Cold Reading for Hypnosis

While the idea of “cold reading” may conjure connections to magicians, divination, and pick-up artistry, the underlying concept -- the ability to read a person without much knowledge of them -- is critically useful in hypnokink. For one reason or another, the hypnotic experience is drastically changed when the subject has confidence that the hypnotist knows what they are feeling. In this article, I’ll be going through some ideas about trust, suggestibility, and techniques to make a person feel like you are reading their mind.

What Are We Talking About?

Cold reading describes the entire process of being able to make someone feel like you know things about them. While we can simplify this into some concrete pieces, there are aspects to cold reading that require more general knowledge about psychology and the human experience. For example, a magician may purport to be a mind reader, and “prove” that by making generalized, highly relatable statements about a person, then following up by using information that they gleaned to make more specified statements. They may have “primed” their mark by creating a collaborative atmosphere, and the way that they make these statements may emphasize a supposedly hidden knowledge.

I know that cold reading has a bit of a nasty reputation as something that’s specifically meant to trick the subject or gain something from them. But within erotic hypnosis, cold reading techniques can be used to create a sense of trust, and they actually prove to your partner that you understand certain things about how hypnosis works, and how they themselves respond.

I’m writing this article partially in a more casual and first-person tone specifically because I want to explore some ideas that are more opinionated or even controversial than my norm. The first of which is that I am very aware of the necessity to treat every person as an individual, and to learn someone’s personal histories and responses is wildly important in hypnosis -- “every subject responds differently.” But that being said… I believe that there are actually many general commonalities between people and the way that they feel and think, especially when we can broadly categorize people (“new subjects,” “experienced subjects,” “people interested in erotic hypnosis,” etc).

Cold reading specifically deals in generalities between people, as we’ll explore -- one of the key techniques is to learn how to say things in a way that is near-universally relatable, but also what those things are to say. It is about an understanding of the broad, common human experience. While it is extremely important to learn and utilize the uniqueness of your partner, you can get very far -- and glean that knowledge -- by displaying your understanding of the general hypnotic experience. The goal here is not to trick our partners into thinking that we understand them: it’s to show that we do.

Suggestibility

The other reason I wanted to write this more casually is so that I could load this particular section of the article with caveats. I hugely dislike the term and concept of “suggestibility.” In my mind, there is no measurable attribute of a person that describes how responsive they are to communication. Largely, my distaste for this idea comes from how suggestibility is said to correlate with hypnosis (and especially hypnotic depth), and additionally the reliance on the term to describe why someone experienced or didn’t experience a particular hypnotic phenomenon (when framing, delivery, and more affect this greatly). I feel strongly that the way that a person responds to suggestions or any other communication is dependent on a huge variety of factors to the point that the term becomes near-useless except to describe, perhaps, a subjective feeling.

All of that being said, there is no other way I can think of to describe what happens when you tell someone what they are feeling/experiencing/thinking, and they suddenly become more attentive, more open, more trusting, and more responsive. It is enough to simply understand that when you read someone in a way that they feel is accurate, you facilitate broader intimacy and hypnotic response. We can, though, attempt to understand some of the factors that may be at play here.

• Trust/Belief

Trust and belief are necessary components of good hypnosis, and they are deeply entwined concepts themselves. Trust contains belief: to trust in something means that you believe things about it. For example, when we say that we trust someone to be safe in kink, it means that we believe that they will act within our expectations and comfort.

But trust itself is multifaceted: when we talk about trust in hypnosis, there are many directions that that trust goes. We trust that we will not be hurt, we trust that we will feel good, we trust that our partner is skilled with hypnosis, we trust that our partner knows (to some degree) what we are feeling, and more. These aspects are interconnected to create a holistic emotional feeling.

When we read someone, we’re affecting these feelings. We are telling our partners, “You can believe that I know you, that I see you.” This trust translates into belief that the hypnotist is skilled. This makes sense, because hypnosis relies on utilization and incorporation on what the subject is feeling -- that is what gives the sense of true, collaborative, and responsive trance. Hypnosis is inherently connected to how a person thinks and feels. When we remark on those feelings, we are remarking on their response to hypnosis; part of the trance or interaction itself.

We also tend to trust people who can accurately read us because we develop faith that they will know our comfort level and how to communicate with us. This connects a lot with the idea of rapport, which is another tricky word, but suffice to say that all of these sorts of abstract concepts working to describe interpersonal connections are overlapping.

