06 - Safewords and Agency

A heads up…

I realized I softened my perspective on this against my experience and judgement. I’ll be updating this page.

I’ve been so flummoxed every time it’s -just- hypnotist installed safeties and nothing else haha Like, those -can- be a helpful tool but…

also the number of times I’ve had this convo

me, talking to experienced sub: “What’s your safeword?” them: “uhhh…”

too many!! We gotta do better lol

-@vylraz

Perspectives on safety can violently shift from helpful opinions to performative hot takes. Unfortunately, we don’t have academic research that applies directly to the recreational community - so we’ll need to make some inferences on experience and behavior.

I’ll kick it off with a few guidelines:

• Safeties do not need to be “given” in the first place, and do not need to be suggested in trance.
• Safeties, safewords, and safe behavior does need to be reinforced.
• To consider yourself a safer subject, you should be able to reflexively and automatically exit the experience. You can always figure out why you stopped an interaction after you take a break.
• They should absolutely fucking not involve any bullshit imagery or metaphors. Your safety is not a game of Calvinball.

If anything…

Understand that exercising your agency, your own volition, your will, whatever you call it - is an inherent ability that you already have. This isn’t an ability to train to get in the first place, it’s something you train to reduce harm quickly and efficiently.

A School of Two Thoughts

Generally in the recreational community there are two schools of thoughts on safeties - both have their merits and they’re both shortsighted.

Group A takes them from the idea of kink safewords - where you have a stoplight system of green being “good - keep going,” yellow being “let’s pause all suggestions and talk,” and red being “fuck this shit I’m out.” Group A usually suggests and reinforces their safeties in a ritual of trance, handing them down to the subject.

Group B believes that you shouldn’t get safewords and safeties from your hypnotist, as it teaches that you can only exercise your ‘agency’ through what the hypnotist defines. You wouldn’t ask a bank robber for instructions on how to leave the situation, would you? This part of the logic is fine - but when you ask someone in Group B how to set this up, they drop the ball and state “oh, the subject just needs to develop this on their own.” It’s not very fucking helpful for someone struggling with their own agency.

Hospitals and pilots have checklists to rely on when an emergency happens. Following a plan is clear, quick, and as close to automatic as we can get. If you’re stuck in a situation you dislike or is potentially triggering, you want to get out ASAP. This is the benefit of Group A’s approach - these responses can be trained. But, we miss out on experientially learning how to use our own agency.

How do we un-fuck this?

If you’ve worked with an excellent hypnotist before, they’ve told you that you can come back up at any time, possibly with suggestions that it will feel great when you do so. Ideally - they’d then test it out with you. But - you didn’t need the hypnotist to tell you this in the first place, you already had that ability.

My recommendation to you is to work on two things:

• Have a set of safewords compatible with kink. Green for good, yellow for pause, red for stop removing all suggestions automatically.
• Returning from the experience without any safewords or formalities. You’re always in control of your mind at all times, even if we let ourselves believe otherwise.

Practice both of these - either with self hypnosis, or with another hypnotist. If you find yourself in trouble, you’ll still be able to do any of this even if you didn’t train. Getting experience ahead of time is like doing a drill - to negate the effects of social or emotional pressure you may be under in the moment.

Safewords are great, but getting the fuck out is the important part.

Here are some rules I follow for myself:

• If I feel uncomfortable, the experience stops reflexively.
• If I’m uncertain if I should stop the session, the experience stops reflexively.
• If I’m uncomfortable with any suggestion for any reason, the experience stops reflexively.
• If I feel like someone is tampering with me in a way I didn’t agree to, the experience stops reflexively.
• If I just want to stop, the experience stops reflexively.

With this intention in mind, go ahead and work with someone to test it out. Make sure you can do this in an emergency, or even just discomfort. You could ask your hypnotist for a suggestion to resist, or something you’d dislike.

Even if you do get into resistance play down the line - this doesn’t get in the way in the slightest. You can ‘fight’ suggestions all you want! But if you’re truly unsure, either push the button to come out, or let yourself return. This doesn’t make resistance play completely safe, but it sure as hell is better than Group A or Group B’s solutions in isolation.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to take time reinforce this.

Further Reading

• Give this file a spin from Aurora - it’ll give you a safe environment to practice your agency without needing to wrassle in a hypnotist.
• Apologia on Agency from Wordweaver. A candid discussion about agency - including some of it’s history, applications in and out of sessions, and misapplications.