How to Access Your Unconscious Mind: Understanding What Happens Outside Awareness

Much of what influences us does not arrive in consciousness as a carefully considered thought.

We can find ourselves reacting strongly to a situation without immediately understanding why. We repeat patterns in relationships that we had promised ourselves we would avoid. We feel uncomfortable with a decision that appears perfectly sensible on paper, or discover that something we have believed about ourselves for years begins to look very different when we finally examine it.

We often describe experiences like these by saying that something is happening in the unconscious mind.

But what does that actually mean? And can we really learn how to access the unconscious mind?

After nearly three decades of working therapeutically with people, I would be cautious about the popular idea that the unconscious is a hidden vault containing all the answers we need, waiting for the correct technique to unlock it. Human psychology is considerably more complicated than that.

What we can do is become more attentive to processes that ordinarily operate outside, or at the edges of, conscious awareness. Repeated patterns, automatic reactions, emotional responses, assumptions, imagery, memories and the language we use can all provide clues to influences we may not previously have recognised.

Accessing the unconscious, then, is perhaps better understood as becoming more aware of what has been influencing us without our full awareness.

What is the unconscious mind?

The idea of an unconscious mind has a long history in psychology, although different psychological traditions mean somewhat different things by it.

Freud famously placed the unconscious at the centre of psychoanalytic theory, proposing that thoughts, wishes, memories and conflicts could operate outside conscious awareness. Contemporary psychology also studies forms of unconscious or non-conscious processing, although these should not simply be equated with Freud’s model.

Research into automaticity, perception, memory and decision-making suggests that conscious and non-conscious processes interact in complex ways. Exactly how much sophisticated processing can occur without awareness remains an area of scientific debate.

For everyday purposes, a useful starting point is much simpler: not everything affecting what you think, feel and do is immediately available to conscious inspection.

You probably don’t consciously calculate every movement required to walk across a room. Familiar words are recognised with little deliberate effort. Emotional reactions can arise before you have formulated an explanation for them. Well-practised behaviours can become relatively automatic.

Our behaviour is rarely best understood as either completely conscious or completely unconscious. It is more useful to think about an ongoing interaction between processes of which we are aware and processes that occur with considerably less awareness.

Unconscious or subconscious: is there a difference?

The terms are often used interchangeably in everyday conversation, particularly in self-help literature, but unconscious is generally the more useful psychological term.

Historically, Freud himself objected to the word subconscious because it could suggest a second consciousness sitting underneath ordinary consciousness. His conception of the unconscious was much more dynamic than this.

You will still encounter the word subconscious frequently, and people generally understand what it is intended to mean. But throughout this article I will mainly use unconscious or non-conscious processes rather than suggesting that we possess a separate hidden mind underneath the conscious one.

That distinction becomes important when we start talking about how we might gain greater awareness of these processes.

Can you actually access your unconscious mind?

Not in the sense of opening a mental filing cabinet and inspecting everything stored inside it.

Introspection itself has limits. We can become aware of a thought, emotion or memory without necessarily knowing precisely what produced it. Equally, an explanation that feels convincing is not automatically an accurate account of the psychological processes involved.

This means that working with unconscious material requires some humility.

Rather than asking, “How do I unlock my unconscious?”, I prefer questions such as:

What am I noticing that I haven’t paid attention to before?

What patterns keep appearing?

What assumptions am I treating as facts?

What happens emotionally or physically when I imagine doing something differently?

Where might I have learned this expectation?

What do I find myself avoiding?

These questions don’t magically reveal a hidden truth. They create opportunities for something previously unnoticed to become available for examination.

1. Notice patterns rather than isolated events

One of the most useful ways of becoming aware of less conscious influences is to pay attention to repetition.

Perhaps you repeatedly become uncomfortable when relationships become emotionally close. Maybe you procrastinate just as an important opportunity becomes possible. You might continually seek reassurance despite knowing intellectually that you are capable, or find yourself reacting defensively to a particular kind of criticism.

One occurrence may tell us relatively little. A pattern deserves curiosity.

The question is not immediately, “What does this mean?” That can tempt us into inventing explanations.

Instead ask:

When does this happen? What tends to precede it? What am I feeling? What am I expecting? What do I do next?

Over time, patterns can reveal assumptions and expectations that were difficult to see when each experience was considered separately.

2. Listen to the language you use automatically

Language can provide another useful doorway.

In therapeutic work, I pay particular attention when somebody repeatedly uses words such as must, should, ought, always and never.

“I mustn’t disappoint people.”

