Understanding The Conscious And Unconscious Minds

Conscious vs Unconscious Parts of the Mind

Our mind is governed by two parts - the conscious and unconscious minds. The conscious takes up 5% of daily thinking, while the unconscious (or subconscious) deals with 95%.

The conscious parts of our minds are logical, analyzing, dealing with daily tasks and critiquing. It is the part of our mind that sets goals and accomplishes them, finds motivation throughout the day. It’s our willpower, our focus, it makes decisions using logical thinking and rationalizing. It also judges and critiques and filters out everything happening to us and around us from our external world - people, places, events. Our conscious mind is what we are aware of, while the unconscious is everything else. It can also only handle one task at a time.

The unconscious handles everything we are unaware of and it can multitask. It handles our breathing, digestion, all our other bodily functions, body temperature, our emotions. Habits get stored here as well and become part of the auto-drive of the unconscious.

Think back to when you first started driving - most young, new drivers are on high alert and take every cautionary step necessary. Now think about your driving now, it's probably more relaxed. You don't have to put so much thought into driving and can think of other things, your unconscious knows green means go, yellow means slow and red means stop. Any pattern that has become a habit such as this is stored within your unconscious.

Along with habitual patterns as stated above, our way of thinking can become habitual too. Our minds enjoy complacency and security in what is comfortable. However, it is important that if and when you book a Hypnotherapy session, you start paying attention to your thoughts and stop any sort of negative self-talk in it's tracks. Our unconscious minds take everything literally and have no sense of humor, the more negative things we consciously say to ourselves, the more it believes them and makes it true. From this moment on, when a negative thought appears, become aware of it and place that belief or thought in the past. Then follow it up with a positive, empowering thought. This helps prime the unconscious mind for change. An example is, "I know I can't do it, I have failed before, and I will fail again." Start reframing your thoughts and say, "I may have failed in the past, but I can learn from those mistakes and choose to keep going. I can do this." Suggestions that encourage growth and optimism open up the unconscious mind to change instead of telling it what it already believes to be true.

The unconscious also works like a data bank or computer and stores every single past experience or memory of you within it. Due to these memories, it stores our taught and adopted values, our accepted beliefs and also our identity and how we see and describe ourselves. The unconscious mind stores these beliefs and values through what we have experienced.

The conscious mind thinks it’s running the show, but it’s actually filtering out information through the unconscious. It’s helpful to understand that the unconscious is infinitely more powerful than the conscious and it is your ‘inner protector’. Its primary function is to prevent you from getting hurt and it learns and remembers rules and behaviours in order to do exactly this. So when new situations and new stimuli are coming in, your conscious mind checks to see if it is a yes or no situation, and accepts or rejects that thought or belief as true or false. “Does this match up with what I believe and hold true to myself? Is this safe, based on my past experiences? If yes, keep or experience. If no, discard and move on.” Once again, what this is doing is - it is protecting us from harm, and our minds use discernment from previous experiences or beliefs, and it also establishes and reinforces one’s sense of self. In the same way it can be helpful in dangerous situations, it can actually be the opposite and be limiting if we are wanting to enforce a new habit or new belief and our minds are telling us no.

Problems presenting themselves that cannot be solved with logic and reasoning are usually rooted in the unconscious. One of the best, if not most effective tools, to tap into the unconscious is hypnotherapy. A skilled hypnotherapist can help you rewire and reset patterns stored in the unconscious to create lasting change. Any limiting beliefs, phobias, or anxieties can be replaced to experience a positive shift in one's life.