians, developers, community stewards, consent monitors, peer educators, advocates, organizers, and creators in our own right. And we can do it. Queer people have been producing creative work about our identities and inner erotic lives for as long as we have existed, and we have always been able to find one another in the back rooms of bars, in small bookstores in cities, in veiled language in personal ads, and everywhere else that we have tricked our enemies into not looking.

We try, as a community, to watch out for each other. But blind spots happen. Biases still exist and can come into play. And as a community we have a massive racism problem I have no dang clue how to solve. (It ... doesn't help that the most involved PoC organzier for a while acted poorly - including reading aloud a complaint that was supposed to be private, while identifying the person who made it.)

But we're trying. We really, truly are. I think we need to continue to improve on things like expecting our con organizers to serve a limited term (5 years? max?) before they step down, so we can minimize how much institutional influence any one person can maintain, and build structures for folk to step up, learn how to do the work they do, and keep volunteering going. And prevent burnout, burnout is bad.

But when you make communities designed to withstand institutional power, you also have to consider how to make those communities also resist *individual* power, and bad actors who see organizing or educating as a shortcut to people they can exploit. And also making sure those insitutional powers you resist aren't just anti-kink hatred, but racism, transphobia, sexism ... heck, even in-kink biases about things like switches "not being real" (uh, hi, yeah we are) or subby types not being able to be in leadership positions (I might be subby often, but I'm not *your* sub, dear reader.)

And that's hard, hard work. It takes effort, continued self awareness, and a willingness to admit you were wrong, or you fucked up. I've made mistakes I firmly regret in helping to build the community we now have. There are situations I wish I'd handled differently, and harm done to folk I wish I could have prevented.

The writing has been on the wall for years, but now it’s in the boldest of fonts: if there is porn that you like, games with even remotely adult or queer content that you enjoy, queer art you appreciate that features nudity or discussions of bodies, works of fiction that you love that features controversial subjects or themes, or any queer historical records that you think should continue existing, now is the time to build an archive of them. If you are panicked by the growing libricide of LGBTQ and NSFW records from the internet, this is one very impactful thing that you can do right now to help.

Download the files, store them on an encrypted drive, upload them to a protected server, and communicate with other lovers of sexual art and queer records, so that you can help build a library of it that is accessible to us, and those that come after us in the future. If you have the capability, keep meticulous records of what you have collected — where you found it, who originally made it, what year it comes from, the spaces and communities it was associated with, the names of the people who brought it into existence.

As the burning of the Hirschfeld archives and the catastrophic losses of the AIDs crisis taught us, queer history evaporates quickly when there is no one around to keep circulating it. But you can be a part of what keeps our stories flowing, the blood moving through us that keeps us animated and alive. And you do not have to be a trained historian or especially skillful with technology, though now is also a wonderful time to learn how to be a better archivist. Just begin doing something. Save and document all that you can — in a private space that you control, and that technology companies cannot purge.

It is also important at this time to understand how LGBTQ content bans happen on a tactical level, and resist in kind. Collective Shout pressures platforms into removing NSFW content by contacting payment processors, such as Visa and MasterCard, and convincing those companies to not process any transactions involving sexual works. Collective Shout claims that it only took about a thousand phone calls to get the companies to enforce a NSFW ban. We can also call them in large numbers, and demand that adult & queer content gets put back.

If a game that you paid good money for on Steam or Itch.io has been removed in the NSFW ban, you have grounds to demand a refund.Give your payment processor a call, make a complaint, and get them to issue you a charge back. This may help place pressure on both payment processing companies and game platforms to revise their policies.

It is also important during this time to study the recent history of LGBTQ & NSFW censorship on the internet, and learn from communities that have been able to resist it successfully. One of the very first groups to be targeted by efforts like these was actually the hypnosis kink community, back in the late ’90s and early 2000s. During that time, an avid porn site user reportedly disputed hundreds of dollars in charges, alleging that he had been hypnotized into giving his credit card information away against his will. To avoid future such cases, payment processors like Visa and Mastercard refused to honor any transactions for any content involving hypnosis or mind control, and this has remained their policy ever since.

In spite of harsh repression at the hands of credit card companies and digital platforms, the hypnokink community has continued to thrive, and even grown in popularity and public acceptance in recent years. As many of you know, I am a long-term member of this diverse & queer-affirming community — I spent all of last weekend at an in-person erotic hypnosis convention, which I blogged all about on Instagram — so I know a bit about how we have managed to cope with being attacked and have come out stronger and healthier than we were before.

I think that any of us who are concerned by the stripping of queer and sexual content from the internet can learn from how the hypnokink community has responded to similar censorship over the years, and adopt some of their strategies.

