Hypnotherapists and Psychologists tend to differ on this subject.
When Psychologists speak of the mind, they’re often as not, talking about the brain. I would suggest that the brain is no more the mind than is the big toe. Let me explain….
You may have heard the expression: ‘Mind-Body Connection’. This refers to the effect of the mind on the body and vice-versa.
- What if there is no connection?
- What if the mind and the body are one unit?
- What if, by changing one, you automatically change the other?
Think about the last time you got really angry. Oh, go on. You remember.
Think about what you were saying and how you were saying it. Now, if you think about this for long enough, you can start to feel the anger all over again.
Okay. Now think about doing this standing on your head. What happens to the anger? Really? You see, you can do anger and you can stand on your head, but you can’t do anger standing on your head.
Think about this for a moment. First, your mind affected your body, then your body affected your mind. Not difficult. In fact, perfectly natural.
So, how might we use this? Well, it’s a really neat way to help with Anxiety.
Hypnotherapists tend to describe the mind in two parts:
The Conscious Mind is our rational mind. It’s the judgmental mind –
- making conscious decisions
- setting goals
- analysing information
- making sense of our world
It has the job of filtering out the masses of input we encounter, on a continuing basis. It’s the dialogue that runs in our heads. It may be telling us that something is wrong, or there is a problem with whatever.
The real problem is, the problem will not be in the Conscious Mind. If it was, we could just think differently, and that would be that. Thinking positively is fine, but it has little effect on underlying programmes.
This is where the Subconscious Mind comes in. It is NOT unconscious – it runs just below our consciousness, hence – Subconscious.
Our subconscious mind is our emotional mind – it doesn’t think; it merely reacts. It is part of the Limbic system – the reptillian mind – fight / flight / freeze. It is our simple mind. It does not respond to intellectual ideas, and it never sleeps.
The emotional part of the subconscious is essential in making decisions, although we are not often aware of its role in decision making. The fact is, every decision we make, regardless of how rational we think we’re being, is determined by our emotions.
Our subconscious mind runs all our programmes, a bit like a computer hard drive. It’s simply, stimulus / response. It cannot think: this programme is not really serving me. The stimulus gets the same response, time after time.