How do triggers work, anyway?
I brought a similar question up in my previous post but I thought it was important enough to warrant its own. Basically, I tried explaining triggers to my friend by describing a trigger I gave to myself and inviting him to use it, but he seemed really unsure about the idea. I'm worried that my attempt to describe hypnotic triggers made it sound like mind control (despite trying to maintain that hypnosis is not mind control), which got me thinking about how triggers even work in the first place.
For example, the example I gave to my friend was that whenever I heard the command "freeze" combined with a finger snap, I would be unable to move my body (Note: I made sure that the trigger had all the necessary safeties, such as it only working with people I trusted and being able to unfreeze on my own if needed). What I'm wondering is how your brain actually decides to respond to a trigger, because I didn't really pay attention to that and just followed the suggestion automatically. Is there any explanation as to how triggers work that would convince a skeptic that they're not nefarious?
Just to clarify, I'm not trying to force my friend to do anything that he doesn't want to do, as we've known each other for many years and I care about our friendship a lot. But at the same time I really want him to experience all of the cool things that hypnosis can do. My goal is purely to understand why he's so uncomfortable with the concept of triggers so I can explain them in a way that doesn't bring up any hesitance or negative thoughts.