Hypnosis with bad consequences

When Sara was a child she had severe sleeping troubles. Her parents tried everything to get her well. Nothing seemed to work so in a last attempt they decided to let her try hypnosis. Sara went to see a hypnotist with a very good reputation. His treatment idea was simple. Under hypnosis he gave her a keyword that her parents could use for her to be totally obedient. The idea was that they would use it when it was time to go to sleep, and Sara’s mind would have no chance not to accept going sleep when they told her to. The hypnotist had developed his method for several years and now felt he could begin treating people with different kinds of troubles. For several years he had only been able to make his subjects stay in an obedient mode for shirt amount of times. At first only half a minute, but later on for at least four or five minutes. After many years he had reached what he thought was needed if his method would be helpful to treat people with more severe troubles. His treatment could now make his subject totally obedient for an hour. He called the last stage of his now working treatment the Longtime Obedient Level.

To Sara, who was the first patient to be treated, he gave the keyword LOL, the abbreviation of his treatment name.

Sara had no more troubles sleeping after that. Her parents just said the keyword LOL and then told her to go to sleep, and the hour of obedience was well enough for her to fall into a deep sleep.

Never could the hypnotist have guessed that his keyword would years later be as commonly used as it was to be.

Sara was now at college studying as a literature major. She was a beautiful girl with lots of friends and lots of men around her wanting to date her. She had never been serious with any boyfriend. One reason being that she occasionally had some strange experiences of losing control of her own mind for short periods of time. She could feel herself being unable to resist doing things people told her to do, even when she really didn’t want to. Sara was a confident girl, but the problem which she had a feeling was getting more and more frequent made her insecure and she therefore had let several boyfriends down when they had suggested taking their relationship to a deeper level.

Sara was studying in the library for an exam coming up in a few days when her friend Alice joined her. Alice was a business major and just had a few exams and had many weeks until her next one. Alice wanted to go out to party, and was hoping Sara would join her.

• Sara, Alice said, look at this. I got a text from Ben. He and a few friends are going to have a party. One of his friends told him he has the hots for you Sara. LOL, they are so juvenile.
• Sorry Alice, Sara said, I have to study, exam on Friday for me.
• Please put your books away for just a minute, Alice said.