Has Anyone Experienced Deep Hypnosis This Fast?

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Hey everyone,

I wanted to share something that’s been happening to me recently with my new discover of self-hypnosis, and I’m really curious if anyone here has had a similar experience.

I’m a senior psychology student, and a college friend of mine who is currently receiving hypnotherapy training wanted to show me some techniques she learned. I wasn’t expecting much at first, but hypnosis started working way too fast on me. I can enter hypnosis in less than a minute, and my body reacts instantly—like my hand lifts involuntarily, my eyelids flicker, and I get pulled into deep emotional and visual experiences.

After my friend introduced me to hypnosis and left, I kept experimenting on my own, refining the techniques she showed me. At first, I was just trying to see if I could replicate the experience, but I soon discovered something unexpected—the gate and the darkness. In my self-hypnosis sessions, I began visualizing a staircase with ten steps, leading to a door at the end. The first time I opened it, I found nothing but darkness. It wasn’t just an empty space; it felt like something was hidden there, waiting. I kept reassuring myself, saying, "It's okay. You can show yourself to me. I’m here." But it remained silent, unmoving. With each session, though, I felt myself getting closer to understanding what was behind that door. Today, I reached a new point. As I went deeper, my hands lifted effortlessly, signaling that I had already entered hypnosis. I descended the staircase, opened the door, and again faced the familiar darkness. This time, however, something changed. I repeated affirmations about self-acceptance, creativity, and moving forward. As I did, my eyes began moving rapidly, and suddenly, I wasn’t just in darkness anymore—I was hugging something. I wasn’t sure what at first, but I instinctively knew it was a part of me, something hidden deep in my subconscious. As I embraced it, the darkness vision began shifting into bright yellow and white light, as if I was finally breaking through something. I felt that I was on the edge of seeing more, like there was something just beyond the brightness, but I decided to stop there. I reassured myself that I would return, counted down, and opened my eyes. When I came back, I was crying without realizing it, my pupils were changing size rapidly, and I felt completely relaxed. It was an overwhelming yet strangely peaceful experience, and I can’t help but wonder what lies beyond that brightness if I keep going.

My friend mentioned something about the Arons Scale of Hypnotic Depth, which is used to assess how deep someone is in hypnosis. She told me that some people can quickly reach the deeper phases (levels 6-7), and I feel like I might be one of them. I’ve also read that the first stage, the hypnoidal state, has two types:

Hypnopompic (the state just before waking up, where your mind is in a “twilight” half-aware state)
Hypnagogic (the state when falling asleep, between wakefulness and dreaming)

I’ve frequently experienced hypnopompic hallucinations, especially after a significant traumatic experience years ago. I’ve seen the Hatman and shadow figure hallucinations in those states, and I’ve had a lot of derealization episodes in daily life before started getting antidepressants. It makes me wonder—could my ability to enter deep hypnosis so quickly be connected to these experiences? Could this be related to autism? I’ve always felt like I can easily "lose touch" with reality and shift into altered states of consciousness quickly.

Has anyone else had a similar experience with hypnosis? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

I bought a book on the subject and tried self-hypnosis when I was in my 20's. I found myself to be easily hypnotised and highly susceptible to the instructions I gave myself. But I had no experiences whatsoever of visualizing anything besides these self instructions.

I tried self-hypnosis when I was about 20 years old, but it didn't work for me. I was quite disappointed. I was having vivid visual hypnopompic hallucinations around that time, though I hadn't had any traumatic experiences. I find it pretty much impossible to lose touch with reality, it kind of follows me about. Never had an out-of-body experience. I do have a creative, artistic side, but a lot of the time I get sucked into technical things so the artistic thing doesn't often dominate strongly enough for me to be a prolific artist, though I certainly have my moments. I've often put my logical tendencies down to having ASD, and I've often wished there was more "magic" in my life, but it seems there isn't much I can do about it.