The alteration of one’s subconscious mind can potentially influence the success or downfall of one’s own mental health. Essentially, the subconscious mind is the counterpart of our mentality that withholds information of which we are unaware of. It is ultimately the “shadow” of our conscious mind and is theoretically suggested to harbor our primitive desires and repressed memories. Nevertheless, learning how to properly stimulate the connections between the conscious and unconscious minds is integral to altering one’s mental framework to his or her advantage according to human resources specialist, Gil Mayer. In contrast, altering the subconscious can also be detrimental to one’s mental health if not correctly approached since an abrupt unraveling of repressed memories can potentially stimulate subconscious turmoil and ultimately provoke traumatic symptoms. Conclusively, the interference with one’s unconscious mind can ultimately end up having beneficial or detrimental effects on your mentality.
The notion of the subconscious mind was famously brought to the world’s attention by the Austrian psychologist known as Sigmund Freud. Specifically, Freud idolized the subconscious mind by creating the theory of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is essentially centered around the notions of the subconscious as well as its respective therapeutic methods. In essence, “Freud believed that people could be cured by making conscious their unconscious thoughts and motivations, thus gaining insight” according to psychology teaching assistant and published researcher, Saul McLeod. This would ultimately be the foundation for which the subconscious mind is centered around. Furthermore, Sigmund Freud elaborated on his theory of psychoanalysis by coining the conscious and unconscious divisions of the mind.
Nevertheless, Freud introduced this division of the mind by also creating his famous Iceberg Theory in which the tip of the iceberg represents what we are aware of while the submerged remaining majority of the iceberg represents what we are unaware of according to psychology specialist, Kendra Cherry. According to this theory, we are only aware of approximately ten percent of ourselves while the rest of the ninety percent is essentially laid dormant in our unconscious mind. Elaborately, inside the subconscious supposedly lies an expansive variety of significant and disturbing material that is deliberately kept out of our awareness to prevent emotional acknowledgement. This Freudian theory was ultimately the first theory to exploit the immense power of the subconscious mind and just how unaware of it we are. It was ultimately the pillar of realization upon how much control our subconscious has over us compared to its conscious counterpart.
Although the subconscious is a complex notion, the primary and yet simple goal of it is to store and retrieve information according to author, Brian Tracy. In other words, the subconscious stores information recognized by the conscious mind, inherently interprets it, and then alters the way you think and act by naturally expressing its interpretation of what was stored. This is, of course, unique for everyone and can be both beneficial and detrimental to one’s mental health since positive information that is stored can aid mental health while negative information stored can compromise it. However, there are many ways for people to directly access their subconscious minds and the sacred content that it withholds. More essentially, there are even ways to safely alter what the subconscious contains.