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ellaenchanting:

First part posted here. I’m kind of proud of it myself. :)

Request:the best posts are always about girls called nicole
getting turned into bimbos called nikki :P if thats not the sort of
thing you mean, a post about why hypnosis turns you on and why you think
it turns others on also great :)- from @bimbonicolette

What about hypnosis turns me on?

Short answer: I’m not entirely sure!

Shorter answer: Everything!

Respectably long answer:

Truthfully, I’m still trying to figure out all of the ins and outs of my hypnofetish. It’s been buzzing around in the back of my brain for years, but I’ve only entirely consciously acknowledged and come to terms with hypnosis as a fetish for the last few months. (Origin story here.) Seriously- if you had asked me about hypnofetishism in May, I would have blushed and quickly changed the topic. This is after years of reading mcstories, obsessively watching fetishy TV show clips over and over, and hypnotizing people/being hypnotized by people. This is also despite the fact that I’ve always fantasized way more about hypnosis than about actual sex*. So, I may not be the most insightful person (on this or in general). Ask me next week and my answers may change.

Reasons I Like Hypnosis (in a sexy way):

1. Fear: Oddly.

     So, one of my formative experiences with hypnotism was seeing a stage hypnotist on Nickelodeon as a kid and FREAKING OUT about it. I took the show way too literally. That hypnotist was so obviously dangerous! Why was someone so powerful allowed to run around in public playing with people’s minds? I didn’t understand why everyone else was so calm about this being on TV. In fact, there’s a little part of me that still wonders why people who know nothing about hypnotism ever volunteer to be hypnotized. From the outside, it looks exactly like mind control and for a control freak like me that’s deeply scary (see below). Even today, knowing everything that I know about the safety of hypnosis, it still feels a little scary and dangerous. There’s a psychological theory called misattribution of arousal– the idea that fear and sexual arousal look very physiologically similar so people tend to mix them up in their heads. It’s why you should always take your date to a roller coaster or a horror movie. :) I remember being abnormally scared by hypnosis stuff when I was a kid, so there’s likely some misattribution of arousal that created an obsession and eventually a fetish. (Now, of course, I experience accurate attribution of arousal.)

2. Trust: I don’t normally play around with things I fear during sex- I’m not a traditional BDSMer and I don’t have the seemingly-ubiquitous lady rape fantasy. What makes the hypnosis fear sexy is the greater or equal amount of trust that balances out that fear. I know normal BDSM play has trust as an implicit component, but the trust in hypnosis is so much more explicit and stated. When I’m being hypnotized, I love that I’m doing something a little scary and that there’s someone there to protect and guide me and keep me safe. It’s a bit regressive, but in a very nice way. I have a hypnotist friend who will hold my hand and tell me he’s right there with me when I’m tranced and that is AMAZING. It feels incredibly right. When I’m the hypnotist, I really really enjoy the trust that is placed in me and become very protective. I love it when my subjects get that happy trancey glow and when they’re obviously having a good time. I love how much they’ve allowed themselves to trust me and themselves to let the good time happen. It’s a beautiful thing.

3. Intimacy/ Vulnerability: Following along with the trust, there is so much intimacy and vulnerability in hypnosis. Being hypnotized is in many ways the act of letting down your guard so much with another person that they may see sides of you that even you aren’t aware of. That’s the most intimate thing I can think of. It’s way more intimate than a naked body. The fact that you allow someone to play around with you on that level is letting yourself be very vulnerable. Sharing that vulnerability is profoundly bonding. Seeing someone else willing to give you that gift is also humbling and bonding. As a hypnotist, I love to use that intimacy to find strength and creativity in a subject that they weren’t aware of and bring it to their attention. It’s the process of letting a subject show him- or herself something personal and neat.

4. Control/ Power: This was the hardest part of my hypnofetish to accept. I really like the idea of having a lot of power over someone else (or them having power over me). Like many women, I was often discouraged from seeking power for myself as a child and was told that being anything but a doormat was morally wrong. Wanting power was always a negative thing.  In my real life, I still tend to be passive and quiet and sometimes feel guilty for asserting myself in even the most basic ways. It can make me miserable. I find that when I’m doing more hypnosis (especially as a hypnotist), it often helps me regain a sense of power in other areas of my life. It’s like nothing bad happens when I exercise power in these large theatrical ways so it’s safer for me to exercise it in smaller, day-to-day circumstances. I’m also practicing being powerful in hypnosis in fun, silly, and helpful ways so I’m breaking the idea in my brain that power=bad. Exercising power has not turned me into a bad person. When I allow some of that power to leak into my life I tend to get more done, get along better with people, and generally be happier. Even when I’m a subject, the ability and encouragement to assert what I want is a way of showing power- one that I can transfer to my real life. I also am a bit of a control freak in my passive aggressive way (I blame being raised Baptist) so hypnosis is a way to relax that control- or increase it!

5. Fun/Creativity/Intelligence: Hypnosis can be such a fun, creative thing to do. There are very few limits outside of your and your partner’s imaginations. As a hypnotist, it’s also a thrilling challenge to figure out what’s going to work for each particular subject. (This can also be part of the fun of being a subject- working out a partnership with your hypnotist to collectively work towards your responding more fully.) At it’s best, hypnosis can create a fun synchronicity that feels like magic for both parties involved. I’m a bit sapiosexual, so intelligence is always sexy in a hypnotist or subject (or both!)

