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The conscious and subconscious mind are two major forces that not only shape most of our mental activities but also drive our daily choices, decisions, behaviours, responses, feelings and thoughts.
While the conscious deals with the mental activities we’re actively aware of, the subconscious controls those below our awareness at the moment but could be brought to awareness with mindfulness ie; those that are more automatic or run on autopilot.
You arrive home from school/work with no memory of the journey because while the conscious mind was busy roaming in Greece, or what happened or will happen or that celebrities trend, the subconscious took over the role of directing your body to your home.
The definition above might be the first difference between the two mental layers. In this article, we shall dive into the differences, functioning and development of the two while drawing insights from our daily lives examples.
The Differences between the Conscious and Subconscious mind
Just to summarize the difference;
The Conscious is more rational while the subconscious mind is more irrational.
The Conscious mind controls deliberate and voluntary actions while the subconscious controls the automatic actions and processes.
For instance, An individual initially learning how to drive a car will require much the efforts of the conscious and this makes one become mindful of the actions they take from changing the gear and turning the wheels… With repeated learning however ,it becomes automatic that one can drive automatically while focusing on other tasks like eating popcorns or talking on a phone. The efforts of the conscious with repetition became a program of the subconscious that it could run automatically without conscious awareness.
The Conscious knows the beginning and the end, Truth & false, good & bad, positive and negative and past & present while the subconscious only knows the familiar, the known and the present. A reason those in the manifestation circles advise one to use present positive affirmations while meditating.
The conscious mind stores a limited amount of short memories while the subconscious mind acts as a vast bank of long term memories.
For instance; Hannah meets David in the market where they agree to exchange contacts. David left his phone at home however but tells hannah to read it to him he will save it when he gets home which he does. Seven days later however, David might have forgotten the contact because it had been stored in the conscious.Â
But David can remember his own phone contact and his mother’s because with repetition, they were stored in his subconscious mind. David remembers his name because with repetition it was stored in his subconscious mind. David remembers the first time he had sex because the experience that was associated with a strong emotion was stored in his subconscious mind as a long term memory.
Ancient traditions like the hermetic refer to the conscious mind as a masculine pole of the psyche while the subconscious mind which receives impressions from the conscious mind is referred to as the feminine pole of the mind.
Working between the two.
The Conscious mind basically receives information from the sensory organs. The skins, eyes, ears, nose and tongue. The information comes in form of stimulus such as; words, actions, thoughts and emotions.
When the conscious is repeatedly exposed to the stimulus, the subconscious takes it as something familiar and store it in the long term memory. The impressions stored in the subconscious later expresses themselves through the automatic responses, decisions, beliefs, choices and habits.
Eg; most of the negative words that were repeatedly thrown at our ears in our childhood had us internalize them and our interpretation of them made us form core beliefs around us. Repeated criticism makes us internalize feelings of shame and low worth beliefs about ourselves.
The political Machiavellian know this and use it to their effect. Remember the phrase “Repetition creates belief”
Stimulus and experiences that are associated with a strong emotion however may not need repetition and may program the subconscious mind with one experience. This is where Trauma and Addiction comes through from different sides of the emotional spectrum.
The Conscious mind impresses, the subconscious mind receives, stored and later expresses. This might force us to embrace the hermetic view of the conscious and Subconscious as male and female aspects of the mind as discussed above. The subconscious acts as a womb that is impregnated with words, actions, thoughts and emotions which it stores before it’s expression is manifested through our behaviors, perceptions, feelings and decisions.
The Conflict between the Conscious and Subconscious.
Just like any other cordial relationships between two, the relationships between the conscious and subconscious is also faced with some problems.
Sometimes the desires the conscious mind want runs against the programing of the subconscious mind. Sometimes the subconscious sabotage our efforts to succeed.
We all want good partners, wealth and peace but core beliefs in our subconscious mind might drive us to the opposite. We want to finish our tasks in time but the programing of the subconscious might make us Procstanate. We want to approach that girl but our subconscious beliefs About our selves make us fear rejection.
Beliefs and the programing that run counter to our conscious desires come to our conscious mind in rationalized form that it’s hard or sometimes impossible to know the underlying cause of the effect.
Eg; One consciously desires a good partner that provide a calm environment but all her subconscious knows from her childhood is a chaotic relationships. In attempt to recreate what the subconscious knows as familiar, she may be subconsciously drawn to unavailable partners with excuses such as Good men are boring… Bad boys are fun.
Growth and Development of the Conscious & Subconscious .
Research by experts show that the subconscious starts developing at birth and is fully formed by the time we’re 7 years.
The Conscious mind on the other hand starts forming at age 7 till in the mid-twenties.
The explanation to this is that, the brain starts forming from the back where the subconscious occurs to happen.
Infact what many holistic psychologist and coaches in the healing circle refer to as the core beliefs, are mostly beliefs we formed in our primal ages (0-7yrs).
The kids absorbs everything uttered or directed to them without a filter and this comes to shape their major decisions and behaviours later in life without their awareness. Understand that only the conscious has the ability to distinguish truth from false and rationally evaluate phenomenons.
Sigmund Freud’s Topographic Model of the Mind.
To Freud, the mind consisted of three layers, not as physical entities but as a model to showcase how the mental activities and processes occur.
The top consisted of the Concious Mind which contains all the thoughts, feelings, fantasies and memories we’re aware of.
Below it, lied the Pre-concious which contain all the processes that are out of our awareness but can be brought to awareness with mindfulness and conscious awareness.
At the bottom lies the Unconscious which contains repressed memories, desires, wishes, emotions and thoughts that were pushed from the Conscious mind for they were deemed unacceptable.
Freud used the term unconscious and pre-conscious interchangeably but later opted to use Unconscious to avoid confusion. Little did he however know that the two would still cause confusion years later after his death. But from the discussion we can state that the what he meant to be the Pre-conscious is what we refer to as the subconscious. It contains activities, memories and processes below our awareness (surface) but can be brought to through focus.
His theory is associated with the concept of an Iceberg in water metaphor. Research suggests Gustav Fechner and G. Stanley Hall to have been the architect pf this metaphor in relation with Freud’s theory.
That the Mind was like an Iceberg in water with only a little tip visible above the water while a bulky layer lied underneath. If we moved close to the iceberg and observed it we would be able to observe the layer just below the tip that’s immersed in water but it might be difficult to see the bottom (Unconscious).
In Summary the conscious mind and subconscious mind are two layers of our mind that have direct influence on our daily thoughts, feelings and actions. While the conscious tends to be rational, controls voluntary actions and handles short term memories, the subconscious handles long term memories, controls automatic processes and habits. While the conscious impresses, the subconscious stores and later expresses. Sometimes conflict between the two will see the ego to mediate.