Scent of Submission
A Smuthunter Story
“Hello Peter, it’s wonderful to meet you,” Dr. Angelica Burke’s warm smile and easy poise was remarkably and naturally disarming. Her dark brown eyes, touched by crow’s feet around the edges, were curious and welcoming, and her closed lipped smile revealed natural, and well earned smile lines at the corners of her mouth. “Why don’t you sit anywhere you’d like, and we can talk a little bit about why you’re here, and what I do.”
Her reddish, dark brown hair was up in a simple bouffant, with wavy strands that framed her round face, and she was wearing a simple, light gray flannel skirt suit with a creamy white button up blouse, and it fit well, showing off her wide hips, her pronounced chest, and accentuated both her natural height and her posture. In her black heels, which Peter noticed as he sat on the couch and subconsciously looked down at her feet, she was just above eye level with him.
Dr. Burke was a mature, tall, and curvaceous woman, and all of that enhanced her welcoming energy, and accepting aura. Peter felt like he’d wholly entered her space, and when she talked to him, he felt swept up in her attention. There was an uncanny flattery to being the center of her focus, and she stood over him, looking down at him, before he looked up from feet to meet her gaze.
She was wearing skin colored nylons… and ankle socks?
“I assume you know that while I can practice any number of therapeutic modalities with you, my primary focus is the use of hypnosis.” She smiled at him, pulled up her chair, and sat down with her legs crossed and a clipboard with a pen on her knee. “I use a complex and progressive model of hypnotherapy to create and expand an open dialogue between us, and your inner self to help with emotional awareness, need, and personal interrogation while cultivating a stronger observer self in you, helping you to have a healthier and more complex sense of emotional control.”
Peter nodded along, following the confidence in her voice, and feeling like he was grasping at least most of what she was saying, or at least recognizing the words and the context.
She smiled at him, a patient smile that made her warm and powerfully focused gaze that much stronger and more welcoming. Making eye contact with her made him feel like the world around them was closing down to just the two of them. “In other words, I hypnotize you to bypass the parts of you that get in the way of your health, happiness, and wellbeing, and then we build those parts up to replace, mitigate, and remove your unhealthy patterns of thoughts and feelings. So, do you feel comfortable with that approach? If you don’t, we can do other modes, but this is my specialty, and I believe that it can help you if you try it.”
Being caught in her gaze, meeting her deep, dark brown eyes, was like being a deer caught in the headlights of a car, but instead of the shock of bright lights, it was the welcoming warmth of compassion. Her eyes were full of empathy and as he stared deeper while she explained, listening to her easy, soothing confidence, he felt like agreeing with her. He felt like he wanted her energy in his life.
“I guess? I’ve never been hypnotized before, or really been to a therapist before, I’m just willing to try anything if it will help me feel… I know we talked on the phone, but really… I just want to feel… normal again?”
She folded her hand over her pen, flat on the clipboard, and he saw deep and profound care in her eyes, and a keen smile on her lips. “Well I’m happy to say that hypnosis can be very easy and natural when you open yourself up to it, which you’re doing because you’re here, and there’s no such thing as normal.”
He knew what she meant, but before he could try and correct himself, she nodded along with his unspoken thoughts. “How we feel day to day changes, but we do have a baseline where we can and do feel comfortable with ourselves, and calm and collected in our own minds and bodies. Which,” the smile moved from her lips to her eyes, making them sparkle with a mischievous enthusiasm, “happens to be one of hypnosis’s most organic strengths, and something I also naturally specialize in as a result.”
Peter realized he was hanging on her every word, caught up in her deep dark eyes, and he felt like she was holding him with her gaze, holding him gently as she also stared deeply into his eyes.
“We all want to feel calm in ourselves, and we all want to feel peace of mind when we’re alone with ourselves, and one of the reasons hypnosis can be so easy when you’re open to it is that it can just happen. I didn’t have to tell you to look deep into my eyes, like you are now. And I didn’t have to ask you to relax and let yourself go, or focus on your breathing for us to begin.”
