A Personal Journey Through D/s Hypnosis – Part 11, Amnesia
It’s been a while since my last post in this series. I thought I would discuss a different facet – Amnesia.
Post hypnotic amnesia is a strange thing. I know it’s something of a fetish with a part of the MP3 crowd, they want to feel their mind wiped out and all sense of time under hypnosis to be eradicated. There are much weirder things that MP3’s cater for, so I’m not kink shaming this type of desire for hypnosis outcome.
The term amnesia tends to imply an all or nothing effect. Yet in practice there’s a range from very mild memory confusion all the way to mind wipe. It takes a very experienced subject to reach a mind wipe – remember, the subject does it to themselves.
Like all effects of hypnosis, amnesia is a very personal experience.
I’m not sure when in our journey I started to experience post hypnotic amnesia. I think it started quite early on. Two minutes after being brought out of trance is not the easiest time to have a considered discussion on what’s just transpired. To protect myself from what at the time was a rather too intensely personal discussion on emotions and feelings my mind started filtering out the details until later.
She picked up on the incipient amnesia very quickly and soon amnesia suggestions were incorporated into most sessions (yes, after we discussed it).
The effect on me has been gradual and is consistently stronger. What I still find strange is that throughout the hypnosis session I am very clear as to what is being said. My conscious hears clearly, it analyses what it finds interesting. If the sub-conscious decides I need to remember something it parks it in the conscious and away from the amnesia.
There’s almost total clarity right up to the point where the count up begins. And then, I feel the mists falling around the conscious. Everything except the bits parked by the subconscious become insubstantial as I come out of trance and they become even more vague over the next few hours.
I’m amongst those who do not generally experience a gap of missing time. Though it did happen once and was very disconcerting – and she rather enjoyed it.
What I do recall after a session are hints of different segments, different topics, the mood or feel of the time in trance. These give me the necessary reassurance that time flowed, that I have a vague idea of what occurred. There might be very few details to be recalled and I maybe unsure of the order in which these segments occurred. The important thing is that it gives me enough context to know that my time sense is intact, if a little vague.
One thing to be clear about, this post-hypnotic amnesia is not memory loss. The memory data is there, somewhere below the general recall threshold. It will bubble up either when needed or when some thought train triggers a recall. The sub-conscious can even riff on these memories during sleep, processing and understanding them until it decides to feed the results of its interpretation to the conscious.
Post hypnotic amnesia fits very well with my concepts and application of submission. In normal hypnotherapy it is a valid approach to utilise the scepticism of a subject and just get them to ‘play along’ with suggestions. In my submission, be it physical or hypnosis, I don’t want to play along, I want it to come from the core of me, as truthfully painful, honest and gloriously surprising as it can be.
There’s also the fact that what she gets from me may not be what she thought she suggested during hypnosis. It will have been filtered, it will have bubbled for a while, it will have been interpreted by my sub-conscious. The result can surprise her just as much as me and I’ve seen the big grin when that happens. She can play me like a musical instrument and sometimes I’ll produce a bum note that is actually a fresh symphony.
How boring it would be if she suggested in hypnosis that I will do X, Y and Z. And with full recall of what she said I played along and gave her X, Y and Z exactly as she defined them ? Far more interesting that X doesn’t work, Y works as expected and Z morphs in to D, E and F.
I couldn’t do this without the gift of amnesia.
Previous posts in this series:
August 14, 2019 @ 12:38 pm
This is a fascinating post Melody – I can’t say I have a great understanding of what you are discussing – never having gone down the hypnosis route – although I did find my dreams throw out stuff that are possibly past memories I thought were long gone.
And then there are false memories – I know i have them too x
August 14, 2019 @ 12:55 pm
I try to make this series informative, there’s so many preconceptions, even fears, around hypnosis. Those fears usually revolve around being “programmed” against your will. And I will admit that a casual view of session amnesia in the wrong hands can raise fears of gaslighting.
Memory is a fascinating subject. And my view is that the subconscious controls memory as part of protecting us. I’m fortunate in being able to play with it in this way with someone who fully respects my autonomy. I believe it’s what creates memory boxes to trap memories of bad experiences, that it leaks stuff out in dreams.
And as for false memories, that really is fascinating. In my 20’s and early 30’s I had some vivid false memories of spending time in jail as a teenager for killing someone 😧
xx
August 14, 2019 @ 1:02 pm
oh – my – god!!!
My daughter had some for living in a completely different house as a boy!
August 14, 2019 @ 1:04 pm
They can feel pretty convincing, huh ? Even though you know they’re totally false.
August 13, 2019 @ 10:34 pm
Interesting! I’ve dabbled in erotic hypnosis, and the posthypnotic amnesia only happened occasionally, and not recently. I love how you describe it as having to come from the core, not playing along, and after being processed internally, “will have been filtered, it will have bubbled for a while, it will have been interpreted by my sub-conscious” and the results can be rather surprising 🙂
August 13, 2019 @ 11:33 pm
If there’s one question or fear I get asked most about, it is that people assume there’s a loss of self, that chunks of the mind and personality are consumed by the hypnotist. In relation to that, amnesia sounds super scary.
I try to convey that as the subject I am far from passive in how suggestions manifest. My subconscious genuinely connives with her to create the conditions where things can become very interesting.
For me, amnesia is a given. However, it is an area that the subconscious might flag as being relinquishing too much control for others to reliably go there.
Thank you for great comment x