Subconscious Mind
In 1956 the psychologist George Miller estimated people could consciously process 7 plus 2 or 7 minus 2 bits of information per second (plus two on a good day, minus two on a bad day). For example, at any given time, you’re consciously aware of:
The TV, the smell of your food, the feel of the newspaper, the sound of a car, the sun shining on your face.
This happens all at the same time in the same second! But when more than 7 things or bits of information come in at the same time, we tend to overload the conscious mind. We just can’t consciously process all the information.
Two million bits of information per second come into the human nervous system. The unconscious mind works like a supercomputer processing every bit of information coming in. Your subconscious mind is always aware of where you are, what you’ve had to eat, how its digesting, and millions of others – at the same time. Scientists have now concluded that the subconscious mind is able to process roughly 2 million bits of information per second!
Your subconscious regulates your breathing, heart rate and body temperature every second. It keeps your blood pumping and stores all your knowledge and memories. Your subconscious mind is working on this and millions of other tasks in the background. Your conscious mind can’t handle all of this information.
If we imagine the mind as a darkened room in our house the ‘conscious’ mind represents a flashlight shining in this dark room. As you shine this flashlight on things, you see and bring to awareness different objects and their associated meanings to yourself. But that does not mean the room contains only those objects you can see. What we cannot see but know/feel is around us is representative of the ‘subconscious’ mind, that part of the brain that feels it can remember something but not with clarity. But there will also be objects that you had forgotten were there until the flashlight shines on them – those bits of information have slipped from your conscious mind into the the subconscious, the unconscious mind.
The unconscious mind works to suppress memories with unpleasant emotions. There are many reasons why certain things are stored away by the subconscious out of the immediate reach of the conscious mind. For example, emotions or events that were too painful or confusing for the conscious mind to cope with at the time they occurred.
The unpleasant emotions inform you something is not right and you should attend to that something in yourself, as holding onto those emotions is not good for your body. In the long term they affect your health. They can also stop you moving forward and taking the action necessary to make your life much more enjoyable.
Sometimes the subconscious continues to try to protect us from emotional pain which is no longer a threat. The locked away emotions or events can produce a symptom such as a phobia. Hypnotherapy helps create long-term and lasting changes at these unconscious levels, by helping the client resolve those learned behaviours.