Meet me where the sky touches the sea. -Jennifer Donnelly
Like the ocean, our subconscious mind is deep, vast, complex, and teeming with hidden wisdom and intuition beneath the surface. Our subconscious mind is responsible for more than 95% of our lives. Appreciating the functions of the subconscious mind can help us understand why we react and behave the way we do. Because writing requires linearity, each function is discussed separately. In reality, the functions are completely intertwined and co-dependent. The subconscious is responsible for our memories, emotions, perceptions, values, and body. To a hypnotherapist, the subconscious mind is the key for establishing lasting positive changes for healing, peace, and growth.
Storing and organizing memories
Most of what we say or do is outside of our conscious awareness, including storing and organizing implicit memories. These unconscious or unintentional recollections of past experiences can influence our behaviour and emotions.
The subconscious mind stores and organizes our implicit memories according to emotions, habits, behaviours, events, and experiences. It is responsible for consolidating our memories and learning from past experiences, often without our awareness. It may prioritize or delay our access to certain memories, especially when they are tied to negative experiences.
Likewise, the subconscious mind realizes space and time differently that our logical, chronological perspective. As an example, our subconscious may consider past negative experiences as unfinished keeping our mind and body on alert. When our subconscious mind senses external stimulus that reminds it of the negative experience (without conscious awareness), we might find ourselves overreacting or responding inappropriately.
Emotions
Invoking, sustaining, processing, emotions
The subconscious mind is responsible for making, sustaining, and processing emotions. Essentially through emotions, the subconscious mind shapes how we feel and how we respond to the world around us. The subconscious preserves past experiences, which can invoke automatic emotional reactions to similar future situations, without conscious awareness. The speed of which the subconscious processes information (much faster than our conscious mind), makes it powerful in shaping thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.
Repressing negative emotions for protection
To protect us, the subconscious mind blocks memories associated with unresolved negative emotions. The repression is a defence mechanism to minimize feelings of guilt, distress, embarrassment, and pain. This protection is a short-term function as these repressed emotions become trapped in the body and hinder communication along neural pathways. Unresolved repressed emotions, though hidden from conscious awareness, can influence behaviour, as well as physical and mental health. The repressed emotions and memories can manifest in the form of anxiety, depression, physical pain, difficulty with relationships or decision making, and more.
Releasing negative emotions and memories
The conscious mind can release negative emotions and memories as a means for processing past trauma. Negative memories and emotions can be triggered by any stimuli that reminds the subconscious of the event. Since we tend towards the negative, the subconscious might prioritize the negative memories without conscious awareness. Unresolved memories and emotions can lead to a range of issues including anxiety, depression and PTSD.
Healing is possible when the conscious mind can rationalize a presented memory and release the negative emotions. Using advanced techniques, a well-trained clinical hypnotherapist can help us process and deprioritize a negative memory and release the associated negative emotions.
Body
Directing bodily movement
Watching a baby learning to walk or learning to speak helps us realize how complicated these tasks are. Sounding out words requires coordinating our breath, vocal cords, tongue, and mouth. Walking requires bending our knees, ankles, swinging one leg forward and balancing to propel ourselves forward. Once we have mastered these skills, our subconscious mind lets us walk and talk without even thinking. We blink several times a minute, often without awareness. All those automatic movements are directed by the subconscious mind.
Preserving and regulating bodily functions
The subconscious mind controls the autonomic nervous system, which is responsible involuntary bodily functions including digestion, heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, immune system, hormones, and more. The automatic nervous system has three jobs. First, the sympathetic nervous system activates in times of stress or danger, including our body’s freeze-fight-flight response. The subconscious mind has our body prepared for a threat before we consciously are aware of the threat. Second, the parasympathetic nervous system balances the sympathetic nervous system and is responsible for the “rest-and-digest” process. Third, the enteric nervous system manages how our body digests food. Regulating each system requires electrical and chemical communication between our brains, organs, glands, nerves, muscles and more. Stress and anxiety can dysregulate the autonomic nervous system.
Values
Enforcing believed morality
Whatever the subconscious believes is true, it will enforce. These “truths” could come from religious doctrine, political doctrine, prejudices, cultural values and more. These “truths” are enforced according to our implicit biases, which are often unbeknownst to us. The Harvard Implicit Association Test has multiple questionnaires that can help us uncover our beliefs or attitudes about a range of topics.
Following directives of the conscious mind
Generally, our subconscious mind follows directions from our conscious mind. But just telling our subconscious mind is not enough. Repetition and consistency are necessary for our subconscious to incorporate a habit. Like all other habits, emotions are habits.
