good morning everybody and welcome back to our live chats today we are talking
about how the subconscious impacts decision making and i am your host dr dawn elise snipes
the subconscious is filled with memories based on our past experiences and what
psychologists often call observational learning we don't necessarily have to
do something or experience something ourself in order to learn it we learn things by watching
things happen to others and it can be in real life or it can be in the media or from messages
from school or from our church or wherever you get your messages from in your community
there are a lot of ways that we learn and all of that learning is filed away if you
want to think of it your brain like a big filing cabinet all of that information is filed away
in in our brains so we can consult it later sometimes there it's called
schema that we form and those are expectations of what is going to happen based on our prior
experiences many times what we think is our subconscious is actually in our conscious mind
but we are not aware of it because in our culture we tend to live very mindlessly and what i mean
by that is we live on autopilot we don't actually take time to stop and think about how we feel what
we need what we want what's going on we just feel a feeling and react and feel a feeling and react
the memories that we have in our brain serve to tell us what we should expect and that triggers
emotions if we are in a situation that let's just stay on the positive for today if we're
in a situation in which we see somebody that reminds us of our best friend from grade school
or our favorite teacher or our first love you know we can experience that as positive and we
may project on them positive feelings and feel very safe even if that doesn't necessarily mean
that we are safe right now and that is kind of an interesting little thing we often react
based on emotional reasoning whatever our brain tells us based on prior experiences
you know it says okay this is similar to a situation we've been through before in the
past it was awesome so this one must be awesome and we don't take time to stop and check that out
obviously the same thing can be be true for uh trauma and other unpleasant emotions
we can have experiences in our past not necessarily just our childhood but in our past
that have been similar to this and because there are similarities our brain says okay well based on
similar experiences you should be afraid or you should expect this to happen and it's
really important that we check those schema we check those assumptions because they're not
always true if somebody was in a relationship and you know five years ago with a person and
their significant other started acting withdrawn and then suddenly abandoned them you know that is
intensely traumatic for for a lot of people when they get into another relationship if that person
if the new significant other starts acting withdrawn they may assume that it means that that
person is unhappy and getting ready to abandon them when in reality we don't know why that person
is acting withdrawn it could be that they've got a lot of stress going on at work or they don't feel
well or you know we can hypothesize for quite a while about what's going on my point is we need to
get away from emotional reasoning our subconscious is great our memories are great because it gives
us a template to work with but that template is not always accurate in the present moment
since we react based on emotional reasoning we don't stop situation and make decisions
based on facts whether the feelings are actually appropriate in this situation we've talked before
about how when our brain experiences something whatever the experience it calls on prior
memories to decide whether or not to trigger that fight or flee response and if it decides that you
know based on similar experiences yeah i need to trigger that fight or flee response then you start
feeling anxious and it's important to check and say okay in this situation is this the exact same
as back then if not what are the similarities and differences and i've shared with you guys
before we've had a couple of bad experiences with storms here and i know that may seem trivial but
i worry about my creatures i worry about my donkey and and our we live on a farm obviously um
so when the storm came through and we've had it happen a couple of times where it's taken out
significant sections of our fence which means that the animals were more vulnerable and you know it's
also expensive to repair and i hate parting with money so between the two of those things
when storms come it can be very stressful for me and it's important for me to recognize and
challenge my own thoughts when something like that happens a storm is coming in i need to ask myself
okay how likely is it in this particular situation that this storm at this time is going to take out
my fence and you know we've made alterations to the fence we've improved it we have you know made
it so it was much less likely to blow down so now i can check those schema and when the storm starts
coming through when the wind starts picking up i still have to remind myself in the present moment
that you know what chances of defense blowing down right now are pretty small so there is
no need to continue to worry anxiety anger any of our feelings are based on prior experiences
because we can't anticipate the very next moment all we can do is say well you know
based on similar things this is what i expect to happen which is why mindfulness is so important
when you have a feeling that's great notice it say okay i feel anxious i feel happy i feel
however you feel and then you know especially if it's an unpleasant emotion check the facts
am i in danger at this moment is this actually a threat to me
right now it may have been when i was eight but is it now that i'm 50 you know do i when i was
eight i didn't have the same skills and tools and ability to protect myself that i do now
transference is a common example and i use that a little bit earlier when we were talking about
how people may have pleasant feelings and positive feelings towards somebody because
they're projecting on them experiences from the past and this can be with the same person or with
different people i'll give you an example with the same person maybe when you first started going out
or being friends it was great you had a wonderful relationship and then something changed and when
you see this person now you keep projecting on them that relationship that used to be
that relationship that new relationship energy and you keep hoping it will come back so you still
are clinging on to that thought instead of looking at the facts in the current situation and saying
you know what something needs to change we can if it's with a different person obviously like
the example i gave before we don't want to hold current relationships current people in our life
hostage for something that somebody else did a long time ago now they may have
similar behaviors but we don't know why and it's important then to start communicating
and find out you know are there any facts to support my anxiety or my anger in this situation
are there questions about the subconscious and decision making this was a
request that i had from earlier in the week so i diverged a little bit from the things that i
was planning on talking about but it's a really interesting topic and it's really
important uh if you come from a psychodynamic perspective as a therapist to explore what we've
learned in the past psychodynamics says that you know our past experiences shape or filter
how we experience life now how we interpret things now and it doesn't necessarily mean
that our interpretations are always a hundred percent accurate a lot of people that i work with
need to examine you know their reactions in the present and explore the things in the past and
maybe deal with some of those things recognizing that okay that was a really unpleasant situation
that was a really bad situation that i was in back then however i'm safe now and
recognize their power and their safety in the present moment
i think people are getting really exhausted lately i noticed in the
gym today it was about half the normal people that were there and you know we have
a relatively low number of people here today i think with
all the stuff that's going on in the world people are just kind of over it and and i get that um
and to that end i would encourage you to think about what is your subconscious telling you
what thoughts are you having right now about what's going on and how you quote should react
what is it that you can do to improve the next moment do you need to talk back to
some of those negative thoughts or do you need to take positive steps to increase the
happiness in your world if you want to think about it that way
alrighty everybody thank you for being with me today i appreciate you coming i hope this was
helpful as always if there are topics that you want to know about please feel free to um let
me know in the chat or in the comments and i will do my best to segue that in
for you know to to meet the um needs um and and wants of my listeners viewers whatever
you y'all are called um and yes mindfulness is so important
and it can be a great time right now because there is so much stuff going on it can be a great time
to start trying to practice mindfulness and you know since we're diverging a little bit
and heartiness take some time every day to focus on all of the things in your life
that make it rich and meaningful focus on all of the things in your life that are important
to you and recognize which parts of those things you have control of and recognize which parts
of the things that are stressing you out that you have control of and which parts you don't
alrighty everybody have a wonderful day and i will see you tomorrow at 9 30.
you