9min Read
The Mind: Conscious, Subconscious, or Unconscious?
When reading about the Mind, Psychology, Therapy, books on habit change and even news articles, it’s common to come across references to our minds as Conscious, Subconscious, Unconscious, or even sometimes, Non-Conscious, but what do these terms really mean? And why’s it important? Well the headline is that they’re terms used to describe layers or levels of the mind. And it’s important because we all have experiences that engage each of those levels every day, and up to 90% of our daily thoughts and actions happen without us thinking about them. So noticing which layer we’re acting from can help us make changes in our lives and live with a greater sense of flow. But what do these terms really mean?
The Iceberg Metaphor: Layers of the Mind
As a way to think about this, a common metaphor used is the iceberg: many people have an understanding that the tip of the iceberg is the part visible above the water line, but that’s only 10% of the iceberg’s mass, with the remaining 90% sitting below the surface, out of sight. So why is this a helpful metaphor to understand the different layers of the human mind? Well let’s get our deep-dive gear on and take a look.
Take a second to imagine an iceberg in your mind’s eye, spend a moment visualising, thinking about or sensing what that could look like for you.
So as you tap into that iceberg in your mind’s eye, picture the tip of the iceberg, the part above the water line. This is a metaphor for our Conscious Mind. It’s the bit we can see, and it’s associated with our awareness of the present moment: the elements of thoughts, emotions, and our physical body that we are aware of at any given time. Put another way, the thoughts and sensations that we know we’re having. This includes noticing the things in our mind and body, as well as things like our executive functioning, which we can consciously direct (making plans, solving problems, self-control, etc). As examples, above, you imagined an iceberg – you consciously did that, asking your mind to come up with an image or an idea, and then noticing what came up. You were aware of what was happening, and you directed it. Similarly, planning your next holiday will likely involve a good part of your Conscious mind – timings, logistics, activities – all parts of our executive functioning our human brains can consciously use when needed.
Our Subconscious minds are the next layer of the iceberg down, just below the water line. Here we hold things we’ve experienced, learnt or stored – things that we often know we know and need access to, possibly quickly, but don’t need to have them in our conscious awareness moment to moment. As an example, if you can ride a bike, when you get on one, how much thought do you have to give to suddenly riding it? Where once, you had to consciously learn to do it, now you just get on and go, even if it’s been years since you last did it. Clearly being able to call upon things we consciously learnt and stored in the past for future use was fundamental to our evolution. These things are outside of our conscious awareness day-to-day, but can be called on when needed.
Then we get to our Unconscious mind, the lowest layers of the iceberg, even farther away from conscious thought, deeper below the waterline. This is the realm of the beliefs, thoughts and memories our brains have stored, as well as our autonomic physical functioning. These things guide our mental, emotional and physical experiences without us having to think about them, and these things become, over time, the foundations of our Identity. Some of these things may have happened, or we may believe, without ever actively knowing or remembering them. Often, much of our unconscious mind-stuff is learned in childhood and stored before our brain has developed into being capable of full adult consciousness. This part of our mind is very focused on keeping us safe, because that’s fundamental to our survival, and often we need access to our fight/flight/freeze responses as quickly as possible, so these things happen before we consciously know what’s happened. So often the trigger that drives the thoughts, emotions, and behaviours that well-up from this part of our mind never enter awareness, it’s just as if our responses “appear”.
What’s fascinating here is that some of our Unconscious mind-stuff can be accessed and even updated (for example, with the right support memories can be moved from Unconscious to Conscious awareness, and Joseph LeDoux’s Reconsolidation Theory suggests they can be modified before being re-stored). Sometimes we experience old memories, emotions and feelings surfacing without necessarily knowing why or having consciously prompted them to. For example, if you experience any kind of fear, phobia or anxiety, do you consciously know what drives your mental, emotional and physical response to whatever it is that triggers you, or does it just happen, as if on autopilot? Do you notice that, not everyone has the same response to that thing that is scary for you, which means there’s something your brain has learnt about that trigger, often outside of your conscious awareness, that results in your response. On the physical side, when did you last have to think about making your heart beat or to digest your food? Your Unconscious mind makes them happen without you even being aware. And yet, if you were to think about something you’re really scared of and pay attention to your heart beat, chances are, it’ll beat faster.