• Pacing

Pacing is, in my opinion, one of the most useful things to come out of NLP. To recap, pacing is when you as the hypnotist play the part of a “biofeedback mechanism” and tell your partner directly what you’re observing about their experience. For example, “I can see that you’re relaxing into your chair, and now that I’ve said that, your muscles are relaxing even more…”

Cold reading and pacing are very similar -- they touch on a lot of the ingredients that affect the way a person responds to and expects suggestion. The purpose of pacing is to get someone to a point where it feels to them as though you’re describing their experience -- this affects all of the things we’ve talked about so far, but is a little more focused. You pace a person in order to lead them; you are describing their experience in order to eventually change it and blur the lines between describing what is currently happening and what you want to happen.

Pacing is a great framework within which to understand cold reading. Rather than focusing on observable, external experiences, cold reading tends to be very ambiguous, mind reading statements (which of course are also part of pacing). But it is useful to us to think of how our partner is developing an understanding of our reading as definitive of their process. We can also apply our idea of “yes sets” to cold reading, as well -- we want to hit affirmative responses as much as possible.

Cold Reading Techniques

In this section, I’ll outline a couple techniques that are used in cold reading and talk about what they are and how we can specifically relate them to erotic hypnosis. I think it’s important to remember our thesis here -- it is possible to make broad readings on people so that you can prove to them that you understand their hypnotic experience. Thus, we’ll also spend some time talking about how we can be confident in aspects, feelings, and mechanics of hypnosis. This is not the whole of cold reading; it’s what I’ve found to be the most foundational parts that work within hypnokink.

• Preframe

Cold readers are encouraged to prime their audience and targets in a certain way to facilitate cooperation. A “psychic” may tell someone that they need to be “open,” that they need to help fill in details to make the reading stronger. This encourages a collaborative process, and one that nets the cold reader quite a bit of free information. Again, our goals are different from someone trying to put on a show, but in hypnosis we talk about preframing and pretalks as well.

Something we want to encourage for our intimate partners is the confidence that they are free to respond in whatever way feels most natural, and that they’re always doing the right thing when they respond. This is exactly like the encouragement that a psychic gives -- we are telling our partners that they should feel comfortable, that this is about their natural reactions (which is all true), and we’re also setting up a situation where we as hypnotists are going to receive information. We will learn about how our partner responds and what they respond to, and that becomes available for us to feed back to and use “against” them in hypnosis.

As part of the set-up process, cold readers also consider information that they already have about a person, even if they’ve just met. Sometimes this relies on stereotypes or broadly universal experiences within a certain gender presentation, age group, fashion style, who they’re with, or etc.

In hypnosis, we know a few very important things about the people we play with. We know the environment that we met them in, such as somewhere online in a kink space or at a kink event versus if the person had no context for hypnosis being erotic before. We know that in some way, they’re motivated to be hypnotized, even if those motivations could change between people. And we know any information that we’ve gained about them from prior conversations or even negotiation. Many subjects will volunteer information about their experience and categorize themselves: “I’m very suggestible,” or “I have a hard time going into trance,” for example. We can presume certain things about these -- someone who self describes as suggestible has had a number of exciting or intense experiences with hypnosis, and someone who says that they are a “difficult” subject has faced frustration and perceived failure. There is so much that we can glean about someone just by considering the bare minimum of our interaction with them.

• Barnum Statements

The meat of cold reading is the ability to make statements that feel relatable to a person, when in reality the statements are very broadly true for many or all people. These are sometimes called “Barnum statements,” after P.T. Barnum (of circus fame). This propensity for people to feel that certain kinds of comments are relatable is called the “Barnum effect” (or “Forer effect,” after Bertrand Forer, a psychologist who studied this). For example, I could cold read you as the reader by saying that I know that sometimes you can be kind of hard on yourself when you shouldn’t be. The reality is that this is just a Barnum statement -- it applies to most people.

There are three main aspects of Barnum statements that we’ll look at here. Firstly, information that is known about the human experience (such as the knowledge that everyone can be critical of themselves). Secondly, how hedged/general it is (“sometimes”/“kind of”/“can be”). Thirdly, something that describes either a personality attribute or some sort of positive feedback. These are not all strictly necessary ingredients, but they are food for thought in terms of crafting broad statements.

While cold reading items about a person’s general perceptions of themselves can be helpful for “suggestibility,” when we apply this idea to hypnokink, we’re doing things a little bit differently. There are certain things that we know about the hypnotic experience, and in the same way that a mentalist reads about the human experience, we are going to read about trance specifically. We’ll look at some aspects of hypnosis and the way that an individual processes that are very broadly applicable.

Crafting these statements: Notice that I’ve made most of these statements very ambiguous and generalized, and think about how and why. Also note that most of these statements are framed as direct knowledge: “I know…” “I can tell…” or otherwise just objective statements; this reduces the ambiguity to a degree and gives the impression of more direct reading. There are also quite a few presuppositions and other NLP language patterns used, especially presuppositions that assume that what you’re reading is true knowledge and leave openness for the subject to not fully identify identify with the statement -- caged in language that implies that that’s because they don’t have the capacity to be aware of it, or that they just haven’t realized it yet.