6. Relaxation/Focus/Being Cared For/Gentleness: If it’s not obvious from my tumblr, my mind tends to run a million miles a minute in all different directions. I can also be sharply critical, which is a skill (when directed towards new ideas) and a detriment (when it’s directed towards myself). I have a history of both anxiety and depressive disorders and (while I’m doing a lot better now) my brain still has those tendencies. Being hypnotized allows me to relax and focus and enjoy the moment instead of frantically dissecting everything in my surroundings**. It’s like I’m frantically rubbing my hands together and someone holds them apart and loosens them and just lets me rest.  It’s a relief to know it’s OK to let go of that hyperawareness for a little while- that I’m safe and can just relax for a bit. I love being treated gently and being taken care of in general and especially when I’m being hypnotized. I’m historically not good at being gentle to myself (although I’m getting better) so it feels good to be guided to a gentler mindset. As a hypnotist, I really enjoy the hypnotist’s trance that makes me feel calm and focused and settled.

Most of all, I like how different combinations and gradients of these ideas can come together in a trance. In my head, hypnosis is very symbolic of a lot of big themes and experiences. It’s a way for me to play with some of these big themes and come out well and happy on the other side with a partner who is also well and happy. I don’t quite know how it came to have all this symbolic significance for me, but I’m very glad it does. I can’t think of any other single activity that leaves me so deeply satisfied on so many levels.

What about hypnosis turns you on? Can you relate to these ideas, or is it an entirely different set of factors for you?

*I like actual sex and have been proudly slutty at points in my life, but hypnosis is a true, classically Freudian fetish for me- it lives in that part of my brain where sex would normally reside for most people. I didn’t become interested in actual sex until well into my college years.

**I get similar benefits with meditation, but it’s nice to let myself be guided there.

“What about hypnosis turns you on? Can you relate to these ideas, or is it an entirely different set of factors for you?“

Well, while reading this post and trying to compare it to my own experience I kept thinking “Sort of…maybe…slightly…but…no?”. So that’s fun to sort out. Like, yes I was pretty scared of it as a kid, and I don’t even know how I feel about the intimacy aspect, and the control aspect has some appeal but not nearly as much as it did when I was younger because, in hindsight, I think it was always more of an instrumental means-to-an-end thing rather than a goal in itself…

…but those all seem like minor issues to me, to my own sexuality and my own understanding of it. The important thing, the core of it, is restfulness. There a reason one of my tags is “people who can distinguish between their drive for sleep and drive for sex fascinate me”: to me, the two are all tangled up and blended together. Tiredness and sexual frustration are generally the same feeling, distinguished only by cause and whether spending a while unconscious will fix it.

I’ve never knowingly met anyone else like me. For me, the process of getting into the hypno-blogosphere hasn’t been about finding a community of like-minded people, people who truly get me, but rather finding successive groups of people with increasingly close resemblances to what my hypothetical community would look like, little glimpses here and there of “yes, I actually grok what you’re talking about”. Lately I’ve managed to even find people who are into consensual stuff*, but even with them…like, take all the hype about the “Hypnotic Amnesia” book. I don’t grok memory play at all: it feels like it’s completely missing the point. If I wanted to forget the good bits, I would go take a nap. To me, the point of hypnosis is that we don’t have to settle for that. We can take the enjoyable parts of sleep, the calm and the peacefulness and the wonderful feeling of dozing, the feelings I long for the same way that other people long for sex, without having to deal with the unconsciousness or the hypnagogic amnesia. Sometimes, if we play our cards right, we really can eat our cake and have it too.

*By “into consensual stuff”, I don’t just mean “finding ways of healthily acting out their non-con fantasies”, but “genuinely deep-down prefer consensual situations, even in fantasy”. Let me be clear, there’s nothing wrong with having non-con fantasies, but over the past couple years I’ve been increasingly realising that they’re just not really for me.

If it helps, I can totally dig your somnophilia. Sometimes I get annoyed at quickie inductions because I want the long, slow slide into a nice, gentle, relaxed place*. The drifting feels very nice all on its own. If I know someone else enjoys that feeling specifically, I’ll try and expand their sense of time while they’re in trance to give them more time with those good feelings. I like the idea of giving someone a seemingly endless, floating peace- like warmly floating on your back in the ocean and staring at all the stars in an expansive sky.

I’m sure there are other people who are more on the pure relaxation side out there. Anyone want to self-identify?

*Sometimes quickie inductions are great- depends on my mood.

I wish that were what somnophilia meant. Then I would have a keyword to use for finding like-minded people. I can see how it could have ended up meaning that if things had gone a little differently, but as it is “somnophilia” seems to be pretty settled on referring specifically to being into having sexual intercourse with unconscious people (or, occasionally, other people having sexual intercourse with you while you’re unconscious). Even if you ignore the intercourse aspect (which I am not into), it seems to be specifically about unconsciousness to them rather than dozing.

As for “if it helps”, it helps a little bit. It’s one of those glimpses of visceral understanding.

Thanks for the signal boost.

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#reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof