Katina is the author of the soon to be published book – Neurocounselling: Using Modern Counselling Skills and Neuroplasticity to Achieve Life Changing Results. The book is written for practitioners in the wellness industry.
Katina has been teaching the Diploma of Counselling for the past 10 years and is also a mental health accredited social worker and clinical hypnotherapist in private practice at Vive.
The following is an excerpt from Katina’s upcoming book release:
In Part 1 of this article we discussed two speeds of thinking. Slow thinking where we use our conscious mind, and fast thinking, which engages our unconscious mind.
We are typically unaware of our fast thinking as it happens so effortlessly and outside of our conscious awareness. Our fast thinking is habitual and I find it useful to think about the unconscious mind as the mind of habit.
Research from neuroscience shows that at most the conscious mind is responsible for our life experiences about 5 percent of the time. This means that the habitual patterns of the unconscious mind shape 95 percent or more of our life experiences. 1
This explains why will power is generally not a successful approach for developing new habits. Will power involves the slow thinking conscious mind. The conscious mind does change easily. Think about how easily you can learn – you might watch a YouTube clip, chat with someone, read an article or have a creative inspirational thought. Any of these activities can quickly change what your conscious mind is doing.
A purpose of the unconscious mind is to support us to effortlessly keep doing the things we have learnt. Think about how challenging it was when you were first learning to tie your shoelaces. You wouldn’t want to be going through that experience for the rest of your life every time you need to tie your laces. Many of our fast thinking unconscious patterns serve us well and we don’t want them to be easily changed.
Unconscious patterns can be changed, though not effectively with conscious mind strategy of … willpower. Different strategies are needed to engage the unconscious mind. Hypnotherapy is an effective and powerful modality for supporting change at the unconscious habitual level.
Vive Health Clinic
36 Riding Road, Hawthorne
0415 480 804
References
1 Szegedy-Maszak, Marianne (2005). “Mysteries of the Mind: Your unconscious is making your everyday decisions.” U.S. News & World Report.”