Experience and the Unconscious Mind13
In order to influence the unconscious mind, we need to first talk about the way in which personal experience ties to the unconscious. Perhaps you’ve heard the ancient story about the blind men and the elephant. Three blind men are brought into a room with an elephant, and each man touches a different part. One touches the tail, one the trunk, and one the side. When asked what they are touching they begin to argue. The one touching the trunk believes he is touching a snake; the one touching the body, a wall; and the one touching the tail, a rope.
Each blind man is saying what he believes to be true. And their experience proves it. Since we tend to trust our experiences implicitly, we understand how the argument started. Of course, the truth is that none of them are correct. They are all experiencing a piece of reality and forming their own, very different, opinions.
Gray explains that we only see and experience part of reality, and no matter how many experiences we have had, our brains are not powerful enough to experience and observe everything. Gray makes the point that we are limited by what we pay attention to: “In any given moment, the more you focus on one aspect of your experience, the less you notice everything else.”14 We usually notice only the things specific to our immediate reality: the society we grew up in, the media, the influencers in our lives, and our actual life experiences.
Gray states that upon those relevant experiences and observations we make assumptions, from those assumptions we draw conclusions, and from those conclusions we form beliefs.15 Gray defines belief as everything we “know” to be true.16
This illustration demonstrates that the things we “know” to be true are not actually formed by reality, but by reality as we have interpreted it from our experiences, observations, assumptions, and conclusions. Consider how this applies to alcohol. Collectively held beliefs are not built directly on the foundation of reality.
These beliefs can include statements like:
• Alcohol provides enjoyment.
• Alcohol provides relief.
• Alcohol is the key to social situations.
• A party can’t really be a party without booze.
• Alcohol makes us funnier or more creative.
• Alcohol can relieve our stress or boredom.
• For some it can be hard, if not impossible, to stop drinking.
• The very definition of alcoholic and alcoholism.
These beliefs can be particularly difficult to change for several reasons. One reason is that we unconsciously self-seal them by seeking out things that are congruent with them. This is called confirmation bias, the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions. We can find confirmation for our preconceptions about alcohol in many forms, including the media, the people we drink with, and our internal rationalizations. Adages about drinking found hanging in so many households illustrate a confirmation bias. Some of my favorites are:
• It’s not drinking alone if the kids are home.
• We have too much wine, said no one ever.
• It’s not a hangover; it’s wine flu.
• I cook with wine; sometimes I even put it in the food.
• Wine! Because no great story started with someone eating a salad.
The kicker is that these beliefs have become so ingrained in our minds and our society, and so repeatedly self-sealed, that they are programmed into our unconscious. And our unconscious controls our emotions and our desires.17 By definition the unconscious is not readily accessible or easily changed.18 We need a specific process to dive into the foundation of our beliefs, examine them, and change our perceived reality.
So what happens when your experiences with alcohol start to contradict your bubble of self-sealing belief? Perhaps your experiences are no longer wholly positive, and you start to question your drinking. Or maybe you hear new information about the dangers of drinking.
Gray says that one of the ways we make sense of these new ideas that don’t fit with our current beliefs is to look for external validity. Can we take the new information and test it out to prove its merit? However, especially with alcohol, we often don’t make it that far. This is because the new information doesn’t have internal coherence— it doesn’t fit with what you “know” to be true. And because it is lacking in internal coherence, you will unconsciously reject it before you have a chance to consciously consider it. This happens all the time. We both consciously and unconsciously disregard information we don’t want to hear. And when we do this, we never have a chance to see if this new information is indeed true; we never move to test it against reality.19
Why does this happen? Because we like certainty; it feels safe. Gray explains this unconscious behavior helps us deal with the realities of life, many of which are uncomfortable. It allows us to outsource some of the fear that attacks us when we confront certain truths. Reality is uncertain, and uncertainty causes fear. We try to protect ourselves from this fear by staying inside our bubble of belief until something happens that we cannot ignore. At that point we are forced to confront reality.
For me, it was one hangover too many, leaving me unable to function during the day as a result of my heavy drinking at night. I reached a point where I could no longer ignore the fact that alcohol was affecting my career and my relationships. This forced me to confront new information that said wine was not the joy juice I believed it to be.
But at this stage, attempting to drink less felt practically impossible. Why? I lived with a huge bubble of self-sealing belief around my drinking. I believed alcohol enhanced my creativity, made me funnier and more outgoing, allowed me to enjoy social situations, relieved my stress at the end of a long day, and comforted me when something went wrong. Giving up drinking felt like an incredible sacrifice, like the loss of a close friend. These were beliefs I had never previously questioned that had been built up over a lifetime of experiences, observations, assumptions, and conclusions.
I knew these beliefs to be true. I felt I would never be able to relax without a glass of wine. I honestly believed social situations would be boring and even depressing without alcohol. Even when I realized these beliefs were illogical, they still felt true because they were embedded in my unconscious and were much stronger than my logical, conscious reasoning. As Gray says, “construction of belief is not something we do consciously, it’s something we do unconsciously.”20 In the illustration below you can see how everything shaded in below the line of our beliefs represents the things we are not consciously aware of.
So what can we do? How can we explore reality and change our unconscious belief that alcohol is the “elixir of life” to fit with our conscious desire to drink less? It’s relatively simple. We need to bring unconscious experiences, observations, assumptions, and conclusions into conscious thought. This allows your unconscious to change. The concept is scientifically proven—scientists now realize that the brain is able to change and adapt in response to new experiences, in a process called neuroplasticity.21
The process of illuminating your unconscious foundation of belief will influence your unconscious mind. To do this, I will logically and critically provide you with information about alcohol and addiction. I will expose your beliefs,