#hypnosis misconceptions

[marnathas]

An induction not succeeding doesn’t mean failure

I've touched on this a bit before in various spots, but some, ahh, recent experiences, ok, flubs >,.,>, have put this back into the front of my mind again.

That being, failure when trying to hypnotise someone.

I'm sure most hypnotists have a few stories under their belt of when inductions just didn't work. Maybe the chosen induction wasn't good for the subject in question? Maybe technical difficulties ensued? Maybe they couldn't keep their words going smoothly? Maybe they tried something that's a bit beyond them yet? Maybe they tried an idea that sounded good, but doesn't work? Maybe they just got too nervous?

Regardless, the obvious result is obvious. A non-zonked subject, and a potentially embarrassed hypnotist.

There's a strong tendancy to view failures, especially among people newer to all of this, as complete deal breakers. Things went wrong, session over, no chance of getting the person in trance anymore. Time to pack up and go home.

And that, my readers, is silly. There isn't any reason why something not working has to be such a big deal, and it's entirely, and easily possible to recover from something like that.

But ok, let's not just talk down at people. There's reasons why people tend to think that way. Let's dismantle those, shall we?

The biggest, and most obvious reason to treat a muckup so seriously, is a matter of confidence. Both on the hypnotist's end, and the subject's end.

For us hypnotists, yeah, it's a big of an ego blow, especially if you're already nervous about something working or not. But it isn't really a bad thing to happen. An often true fact of life is you learn more from failing than you do from succeeding. If everything worked, hey it worked! Job's done! (Ok not really, but you get what I mean!) If it didn't work, then you can suss out why, and learn more from it. Do you need to understand the subject in question better? Do you need to pick apart your own technique a bit and find out what to work on? I'll come back to this shortly.

The bigger worry would be from the subject's point of view. Generally speaking, the whole hypnosis process depends at least on some level, on the subject being confident that the hypnotist can hypnotise them. So the worry is, if they mess up, the subject is going to lose that belief, and any subsequent attempts are going to be less effective. Now yes, this is potentially true, but it doesn't have to be, and this worry can be remedied pretty easily.

In my opinion, most of that can be fixed with attitude. ...No, not that kind of attitude.

I've talked about it before, but if you approach a non-success as not a big deal, it's not going to be as big a deal. No, really. This all sort of comes back to confidence. If you're confident in your abilities and knowledge, you can recover from something, especially if you convey that confidence across. There's a worlds difference between "Oh no it didn't work I can't trance you shiiiiiit!" and "Welp, that didn't work, probably because X, Y, and/or Z. How about we take a breather and try something easier/more suited for you?".

My approach, when I flub, is that latter one (surprise surprise). I don't view there being much point in hammering home at somethig that isn't working, for whatever reason (caveat, if you have a very good subject you can half flub and still push through and it'll work). It's a bit embarrassing, but it's easier to recognise that point, stop things, discuss a bit, and then after a bit hit things from a different angle. Maybe an induction that's a different method, or one that I know better.

It seems counter-intuitive, but I personally find it works to take said breather. It lets you calm down yourself, it gives you a chance to talk to the subject, and get across that yes you know what's going on, and what'll fix it, and you can explain to them what'll change in the next approach, to give them confidence it'll work this time. Essentially you're going to project your own headspace onto the subject to some degree regardless, so better to get a handle on yourself, and be confident you've got the situation under control. Shit happens. To all of us. Eventually it's going to happen, so why treat it like the world's ending?

(Obviously there can be other approaches that'll work just as well. This is just my personal one, but it's worked perfectly every time thus far for me. If anyone does things way differently do tell!)

And moving back to what I left behind a bit earlier. It's a learning opportunity. Talk it through with your subject, especially if it's a case that something isn't suited to them. Failure is the best chance to learn, and pull things apart for yourself.

If they're able to convey things that didn't work for them, that's brilliant! It means you can think through what'll avoid those issues, or how to change your technique to compensate for that. And then that'll stick with you for the next time you run into someone similar. Often we only learn via experience.

If it's something on your end, it's a good chance to sit down afterwards, and again discuss it with the subject (especially if they're switchy, or knowledgeful too!), and figure out things you can work on to make it work next time. Maybe it's a practice thing, and you just need to keep doing it to get the words or the pratter right. Maybe it's a technique thing, and you've gone too far too quickly, and need to break it down and go from a simpler approach before you go nuts with complexity.

