My experience & looking for opinions
I just wanted to write about my experience with hypnosis and how I feel I can’t be hypnotized. When I was young, I went to a show, I believe at the time I was 18, and although I didn’t participate directly, I followed along with the start for fun and didn’t go into a trance. Technically, this is the only time I have seen another hypnotist in real life, and this was stage work.
Moving forward, I started studying in the fall of 2025 and started going online, and within a rapid succession I was hypnotizing people every day on video chats and whatnot, eventually hypnotizing a friend in real life. I did some pretty wild stuff during this time that I learned quickly, and I only learned through YouTube, reading Reality is Plastic, and just general research. I estimate I probably hypnotized upwards of 50 people.
I then gave it up, but I always tried to self-hypnotize myself, either through videos or watching other people’s videos, but could never get it to work at all. I could never even get myself to enter a trance. Now I haven’t practiced or researched for a long time now, since around December was the last time I did anything, but a couple weeks ago I had an interesting experience.
I was sitting at a wedding zoned out, and I heard someone point to something on the floor and say, “Hey, such and such left their wallet there.” I genuinely and wholeheartedly saw a wallet laying on the floor in the distance, and it was about 10 seconds before someone leaned down and said, “Oh dang, that’s not a wallet,” and they picked up a napkin. I found this experience rather interesting because it almost seemed that when I was zoned out, I accepted the suggestion and believed I had seen a wallet as well.
I would like to work with another hypnotist one-on-one in real life, not only to test if I could get into a trance, but also for the fact that I could work with them and learn some skills to add on to my skill sets. So has anyone else had any journey similar to mine where you couldn’t self-hypnotize or do it online? And what’s y’all’s advice for finding other hypnotists in real life?