I used to think hypnosis was real mind control, and that real mind control just isn't as powerful or impressive as in the fantasies. When I believed hypnosis was mind control, it felt more like mind control. Suggestions felt difficult to shake off. I had negative experiences because of misphrasings by my hypnotist that I took too literally. I believed my brain was being programmed and I would obey as a computer does, literally, exactly as said, no inferences. And so that was how I experienced it, and how I followed suggestions.
There was a middle bit, where I came to have a bit more self-awareness. I kinked the most on what I had come to understand as "real hypnosis" and which was not very similar to the fantasies, but the fantasies existed inside of the real world now, so they were often easier to achieve, though not as intense. We were playing with real mind control, after all, so we needed to temper our fantasies and be more careful, more safe.
I had discovered that I could modify and remove suggestions on my own, which I saw as self-hypnosis, or I wasn't sure what I saw it is. I realized I could update Good X to Good Y to Good Z without needing a whole new trance. I realized talking about how we wanted a suggestion to work after the fact seemed to change how it worked without a new trance. It became increasingly clear the trance wasn't really what was doing things, but they still all felt like compulsions to me. If I did wake myself up, I thought of that as "lucidity" not "agency."
Then there was a period where hypnosis didn't feel very real. I wasn't in a good spot with my then-hypnotist, or playing with other people. Our relationship was nearing its end. I was not very motivated emotionally to lose myself in the experience. Following hypnotic suggestions felt like faking orgasms to make an experience end.
I started attending local hypnokink classes occasionally around this time, even though they were all 101s, but it was community with people besides my then-partner. Long distance and nearing its end. I saw a class by HypnoStory and PandaPet where they did a demonstration of Subject Agency. Story said to someone "You can assume nothing I say is said with the intention of hurting you so if I accidentally say anything that would you can ignore it." It was so broad, it required subjects to actively interpret things, and it was amazing.
Something clicked in my brain, it was amazing, it completely changed how I saw hypnosis, and as beautiful as it was, hypnosis now felt faker than ever.
I broke up with that hypnotist, and started to see hypnosis as a silly thing from my past, something I had grown out of. Perhaps I could have a normal non-dysphoric relationship to sex. Perhaps I was becoming vanilla.
This was very brief. I attended a local hypnokink event (the classes that were our intermediary space between mindplay and trancesylvania) and enjoyed myself. I felt motivated to be in the community again so I could make new friends. I discovered hypnosis discord. and then I got a head injury.
Discord group calls were easy ways to feel less alone while stuck at home unable to handle a one-on-one conversation. The head injury totally killed my sex drive and the meds suppressed my libido. Hypnosis played with intense emotions and there was satisfaction to be had without necessarily involving sex. This was very good at the time. I found myself even more deeply enmeshed in the hypnokink community than I ever had been before.
I learned more and more about subject agency from people I was meeting and things I was reading. I learned about newer models of hypnosis like Phenomenological Control and I read about predictive processing theory. I became enmeshed in agency-forward subject-centered New School hypnosis which saw everything as active collaboration.
I learned to see hypnosis as decidedly NOT mind control. Hypnosis "worked" better than ever and it felt so much less like mind control. I could bring myself to experience any suggestion vividly regardless of the skill level of the hypnotist. I learned about blueprinting. I started getting exactly the trance I wanted. Scenes went off perfectly. I rarely if ever had abreactions or negative experiences.
And it didn't feel like mind control anymore... and I missed that.
And lately, I've been planning scenes where I view the part where I find hypnosis hot and the part where I find mind control hot as two different parts of planning the scene.
I go into the scenes with the intention "I want it to feel like mind control" and I blueprint how it can feel like mind control. I plan scenes where we intentionally evoke our old fantasies from McStories and cartoons growing up. I blueprint how to make something feel more like a compulsion, or more automatic. What if we incorporated amnesia? What if we were just a bit less careful with our phrasings? I have common sense. I know not to interpret things irresponsibly.
For over a decade, I was so used to the carefulness of "You will feel obedient, a desire to do as I say, within reason, so long as it's safe, and you're comfortable doing it, and nobody else is around, and..."
And lately, instead, we've let all that go unsaid, and I did a scene at Beguiled where it was just "You're going to do anything I ask of you. You're going obey me completely, no matter what."
And, of course, that was not true. I have agency. I can intercept this to have those caveats implicitly.
and it was SO MUCH HOTTER. To just play with those tropes. To play with the fantasies of the extreme version of mind control from the stories. When I thought hypnosis was mind control, we couldn't fully enter those fantasies. When I see hypnosis as a tool to create scenes inspired by mind control, to create the illusion of mind control, then I can actually do mind control scenes, actually experience those deep fantasies of powerful mind control and intense experiences. It's edgier, and yet safer, more honest.
All the safeties and negotiating and detail consent still happens, but we do it all before the scene. We blueprint and plan. I don't need to be told in trance not to leave the hotel room, because before the trance we negotiated that I wouldn't leave the hotel room, and that can carry equal weight. The trance is not the only time I can accept suggestions or how to interpret them, it's the time to get myself lost from reality, to enter the fantasy.
So I've come full circle again, having hot hypnosis scenes that feel like mind control, and in many ways they're hotter, and in many ways they're safer.
"Is it real" is the wrong question. The whole point is to experience the unreal. No, the scene is not real, so it's best not to worry about the tools. The point is to become so lost in the fantasy that it feels real, and so I know I can get into the science of why it all works, and talk about how it overlaps with lots of other things we do that aren't called hypnosis, but I don't need to.
Because what matters is it's really hot and fun, and with the right techniques, anything can feel like a genuine experience.