Especially if you'll be doing more with the same person, you can steadily work on bits and pieces of what didn't work, and get a good sense of progress, which can be hard to pin down precisely sometimes!

To end this simply, failure is only failure if you believe it to be. But it shouldn't, it represents an opportunity, and you should make the most of it. It's not the most fun in the world, but if you're looking to improve yourself as a hypnotist, nothing beats having what you're not good enough at yet smacking you in the face. :)

[marnathas]

Misconceptions - The "skill" of being hypnotised, and "suggestibility"

Keeping on with these, let's hit a less obvious thing. The idea that some people are just better at being hypnotised, or are more "suggestible", and that's set in stone. In fact, let's hit both at once. Now, contrary to what you might expect me to say considering the title, yes, this former parts of that statement are actually true. The latter part, that it's set in stone, is not.

Being hypnotised is, essentially, a skill, of being able to go into a specific state of mind. Naturally, some people pick up on that far easier than others, due to all the factors in their life, and how their mind works and interprets things. But, this is a skill, like all others, that can be worked at and improved upon. As a general rule, you tend to see more experienced subjects being rather good at being hypnotised, even if they aren't "suggestible", because they've done it a bunch, and know themselves how to get there, how it works for them, and what does (or doesn't) work. This is even more true for people working with the same hypnotist repeatedly, as the buildup of trust, rapport, and mental associations (i.e. this tone of voice means they want me in trance) help make things very easy usually.

Similarly, various phenomena that can be produced through hypnosis work similarly, although I'll say these can be a bit harder to get better at. Someone just may always kind of suck at visualising things, or fogetting things, even after a lot of experience with hypnosis, just as a side-effect of what senses their mind emphasises, or how their brain works. I'll diverge a little though, and say that my opinion is that, with more effort, these can still be worked on and gotten better at, but a big part of this is also how the hypnotist approaches it, and finding an approach that works with the subject's brain. For instance there's dozens of ways you can go about trying to produce hypnotic amnesia in a subject, and for each person there may be some that just work brilliantly, many that do nothing, and some that can do it with practice and experience, so a large part of it is finding what does work.

And lastly, suggestibility. This, in my experience, is more set in stone at a broad level. Someone "suggestible" is probably going to stay so, and be relatively easier to hypnotise, while someone not "suggestible" probably won't suddenly become so. This is me cheating a bit because that's a nebulous concept that I'm not going to explain here. But, with specific partners it's much more malleable, because of the associations and trust that builds up. Someone may not be suggestible to 99.9% of people, but to their long-term hypnotist they may be the easiest person in the world to influence, given the right context (for instance only when "hypno voice" is being used).

This is actually a bit of a case where the standard "misconception" actually isn't entirely wrong, or that someone new asking about it could get an answer of "actually yes, but...", which was actually kind of cool to think about a bit! :)

[marnathas]

Misconceptions - Cliches and expectations, how do they affect things?

As we all know, hypnosis had its own metric buttload of cliches. The obvious things, the pocket watches, the crystals, we all know how it's supposed to work in movies, and fiction, and in our heads. And so at some point we all ask, do those actually work? Are they helpful? And related, can knowing what's going on, or what's expected, not be a hinderance to going into trance?

The answer, actually, is yes! There's a few aspects to this, which I'll talk about in turn. The first thing, is quite simply, these things become cliches for a reason. Now obviously, part of it is just being show-y and mysterious and so-on, but there's usually a kernel of truth somewhere in things like that, and for hypnosis it's actually not hidden that deeply. The easiest set of cliches to talk about here are obviously the visual ones. Eye fixation as a hypnotic induction works, regardless of what you get the subject to look at, it's a very old and very well known method of hypnosis (I'll maybe describe the details later). The pendants and pocket watches and so-on just give a really pretty object to focus on. This is an easy example, but basically something is probably a hypnosis cliche because fundamentally it works.

