Agency

Agency refers to your ability to act for yourself. Oftentimes, the fantasy of mind control involves having that agency taken away. The trope of hypnosis is that it can't make you do *anything* against your will. But can it?

The answer is complicated.

You (as a subject) should know that you can always wake yourself up from a trance happily, quickly, and easily. You should know that you can always delay, modify, or ignore any suggestion or trigger if it is unsafe or unreasonable for you and your situation at the time. These are your inherent abilities as a subject, and nobody can take that away from you.

You (as a hypnotist) should tell your subjects that have agency in emergencies. Tell them that they can mentally modify unreasonable suggestions to make them work. Telling your subjects about agency when they are awake as well as when they are under will help them grow their abilities as a subject in a safe and sustainable way.

If the subject knows that they are safe, and that they don't need to worry, they will be more easily able to accept the hypnotist's suggestions. They will be able to drop into a deeper trance if they're not worrying what will happen to them in an emergency.

Hypnosis is not mind control that can instantly take away all agency. But neither is hypnosis merely [role play]. In erotic hypnosis, many subjects want to feel helpless. The hypnotist could tell them that their subconscious will decide when to act on their subject agency, and that they can otherwise accept the suggestions fully. A hypnotist attempting to remove or inhibit this critical safety measure is a big red flag.

There are hypnosis files that you can search for online that are designed to teach subject agency.