When we talk about the conscious mind, we refer to the thoughts that are going through our heads right now, the ones that we are aware of as we think about something, the little voice on the shoulder or in the head, the one you can hear right now, as you think of your shoulder.  The conscious mind is rather less significant than our unconscious mind. To make it clearer (or not as the case may be), if you compare your mind to an iceberg; an analogy that one of my lecturers favoured, then the tip of the iceberg that you see above the surface of the water is the conscious mind, and the larger more substantial part of the iceberg that is out of sight, below the water line (but supports the tip), is the unconscious mind, a significantly larger part.

The unconscious mind is the seat of our emotions, and directs nearly all our behaviour. Everything that has ever happened to us, and everything we have ever seen, smelt, touched or heard is stored away there for future reference. It contains all our wisdom and intelligence; it is our source of creativity. The number of activities our unconscious mind performs and controls for us is quite humbling and astounding. Whenever we need to remember something, a name, date, place, an instruction, an understanding or insight, up it pops out of our unconscious mind like magic, weather the conscious mind wants it to or not.  Without ever being consciously aware of it, we breathe, walk, talk, drive a car and use complicated pieces of technology, never giving a second thought as to where all that knowledge came from. However, the conscious mind constantly takes credit for, and finds explanations for the activities of the unconscious mind, over which it actually has no control and about which it is unaware. 

Over many years, the conscious mind becomes very good at this act so that it is able to offer such impressive rationalisations and explanations for its behaviour that we don’t even question it. Nevertheless, the unconscious mind is much more observant, wise, intelligent, adaptive, and skilful than the conscious mind could ever be; it is said that the conscious mind can only hold eight thoughts at any one time; usually in small chunks, which is why we tend to remember numbers more easily if they are in small bundles. 

The unconscious mind can also delete information from our awareness. It would be impossible to process all the information we receive consciously, so the unconscious mind sorts it and then presents us with a summary of what is taking place.  We have all heard anecdotal stories of extreme bravery when someone has badly injured himself or herself, but feels no pain and has no awareness of their own injuries until after the traumatic event.  The unconscious mind had sorted through the information and decided what we need to know to help our actions at that moment in time. The interaction between the conscious and unconscious minds is going on all the time and we never give any of this process a second thought. 

Our conscious mind uses questions to reason, our conscious mind; the voice in our head, is always evaluating - critically and analytically – by comparing, contrasting and noticing, but in hypnosis, and the hypnotic trance state, the conscious mind is dampened down and this allows excellent communication with the unconscious mind, and without it’s critical analytical partner, changes in core beliefs and behaviours can take place.

But this ability of the unconscious mind to accept without critical analyses has a downside, because it can just as easily hang on to negative experiences, so that whenever a similar event to that previously experienced occurs again in the future, the old feelings of discomfort that were felt the first time, are instantly brought back to the conscious mind in an attempt to protect us; this is how phobias start. 

So to recap, during a hypnotherapy session, it is the unconscious part of the mind that is spoken to, where new ideas, concepts and affirmations can be implanted, and it is here that old limiting beliefs can be changed. Past phobias and learnt negative behaviours, feelings and concepts can be looked at and laid to rest, allowing the conscious mind to adopt a more rational positive outlook. The subconscious part of our mind has no critical awareness, and is only limited by our imagination.