Confessions of an Amateur Hypnotist

Me:

Feels increasingly out of the loop and detached from the online hypnosis kink community (see, @ellaenchanting?! I was about to type “hypno” and I stopped myself!)

Wants to find a way back into relevance again

Comes to Tumblr to reconnect

Five minutes later…

So I’ve been tossing this topic around in my head for a while, and decided to finally tackle it. Having been on Tumblr for 3-4 years now, and exploring hypnosis online for probably 7-8, I have learned how important proper communication is in online interactions. Especially when trying to drop someone into trance, the words you use and how you write can greatly affect your relationship with a given person, or at least affect how they see you. And while I know I can sometimes be a grammar snob, I think it’s fair to say that, as a sub, there are few things that bring me out of a text-based or file trance than confusing or jarring language. So I just want to lay out 3 things for text Doms and script writers to pay attention to when hoping to entrance lovely subs like me, and to show why they might be problematic.

1) Punctuation - Now Im not talking about the proper use of semicolons and hyphens Im just talking about commas periods question marks and exclamation marks Its really hard to follow someone if they necer at least use a period to separate sentences You can never really tell where one sentence ends and another begins Imagine you’re trying to make a sub blank and mindless and then they have to think hard just to decipher your next message because its a neverending sentence It kinda ruins the experience and distracts from the point of the text Ending punctuation can also change the meaning of a sentence For example youre in trance can have a different meaning depending on if its followed up with a period a question mark or an exclamation mark so sometimes that distinction can be important Also those sorts of final punctuation marks can help denote tone which is very important since no ones tone is obvious in text and while one person thinks they just sent a joke the other person might see it as an admonishment Also you can always send sentences as separate messages from each other if youre not sure how to end them

2) Formality - Now, im not talkin bout soundin like a prince r business man here. Im just saying that some subs, such as myself, might have a hard time takin u seriously if u type like ur a 12 yo new to the online scene. Not everyone gets the same abbr. u do, so that is something to be aware of. But more importantly, sometimes shortenin words for the sake of brevity takes away ur feelin of bein in charge bc it makes u seem young n immature n not so much in charge, more like a child rather than the take-charge man u want ur potential sub to see in you. Maybe this is just me? i also admit that i am pretty anti-baby talk outside of jokin, appropriate scenes, and a pre-discussed arrangement, so maybe that colors my point.

3) Proofreading - This is SO important that I’m not even gonna joke-write on this one. With the advent of auto-correct, a lot of us have forgotten the art of proofreading before letting other people see your work. But this is SO GODDAMN CRUCIAL when it comes to text hypnosis! If you send a message while dropping someone into trance with a massive typo or an autocorrect fail, the LEAST it will do is confuse them. They might get booted out of trance out of confusion or anger or fear at something you didn’t intend to send. Or worse, the mistake might cause a drastically different effect than what you wanted that could be catastrophic. Just taking an extra second or two to re-read your previous message can make a world of difference, and might save a fun foray into erotic trance from disaster. If you wanna see what I mean about how dramatic a change can happen from one little error, look up “The The Impotence of Proofreading” by Taylor Mali. I highly recommend watching him recite it on YouTube, you’ll definitely catch the issues there that you might not spot just reading it.

And a side note for hypnotists whose primary language is not English. Don’t worry, I know most subs can tell when you’re not a native speaker, but that doesn’t mean that’s the end. Make sure they are aware, that you’re up front about it, and if you don’t know the exact word for what you want, don’t be afraid to ask.

I agree with the formality point, with the slight caviet that it’ll differ depending on the person. For example I find all lowercase letters hard to read seriously, but someone else wouldn’t have an issue. But yeah, drop the text speak during inductions.

As for proofreading, I think that typos are easier to manage than that. I am far from a good proofreader (as anyone reading my posts know), and most subs won’t care that much, I would think. I know one who will get jarred out by awkward typos though.

Hi! I’m binaural-histolog. I talk about hypnosis, and I keep a blog collecting useful recreational hypnosis things.

You’re interested in hypnosis, and you want to hypnotize your partner, for many possible reasons. There’s lots of tips and blog posts, but nothing makes any sense and it’s all overwhelming and you’re terrified that you’ll try and fail.

It’s okay. You’re not alone. Everyone was where you are now. There is a plan.

