Your unconscious mind. What is the point?

When you hear professionals, such as hypnotherapists and Neurolingistic Programming (NLP) experts talk about your unconscious mind, you can be forgiven for glazing over a little. What exactly is the unconscious mind? What’s the difference between that and the subconscious? What does it do and why does it do it?

Therapists and the like may naturally put great emphasis on the importance of understanding why we do things and understanding our unconscious. For many though, the bigger question could be ‘what is the point of an unconscious mind in the first place? If it creates so many problems for us, through creating phobias, anxiety, OCD and so forth, wouldn’t we be better off without it?’

Maybe there is a kind of surgery that could just chop that part of the brain out? Maybe we could install some sort of chip that switches the whole thing off? How much simpler life would be.

You’ve probably guessed that isn’t going to work already, and over the next few blogs I will be unpicking how great and wonderful a thing the subconscious mind (yes both words are interchangeable) is. Not only can we not function without it, but it is doing a fantastic job every day at helping us function effectively.

What is your unconscious mind for?

Here is a quick list of just 5 jobs that your unconscious does for you that you wouldn’t want to be without:

• Runs your body – it just plain keeps you breathing, your blood pumping, your heart beating and tells you when you are thirsty or hungry.
• Stores your memories – without both our long term memories and short term memories we would quickly become lost, confused and potentially unable to keep ourselves alive on a daily basis.
• Maintains your habits – we all have good habits that we need to maintain, simple things like cleaning our teeth, eating regularly, exercise routines.
• Upholds your standards, morals and ethics – these core aspects of yourselves are created by your unconscious as it constantly learns from those around you and your experience of the world, to create your own set of rules for life.
• Controls your perceptions – not just seeing, hearing, touching, tastin and smelling but also a whole range of analytical functions around your experience that help you understand your world.

Over the next few blogs I will be looking more into the job of your unconscious mind and some ways you can use these abilities to your benefit. Each article will also look at how sometimes things can go wrong, just because your unconscious mind does what it does.

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