The Power of the Mind: Understanding Your Subconscious

How the thoughts you don’t always notice can influence the way you feel, think and behave

Have you ever found yourself doing something almost automatically?

Reaching for your phone without thinking.

Eating when you’re not really hungry.

Feeling anxious before anything has actually happened.

Putting off something you know you need to do.

Or suddenly finding yourself thinking, “Here we go again…”

These behaviours can feel as though they happen without conscious choice.

And this is where the power of the subconscious mind becomes fascinating.

Your mind is doing more than you realise

We tend to think of our conscious mind as “us” — the part that thinks, reasons, plans and makes decisions.

But underneath that is a vast collection of memories, experiences, beliefs, emotions, habits and learned responses.

You don’t consciously think about how to walk.

You don’t have to remind yourself to breathe.

You don’t have to consciously remember how to drive once you’ve learned.

Your brain has learned these patterns and made them increasingly automatic.

The same thing can happen with emotional responses and habits.

If something has happened repeatedly, your mind can learn to respond in a particular way — sometimes before you’ve consciously decided what to do.

Your subconscious is a pattern learner

Think about your mind like a path through a forest.

The first time you walk somewhere, the path may be difficult to see.

But every time you take the same route, it becomes clearer.

Eventually, you don’t have to think about where you’re going.

You simply follow the familiar path.

Our thoughts and behaviours can work in a similar way.

A stressful situation may repeatedly lead to worry.

Worry may lead to overthinking.

Overthinking may lead to avoidance.

Avoidance can then reinforce the belief that the situation is dangerous.

The pathway becomes familiar.

But a familiar pathway isn’t necessarily the only pathway.

With awareness and practice, new pathways can be created.

The subconscious doesn’t always know the difference between helpful and unhelpful patterns

Your mind’s job is not to decide whether every habit is good for you.

Its job is often to learn what you repeatedly do and make it easier to repeat.

That’s why you can know consciously that something isn’t helping you…

and still find yourself doing it.

You might say:

“I know I shouldn’t worry so much.”

“I know I need to stop smoking.”

“I know I need to be more confident.”

“I know I shouldn’t keep thinking about this.”

And yet the pattern continues.

This doesn’t mean you are weak.

It means the pattern has become well established.

And what has been learned can be changed.

The mind and body are connected

Your thoughts don’t exist separately from your body.

Think about a time when you were nervous.

Perhaps your heart started beating faster.

Your breathing changed.

Your stomach tightened.

Your muscles became tense.

Nothing physical necessarily had to happen for your body to respond.

Your mind perceived something — and your body reacted.

This mind-body connection is one reason learning to manage thoughts, emotions and patterns can have such a powerful effect on how we experience everyday life.

So where does hypnosis come in?

Hypnosis is a natural state of focused attention and increased absorption.

You experience forms of it more often than you might realise.

Have you ever driven somewhere and suddenly realised you had arrived without consciously remembering every part of the journey?

Or become completely absorbed in a book, film or piece of music?

Your attention becomes focused, distractions fade into the background, and your mind becomes more receptive to certain ideas and experiences.

Hypnotherapy uses this state deliberately within a therapeutic setting.

Rather than simply telling yourself to “think positively,” hypnosis can provide an opportunity to work with the deeper patterns that may be influencing your thoughts, emotions and behaviours.

Changing the conversation in your mind

Imagine your subconscious as an old sat-nav.

It has been programmed with certain routes over many years.

Sometimes those routes are useful.

Sometimes they take you somewhere you no longer want to go.

You don’t need to smash the sat-nav.

You simply need to teach it a different route.

Perhaps instead of:

“I’m not good enough.”

You begin developing:

“I am learning to trust myself.”

Instead of:

“Something terrible is going to happen.”

You begin with:

“I can handle what comes.”

Instead of:

“This is just how I am.”

You begin to consider:

“This is something I have learned — and I can learn something new.”

Change doesn’t happen because you repeat a sentence once.

It develops through repetition, experience, awareness and practice.

You are not your old patterns

Perhaps one of the most empowering things to understand about the subconscious mind is this:

A thought is not a fact.

A feeling is not a command.

A habit is not your identity.

And your past does not have to dictate your future.

You may have learned to worry.

You may have learned to doubt yourself.

You may have learned to avoid.

You may have learned to reach for something when you feel stressed.

But you can also learn calm.

You can learn confidence.

You can learn different responses.

You can learn to trust yourself.

Your mind can become your ally

The goal isn’t to control every thought you ever have.

That’s impossible.

The goal is to become more aware of the patterns that are running your life and develop greater choice around how you respond.

Because sometimes the biggest change isn’t changing the world around you.

It’s changing the way you experience yourself within it.

And when your conscious intentions and your deeper learned patterns begin working in the same direction…

change can start to feel much more natural.

Your mind has learned a great deal over your lifetime.

Imagine what it could learn next.

If you’d like to explore how hypnotherapy could help you change an unwanted pattern, develop greater confidence or create a calmer relationship with your thoughts, get in touch to find out more.