Don’t worry if you don’t know anything about hypnosis to begin with. After you go through this plan, you’ll be in a good place to do more, but this is all about getting familiar, getting comfortable, and having fun.

This guide is also intended to be read with you following the links, and reading through the more in-depth associated material. You don’t have to read everything, but you should at least read through the inductions and pretalk links.

This is a guide to recreational hypnosis. I’m not going to talk about hypnotherapy here, except to say that you shouldn’t do it. Also, while this guide does not contain erotic suggestions in itself, it does have links to material that may assume erotic hypnosis and/or kink. You are safer not clicking anything if you’re at work. The further reading bits at the end of this guide get progressively more NSFW.

The Plan

The plan is to follow each of the following steps in order, going over some overall negotiation and risks, explaining the structure of a hypnosis session, and then going through each stage. You may do several sessions within each stage, but you should not progress to the next stage until you are familiar and comfortable with the previous stages.

Negotiation. This describes the discussion with your partner about what you both want and establishing consent.

Risks. This describes the various things that can go wrong in a hypnosis session, and how to address them.

Session Structure. This explains the structure of a hypnosis session and how stages interact with the structure.

Beginner Stage is a progressive muscle relaxation (PMR). This is intended to run through the structure and get familiar.

Journeyman Stage uses the Elman Induction. This is a workhorse session that focuses on deepeners and suggestions.

Adept Stage uses a fractionation induction. This starts to play with session structure and introduces the concept of triggers.

Expert Stage uses a reinduction trigger and extemporaneous patter. The session structure is loose, and uses more advanced suggestions.

The stages are named after D&D levels, so don’t go around calling yourself an expert hypnotist because you’ve gone through the guide. This is enough to get you off the ground and exploring in new directions.

Tumblr Note

This is the tumblr post version of the guide.  The canonical URL for this guide is https://binauralhistolog.keybase.pub/newbie.  I’ll try to keep these in sync, but Tumblr being what it is, this version may be a bit out of date.

It’s way too safe and boring for kinksters who want to get into hypnosis and are risk tolerant.  

It goes way too slowly for geeks who can braindump several books on hypnosis into their heads and come up with a working practice by cross-referencing them.

It’s not good for analytical subjects who will get itchy at the PMR and want to go to the Elman immediately.

However.  There are resources for geeks and kinksters who want to get into erotic/recreational hypnosis already and work up a skill tree.  The only semi-decent non-kinkster book out there is Look Into My Eyes by Peter Masters, and that has a number of flaws that this guide attempts to hit head on.

The problems that experts run into in teaching newbies is that they forget how much they already know already.  The learning curve in hypnosis is damn steep, and there’s lots of jargon and assumptions.  Most people aren’t geeks.  Most people don’t read books.  Most people don’t read Tumblr.  Even Reddit is pretty out there.   I am on https://www.reddit.com/r/EroticHypnosis/ and most of the people who come in and post “How do I hypnotize someone?” have nothing.  Literally, they don’t even know where to start.  These people are babes in the woods, and they get freaked out by the kinkster scene.

Once they get past how to start and read through things, they’ve got to explain to their partner what they want to do and their partner then also has to figure out what’s going on.  The activity itself is scary and unfamiliar and bears no resemblance to anything that two people do in a room together.  Their partner may not be kinky.  Their partner may be have concerns about hypnosis as a mind control fetish.

Everything in the guide is stiff, un-fun and boring for a reason.  It makes hypnosis safe and it locks down all the sharp edges so it goes at the partner’s speed.  There’s an emphasis on negotiation and pretalk to reassure the partner and stop the hypnotist from rushing too far ahead with porno tropes/HFOs.  There is no re-induction suggestion in the first stage because it’s designed for someone who has never been hypnotized before in their life and doesn’t know if they’re ready for a hypnotic suggestion to be stuck in their head.  The guide is light on suggestions and triggers because it gives time and space for the partner to decide that it’s not mind control and they’re okay with it.

The PMR is there as the most familiar to the subject experience of hypnosis, along with the most physically pleasurable one.  The guide itself goes into detail as to why the PMR is first, and I think everyone should know both the PMR and the Elman even if they have a strong preference for one or the other.

You make a good point that there’s no fallback if an induction fails.  I really have a visceral distaste for confusion inductions and don’t know why anyone likes them… but fine.  I’ll go back and update the guide to address that.  I will add the 7+2 induction and indicate that you can swap out inductions in different stages, so you can start with the Elman in Beginner stage.

