The unconscious mind and hypnosis

We can divide the mind up into the part that is conscious and the part that is unconscious.

The conscious mind is the part of you that is aware right now. It is involved in thinking, analysis and making decisions. For example, where to go on holiday, what to have for breakfast etc. However, these processes often have their roots in the unconscious mind. Consciousness is focussed awareness, and we frequently and flexibly change and direct the focus. When our awareness is focussed appropriately, we become aware of some of the contents and processes in our unconscious mind. However, much of the unconscious mind is inaccessible to consciousness.

The vast majority of the processing in our minds happens unconsciously. This includes essential bodily functions such as maintaining breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, hormone levels, temperature etc. The unconscious mind deals with preliminary processing of sensory information, sight sound, taste, touch etc. and integrates them into a unified experience that is presented to the conscious mind (Harris 2019). It is also the origin of feelings and motivations driven by events that activate networks of memories. Any habits or physical skills that have been thoroughly learned will have unconscious components. For example, when we are driving or tying our shoelaces, we are very rarely aware of the low-level details of how to do these things. Indeed, if you were to describe the details of how to tie your shoelaces you might find it difficult to actually get the job done. Your conscious awareness would interfere with the performance of the routine. The way these habit are made into routines and then dealt with by our unconscious frees the conscious mind from of a lot of work.

There are very many vital operations carried out by the unconscious; however it is also the place where many distressing feelings and experiences originate. Unwanted habits, anxieties and phobias live in the unconscious and are activated when the unconscious detects a triggering pattern. These habits of the unconscious mind will have usually developed as a way of defending ourselves from threatening situations when our ability to deal with them rationally was overwhelmed. They might also have been because we were too young to fully understand what was happening or it might have been because the events were truly overwhelming.

The problem for us is that these old habits of the mind may no longer be useful or appropriate. And although we might consciously want to change them our unconscious mind keeps repeating the same old distressing patterns. In hypnotherapy we work with the unconscious to change these patterns so that they either are not activated or so that their effects are much less severe.

Reference

Harris, A. (2019). Conscious. Harper.