The next question is well, are the cliches helpful? Does something being a cliche dull the effectiveness? Generally no it doesn't, because the fundamentals work. This is a bit more of a person to person thing though, as some people get really turned off by cliches, others get really turned on (in both figurative and hawt meanings of the phrase). But there's more! Contrary to what you might initially think, something being cliche can make it more effective, especially to someone very unfamiliar with hypnosis. Let me explain. A lot of hypnosis, is creating expectations, and confidence, as to what is going to happen, and that you're capable of making it happen. If someone absolutely believes they're going to be hypnotised, you're almost certainly going to zonk them to some degree. The cliches can help create that expectation instantly, because you pull a pocket watch out in front of someone and they immediately know the cliche involving it, which makes it easier to set everything up in their mind. It also helps that generally the cliches are pretty fun too! :)

And lastly, the sort of related question, which will probably get its own post sometime later, is does knowing what's going to happen make things easier or harder to go into trance? Depends on the person, depends on the induction. As a rule, no it shouldn't make things any easier or harder, the underlying principles of trance and hypnosis work pretty well regardless of whether or not you know them. Most experienced subjects tend to eventually develop an intuitive understanding of them anyway, and still go into trance without any issue at all. Although, for someone very analytical, or who has trouble letting go, this can disrupt them if they start focusing on details that they know aren't working 100% (or at least they can't tell that it's working). But, this is approach dependant. You can easily take that kind of situation, and turn it to your advantage by guiding them to focus on things you can show are working, and use their knowledge of hypnosis to help get them to focus, and let other things fade out.

And that's all for now. In general, yes the cliches work and aren't a hinderance, and neither is knowing the processes of hypnosis yourself. But that's not a strict rule, so always adjust to who you're working with, and how they prefer, interpret, and approach things!

[marnathas]

Misconceptions - Getting “stuck” in trance

So this is one of the most common misconceptions, and quickest to clarify. The idea that you can get “stuck” in trance, i.e. the idea that if you get put into trance and for some reason you end up in a situation where you’re left alone in that state (found something on the interwebs, or the tist had to run off and never returned), and that you’re then boned. Luckily this isn’t true. Trance is a pretty natural state of mind, it’s one we go in and out of, to varying degrees all the time (driving, watching TV, zoning out, ect), so your mind already has a decent idea of how to go in an out of that state, even if you don’t know it yourself. So even if you’re left alone, odds are you’ll be able to bring yourself out of it without outside help. Worse case scenario, you either fall asleep, or get hungry, and then the part of your brain that deals with survival goes “food is more important, you’re getting off your arse”, regardless of how nice trance is! In a similar manner, if something BAD pops up while you’re under and you need to deal with it urgently, that same part of your brain is generally pretty good at snapping you out of it to go deal with it. Easy and quick explanation, wasn’t it? :P

[marnathas]

Misconceptions - Who's actually in control?

Let's do another of these. So this might seem like a bit of a weird question, at first, until I go into it. Who is actually in control during hypnois? The hypnotist or the subject?

Well everyone is going to say the hypnotist, duh. Not only from a stereotype point of view, but from a play point of view hypnosis play usually involves power exchange with the subject giving up control.

Aha, "giving up control", as soon as you say that, it gets murkier. My opinion is that the subject has a much greater control of what happens than you might initially think. For one thing, they're giving that control (or illusion of control) away by choice, and have the ability to take it back. So in one sense, they're in control of whether or not anything actually happens. For another thing, a subject can (usually) resist suggestions if they really want, so while the hypnotist is leading the way, essentially, the subject is the one choosing whether or not to follow along.

Another way of looking at it is, not all hypnosis takes place in a clean-cut dominant hypnotist submissive subject paradigm. While not super common, it's not unheard of to have a submissive hypnotising a dominant partner, for instance, or to have a session where the subject has, for lack of a better word, dictated what the content will be to the tist. In those situations, the subject is very much the one in charge of things, despite not being the one doing the hypnotising.

Perspective, and situations can turn this on its head a bit. But of course, it's not clear cut even in those and can vary depending on negotiation beforehand, and the level of disclosure of the contents of the trance before anything happens, among other things (much higher levels of disclosure give the subject a lot more control over things, by way of veto power).

[marnathas]

Misconceptions - Is hypnosis mind control?

Something I want to do a set of short posts on are the common misconceptions about hypnosis, and especially around recreational/erotic hypnosis. Partially because these come up a bunch with people unfamiliar with it ("common" isn't a misnomer), so you're bound to run into these questions/explanations if you bring it up with people who aren't into hypnosis. And partially because these sometimes aren't well understood within the community here as well. They're usually understood at a gut level, but rarely explained well and in detail. Naturally, these will be how I understand them and try to explain them.

