What It's Like to Have a Hypnosis Fetish

When I first realized the idea of mind control turned me on, I was shocked and embarrassed. But then I found the hypnokink community.

Illustration by Vicky Leta | Edited by Lilly Dancyger

I was 4 years old and watching The Jungle Book. It was the scene where Kaa, the snake, was hypnotizing Mowgli to make him an easier meal. He was singing about it too — “Trust in Me”:

Slip into silent slumber Sail on a silver mist Slowly and surely your senses Will cease to resist

I loved the song. I hated it. I needed to pee. But, as always happened when I watched this scene, when I went to the bathroom, nothing happened.

I eventually figured out a pattern, something so automatic and physical it had to be completely natural: A movie or TV show would feature some form of mind control, and it would feel like the most compelling thing I had ever seen, and I would feel an annoying physical sensation in my groin.

I mentioned how I felt to a friend or two, but by the time I was 6, I figured out that not everyone felt the way I did. An odd, nerdy kid in general, I was used to being a bit different. But this felt shameful in a way that my stamp collecting or obsession with fairies did not. I uncharacteristically decided that this was a secret — and I kept it. Very occasionally, I played games with my friends that involved kidnapping and magical spells that turned someone into a slave. But mostly I just daydreamed about hypnosis and mind control — constantly.

A decade later, when I was 14, I noticed the feeling that I got when a story included mind control was growing stronger — there was a heat to it now. Some new need I couldn’t place drove me to Google “hypnosis stories,” just to see what came up.

Of course, I immediately found erotica, and as I scanned some of the worst prose I have ever read (I eventually found better), the feeling roared into a fire in my stomach. It was one of the most intense sensations I had ever experienced, and I suddenly understood.

The nerdy innocent, I had been the last girl in my class to even learn what intercourse was. And now, a word I had heard maybe a couple of times came bubbling into my mind with startling clarity: “This is a fetish,” I thought. “I have a hypnosis fetish.”