Non-Conscious is a term used by some people to refer to everything below the visible tip of the iceberg, anything below the water line, so the Sub- and Un-conscious layers together. Some people use this concept to acknowledge there are things going on below the surface but to avoid getting associated with the narratives or histories of the terms Subconscious and Unconscious. In the history of writing about, and studying, of the mind, Freud popularised the idea that there were things happening inside our minds and bodies that were outside of conscious awareness, and he used the two terms Subconscious and Unconscious interchangeably, until latterly settling on Unconscious. Below, I also use the term Unconscious to mean everything below the level of our conscious awareness.
The Mass Below the Waterline A.K.A. Who’s Driving the Bus?
I’m about to mix metaphors, and I’m not even sorry.
If you think about the iceberg metaphor, you start to understand that there’s a lot more weight below the waterline, and our Unconscious minds literally hold sway over the direction the tip of the iceberg moves. In fact, some studies have shown that up to 90% of our daily actions and thoughts are generated unconsciously, meaning for many of us, a lot of what we do, what we believe about ourselves or the world, and how we think is being driven from deep below the waterline of our mind, far from our conscious awareness.
And this can be fantastic because it means there are many things we need to do that we don’t have to think about doing, and, it’s worked for millennia of human evolution (and many, many millions of years or evolution before that!) to keep us safe and guide our survival. And yet, it can also feel confusing, especially in the modern world – the challenge for many, if not all of us, tends to be that, in some areas of our lives, our Conscious and Unconscious minds pull us in different directions. In that case, we’re experiencing a lack of alignment or coherence within ourselves: our Conscious mind chooses one direction, but our Unconscious mind, for reasons we may not (yet, or ever) be aware of, has other plans.
Yet, since René Descartes’ maxim “I think therefore I am”, and the modern fields of Science and Philosophy that developed on that foundation, it’s been controversial until relatively recently to believe that we are not singular, conscious, rational and internally aligned human beings. And yet, if we stop to think about it, many of us have experiences that contradict this every day. Have you ever driven somewhere and arrived with no memory of having driven the car because you were rehearsing a conversation/planning a to-do list/etc? Have you ever consciously wanted to stop or start doing something but been unable to? What about having an incredibly sensitive and heightened response to something that other people don’t bat an eyelid at? How about having an argument with a partner, friend or colleague and saying afterwards “I don’t know how that happened, I’m not sure what came over me”? Or said something along the lines of “There’s a part of me that wants to go for that new job, but a part of me that’s holding me back”? I would say that all of these (and many more!) are hallmarks of the deeply buried levels of the iceberg holding sway over the visible, conscious part, or, of the Unconscious mind driving the bus. At its most challenging this can result in all sorts of behaviours and experiences from self-sabotage, to anxiety and panic attacks, to addictions of all hues and flavours, to low self esteem, to simply living a life that feels, in some intangible way, not to fit all that well. Sometimes it can feel like we create chaos in our lives driven by we have no idea what, and then when we finally “come round”, we’re sat in the middle of train wreck of our own making with no idea why we’re there.
Learning to Drive Your Own Bus
What if I told you it was possible to better integrate the different layers of the iceberg, to bring greater alignment, ease and flow to your thoughts, actions and your life? That it’s possible to actually be driving the bus in all those situations where once you used to feel like you weren’t in control. From my personal experience and from working with clients, I believe that greater internal alignment is possible, and it sure makes life easier! If that’s something that resonates with you and you’d be excited to explore further, contact me. As a Cognitive Hypnotherapist, NLP Master Practitioner and Coach I can support you to get your deep-dive gear on and together we could create greater alingment and flow in your life: just Imagine what it could feel like to be truly in the driving seat of your bus…where would you choose to go? What could you choose to do?