Subconscious Theory

Many people become perplexed by repeating patterns and behaviors in their lives that they seemingly have no control over. As hard as they try to break these trends, some mysterious force seems to keep them "stuck" in old feelings, perceptions, habits and behaviors. What is this "force"?

Simply put, it's your superconscious "life script" just beneath the surface of conscious awareness, which may be true or false, positive or negative, verbal or non-verbal, rooted in higher or lower attractor fields, all depending on it's source of information and coding. Positively changing the superconscious belief system and the way it operates, on all levels, is the heart of hypnotherapy.

How does this belief system form? For starters, the following "Theory of Mind", modified from HMI teaching materials, explains the basics of how information begins to get stored in our sub or superconscious mind: (for our purposes here, "subconscious" and "superconscious" will be used interchangeably).

When an infant first comes into the world, s/he does not have a developed ability to use logic, reason or inhibitory processes. To make their needs known, children use primal means of expression. Included in the "primal" faculties are the fight-flight mechanisms of survival. As a child grows and becomes exposed to societal controls, s/he develops inhibitory processes governing behavior, such as wearing clothing and learning to delay gratification of physical needs (such as through potty-training).

Babies learn by association and identification. Incidentally, there are only 2 fears that we are born with: 1.) the fear of falling and 2.) the fear of loud noises. Every other fear is learned by identification and association.

From age 0 to approximately age 8, a child develops a library of these associations and identifications. S/he learns that some of these are positive and some of these are negative. These positive and negative associations and identifications form what is called our “life script”, and explain how, for example, food can be associated with feelings of love if it was offered as a reward or token of special affection from a caretaker.

This subconscious "life script" is based on our body of “knowns”. The subconscious, in early childhood, does not yet perceive the difference between "right from wrong" in an adult context. It’s only aware of "knowns", which are stored in many ways, such as auditorially (through words), visually (through images) and kinesthetically (through feelings.)

Between the ages of approximately 8 and 12 we begin to solidify logic and reason. We become capable of making decisions and developing will power. This reasoning ability becomes our conscious mind, which represents 12% of our total mind power. The subconscious mind comprises the remaining vast 88% of our total mind power.

Our "critical faculty" separates these 2 areas of mind and serves to "protect" our subconscious from unknowns, whether "good or bad". It acts as a filter between the conscious and subconscious minds. If it were not for this filtering mechanism, we would have no protection from the vast number of message units arriving from our environment at any one time, and we would be in a constant state of "overload", or fight or flight.

However, our early childhood life experiences were recorded in the subconscious before this critical faculty developed... For more information on the subconscious script and what this means for you, please click on the iceberg below and go deeper: