Understanding the Mind: Conscious, Critical, and Subconscious

Your mind has three components:

1. The Conscious Mind

This is the part of your mind you're using right now: logical, analytical, thinking, judging, and planning.
It handles:

• Daily decisions

• Willpower

• Short-term memory

• Rational thought

The conscious mind is powerful, but it’s also limited. It processes only about 12% of your daily thoughts and behaviors.

2. The Critical Mind

The critical mind (also called the critical faculty or critical filter) is the mental “gatekeeper” between your conscious mind and subconscious mind.
Its job is to analyze, judge, compare, question, and filter information before it reaches the deeper part of the mind.

You use your critical mind every day when you:

• Evaluate a situation

• Question something

• Decide what’s true or false

• Reject information that doesn’t match your beliefs

• Use logic and reasoning

It’s a valuable, necessary part of your mind — but sometimes it gets in the way of healing.

3. The Subconscious Mind

This is the deeper, quieter part of your mind that stores:

• Beliefs

• Emotional patterns

• Automatic reactions

• Habits

• Memories

• Internal narratives

It’s responsible for about 88% of your behavior and emotional responses.

Your subconscious is the place where:

• Fears live

• Confidence is built

• Self-worth is shaped

• Trauma imprints are stored

• Automatic habits are formed

Because the subconscious drives so much of your life, meaningful change often must happen there, and that’s exactly what hypnotherapy does.

What Exactly Is Hypnotherapy? A Deeper Look Into This Transformative Healing Practice

Hypnotherapy is often misunderstood because people associate it with stage shows, swinging watches, or mind control. But real clinical hypnosis is nothing like that. In reality, hypnotherapy is a gentle, science-backed therapeutic process that helps you access the most powerful part of your mind: the subconscious.

To understand what hypnotherapy really is, we need to understand how the mind works and how the subconscious influences nearly everything you feel, think, and do.

So What Is Hypnotherapy, Really?

Hypnotherapy is a therapeutic technique that uses:

• Relaxation

• Focus

• Visualization

• Guided suggestion to help you enter a natural state of heightened awareness called hypnosis.

In hypnosis:

• You are not asleep

• You are not unconscious

• You are not controlled

• You are fully aware

• You can open your eyes or move at any time

Hypnosis simply allows the conscious mind to quiet down enough for the subconscious mind to open up and become more receptive.

It’s similar to:

• Being deeply relaxed

• Becoming absorbed in a book or movie

• The moments before sleep

• Daydreaming

This is a natural state your mind enters multiple times every day; hypnotherapy guides you there deliberately.

What Hypnosis Feels Like

Most clients describe hypnosis as:

• Calm

• Peaceful

• Deeply relaxing

• Comfortable

• Safe

• Like drifting inward

• Like time slows down

• Like being aware but relaxed

Some people say:
“It felt like I was waking up from a nap, but I heard everything.”
“It was like relaxing with someone guiding me where I wanted to go the whole time.”
“It was the calmest my mind has been in years.”

The experience is different for everyone, but universally, it is relaxing.

How Hypnosis Works in the Brain

While in hypnosis:

• Brain waves shift into a relaxed, focused alpha or theta state

• The critical, analytical mind becomes quieter

• The nervous system calms

• The subconscious becomes more accessible

• Positive suggestions are more easily absorbed

This makes hypnotherapy especially effective for:

• Releasing old fears

• Reprogramming limiting beliefs

• Creating new habits

• Healing emotional imprints

• Changing automatic thought patterns

• Reducing anxiety

It's not magic, it’s neuroscience blended with therapeutic technique.

Why Hypnotherapy Is So Effective

Hypnotherapy works because it addresses the part of the mind where real, lasting change happens: the subconscious.

Think of it this way:

• Talk therapy gives insight

• Hypnotherapy gives access

• Together, they create transformation

Hypnotherapy bypasses:

• Self-doubt

• Overthinking

• Emotional resistance

• “I know better, but I can’t change it.”

And reaches:

• Root causes

• Deep beliefs

• Emotional imprints

• Automatic reactions

This is why hypnotherapy can help with issues people have struggled with for years.

Common Uses of Hypnotherapy

People often seek hypnosis for:

• Anxiety

• Stress

• Trauma recovery

• Inner child healing

• Panic attacks

• Insomnia

• Phobias

• Low confidence

• Emotional regulation

• Overthinking

• Addictions

• Motivation

• Weight loss

• Pain management

• Anger issues

• Pain Management

Because it works at the subconscious level, hypnotherapy complements nearly every therapeutic or self-growth goal.

Is Hypnosis Safe?

Yes, when done by a trained, ethical practitioner, clinical hypnotherapy is safe, natural, and deeply supportive.

You cannot:

• Get stuck

• Lose control

• Reveal secrets

• Be forced into anything

Your mind won’t accept suggestions that go against your values.

You are always in control.

The Heart of Hypnotherapy: Inner Healing

Ultimately, hypnotherapy helps you reconnect with the inner part of you that is wise, capable, compassionate, and ready to heal.

By quieting the noise of the conscious mind, you can access:

• Clarity

• Healing

• Insight

• Inner strength

• Emotional freedom

Hypnotherapy isn’t about changing who you are; it’s about guiding you back to who you’ve always been beneath the stress, fear, and old conditioning.