Hypnosis Center of Southern California

The Job of the Subconscious Mind

Perhaps it is easiest to see the jobs and operations of the subconscious mind by examining a newborn infant. A newborn has no conscious mind yet; it is born with instinct and a subconscious mind. The conscious mind will grow and develop as the infant grows. We can literally observe that development as the child grows.

The subconscious mind is present, in its earliest form, from conception. Its first job is to build and direct the development of the autonomic nervous system. Still. inside its mother, the embryo responds and develops, to some extent, directly to stimulus from its mother. While in the womb it can tell if something is wrong with the movement of the fluid in the embryo sack. The mother's temperature, heartbeat, breathing rate, the mixture of nutrients available through the umbilical cord as well as her own immune system responses and emotional state may also convey information to the developing infant as well. Just as it has been suggested that patients under anesthesia or in comas may absorb stimuli from the external world, so too, emotional imprinting is already taking place on infants before they are born. Pregnant mothers intuit this when they begin projecting love to their not-yet- born babies. In turn, babies demonstrate their awareness, prior to birth, by moving and kicking. It has even been suggested that how, when and where the embryo implants in the wall of the uterus is, to some extent, conditioned by the embryo's perception of the mother's feelings towards it.

These are survival mechanisms of the human animal. The subconscious mind can be seen as 'designed' to ensure the survival of the individual, and indeed, that is its primary function. From conception until death, the subconscious mind will direct the functioning of the autonomic nervous system and, indirectly, the autoimmune system as well. All events in the individual's life will be recorded in the subconscious through a filter of 'is this good for the organism'. All living organisms have a predisposition towards survival. In the human animal, the predisposition for survival is the job of the subconscious mind.

The subconscious mind communicates with feelings and emotions. It stores information as holographic (visual) records with emotion attached. Because it communicates to the conscious mind in feelings, it is considered to be the more powerful of the minds. Certainly, many of us have experienced consciously knowing that something we are about to do is not good for us, but could not overcome the feelings that drove us to do it anyway.

It may be that the subconscious mind records all thought as well. If the subconscious mind's job is the storage & recall of information about all events occurring in an individual's life, then it would seem to follow that among the subconscious' job is are retention of all memory. The memories of most interests in a discussion of healing are those that appear to unconsciously direct the adult individual's behavior and view of the world.

As we said earlier, until we reach a certain age, the subconscious mind is wide open, receiving and storing information about the world in which the child finds itself. In early childhood, the conscious mind knows little and is incapable of protecting us in any manner. Not only is the subconscious mind open to all input, at this point, but it is highly sensitive, charged with the task of identifying and protecting the child from any potential danger. As children, it is necessary for the subconscious to have total awareness of circumstances in our external world in order for it to be aware of any event that could hurt us. The subconscious does not distinguish between events which may hurt us physically or emotionally.

When events take place in a child's life, it is the job of the subconscious to record and file those events. As a survival mechanism, all events will be interpreted according to whether they were associated with pain or pleasure. Along with observing and recording the actual event, the subconscious records our interpretation of the event. It records that interpretation as a 'protection mechanism.' Clearly, the mind literally makes a decision as to what the event MEANS in terms of survival of the individual. The compiling of these interpretations and assigned meanings of events is how individuals ultimately come to their own unique perception of how Life is on Planet Earth, what is normal, what can be expected, what must be guarded against, etc.

Which mind is it that interprets the events in terms of survival/not survival? We can't know the answer to that question, at least not without extensive research. We do observe that, particularly in children, every event is being analyzed, interpreted and then stored in the subconscious along with that interpretation, coded with emotional/physical triggers. So when an event takes place in the child's life, the subconscious records that event and it also records an interpretation of the event. If the child has an interpretation of those events that the event was bad, hurtful or painful, that interpretation will get recorded in the subconscious mind along with a 'program' that similar events are to be avoided in the future. Apparently, there are both very specific programs and also very broad, general programs recorded in the subconscious. The formula for how the 'program' gets recorded may have to do with how the child or individual interpreted the events in the first place amplified to some extent by the emotional content as well. If there is a broad generalization involved, such as 'ALL strange men want to hurt me' and the event was deeply painful to the individual, then the program devised to protect the individual will be equally broad and their adult behavior will, as in this example, be triggered simply by coming into the presence of an unfamiliar man. Since every individual is unique and since every event in their life is unique, how an individual interprets any given event and the program designed to protect against a reoccurrence of that event will also be unique.

If an event happens which the subconscious mind records as hurtful, it will immediately record the circumstances and 'program' in some type of protection (negative feeling) in order to keep us from getting hurt under the same or similar circumstances in the future. These do not appear to be conscious choices and decisions. Whether the conscious mind is aware that the subconscious mind has programmed in a protection or not, once that protection is recorded in the subconscious mind, it will dictate the individual's behavior, however unconsciously, either until it is removed or the individual dies.

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