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N O T I C E : : m e m o r y _ s t r e a m _ l o c a t e d
I D : : H y p n o s i s
T Y P E: : R E C O L L E C T I V E
Hypnosis is weird. It's one of those things that you think "oh inos where do I even start with explaining this," and, uh, yeah. The main issue is that regular people tend to have, you know, strong thoughts and feelings on the idea of 'independence' and 'free will.' Understandably so, honestly. So the question becomes: how do you explain to them that yeah basically my life's work is all about figuring out how to subvert that?
At a basic level, hypnosis is just like, a state of heightened suggestibility in which you're more amenable to doing as you're told and believing things without employing critical thinking to see whether it's true or not. One of the things that a lot of people misunderstand about hypnosis is that trance is actually incredibly common: non-hypnotic trance is just a state of heightened focus, that's literally all it is. The difference between that and hypnotic trance is, uh... I don't know, actually. why
is there a difference, I've still never had anyone explain that to me
Anyway the point is, it's not actually very hard to get hypnotised; just about anything can put you into a trance it if you let it- but some things
are better at that than others. If you've ever heard a lesbian with a really pretty voice talk and gone "woah my brain no longer works," or gotten distracted by the sound of a ticking clock or running water, those are good examples of sounds that can naturally induce trance. Sound is in general probably one of the most reliable methods of prompting trance; there are a lot of noises that landamaeri brains seem to respond to that way. Other examples also include some visual stuff; watching a thing sway back and forth can do that too, and various kinds of touch or kinesthetic sensation can also induce it. I've started to think that the connection between all of these things is that they're all at least somewhat rhythmic (other than some of the sounds I listed), and so I partially wonder if hypnosis is an artefact of landamaeris' rhythmic senses; but I'll come back to that later.
Hypnosis kind of has, like, one of those IQ spectrum memes going on with it. On the near end you've got "hypnosis is mind control", then in the middle you've got "hypnosis can't make you do anything you want to do," and then on the far end you're back to "hypnosis is mind control." The average person who doesn't know shit about it beyond what you see in holovid shows probably thinks it's magic, then people with a cursory understanding who've looked it up on the fleetnet a couple times tend to just think it's pseudoscience quackery, and then the people like me who've been doing it for more than a decade exist in a state of perpetual horror at the sheer extent of what it can actually do.
Because, like-
I have seen some shit, okay? Some of these things I got second-hand and can't confirm if are actually true or not: I know there are curse files out there that have the aim of making you permanently unable to cum; I don't know if anyone has ever actually gotten got by one of those, but they do exist. There are a variety of dronification cults with hundreds, I think maybe in some cases thousands of members, who go by serial numbers or the names of fucking Terran Disney characters rather than their actual identities, and I
have seen people get hypnotised into giving away all their money to hypnotists.
I also knew someone who apparently got hypnotised into becoming a girl and the suggestion lasted six months, but, they also later just turned out to be trans, so like...
I do not know what the actual upper limits of hypnosis are. It seems to vary enormously from person-to-person, and what I can say is, I have seen people doing some tremendously stupid and openly self-harm-y shit that it's hard to believe they would do if they were not being altered in some way. From my own subjective experiences, the worst I can say I've had happened to me is a couple people have used hypnosis to noncon me about twice, which, uh... I should probably treat as a lot worse than I actually am treating, but compared to all the stuff I just listed, 'someone used hypnosis to sexually assault me' honestly does not feel that bad.
So, yeah. Do you get the problem I'm having here yet? This is kind of like trying to explain to someone "yeah I grew up in the backstreets of predatory sex wizard
Detroit." It is not the kind of thing that would parse for people who haven't done that; most of them are likely to get stuck on the part where sex wizards exist.
But, yeah. For all that it sounds horrible - and it is; the hypnokink community is objectively a cesspit of predators and abusive behaviour - it's where I grew up, and it's still the place that I think of as home. It left marks on my brain that are going to stay with me for my entire life, and I don't think I will ever be able to exist independently of it. The example of that which I think of the most frequently is all the conditioning that I have as a result of spending time there: I have been put into trance more times than I could count in the more-than-a-decade since I first joined the community. The number is at the very least in the low thousands, and might be as high as ten thousand, maybe. Doing something like that over and over again carves grooves into your brain that eventually become automatic the same way breathing is. To this day, if someone says something that my brain registers as hypnotic, I pretty much just keel over and flop down into trance immediately. Like, go from 'fully aware and holding a completely normal conversation' to 'deactivated and just waiting to be told what to do' in sometimes three or four words.
The subjective experience of trance for me is definitely the part that means the most to me... It feels very, very good. I don't understand why, and I've never seen anyone else explain it, but being hypnotised seems to cause the brain to output incredible quantities of reward chemicals; so just getting lightly hypnotised can feel
amazing. In my case, it makes me feel all light-headed and drifty, and my chest starts feeling fizzy and bubbly like the surface of a drink. In deeper trances, my entire body starts feeling heavy and lethargic, and any part of it that I turn my attention to, it just feels... nice.
There aren't really any other experiences I'm aware of in life that can reliably produce that level of pleasant sensation; not in the same way hypnosis does at least. Sure, accomplishing something difficult can be more satisfying in the moment, or I guess sex might maybe be able to compare- I wouldn't know- but there's nothing that can just like, make you feel completely blissed out like that on demand. Except drugs, I guess: which is probably why there's a saying in the community that a lot of people compare hypnosis addiction to drug addiction. I've never done drugs either, but I can definitely get why. Virtually everyone I know with a similar depth of experience as a subject to me is completely addicted to hypnosis. I know that I couldn't stop being into it if I tried; I've gone several years without a hypnotist a couple of times and the cravings I got at the start of that period didn't get any less bad by the end of it.
I think it sometimes feels like an addiction where the more you indulge it, the more you lose of yourself to it. In my case, it might be because I do other fucky brain stuff than just hypnosis, but nowadays, it's so easy for me to just get lost in the middle of completely normal conversations or while doing unrelated stuff. I find that my brain ends up spacing out and I sorta just, go into a half-tranced state and get stuck there. I can't really remember how- or, no, I can remember how to stop myself; I just don't. It's like I can't remember why I would want to stop myself. It's easier to just... float off and wait for orders, I guess; even when you know they're not coming. I presume it's because the more I let myself get hypnotised, the more my brain associates increasing amounts of things with becoming hypnotised.
I sort of wonder if there's going to come a point some day where I just- I don't know, completely lose touch with reality, or end up always in trance, or something. It sounds ridiculous, but I do actually kind of worry about it. The worst part is that it... kind of sounds peaceful to me. Just existing in a state of eternal stillness, only taking action when directed to by someone else. ...It sounds nice.
I think it might also be why so many of the entries I record are just, me dissociating. My journal entries used to be more about actual stuff when I was younger; like, proper structured thoughts, rather than just daydreaming.
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N O T I C E : : m e m o r y _ s t r e a m _ t e r m i n a t e d
