No matter what our emotional problems might be, they invariably involve uncomfortable feelings. But our uncomfortable feelings don’t always arise solely from the reality we might think they do, for they may also unrecognizably arise from our unconscious. To understand how our unconscious can unrecognizably determine our uncomfortable feelings, let’s begin by calling the multi-faceted recognizable and unrecognizable cognition, which is our brain’s “thinking,” our “mind.” We can look upon our mind as having three parts. Our “conscious mind.” is the cognition of the brain about which we’re aware. It involves our recognizable perceptions of ourselves, of others, and of our environment. This recognizable brain cognition entails evaluating, equating, comparing, judging, and anticipating. It can result in what we recognizably conclude and what we might communicate to others. Our “subconscious mind” is the great storehouse of all our memories not being recalled at the moment. The third part of our mind is our “unconscious mind,” which is the cognition of the brain about which we aren’t aware. It involves our unrecognizable brain cognition which entails perceptions of ourselves, of others, and of our environment, and evaluating, equating, comparing, judging, and anticipating, that can be very different from our recognizable cognition of our conscious mind. It’s our unrecognizable unconscious brain cognition that can result in our conclusions and communications to others, the origins about which we may have no awareness whatsoever. Our unconscious cognition rivals, and may even surpass at times, the complexity of our conscious cognition. It shares access to our subconscious mind with our conscious mind. It can resurrect memories from our sub-conscious that we might rather forget. It has remarkable abilities that rival the very different but equally remarkable abilities of our conscious mind. Our unconscious mind can do things that our conscious mind can’t. Where we have to be awake for our conscious mind to function, our unconscious mind can function both while we’re awake and while we’re asleep. Although our conscious mind, our subconscious mind, and our unconscious mind, all depend upon a properly functioning brain, the majority of our emotional problems, as we shall soon see, arise from a combination of the reality we are currently perceiving in our conscious mind, and what’s currently in our unconscious mind, and much less, or not at all, from any abnormalities in the neurology of the brain.
Our unconscious mind, which we can simply call our “unconscious,” is that part of our mind about which we have no control. It involves a way of thinking that is very different from the thinking of our conscious mind. Where our conscious thinking is factually-oriented, our unconscious thinking is more “feeling”-oriented than factually-oriented. It is emotionally-oriented, and because it is, it can easily affect the emotional side of our lives. Though our unconscious thinking is influenced little by our conscious thinking, our unconscious thinking can greatly influence our conscious thinking without our realizing it, and particularly so when there are strong feelings involved. Whether our feelings are comfortable feelings, or uncomfortable feelings, they can recognizably arise from our perceived reality as well as unrecognizably from our unconscious. Because our uncomfortable feelings can unrecognizably arise at times predominantly, or even solely, from our unconscious, it makes our understanding of a possible major origin of any emotional problem we might have, more difficult to ascertain correctly.
Where we might be very much aware of our reality and what we perceive to be the origin of an emotional problem of ours, our unconscious is pretty much an unknown to us. We’re not programmed to discern our unconscious because we don’t have any sensory receptors for doing so like we do for consciously perceiving the world around us. If we can’t see, taste, smell, hear, or touch it, it is understandable that it might be difficult for us to believe that it even exists. Yet our unconscious may play a major but unrecognized role in the development of our emotional problems and may later play a major but unrecognized role as well in the resolution of those same problems.
If our mind can be likened to an iceberg, our conscious thinking would represent that one tenth, or less, part of the iceberg above the waterline that’s easy to see. Our unconscious thinking would be the more massive nine-tenths, or more, that lies below the waterline which we can’t see. Because we can’t see that part, we may fail to appreciate that the hidden much more massive part supports what’s above that we may very clearly see, and may be determining the direction that our conscious thinking is taking. Like the path that an iceberg may take, may be more determined by the part we can’t see, from ocean currents exerted on that hidden part, our unconscious thinking may be determining the direction that our conscious thinking is taking, in a way that’s not recognizable to us. We can’t tell when our unconscious may be determining, not only the direction that our conscious thinking may be taking, but also directing what we consciously perceive, and what we don’t perceive, of our past, present or future reality. As such, it can distort how we see ourselves, as well as how we perceive things, people, experiences, and situations in our reality, so that what we perceive may be very different from how they actually are, were, or will be, in our reality. When it does this, we won’t know how much of what we perceive, think, do, say, and hear, will be a direct result of the influence of our unconscious. Because of the influence of our unconscious on our conscious thinking, and what we remember, or don’t remember of our past, what we might conclude about our reality could be very much different from what our reality actually is, was, or will be. How we consciously feel about ourselves, and about certain things, people, experiences, and situations, in regard to our past, present, or future, may be greatly influenced by our unconscious without our knowing it. Our emotional problems often do arise more as a direct result of this unrecognized unconscious influence, than they arise from our reality where we will always think, or “know,” they entirely do. That’s because we don’t know what’s going on below the “waterline” of our thinking.
We might think that in resolving an emotional problem of ours, all we have to do is change our thinking. If our emotional problem is that we don’t have nice feelings about ourselves, when we know we should have, we might believe that we can resolve that problem by simply making a decision to have nice feelings about ourselves, and as a result of that decision, we’ll resolve our problem. If our emotional problem is that we don’t have nice feelings about someone else, when we know we should have, we might also believe we can simply make a decision to think more kindly of that someone, and we will think more kindly of that person. This comes from our belief in the supremacy of that intellectual side of us and of our conscious thinking. If we have an emotional problem, we’ll tend to feel we know precisely what has caused it, and feel that we can resolve it intellectually with our conscious thinking. If emotional problems are like icebergs, to think that way would be like seeing only that small part of the iceberg above the waterline, and believing that’s all there is to it.
If someone’s emotional problem involves lying in the middle of a busy road, we might readily conclude that this person’s problem is simply that he, or she, is dangerously lying in the road, and that the emotional problem will be resolved when we drag him or her out of the road. That conclusion we might make about this person’s emotional problem, and the resolution of that problem, is oriented to reality. Something other than reality can become very much apparent to us if this person repeatedly goes back to lie down in the middle of the road. We might then begin to recognize that there’s something bigger as an emotional problem, underlying that which we can readily see. We might now conclude that this person’s emotional problem isn’t only what seems so obvious in reality. In fact, we might conclude this person’s emotional problem is arising a lot more “below the waterline,” in this person’s unconscious that we can’t see, than in the reality that we do see. We might recognize that the emotional problem is going to require a resolution in this person’s unconscious first, before it will appear resolved in reality. We might now conclude that, like this person’s emotional problem, our emotional problems and their resolutions may also entail a lot more that’s hidden, than what meets the eye. There may be more important unseen causes for our emotional problems that require unseen resolutions. Recognizing this may now make us question the origins of our emotional problems that might have appeared, at first sight, to be arising solely from our reality. It may make us begin to question the benefit of reality-oriented advice for our emotional problems that deceptively appear to be easily resolved with a conscious effort to follow that advice.
Though we might readily recognize