Trust-Building

One of the most important parts of healthy BDSM is trust-building. If a sub doesn’t trust his Dom, he’s not going to fully let go and put himself in that submissive place he craves, and the Dom won’t get as much control as he probably wants. So it’s important that the Dom act in a way that consistently signals to a new sub that the Dom is probably safe to play with.

Yesterday I had a really good example of this. A boy, Templar, and I had been talking for a couple of weeks about doing some hypnotism play. We live in different parts of the country, so hypnotism is one of the few good options for power exchange, and we’re both into it. In the lead up to yesterday’s session, we’d discussed the sorts of hypno he wanted to do, so I had a pretty good idea of what he wanted: a muscle growth fantasy and some mind-blanking.

So we connected through Zoom and chatted a bit. I reiterated what I understood he wanted for the scene. Then, I said, “So I’m not going to do anything that I would consider unethical or non-consensual and I’ll stay within the boundaries of what you want to do, but are there any specific limits you want to set?” And Templar replied, “No post-hypnotic suggestions.”

For those who are unfamiliar with hypnosis, there are two basic ways you play with hypnosis. The tist can put the subject into a trance and play with him in the trance, describing things for him to see and experience entirely in his mind. (“When you step through the door, you will find yourself in a bar filled with naked men…”) Alternately, the tist can implant a post-hypnotic trigger in the subject, something the subject will do or experience after he has been brought out of the trance once the trigger happens. (“When I snap my fingers, you will realize that your dick is missing. Someone has stolen it. It will be very obvious to both of us that your dick is missing.”) I’m simplifying, but you get the idea.

The fun in a post-hypnotic suggestion is that I can hypnotize the boy, implant some triggers, and then bring him out of the trance and watch his reactions as I activate the triggers; if I do the commands properly, he will probably not recognize that he’s doing something odd. He might just feel an impulse to take off his clothes and it will seem like a normal thing to do, for example. This is a part of hypnosis that I really enjoy. It’s a power thing for me, because I’m manipulating the boy in ways he might not understand.

So when Templar ruled out post-hypnotic suggestions, he was saying that he only wanted to be played with in the trance. And I understood why. Unethical Doms can use post-hypnotic triggers to do all sorts of abusive things to a subject. While hypnosis can’t make you do anything you truly don’t want to do, it’s your subconscious mind that decides what things you do and don’t want to do in hypnosis, not your conscious mind. A skilled tist can figure out ways to push the boundaries of what the subconscious mind wants to do, and a naturally very submissive subject can really be taken advantage of that way. Even if a boy consciously sets a limit like “no findom triggers”, if his subconscious mind finds findom exciting, he’ll probably accept a findom trigger.

(Conversely, if he thinks he wants findom play, but his subconscious mind doesn’t feel comfortable, he won’t accept such a trigger and may very well not even realize the tist tried to implant such a trigger. The subconscious mind is a really fascinating thing…)

So I agreed to Templar’s limit and worked on getting him into the trance. But after I’d gotten him into a trance, I realized that there was a small problem with what I planned to do. Normally, I would put in a post-hypnotic trigger that would allow me to quickly put the boy back into a trance after I brought him out (what I call a Naptime trigger). I had planned to put in some muscle-growth triggers, bring him out of the trance, and then activate the triggers gradually, so he would get to experience the feeling of his muscles expanding and turning into a huge musclebeast as we talked. And even if I simply implanted the idea of growth before I brought him out of the trance, I wouldn’t be able to put him back into a trance to modify the triggers or even just remove them.

I briefly thought about using the Naptime trigger, because it surely wasn’t the sort of post-hypnotic trigger he was thinking of. But it was a post-hypnotic trigger, and he had clearly ruled out all such things. Ethically, I couldn’t use the Naptime trigger, even if I thought it might be ok, because I hadn’t thought to ask for an exception.

So I had to revise my idea for the scene. We were going to be playing entirely in the trance. So in his mind, I made him grow into a huge muscle freak. Then I turned down his intelligence and turned up his sex drive, making him into a mindless bull that needed to fuck. Then I took him to a room with an eager bottom that he could fuck like a wild animal. Let’s just say he clearly enjoyed the scene a lot…

As I wrapped up the trance, I asked him if he wanted to retain the feeling of being a muscle freak when I brought him out, and he indicated yes. So I gave him a command that when he exited the trance he would still feel huge and muscular, and when he no longer wanted that, he could simply ‘deflate’ his muscles until he felt normal. Technically that was a post-hypnotic trigger, and technically I suppose I was negotiating consent within the scene, which is generally not something a good Dom does. But throughout the trance, I’d gotten signs that he was aware of what was going on and was able to give some degree of genuine consent, and the purpose of the trigger was to give him some control. So I thought it would be acceptable. And then I brought him out.

During the aftercare, I asked about how he had liked it, and he said he’d really enjoyed it, and we discussed what we might add in a future scene. Then I explained that my normal play style with hypnosis involves using triggers to play around with the subject after the trance and putting in a Naptime trigger to allow me to modify things as needed. Was Templar ok with me doing that sort of trigger in a future session?

He replied that when he was a more novice sub, he’d run into an unethical tist who had really fucked with his head using post-hypnotic triggers. That explained a lot to me, including why I’d gotten a sense that he was being slightly guarded during the trance–he was clearly in a trance and responding to my commands, but I had a sense that part of his mind was definitely monitoring what I was doing and that he’d snap out of the trance if he were unhappy.

He told me that he could tell I was serious about consent issues. “Normally, the guys who can’t be trusted don’t talk about limits and consent at all, and you’ve talked about that a good deal. So I’m less worried about you.” And he indicated that next time he would be comfortable with some post-hypnotic triggers if they operated only during the scene.

Had I chosen differently, had I tried to use the Naptime trigger, I strongly suspect he would have broken out of the trance, because he had no way of knowing that I wasn’t going to use it to mess with his head. Remember, even if you know you have only good intentions with a first-time sub, that sub doesn’t know that, and trying to break or seriously bend the limits they set is a sign you might not be so well-intentioned. Yeah, not being able to use the Naptime trigger threw off the scene I had planned, but it turned into a fun scene anyway and it helped establish some trust between us, because it showed him I was going to respect his limits. Hopefully next time we play, he’ll feel like he can trust me more, which means maybe he’ll turn down the part of his brain that was monitoring the scene and let me take him deeper into the trance. Had I tried to install the Naptime trigger, I doubt he would want to do a second scene with me.

Trust is particularly important in a hypnosis dynamic, because the sub is making himself vulnerable to the tist in a very intimate way. He’s basically letting the tist into the source code for his brain. If the subject doesn’t trust the tist, he’s unlikely to go very far into trance, even if he wants to, and even in the trance he’ll be guarded and watchful, which hinders a really deep trance.

So what about you? What do you do to try and build trust with a new sub?