The conscious and subconscious mind
It is useful when wanting change in our lives to consider what the conscious mind and the subconscious mind are, how they function and how they differ, so that long lasting change can happen with hypnotherapy.
Our conscious mind, is busy focusing on the “stuff” that is happening right now. Whatever you are aware of Now is part of your conscious mind. Reading this, you are focusing your attention, perhaps finding your attention focuses even more as you think about your attention. Take a quick “snapshot” right now and notice any thoughts, feeling or emotions …. Thats your conscious mind working right now.
Juggling our never ending “to do” list of our competing areas like work, family, friends ….. we quickly evaluate what is important, what makes sense to us, right now. Make logical choices, tap into our feelings, check out our thoughts, use our free will to live our lives. All the decisions, thoughts and feelings of each. So much information, so much to consider and take notice off. We would be overwhelmed if our conscious mind didn’t have a way to sort out everything. Fortunately our conscious mind acts like a gatekeeper, disregarding whatever it considers unimportant, filtering out anything that does not fit our existing belief system and relying on habitual thoughts and behaviour. Working at a speed of 40 decisions per second, we do get a lot done!
We could also think of the similarities of our conscious mind with a social media feed. When we start a new app, it offers generic posts, then we start adding our personal data and preferences, As we interact with these initial posts, liking, scrolling past, commenting. They quickly adapt to our interests, only show us content that is relevant. If we search out something new, suddenly there is some new content related to our new interest. The more you engage, the more you receive, but if its just a passing interest, you’re not engaged or you get distracted by something else, and are scrolling past, that content soon disappears. Social media has notice your attention is elsewhere and just stops that content. The app is building an information store with its algorithm, its version of a gateway, about you, sharing the information with other apps. It is no coincidence that our computers and phones work just as our minds do, as our gatekeeper. Our conscious mind is the ultimate algorithm, able to switch focus instantly, does multitasking sound familiar?
Jumping from one thing to another, our short term memory, stores our current focus. As you progress through the day so you let go of what was important at the start. Everything, images, sounds, thoughts, emotions even smells, all backed up, into your subconscious mind. You are also backing up lots of things you are not aware of, maybe its the temperature , the sounds around you or even the smells from over there, all filed into your subconscious as it gathers all the types of information you have previously given the green light to.
Our subconscious mind is like the operating system on your phone, it keeps everything running, backing up, filing away all the information from the conscious mind, automatically, into the relevant storage files. We are not even aware of that happening, you might not even know it exists, it just does. Just like our phones or computers, we engage with what’s on the screen, accepting that anything we want or anything associated with that are saved and working efficiently. Anything we want to find we can search for easily. Building a huge information bank of your life. As we age and experience more, our files become larger more interconnected and complex. You could be aware of that as feeling more knowledgeable. You could think about your photo app, how it not only stores all the photos you take, but all the ones shared by friends, random pictures that turn up there from other apps, plus those random screenshots…. All filed away, never to be deleted.
Our subconscious minds are processing so much, some think it is nearly 95% of our processing power, our subconscious is vast. Which isn’t surprising when you consider that our bodily functions are also being run by the subconscious too. Breathing, digesting, growing our hair, automatically doing. Imagine also every cell in our bodies, doing its job and reporting back…. Huge amounts of information being collected, stored, compared to the norm…. Always on 24/7. Not only are we processing huge amounts, it is fast too, some estimated the subconscious mind process information at 20million decisions per second!
If you have ever woken up with new insight regarding something that was unresolved the day before then you know how the subconscious never switches off and can be incredibly insightful and helpful. When we are asleep, the gatekeeper and all its judgement, is quiet, allowing the reasoning of your unbiased subconscious with the huge information base, to provide a solution. It is no wonder that big tech companies and their apps, software etc are inspired by how the subconscious mind works as it works so well for us!
As a trained hypnotherapist, I work with that natural process we experience during sleep. Unlike sleep, the hypnotic state, is one of focused and alert attention. Where your judgmental gatekeeper, the conscious mind, is quiet and relaxed. I will give you positive suggestions, that are aligned with your goals, that your subconscious mind can and will accept. I use a variety of techniques, depending on what is most effective for you. As you listen, your subconscious mind processes these suggestions so you can achieve long lasting change. You could even have made the changes you want by the end of the session.