Again, her eyes, her deep, dark brown eyes sparkled with knowing and encouraging mischief, and as he blinked, noticing how softly detached and relaxed he was starting to feel, he felt himself blush under her gaze, and with nervousness.
He shifted a little and shook his head slightly, “How did you do that?”
“Relax Peter,” she picked up her pen and tapped it on the clipboard, “some things naturally happen in conversation, and naturally happen when you talk to a hypnotist. Now, just look deep into my eyes and focus on the sound of my voice.”
Her eyes sparkled with amusement at his nervous shifting, and she laughed as he realized he was looking around the room, and not into those deep, dark, sparkling eyes.
He laughed in response to her laugh, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it. But fundamentally hypnosis is a state of singular focus and physical relaxation wherein you become more receptive to suggestion, both from external and internal sources. The conscious mind, or the waking self, when in trance, becomes less critical while the subconscious, which is always receptive and open, takes over. You don’t have two parts of your brain, this is just a description of how we function. And when you intently pay attention to someone, and when you try not to get nervous, you tend to open yourself up to trance more naturally and easily.”
She nodded as she spoke, and steadily tapped her pen on the clipboard, “You were paying attention to every word I said, and you were doing little things we all do to try and manage our nervousness, so you were focused and trying to relax, does that make sense?”
He nodded.
“And as a hypnotist, and I feel like you’ll understand this, even when I don’t mean to I can still accidentally, or subconsciously use the skills I have to help people naturally make their way into trance. So, I’m sure you can imagine how easy it is for me, when I try, to make it very easy for my subjects to find themselves staring deeper into my eyes as everything else starts to fade away.”
She nodded again and he nodded again as he stared deeply into those deep, dark eyes again. “And it feels natural too, doesn’t it? Just to stare deeply into my eyes, noticing the sound of my voice becomes more clear as everything else becomes softer and quieter in the background of your narrowing awareness now, doesn’t it?”
She nodded with every question, and Peter nodded along in agreement as the sound of the pen’s steady, monotonous tapping grew softer and softer as he stared deeper and deeper into her eyes.
“And it’s easy to let go of everything else at those fading edges now, isn’t it? Easier to focus on the sound of my voice and just sit back than to try and pay attention to everything, and the soft, heavy, blurry edges of your fading, falling, sinking awareness now, sinking deeper into my eyes with every word I speak.”
Peter felt his body slump back into the couch as his eyes stayed focused on hers, falling into hers, deeper into hers as everything else fell away into muffled, unfocused softness.
“And when you’re ready to just close your eyes and sink into deep trance for me, it will just happen. And until your mind and body are ready to just let go, sink back, and drop deeper, you can notice now just how deep and dark my eyes truly are. You can see how the brown of my irises gets deeper and darker the longer you stare, almost like my pupils are getting bigger now that you see just how deep and dark, like midnight sleep… deep sleep.”
Peter’s eyes closed and everything felt wonderfully soft, and quiet, and relaxing as a wave of warmth washed over him from head to toe.
“Good, now as you sit with me I want you to just look inward towards how you feel now. Look inside and notice how easy it is as you follow the sound of my voice away from your outer self, and deeper into the sound of my voice as it fills your quiet, sleeping mind. We’re here together now, working on relaxing you, opening you up, and making you feel good about just letting go and being who you are. Hold on to the sound of my voice…”
He felt her move and sit next to him, “Just like I’m holding your hand now, and lead me deeper into your mind.”
She held his hand gently with one hand and stroked the back of his hand with the other, “That’s it, deeper down now, deeper and deeper down into your core. Open up and lead the way past all the parts of yourself that judge and think, that criticize and condemn you with self awareness.”
She kept stroking his hand, but slowed it down to match his breathing, and without a word from her about it, he found himself breathing deeper and slower in time with her caress. He felt like there was a hole in the back of his mind that he was falling into, falling backwards and down into a deepening blackness, physically moving through himself and taking her with him, leaving the parts of himself she talked about behind.