Desires

Complexity

• Sexuality in general is often a complicated beast for people. Especially considering hypnosis as a kink or fetish, fringe sexuality can be even more so. We can feel fairly confident telling our partners that we understand that their desires to be hypnotized or controlled aren’t wholly simplistic, even if we have a limited understanding of why. Acknowledging this can add intimacy and heat to a scene as well as potentially put our partners at ease.

Example statements:

• “I know that you have your own personal, intricate feelings about this.”
• “It’s OK to have a lot of different thoughts about your desires.”

Desire to be Hypnotized

• If someone is engaging in hypnosis with you, you can safely assume that they want to be hypnotized. There is a lot of power in telling someone that they want something, especially alongside the concept that they are getting it at that moment, or that they’re motivated.

Example statements:

• “You want to go deep for me, don’t you?”
• “You’re going into trance, it’s happening right now, this thing that you have wanted so badly…”

Desire to Feel Good

• People want to feel good. Even though we can feel complex or even embarrassed about our drives for (sexual or nonsexual) pleasure, those drives exist, and it’s often part of our motivation for hypnosis in the first place. It can often feel very pinning to call someone out on what is ostensibly a base need.

Example statements:

• “It feels good, and very simply, you like feeling good.”
• “Your drive for pleasure can sometimes control your actions, whether or not you always notice it.”

Insecurity

• Most subjects do or have at some point felt like they want to “do the right thing” in trance. Whether this is in a D/s context such as wanting to obey well or it’s in a general context where they simply want to “get it right” to go into trance, many people, especially those new to hypnosis, worry about their performance. We as hypnotists want to allay this fear, and one of the ways that we can ease this insecurity is by acknowledging it on the path to proving to our partners that they can’t get it wrong.

Example statements:

• “I know you’re worried about doing the right thing, and it’s OK to feel that, but your responses are your own, so there’s no way to get it wrong.”
• “Maybe there’s a part of you that thinks you could be doing something better, but the hypnotized parts of you are just overwhelming that feeling as you go deeper.”

Psychological Phenomena

Change

• Hypnosis involves changes in experience and perception. These moments of change can be subtle or overt, but part of the perceptual intensity is in how we notice them, so talking about change can make it feel bigger. There are shifts in the way that someone pays attention, like the moment you enter into a scene, the way they feel through the words you say, when they focus on different parts of their experience. There is also change inherent in trance; the actual feelings of hypnosis are fluid, and they’re “changed” from being awake. Talking to someone about them experiencing a change is one way that we can reliably read someone, and especially when we take body language cues -- if your partner has a reaction to something, it is reasonable to contextualize that as them feeling a shift.

Example statements:

• “I know that you’re going to go through some changes in the way that you’re feeling right now as you listen to my words.”
• “Your thoughts are different now than they were when I first started talking to you.”

Attention Shifting

• More specific than general change, we can understand that as you speak to a person, their thoughts will naturally follow your words. If you talk to your partner about your voice, they will think about your voice. If you talk to your partner about their physical experience, they will think about what they feel. Though this experience of attention can change, we can effectively mind-read by pointing out these simple things -- telling someone very explicitly, “You’re thinking what I tell you right now.”

Example statements:

• “As I say things to you, your mind processes my words, and I am controlling what it thinks just by talking.”
• “Did you notice how when I talked about your legs relaxing, you focused more on your body?”

Hallucination

• Hallucinations in hypnosis have the context of being very grand, but the reality is that we can think of all sorts of feelings and imaginative experiences as hallucinatory. Recalling a memory contains sensory aspects, imagining/visualizing a scenario or suggestion contains sensory aspects. We can pay attention to what kinds of language we’re using to read the sorts of sense-experiences a person might be having.

Example statements:

• “As I tell you how I’m going to fuck you, your body is imagining what that’s going to feel like…”
• “What parts are you most focused on when you remember your deepest trance?”

Associations

• One of the primary ways that hypnosis works is via the associations of thoughts and concepts. People are relating, comparing, and connecting our words to their experiences all the time. For example, we can acknowledge that many existing hypnotic concepts are all associated with desires and past experiences. We can also understand that when any two things are happening at the same time, a connection can be made, like a trigger, or just a general relationship between your hand and their pleasure.

Example statements:

• “Are you feeling the association form between the sound of my voice and your trance that gets deeper and deeper?”
• “Your mind is like a complex web of connections and memories -- I wonder what kinds of responses it’ll produce when I tell you [x]...”