So let's start off with the most obvious question, or thing new people will worry about to some degree: Is hypnosis mind control?

We wish! Ok ok, more seriously, no. The facetious answer is if it was, hypnotists would be running the world, but we aren't. The best way of explaining this (in my opinion), is to go a bit into how hypnosis works. Generally speaking, what happens in hypnosis is the conscious mind switches off a bit, and stops filtering what goes through to the sub-conscious. That part of your mind will go along with things that sound enjoyable and don't sound like too bad an idea. The analogy is being a bit tipsy and having your inhibitions loosen somewhat.

Despite that, there's a part of your mind that will try and look out for you even when you're in that state, and will make sure nothing gets through that you absolutely wouldn't do. If, for instance, you got asked to hurt someone, that part of your mind would go "Nope!" and reject the suggestion, and probably snap you out of trance. The general saying is you can't be made to do anything you don't want to do via hypnosis. Essentially, at some level you're still in control of what you do, as you retain the ability deep down to say no.

Now, astute people will notice that I've said "generally", and there's a reason for that. While you can't be made to do something you don't want to do, what you want to do can get manipulated, and some people open up more than others while in trance. So please make sure you trust a hypnotist first before doing anything with them. Ideally it's something you never have to be pushed on.

Ethics are imporant, damnit!

[upnowapp]

Hypnosis Myths and Misconceptions Explained.

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[marnathas]

Some musing on "hypno-voices"

Just something random that came up in my head. I'm gonna talk about "hypno-voices", and how to use them, and a really common misconception about them that people make.

Let's start with what is a "hypno-voice"? Well, it's the tone of voice a hypnotist uses when actually doing trance-y things. It'll be different from person to person, by usually tone changes (higher or lower), it gets breathier, and quieter.

Why? Partially stereotypes, let's be real. It's an ingrained thing, and not necessary at all. It's fun though, and adds to the atmosphere of everything.

It's also a bit pragmatic. People get conditioned to dropping to things, including voices. Having a distinct "hypno-voice" to shift into let's you indicate when something is meant to get into their head, as opposed to just talking normally.

Now, not only does it involve changing the tone of your voice, but also how you use your voice, such as via cadence, and pacing. It's the fundamental idea I hold onto that everything you do has an effect on the subject.

You can slow your words down, and watch them slow down and start to drift as you do so. You can speed up, or go back into normal tone, if you want them more alert (ala most awakeners where people do this already).

You can pause, and emphasize, and use that to pull attention to where you want it, or create expectations. If you're physically there, or have a directional mic, you can shift where your voice is coming from, or from how close (whispers melt people).

You could also bark commands at people, and take them by surprise by sudden tone changes, or things like that.

While I'd love to keep going here in more detail, I'm still learning all of this myself, so I can't describe it too well. If anyone knows anyone who has done so, point me in their direction please!

Ok, now here's the main point I'm gonna make, and this is something that's obvious when you hear it, but is easy to just miss entirely and it's often forgotten, especially by newer people who only see one kind of example: Hypno-voices do not have to be deep and throaty and booming. There are absolutely other directions that you can go, and that work, and that people will enjoy.

Now admittedly deep and throaty does work, and a lot of people get rather wet over voices like that. But the point I'm going to make is go with what works for you, and what feels natural as opposed to what you think you have to do.

Work it into your "style".

I'm gonna use myself as an example here. I (as a guy) do light and high an air-y and float-y when I go into hypno-voice. A combination of that's just what came to me naturally (i.e. if I imagine myself zonking someone in my head that's where my imagined voice goes), and having been inspired early on by a girl I can only describe as "evil hypno-fairy". :P

This works for me. I'm a dom, but I'm not commanding, or super dominant. I tend to prod people, and lure them in directions, rather than order or direct things, most of the time, so being deep and commanding doesn't really work for me as much.

And I've sort of taken the "evil hypno-fairy" idea myself, a bit. I'm a gigantic troll, I like being silly, I like teasing, I like dangling things in front of my subject and maybe taking them away, maybe not. So light and air-y is just a natural fit there, and the way I use my voice sort of goes with that imagery of darting about and teasing and tempting.