“You’re doing so well, you’re a natural at this, and I can tell we’re there now, deep in the heart of who you truly are and who you want to be. This is the core of your true self, and for you to be you, this part of you moves upwards through your layers of conscious and unconscious awareness. Passing through those layers changes you and tempers you. It also slows you down and gets in your way, because what you want collides with what you’ve learned. And here, with hypnosis, we can connect you to this place and create a new path for your inner self and your deeper truths. This part of you can conquer anxiety and apprehension, this part of you can be fearless and decisive, and even more than that, this part of you can simply be. And don’t you just want to be yourself, Peter?”
Dr. Burke’s voice was so soft, and she was so gentle and caring with him. He felt her closeness, her energy wrapping around him, and a tenderness he had not expected radiating through her hands and up into his body. He felt her pulling him into her aura more and more, like a warm fire on a cold night, and everything about her was softness.
“I need you to answer me Peter, do you want to be yourself?”
She spoke softly and with an undeniable patience that told him she knew exactly how he felt, and what he needed. He understood the touch of mischievous enthusiasm he’d seen in her eyes, and in her approach; what he was feeling was both euphoric and deeply, profoundly and intoxicatingly relaxing. If she’d told him this was how he would feel, he wouldn’t have believed her or been able to reach this place.
“I want to be myself.”
He felt a heavy weight lift from his mind, and his body, and he let out a deep sigh after he spoke.
“I know you do, it’s what we all want, and what we all strive to be and struggle against every day. Now listen very carefully Peter. Everything we are is made up of our inner self, and our outer self. Everything we are is informed by awareness of the self, and all of our awareness is critical, so the only way to truly be what we are is to wholly give ourselves over to oblivion. Let go of listening, let go of thinking, let go of sleeping, and being awake. Let go and let yourself fall even deeper into the sound of my voice. I’ll catch you when you fall, and I’ll hold your truest self and show you how to be yourself fully and completely.”
Peter felt himself falling deeper into the hole in his mind, until…
“…and to help you anchor this state of self, I am going to give you a verbal trigger and a sense memory to help you. You are very open right now Peter, open and vulnerable, because to be our truest selves is to be vulnerable. And you are also vulnerable because deep trance with someone you trust, and you do trust me to go this deep and be this open and vulnerable, is its own powerful vulnerability. Suggestion is a part of vulnerability, and you are very hypnotically suggestible now.”
He floated in warmth and calm, only aware of her voice as she continued.
“The sense memory trigger I am going to give you is a smell, because smell is the sense most powerfully associated with memory, and the way I am going to give you this trigger is to say the word remember and have you inhale deeply through your nose to anchor it. And since you feel so wonderful and open and trusting with me, it’s going to be so easy for you to trust me to do this, to help you, and to give you this trigger that will help us now, and in future sessions.’
He felt her gently brush his lips with a finger, and he opened his mouth, “Close your mouth, let your lips feel natural as they touch, feeling so relaxed as you focus on just breathing through your nose. Now as you focus on inhaling through your nose, notice how your jaw relaxes, making it so easy to fully and completely breathe out through your mouth. IN through your nose, nice and deep, and out through your mouth, easily and fully, This is to help you fully breathe in the anchoring scent, and to help your body recognize and remember just how relaxing it is.”
What she said made sense, because she said it. Why else would she be saying or doing anything that wasn’t to help him? And as he found himself thinking those agreeable thoughts, he noticed how his body was relaxing even more, feeling every exhale causing him to melt more and more into the couch.
His whole body was loose, almost numb with relaxation, and he felt something on his face, pressing down over his mouth… It was warm and smooth, but he wasn’t able to think of what it was as its smell, musky and sweaty… a powerful odor that filled his nostrils as he heard the word “remember” repeated over and over in his ears… and then in his mind, made him stop thinking or wondering, and just sort of… fade…
