What's Your subconscious telling you?
This article will help explain why accessing the subconscious mind is important and an efficient way to modify unwanted beliefs and/or behaviors.
Your brain and central nervous system are comprised of billions of neurons which ingest and process stimuli in real time to determine what actions your body should take. Your brain (a physical organ) houses your minds (which work through the brain via the energy they generate through thinking, feeling, and making choices). Your minds are separated into conscious and subconscious.
The conscious mind is your logical, thinking mind. The subconscious mind is your feeling, instinctual mind. The two minds work in conjunction to determine your actions. Therefore, your thoughts (conscious mind) which, repeated over time, create your beliefs (subconscious mind) and your beliefs shape your behaviors.
So, if being in large crowds makes you feel uncomfortable or stressed, you will choose to avoid large crowds. Your conscious brain’s job is to keep you safe so it will avoid any perceived threat by any means necessary. You may find the more you have to encounter large crowds, that you begin to feel nauseous or acquire a headache sometimes even days beforehand. Your body is choosing to respond to the conscious mind’s perception that you are stressed and uncomfortable by showing you exactly how stressed and uncomfortable you are via the nausea and/or headache.
In order to really eradicate the issue, though, you are going to have to figure out WHY you are feeling so stressed and uncomfortable when in a large crowd. What made you believe that large crowds were uncomfortable or stressful places to be? Did you actually experience this or are you following along with something you learned from your family or friends?
Would it surprise you to know that the majority of beliefs you have as an adult were formed when you were a child (typically before the age of 8)? These beliefs were either from direct experiences or observations of the significant adults in your life at that time.
“ Of the downloaded behaviors acquired before age 7, the vast majority — 70% or more — are programs of limitation, disempowerment, and self-sabotage. These programs were acquired from other people, not from ourselves. Again, being SUBconscious, these programs are occurring without conscious recognition and awareness.
Therefore, though we have the perception in our mind that we are controlling our lives with our wishes and desires, the truth is far from that. Since thought causes 95% of our cognitive behavior to be controlled by the subconscious — i.e, below conscious — mind’s “invisible” behaviors, we struggle to manifest our conscious mind’s wishes and desires.” [Judith Pierson’s “The Power of the Subconscious Mind”]
So, say at age 8, a gymnastics coach tells you you’re too fat for your leotard. He may do so out of his own feelings of inadequacy and insecurity, but, as a child, you don’t yet have the capacity to understand his perspective, you simply trust him as a significant adult in your life and therefore internalize every bit of what he said. So much so, it becomes part of the core beliefs you now have about yourself.
How, then does this affect you over time? Maybe you quit gymnastics because you now feel “less than” despite loving the sport and doing quite well at it. And maybe that feeling of “less than” keeps you from auditioning for a play at school (which was another activity you used to enjoy). And maybe you develop disordered eating because you also were made to feel at age 8 that your appearance was more important than any level of achievement. And then, maybe as you became an adult you started to gain weight because it kept people’s attention off of you altogether which made you feel better, yet now you ALSO feel isolated and unable to connect with anyone.
But, as this overweight adult with no recollection of this gymnastics coaches’ absurd opinion when you were just 8 years old, you are struggling with trying to lose weight and to establish meaningful connections with people, and can’t figure out why (despite modifying your behaviors and doing “all of the right things”). It’s because those underlying beliefs and resulting suppressed emotions acquired when you were just 8 years old have not been addressed. They are no longer valid for you as the adult you are, but they are still lurking in your subconscious mind.
By accessing the subconscious mind via hypnosis, meditation, journaling, visualization, etc. you are granted the key to transcending your limiting beliefs and achieving any of your goals.
Amy Barbour, MS
Certified Hypnotherapist/Life Coach