Rainbow Ruse

The second language technique we’ll look at is called a “rainbow ruse,” and it describes a comment that assigns a personality trait to a person as well as its opposite. For example, “There are times where you feel very driven, but other times it feels like you can’t motivate yourself at all.” Similarly to Barnum statements, rainbow ruses take advantage of the known human experience, especially its often two-sided nature.

In hypnosis, one of the most valuable skills to learn is that of “covering our bases” -- making suggestions that take a shotgun approach to most broadly apply to a subject and their responses. You see this in suggestions such as, “Maybe your body feels very heavy, or maybe it feels light.” But rainbow ruses, at their best, are not an either/or question -- they’re wholly relatable, and they give the impression of understanding someone’s complexities. We’ll be looking at several aspects of hypnosis that can have opposing responses, and part of our goal is to make it clear to our partners that both responses “work” for hypnosis.

Crafting these statements: In addition to generalizing, making ambiguous statements, and relying on presuppositions of awareness, we’re also going to be taking advantage of a lot of time-based language. One of the characteristics of humans is that we are not static creatures, and hypnosis is not a static activity. By saying that “sometimes” a person feels one way versus another, we’re making the statement more true and believable. We’ll also be using a lot of “parts” language -- a great way to highlight the complex nature of human feelings.

Desires

Safety/Danger

• We can read further into our partners’ complexity of desires by acknowledging one of the paradoxical natures of kink: We want to be confident that we are safe, but at the same time, many (but not all) s-types are looking for a thrill. Sometimes people engage in kink to feel fully comfortable and safe the entire way through, but there are a lot of people who are turned on by the allure of something a little bit outside of their comfort zone, or something that they’re not fully aware of the potential of. Before reading this, use context clues and prior information about your partner to be more confident in your read.

Example statements:

• “I know that you trust me to keep you safe, but I also know that there are little parts of you that are excited by the idea of a thrill…”
• “You can be as safe and comfortable as you need at the same time as feeling yourself pushed in exactly the right ways.”

Give In/Resist

• Resistance is often (but not always) a component of mind control fantasies. This can come in the form of an aspect of CNC play/desires, or it can be an inherent aspect of the idea of losing control. This is great to use in a resistance play scene, but more often than not, subjects can relate with the idea that there is some part of them that wants to surrender themselves, but that that desire is complex or they have a hard time doing so because of fear of vulnerability or something else. Even experienced subjects who fetishize control can have hangups and artifacts about “fully” giving in.

Example statements:

• “You want to go deep for me, but I know that the idea of truly surrendering and being vulnerable can make that complicated.”
• “You’re pushed and pulled at different times by your desire to yield, versus your desire to show your willpower…”

Psychological Phenomena

Voluntary/Involuntary

• While there is an overarching idea that hypnosis is supposed to make the subject feel like they’re not controlling their actions, we know that subjects can have fulfilling trances whether they feel like they’re being active or passive. Acknowledging that both of these experiences happen can help our partners worry less about their perception of their responses.

Example statements:

• “You can think of different times that you’ve felt like you were being very active versus being very passive.”
• “Sometimes trance feels like you’re participating, but there are other times when you really start to feel controlled.”

Aware/Unaware

• Similarly, there are preconceived notions that individuals have about how aware they are supposed to be about what’s going on -- how focused they are, whether or not they’re supposed to dissociate, etc. We can incorporate (and affect) both by making statements about this experience.

Example statements:

• “You will naturally go between being very focused on me and letting my words happen more detached from your attention.”
• “I know that you can feel how aware you are right now of your thoughts, but there’s also times when that awareness becomes more tenuous.”

Intense/Subtle Response

• Sometimes hypnotic responses feel very strong, and sometimes they are not as noticeable. This has less to do with how “intense” a perceived suggestion is (like the concept that an orgasm is stronger than a simple touch), and more to do with context, framing, and general subjective experience in the moment. Making statements about the duality of this experience is a way to make subtle responses more powerful.

Example statements:

• “All of the little impulses of responses you have are just opportunities for me to make you feel them stronger.”
• “You can think of times where you had more subtle feelings about something, and other times when something hit very strongly.”

In Conclusion

There are many more aspects of the hypnotic and human experience that I believe are broadly readable about people. The more that you grow to understand how subjects feel and process in hypnosis, the more that you can make statements that you feel are accurate -- hypnosis is about understanding the subject’s experience. I didn’t include utilization in this article because I feel it’s something I’ve explored extensively in other writings, but it is a critical aspect to cold reading, and I encourage you to use observation and information-gathering skills to acknowledge what your partner “tells” you. I highly recommend reading my “psychological phenomena” article, as this piece builds on that one -- I believe there is a good model for hypnosis in simply understanding the ways that subjects can feel and respond and crafting your communication to suit it. Try this all out alongside conversations with your partner about their perceptions, and enjoy!