Old habits die hard!

Oh, how frustrated we get!  Yet what I am about to tell you might excite you and give you hope.  The truth is, we simply need to understand how the subconscious and conscious mind work together, which helps explain why these unhealthy and irritating habits form in the first place.

The first thing to understand is that together these parts of your mind are what you use to survive, to stay alive. 

The problem we encounter is, that one labels and forms our memory of an event with all five senses, while the other only operates in the moment and only focuses upon how you feel.  When a critical event comes into our purview, causing both of these parts of the mind to begin to be alerted, one looking intensely upon all aspects of the situation (conscious mind), the other only focused upon how we feel (subconscious).  When these types of events occur, we think as hard as we can with our conscious mind to solve the problem.  However, the other part of your mind, focused upon your feelings, responsible for creating responses to external stimuli and storing in the database of the mind every experience, learning and behavior created, also is responsible for your response to the incident you are focused upon and this is where it gets sticky and why it can be so difficult to change these behaviors.

The subconscious based upon its job to keep you alive, has the power to overrule your rational conscious mind, and it may do so based upon a faulty read of the situation, all because it evaluates what you are feeling, not what is actually happening.  And if what you are feeling has occurred in the past and is tied to a pattern stored in its database, it will overrule your rational minds desire to not do that behavior, all because it thinks it is keeping you safe.  The result, BOOM, you pick up the cigarette or food you are trying to avoid or do the phobic fear-based response that seems irrational. Fortunately, there is a way to stop this seeming insanity, that is really operating from a very logical, "if this, then that" response.  And that is to learn to observe and not react.

I always speak about this with my clients and my students, that the power of observation is key to a balanced life. Why? Because when we observe, we don't activate our fight or flight response, which alerts the subconscious to a perceived potential threat. When we react to a situation, it causes the logical patterns formed in the mind to be activated, or what is referred to as trance logic in the world of hypnosis. In other words, old patterns formed when the behavior first occurred, stored by your subconscious for future reference, are now activated because the subconscious only examines how you FEEL!  So, when you react in a situation and the subconscious feels a familiar feeling arise, it simply goes to the database and "voila", like in a trance, you pick up the cigarette, food or act upon the very behavior you are so consciously trying to to stop.  The key, then, is to not react.  This is why there is so much emphasis on mindfulness and meditation in our anxiety driven society today.  Many people don't understand this and hence reject it as too spiritual or somehow not being a strength to actually accomplish it.  The truth is that it is critical to balancing our life.

One powerful way to transmute these misformed patterns in the mind is hypnosis.  Hypnosis, like mindfulness and mediation, achieves the very thing we discussed in the above paragraph.  By calming the conscious mind down in a trance state, a suggestion is made to the subconscious that can keep you as safe or safer than the existing pattern.  When this is done properly, the subconscious gladly accepts the new pattern response.  The key, then becomes anchoring it in the mind.  It seems almost magical to clients when it works, yet it is the most logical and easiest thing to explain, once you understand the mind and how it works.

Want to learn more about your mind and how it works..stay tuned for more in my next blog post!