We can’t say to ourselves ‘be happy’ and find ourselves feeling happy. Positive affirmations are not enough. For instance, to feel happy, we need to repeatedly experience or imagine ourselves in situations where we are feeling happy. When I am walking the dogs through my favourite Riley Park, I intentionally notice my dog’s wagging tails, the beautiful trees and flowers, and all the other people enjoying themselves. Intentionally noticing things that bring me joy, helps me feel happy. With practice, the feeling of happiness is more spontaneous.
Taking things literally
The subconscious mind cannot process negative directives. It takes things literally. Rather than telling the subconscious what not to do, we need persuade it what to do, what to think, and what to be. If we say to ourselves “don’t eat that chocolate”, our subconscious hears “eat that chocolate”. Next thing we know we have eaten 3 large chocolate bars. Instead of a negative directive, persuading our subconscious to savour a small (or big) piece of chocolate and enjoy it will leave us feeling more satiated. We could also persuade ourselves that a delicious apple is more desirable. Then when eating an apple, consciously intentionally enjoy every crunch, taste and texture of that apple.
Seeking more and more
The subconscious mind is never quite satisfied, it always wants to learn, adapt and evolve. Once a goal is achieved, the subconscious mind quickly seeks another goal. This is why that new dress (or new car or new home or new vacation, or…) that we just had to have and then bought feels old quickly. To counter that, we can use creativity with our closet to keep our clothes fresh in our subconscious. Finding new ways to style and pair items of our clothes to create new outfits will satisfy our subconscious mind’s need for more.
Perceptions
Filtering information
We are constantly bombarded with information. The subconscious mind is a powerful filter of information, focussing on specific stimuli while filtering out other. This filtering is efficient allowing us to focus on what is deemed most relevant. It affects our cognitive decision-making. A classic example is when we notice our name being mentioned in a noisy crowd. It also explains why can be doing the same thing with another person and have completely different experiences. My husband is a fisherman. Whenever we walk by the river, he always notices what’s happening with the fish. I never notice the fish until they are pointed out.
Responding with instinct and habit
When we experience a strong emotional reaction, or do something without thinking, it could be because our subconscious is processing past experiences and association with that location or situation. This leads to an instinctive feeling of unease. Our “gut feelings” could seem like sudden and irrational insights, but they lead to quick and often accurate judgements. When a pattern of behaviour becomes ingrained through repetition, it becomes a subconscious habit. These habits operate automatically without conscious thought.
Building habits with repetition
Hebb’s law states that neurons that fire together wire together. In accordance with Hebb’s law, neural pathways are strengthened with repetition. Learning requires conscious effort and focus. However, repetition leads to behaviours and skills becoming automatic and feeling like second nature. Triggers and cues are essential for reinforcing routines. For instance, a bedtime routine can cue our body that it is time for sleep. By repeatedly engaging in a desired behaviour, the subconscious mind can replace an old habit with a new one.
Expressing itself with symbols, imagery, and metaphor
The subconscious mind expresses itself and responds to images, symbols and metaphors, not through logical reasoning. To the subconscious mind, time is not a linear chronological progression, but a fluid multi-dimensional experience. Similarly, space is not a static physical entity, but a dynamic field. The subconscious mind is free from logical constraints. As such it connects unrelated ideas leading to creative insights.
Our morning dreams are often clues to the emotions that our subconscious mind is processing. Dream journaling can help us understand what our subconscious is trying to express.
Hypnotherapy and the subconscious mind
I’ve discussed five intertwining mingling functions related to memories, emotions, the body, values and perceptions. Experiences shape these functions in ways that can be either negative or positive. With repeated negative experiences the subconscious mind can be habituated towards unwanted or unwarranted behaviours, negative emotions, thoughts and physical sensations. But the cause can also be the solution.
With repeated positive experiences the subconscious mind can be habituated towards positive emotions, desired behaviours, constructive thoughts and physical well-being. There are many ways to regulate our emotions, behaviours and thoughts with healthy daily habits including eating and sleeping well and getting adequate exercise. These healthy habits could also include meditation, yoga, and visualizations.
Sometimes we may find we are unmotivated or overwhelmed with issues and our healthy habits fall by the wayside or are non-existent. At these times we may need help.
The subconscious mind is the primary modality of healing for a hypnotherapist. When inappropriate reactions, thoughts, or behaviours cause consternation, a well-trained clinical hypnotherapist can help us repattern our subconscious mind towards more positive ways of living in the world. Utilizing states of focussed attention and relaxation, a hypnotherapist helps us communicate with our subconscious mind, allowing us to make positive changes in our behaviours, emotions, and thoughts. Like meeting where the sky touches the sea in the opening quote, the hypnotherapist helps us meet where our conscious touches the subconscious.
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