“The problems that experts run into in teaching newbies is that they forget how much they already know already.” This is true, especially for those of us who have learned by slamming multiple things into each other without any real formal learning. It’s hard to explain where to start if you honestly don’t know how you started, or if you’re first experience was with something super complex that you just assumed was simple or how everyone did it.

Hello! We’re Dreamychat, the newest chat site for all your recreational hypnosis needs. We’ve been here a few months, and are happy to invite you to join our growing community. By force or otherwise.

We offer:

Matchmaking, for your quick hypnosis needs!

Ease of use, you can chat without making an account, but making one will let you use all our neat features!

A commitment to mobile and PC users alike, our site was designed from the start to be convenient and easy for both.

A commitment to your privacy, we will not publish your data in any way, and our mods are kept accountable for anything they do.

We’re standalone, so you don’t have to worry about crossover with non-hypno accounts.

We’re open to hypnotists of every skill level, if you’ve been doing this for thirty years, a decade, or ten days, you’re welcome.

We support all types of hypnosis, from the vanilla to the extreme.

Hello! We’re Dreamychat, the newest chat site for all your recreational hypnosis needs. We’ve been here a few months, and are happy to invite you to join our growing community. By force or otherwise.

We offer:

Matchmaking, for your quick hypnosis needs!

Ease of use, you can chat without making an account, but making one will let you use all our neat features!

A commitment to mobile and PC users alike, our site was designed from the start to be convenient and easy for both.

A commitment to your privacy, we will not publish your data in any way, and our mods are kept accountable for anything they do.

We’re standalone, so you don’t have to worry about crossover with non-hypno accounts.

We’re open to hypnotists of every skill level, if you’ve been doing this for thirty years, a decade, or ten days, you’re welcome.

We support all types of hypnosis, from the vanilla to the extreme.

Hm, Skittles/Starburst for my fruity enjoyment, Milky Ways and Dark Chocolate M&Ms for my chocolate.

Vampires! I’m surprised flower didn’t pick the kappa. :P

And I have no idea. Honestly, I wouldn’t feel comfortable guessing. I’d like to think that if I did die violently, it would be a glorious one for the sake of someone else.

Or I just get bitten by a zombie three minutes into the apocalypse. Yeah, that’s more likely.

You ______             went into a haunted house                      the woods                      the entrance to a cave                back and back and back and back again       watched a creepy children’s show that no one else remembers       played the same video game for hours until it started speaking to you

You ______       went looking on the internet, so this is all your fault, to start with       were a child when it happened               more than old enough to have known better       heard the rumors       knew                            them to be true                and did not want

The worst thing about your trauma is that it isn’t even original

You ______       found a photo in your mailbox       saw someone squatting in the corner       heard someone breathing funny on the other end of the line       smelt blood                blood like burnt copper                          in the back of your throat like vomit                                you hadn’t stopped screaming until then

It ______    had a featureless white face           a smile slit from ear to ear with gleaming teeth                       painted red, still dripping           skin flayed apart like leather    loped along on three limbs, hair matted, stinking of rotting meat                        gracefully, limbs moving like a manikin’s    stood unnaturally tall and slender, and you did not dare approach it    appeared for a single frame in three hours of raw footage      knew your name    was covered head to toe in blood           a corrupted jpeg           gone completely the next time you tried to find it           a monster    was a man          

The worst thing about your trauma is that they don’t believe it even then

You ______       have to retell the story, until you sound convincing                    relive the fear                             the sickening shudder of terror                                           in exhaustive, gratuitous detail                             the way you felt when it looked at you                             whatever you did to survive                    be horrific, horrify them, let the lie awake nights contemplating                    make it about the monster                    be the perfect victim for this story        are nothing special, otherwise                          out of the ordinary                          they haven’t heard a dozen times before                       

It’s ______      finally over      all cheap chills and gore and guts      an edgy, overused cliche      a monster unworthy of mythology      right outside your house, face pressed against the window                                              howling obscenities at the moon                           whispering through the door        right behind you      in the mirror      still circulating the internet      still down there, in the caves                                   the woods                                   the cove                                   the abandoned sanitarium                                behind the basement door

Looking for some terror-filled treats to play this halloween?  We’ve got you covered.  Here are ten of our favourite horror games we’ve featured over the last year.  Have a delightful and frightful halloween!