One of the first things that the hypno-kink community learned once it was under attack was not to self-snitch. When we got banned from mainstream porn sites, we found the seedy, poorly regulated platforms that were not as likely to enforce payment processors’ ban on hypnosis content. On sites like Pornhub and Patreon, we learned to use terms like mesmerized and other euphemisms instead of hypnosis or mind control, or to merely reference media properties where hypnosis is featured without saying it outright.

We became data hoarders, snapping up copies of every porn video, erotic audio file, animated gif, and illustration featuring hypnosis that we could find, and then sharing it on forums with our fellow fetishists. We learned to make and share our work in private — in chat rooms, on password-protected servers — and began hosting hypnotic content on shared drives and websites we didn’t widely advertise.

Rather than allowing outside groups to censor us, we took community responsibility for maintaining standards of consent and safety, and gave no quarter to predators. At conventions, we require attendees to complete consent quizzes, and provided dungeons with consent monitors. We offer classes on consent, safety, and developing agency as a hypnotic subject. Many of our events ban the use of substances and require COVID vaccinations and KN95 masks in order to reduce risk. We continually debate how best to navigate riskier kink practices and negotiate encounters with one another.

We have continued gathering in person, and in small virtual conferences, because there are conversations about our shared passion that require an in-depth conversation among people who are at a higher level of understanding. We discuss more complex, nuanced topics in rooms where people are prepared to have them, and we understand that every rule has the power to cause exclusion and damage — and appreciate that even the best guidelines need to be broken sometimes. (For example, plenty of people still benefit from using substances for their mental health, even at a “substance-free” con).

Because the kink we are playing with can be psychologically very risky, we emphasize the importance of being in community with one another and vetting play partners, and speak about our experiences so that we can better understand what we’re going through and what we need. We do what we can to unlearn our shame and stigma, and to bring our feelings and needs out into the open — but not in front of corporations and social media platforms that will only punish and censor us.

We come out to one another, and commune to build better art, more responsible and effective hypnotic files, to write hotter smut, to have better scenes, to be able to play at the edges of consent and consciousness with intention and responsibility. This does not erase all of the risk, but it allows us to be informed of it, and to accept what difficulties and costs we take on. Nearly everyone finishes a scene by asking who needs aftercare. We prepare for the emotional drops of having seen and experienced intense shit — and for the most part, we are grateful that we get to dive with such strong parachutes.

It is this combination of privacy, technological shrewdness, dedicated archival and resource-building work, and loving community responsibility that has made us robust. Though so many outside forces have attempted to silence us and portray us as a group of perverted predators, we’ve continued spreading the truth about who we are and helping people who share our desires to find one another, and revel in our passions as safely as we can.

We have escaped the fear mongering and corporate pressure, and made something completely our own. All queer people and all makers of sexual or erotic art can do the same. We will get through this, but we will have to be more than just passive consumers of content.

We will have to become archivists, librarians, developers, community stewards, consent monitors, peer educators, advocates, organizers, and creators in our own right. And we can do it. Queer people have been producing creative work about our identities and inner erotic lives for as long as we have existed, and we have always been able to find one another in the back rooms of bars, in small bookstores in cities, in veiled language in personal ads, and everywhere else that we have tricked our enemies into not looking.

— Francesca Coppa, “Introduction to The Dwarf’s Tale,” The Fanfiction Reader (via francescacoppa)

(a graphic in two panels. In the background of each panel is a staircase and a blurred video of people socializing. The first panel shows a pair of hands holding a pill bottle on the label of which there is a spinning hypnotic spiral and the words: "Hard to swallow pills". The second panel shows the same hands holding three pills. There is a spinning hypnotic spiral on one of the pills. A caption over the top of the hands reads: "There will always be something that you have to miss at a convention in order to do something you want to do more." Overlaying text above and below the graphic reads: "August 9, 2025", "How do you prioritize your time at events?", and "Mini-Charmed! Countdown Day 16". The Mini-Charmed! logo is in the upper right hand corner.)

DAY 16

How do you prioritize your time at events?

Click HERE for the Mini-Charmed!2025 Schedule!

These are the slides from my @beguiledcon 2023 class on Navigating Hypnoamory. I began class by explaining why there's such a strong connection between doing hypnosis and love- historically/culturally, behaviorally, maybe a bit biologically- and then get into navigating love in hypnokinky relationships. (If I teach it again, I may break it into 2 separate classes because I'm not sure I did the 2nd part justice yesterday. )

Slides (with unedited presenter notes) are linked below. I gathered up a few resources- will try and make a resource list a bit later.

If you have a Beguiled ticket, you can listen to the whole class on their podia page! Check your email for the invite. :)

If you have a kink interest, it's likely that someone out there has a compatible interest. If degrading play isn't for you, you don't have to do it. Find your folks.