🧠 Reprogramming the Mind: Why Your Unconscious Patterns Matter An understanding of the effects of stress on the nervous system

Conscious vs. Unconscious: Two Parts of Your Mind, One Powerful System

Your mind operates through two main systems:

• The Conscious Mind – your logical, thinking self. It plans, decides, analyses, and sets intentions.

• The Unconscious Mind – the automatic part of your mind. It stores habits, emotions, memories, beliefs, and body functions. It’s where real habits are stored and where change needs to happen for things to shift.

Think of your conscious mind as the driver of a car, but your unconscious is the engine, GPS, and autopilot system. The driver may steer, but the car runs based on what’s already programmed underneath.

How the Brain Supports This System

Your brain is always working to keep you safe, functional, and alive. Here’s how a few key parts are involved in this process:

🧠 The Amygdala: The Alarm System

This almond-shaped part of the brain scans your environment constantly for threats. It’s responsible for emotional reactivity, especially fear and stress. When you're calm, the amygdala stays quiet, but under stress, it sounds the alarm—often before you’re even consciously aware of a threat.

The amygdala triggers an instant reaction, based on past experiences and bypassing rational thought in the process. Depending on the level of alarm the nervous system experiences, there is a relative increase in the amount the body relies on immediate habits and responses to keep you safe. This is why you might say or do things under pressure that you later regret.

🧠 The Prefrontal Cortex: The Logical Thinker

This is the conscious decision-making centre of the brain. It helps with:

• Reasoning

• Impulse control

• Focusing attention

• Making thoughtful choices

When your nervous system is under stress, the prefrontal cortex reduces its effective control over the body and responses. This means you lose access to your best thinking—right when you need it most. It’s been shown by Dr Bruce Perry that there can be more than a 50% reduction in executive function of the Prefrontal Cortex when the nervous system becomes stressed, depending on how much stress is experienced.

🧠 The Hippocampus: Your Memory Bank

The hippocampus helps store and retrieve memories— which are coded based on the emotions that are experienced at the time. It helps you link current experiences to past events.

So if something reminds your brain (even subtly) of a past stressor, the hippocampus may signal a stress response—even if there’s no actual danger now. This is the case in veterans who experience PTSD, where the backfire of a car can signal the brain and body into a full response towards protecting the self. Before the conscious brain has even a chance to process what is going on.

🧠 The Basal Ganglia: Habit Central

This part of the brain helps form and maintain automatic habits and patterns—from how you tie your shoes to how you react emotionally in certain situations.

When you're under stress, the brain leans on these well-practiced, unconscious patterns—whether they’re helpful or harmful.

Why Programming Your Unconscious Mind Matters

When you’re relaxed and safe, your conscious mind and prefrontal cortex are in charge. You can think clearly, make wise decisions, and stay emotionally balanced.

But under stress the process is usually as follows:

• There is a strong novel stimulus, or a familiar past stimulus that is taken in by the senses around you.

• The amygdala signals to the body and brain that there is an immediate danger (or unknown stimulus).

• There is an orientation response from the Reticular Activating System (RAS) Located in the brainstem, the RAS plays a central role in attention, arousal, and alertness.

• The prefrontal cortex slows or stops, depending on the level of danger perceived by the amygdala.

• The brain defaults to old, unconscious patterns stored in the basal ganglia and reinforced by memory (hippocampus), until the threat is perceived to have passed, or the nervous system begins to settle down and the prefrontal cortex can come online.

In these moments, you're not choosing how to act—you’re reacting based on what’s already programmed.

That’s why inner work isn't just about thinking differently. It’s about retraining the unconscious, where real and lasting change happens.

How Hypnotherapy Helps

Hypnotherapy uses a state of deep relaxation (a focused, trance-like state) to quiet the conscious mind and speak directly to the unconscious. This makes the brain more neuroplastic—ready to learn and rewire.

Through this process, you can:

• Calm the amygdala, reducing stress reactivity

• Reprogram the basal ganglia with healthier habits

• Update emotional memories stored in the hippocampus

• Strengthen the prefrontal cortex’s ability to respond, increasing what is called your ‘window of tolerance’

Over time, these changes create new neural pathways—making it easier to stay calm, focused, and in control even when life gets challenging.

The Window of Tolerance 🪟🛠️

The window of tolerance is an important concept for understanding the nervous system and something that varies based on each individual.

Some people have a very wide window of tolerance. This can be due to many reasons, such as having a supportive upbringing, stable relationships in school, and a good sense of where they stand in the world. Others are not so lucky to have it all, and can end up with a very small window of tolerance. Leading to them being easily overwhelmed, or retreating from high intensity environments.

The good thing is that the window of tolerance can be expanded. Many of the practices that help expand the window of tolerance are also good for grounding the sense of self and improve general well-being overall.

Some things that help to widen the window of tolerance:

• Mindfulness activities - Yoga, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MSBR)

• Meditation (Breathwork as well)

• EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique - Tapping)

• Hypnosis

• Spending time in nature

• Journaling (Especially gratitude journaling)

• Connection and community

The main thing is to have something that you enjoy doing, and that is readily available for if you begin to experience your levels of stress increasing. Mindfulness is a very strong place to start as it is very difficult to change something that you are unaware of.

A Nervous System That's on Your Side

You're not broken—your brain and body are doing exactly what they were designed to do. But those systems were shaped by past experiences, and you have the power to reshape them.

Hypnotherapy isn’t just “mind work”—it’s nervous system work.

You’re retraining your brain to:

✅ Stay calm and remain present under pressure

✅ Let go of and reprogram old emotional reactions

✅ Build new automatic habits into the subconscious mind

✅ Support your goals and well-being—without needing to force or fight yourself

Final Thought

“Under pressure, you don’t rise to the level of your goals—you fall to the level of your training.” — Adapted from a Navy SEAL principle

You're not just coping—you’re reprogramming your future from the inside out.