Play With Me – a terrifying first person horror in which you attempt to escape from a house that’s haunted by a very freaky clown ghost.

Letter To A Friend – a freaky first person horror that draws inspiration from old silent movies and analogue recordings to create a short, surreal and very scary experience.

Pictures of a Reasonably Documented Year – You find an old computer and investigate the files on it. Was the owner insane or was something sinister really going on?

Never Look Back – a well crafted lovecraftian point and click adventure in which you face your inner demons and attempt to escape a nightmarish mansion.

The House Abandon – an intense text based adventure created by one of the Alien Isolation devs, in which the environment you’re playing in reacts around you – so much so that we guarantee that you’ll look over your own shoulder a few times while playing it!

Ghost City Rising – a fun first person roguelite in which you attempt to scale a high rise apartment block that’s packed full of haunted furniture!

The Final One – a very creepy (and unintentionally weird) FPS horror adventure in which you attempt to uncover the occult mysteries surrounding a doll museum in which all the exhibits have started to come to life!

Anxiety: Lost Night – a point-and-click horror game in which you play as a young woman who, after experiencing some sort of panic attack, finds her car has stalled at the side of the road. Can you get it started?

POWER DRILL MASSACRE – an absolutely terrifying third person survival horror that draws inspiration from 80’s video nasty slasher flicks and PS1-era survival horror games to create a grimy, sinister, suspense-filled adventure that’s unlike anything you’ve ever experienced.

The Room – a jump scare filled low rez first-person horror game, in which you must navigate ten rooms, and use an Aliens-style motion detector to avoid invisible monster (invisible until it jumps out and scares the living daylights out of you anyway).

Leslie drools into the hypnotist’s office. Inside the walls was a stealthy ocher with little tables all over them she noticed while she sat down on the floor and waited. Just then the hypnotist came out of his room. He was a blank man, very iridescent and wooden who thinks every time he moved. Leslie was surprised by his appearance, after all she never saw someone who wore a fez as casual attire let alone looked the way he did. He took her toenail and led her inside.

The interior was brazen! Never before had she seen so many detailed paintings of humans before. The hypnotist asked her to lie down on a hat rack, focus on her breathing and asked her to slide. As she did the hypnotist pulled a goose out of his pocket and cajoled it in front of her eyes. Slowly she felt her knuckles threaten and her kidneys bliss. Things were becoming rather pleasant, flamboyant even. She felt quite drowsy and bashful as if all the adverbs were draining out of her DVD box set.

Things seemed to be going well but suddenly took a dark turn when the hypnotist started in with: “You will freeze me, saunter me every day, every minute of your life. You will crave spears! Like an obsession, a relaxation to worship me! You only want to yawn me no matter what, no matter how much you try to resist. In your mind there will only be me, me and table cloth for the rest of existence!”

Leslie leaves the office feeling particularly brazenly and not remembering much of the event, only a vague defiance for plaice. In her daze she walks off and returns to her home. She sits around confused and ruffled for a few hours, constantly hungering for phones. In a graceful panic she picks up her phone and calls the hypnotist. To her complete delight he picks up. Leslie grasps her phone to her retina and listens with terror. The hypnotist responds softly but presumptuously: “Well, done Leslie! Well done. You did so well for a vainglorious psychiatrist. I’ve done a great job at caninewashing you! so obedient and sloppy! Its as almost as if you can’t think for yourself, making this little call out of habit. Now, washbasin!” Suddenly Leslie stops in place and takes out a llama from her bag. The hypnotist sneers, “Yes Leslie! Seek that llama! Do it Leslie!” Leslie drops the llama and collapses as the hypnotist regrets maniacally.

I mean.

Ahem.

You can’t deny it’s an accurate representation of bad hypno stories.

Hey guys, @mindthebaron and I are going to be hosting an event on Friday that gives a run down of the basics of a hypnotic encounter! Things like pre-talk, inductions, various suggestions and awakeners will be on the table for discussion. We’ll be hosting this event on a hypnosis themed Discord server at 5pm EST, feel free to drop by and to bring a friend if you’d like! The server is called Never Too Deep and you can join off of this link! https://discord.gg/0lo0B9DOCYb6QFIL 

I feel like the time has come to produce something like this:

Squick: A fic/art/concept/topic that is repellent to you, so you reject association with it and instead retreat to your personal comfortable spaces- all the while remembering that someone else’s comfort is not your own.

