How the Unconscious Mind Works

There are many theories about how the unconscious mind works and nobody really has all the answers, however, let me tell you metaphorically how I think the subconscious operates, based on my experience of helping clients through a diverse range of problems.

What is the unconscious mind?

The way I see it is – we have two aspects of our mind, there is the rational conscious part of our psyche that has the capacity to think and to analyse, to ruminate and conceptualise and is certainly one aspect of humanity that differentiates us from other creatures – we might even call it intelligence.

Then there is the unconscious side of us, for me, the analogy I use is to compare it with a small dog or a monkey. We all have legs, hair, eyes, a heart that beats, a brain and at a primary animal level we have the same fundamental needs:

• To be safe (to not be dead so we can reproduce)
• Food & water
• Shelter
• Reproduction
• Social intimacy

In my experience the unconscious mind is very animalistic and is unaware of (or not interested in) things like how old you are, what you look like, which car you drive etc. I feel it has the mental age of a small child, much like a monkey might have – and it looks at the world from one that tries to fulfil the needs listed above.

Whereas the conscious mind uses thoughts, words and rational concepts to think and plan – “I think I will go there, I think that is right thing to do, I think it won’t work.” The unconscious mind uses feelings and emotions which are the language of the body – “I feel hungry, I feel cold, I feel sad, I feel happy, I feel scared.”

This means there is often quite a mismatch between what the intelligent mind is thinking and the unconscious mind is feeling as they speak different languages, they want very different things and come at it from two very different views – one of logic and one of survival.

Because the unconscious mind is so busy ensuring that our body functions optimally, keeping all the chemicals in balance, digesting food, pumping blood, distributing oxygen, listening for danger etc. – it doesn’t have too much capacity to think. So, what it does is look for any repetition and automates the responses, that way there is one less thing to worry about. An example of this can be seen in a handshake, if someone extends their hand, you just reach out and grab it, you don’t have to think about it – it’s automatic.

This works well – unless, the automated response that gets filed away is inappropriate. For example; if as a young child a dog knocked you to the ground (just wanting to play) your unconscious mind might say “I will protect you from this danger – I’ll keep you safe from this creature with all those teeth.” So it installs an automatic response so when you see a dog you get an overwhelming need to move away from it – and this is the beginning of phobic responses or learned strategies that made sense from the unconscious mind but not from a logical conscious point of view (especially if you grow up and still get that automatic response.)

Will power is not enough

Usually, the unconscious mind trumps the conscious mind when it comes to feelings and emotional responses – so even though you might be consciously thinking “this is silly, I shouldn’t respond this way” when the trigger event happens, your unconscious just fires off that response and floods you with feelings and emotions – some good, but more often bad.

This is the battle between will power (consciousness) and emotional responses (unconsciousness) and they fight back and forth but usually the emotions win in the end.

Because the unconscious doesn’t really use language very well when it needs to communicate with us it uses feeling, pains, twitches, headaches, rashes, etc. to inform us that things happening around us (or to us) are compromising us in some way – I feel that this is where some aspects of psychosomatic conditions may stem from, because once the unconscious has been listened to (therapy) then symptoms often abate.

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