"It's exactly your point — I was fully conscious and "at home" the whole time, yet something was processing and acting on the language independently."

It's unclear what you're referring to here. You were conscious, & you wanted to think the thought "this is dumb, it will never work." & you thought that. What was the independent process?

The hypnotism worked. There was an unconscious process at work whose relationship to the words was completely different from my conscious reaction.