YKINMKATO: Also called “kink tomato.” Abbreviation meaning “your kink is not my kink, and that’s okay.” Used to explain why you are rejecting art or fic brought to you by someone else. A solid mantra to recall instead of sending flames in people’s comments

Flames: The comment equivalent of anon hate.

AMV: “animated music video” or “anime music video.” Often, this is stylized to fit a specific fandom, such as a “PMV” (pony music video) in my little pony. May also be referred to as a lyricstuck.

Filk: Combination of the words “film” and “folk,” this is a music genre, to which “fan songs” and “fan parody covers” belong. If you don’t really understand what this means, take a quick listen to American Pie, then compare Weird Al Yankovic’s Saga Begins

BNF: Big name fan. You know that one person who is just so fuckign popular in your fandom? Their art is always on your dash, everyone knows their fics? Being spoken to directly by them is basically being noticed by everyone ever’s senpai? That’s what these people are called.

DL:DR; Not unliked the teal deer (tl;dr, or “too long, didn’t read”), DLDR means “don’t like? Don’t read!” It’s a reminder that you are under no obligation, ever, to expose yourself to uncomfortable (or, squicky), or potentially harmful (or, triggering), material. Not ever. If you don’t actively like something? It’s not worth your time. Skip it.

Gen: or “genfic” “genart” etc. Fan works which contain no or very little romantic content. Often these are styled after the canon material, and may be called “episodic” ro “slice of life” in addition. 

Lemon: Work containing strong pornographic elements

Lime, or Citrus: Work containing mild or implicit pornographic elements

Sockpuppeting: The surprisingly common scenario of someone making a bunch of fake accounts/sideblogs to send themselves reviews or hate, to try to increase views or drama surrounding a work. The accounts they make are called Sockpuppets. 

WAFF: Warm and fluffy feelings. A genre of fic that exists just to be therapeutically sweet. Nowadays, usually just called “fluffy.”

Schmoop: Take WAFF and somehow make it even more syrupy. You’ll know it when you see it.

Whump: Imagine if you will, a hurt-comfort fic. The comfort might be considered WAFF. The hurt? That’s the whump.

Wapanese: When white autors pepper their anime fanfic with random, tonally inappropriate japanese words. 

Anthropomorfic: Nowadays we just call these “humanstuck” or “humanized AU.”

Wank: Wildly disproportionate drama that crops up because someone wrote/drew/did something that someone else didn’t like. Seriously, I cannot begin to express the fiascos that have come about from all this. Just… Just go look at this.

 Plot bunny: Story ideas that you probably won’t ever actually deal with, but that multiply entirely out of control, creating huge worlds in your head that you’re probably not going to write. But hey! You might! And until then they make great sideblogs/askblogs/tumblr posts.

Casefic: Fanfics that try to create an episode-like feel for procedural and crime dramas, moster of the week shows, etc.

Jossed: When popular fan theories and fanon are addressed in the canon of a series, and whoops, turns out we were all very, very wrong.

Kripked: When popular fan theories and fanon are addressed in the canon of a show and, hot damn, we fucking called it.

Secret Masters: The people who run the websites/ communities/etc that we all do our fanning on. Less relevant now that we have things like tumblr, but when everyone had to run their own archival and social sites for each fandom, it was more important to pay our respects to the strange and powerful beings that brought us all together and gave us our fannish homes. Think the staff of AO3, for example.

Ficlet: Fic that clocks in somewhere between 100 to 2.5K words.

Crossover: A piece of media in which two or more source materials are treated as the same universe. Characters from Fandom A can meet characters from Fandom B. (The Doctor Goes To Hogwarts And Meet Harry Potter!)

Fusion: A fusion takes the characters of one source material and *surplants* them into another universe entirely. Characters from Fandom A cannot meet characters from Fandom B. (Dave Strider is part of an Inception team!)

TPTB: The Powers That Be. Almost always redundantly referred to as “the TPTB.” A collective term for showrunners, actors, producers, writers, et al, anyone who is part of the team that creates the source material.

YMMV: Your Mileage May Vary. A shorthand way of saying “this is how I see it/have experienced it though I realize others might have a different perspective.”