“I should be further ahead by now.”

“I ought to be able to cope.”

“I must succeed.”

Sometimes people have repeated these statements for so long that they no longer experience them as beliefs. They feel like descriptions of reality.

That makes an interesting question possible:

Who says?

Where did the rule come from? Was it consciously chosen? Does it still represent what you believe now? What do you imagine would happen if you broke it?

Sometimes the answer is entirely consistent with the person’s present values. At other times, the belief appears to belong partly to an earlier period of life, a family expectation, a teacher, a previous relationship or a younger version of the self.

This is also where the unconscious intersects interestingly with Albert Ellis’s 12 irrational beliefs. Ellis was particularly interested in the rigid demands we place upon ourselves, other people and life. Becoming conscious of a must or should that has previously gone unquestioned can be the beginning of examining whether it still deserves the authority we have given it.

[LINK: Albert Ellis’s 12 Irrational Beliefs]

3. Pay attention to emotional reactions that seem disproportionate

Emotion can sometimes tell us that more is happening than the immediate situation appears to explain.

A relatively mild criticism may produce intense shame. Someone being slightly late might provoke powerful anxiety. A disagreement could generate anger far beyond what the present interaction seems to warrant.

That doesn’t mean there must be a hidden trauma underneath every strong emotional response. Nor does it mean that the emotion is irrational.

It does make the reaction worth exploring.

You might ask what the situation seemed to mean at that moment. Did criticism become failure? Did lateness become abandonment? Did disagreement become rejection or loss of control?

Often it is the meaning attributed to an event, rather than the event alone, that helps us understand the intensity of the response.

4. Notice inner conflict

Another route into previously unexamined psychological material is the familiar sentence:

“Part of me wants to… but another part…”

Inner conflict can expose competing values, fears, expectations and desires that are difficult to recognise when we are trying to force ourselves towards a quick decision.

One part may want freedom while another wants security. One may want intimacy while another fears vulnerability. One may want to change direction while another remains deeply attached to an established identity.

Rather than deciding immediately which side is correct, it can be useful to understand what each position represents.

I explore this much more fully in Inner Conflict: Why You Feel Torn Between Different Parts of Yourself and What to Do About It, including a practical meeting-room exercise for allowing these different positions to be heard.

[LINK: Inner Conflict article]

5. Use imagery to explore possibilities

Imagery can sometimes help us move beyond the answers we habitually give ourselves.

That does not mean imagination provides direct access to objective truths hidden in the unconscious. What it can do is change the conditions under which we consider a problem.

Instead of asking only, “How do I solve this?”, an imagery exercise might ask you to imagine what life would actually look like if the problem were no longer organising your behaviour.

This brings us to an exercise I have used in my own work.

The Amazing Miracle Scenario

Imagine that tonight you go to sleep as usual.

While you are sleeping, something happens. The problem you have been struggling with is resolved. You don’t know how it happened because you were asleep when the change occurred.

When you wake tomorrow morning, however, you don’t immediately remember that the miracle has happened.

What is the first thing you notice that tells you something is different?

Take your time with that question.

What would you be doing differently?

What would you notice about the way you get out of bed, speak to people, approach work or move through your day?

What would you stop doing?

What might somebody who knows you well notice?

How would they know that something had changed without you telling them?

What might become possible that currently feels difficult?

Try to make the answers behavioural and observable rather than simply saying, “I’d feel happier” or “I’d be more confident.”

If you were more confident, what would we actually see you doing?

Perhaps you would contribute an idea in a meeting. Make the phone call you have been avoiding. Say no without immediately apologising. Apply for something. Have a difficult conversation. Walk into a room differently.

The more specific the description becomes, the more useful the exercise can become.

Where does the Miracle Scenario come from?

The exercise is closely related to the Miracle Question, one of the best-known techniques associated with Solution-Focused Brief Therapy.

Solution-focused approaches developed around an emphasis on desired futures, existing resources, exceptions to problems and observable changes rather than concentrating exclusively on analysing the origins of a difficulty. The Miracle Question invites someone to describe in detail what would be different if the problem that brought them to therapy were suddenly absent.

There is research examining the effects of these kinds of questions. For example, an experimental study involving 246 participants found some differences between miracle, exception, scaling and problem-focused questions, although the authors also concluded that solution-focused and problem-focused questions were more similar in their immediate effects than might sometimes be assumed.

So I would not describe the Miracle Question as a scientifically proven mechanism for “unlocking the subconscious”, nor do we need to claim that vividly imagining a future automatically creates neural pathways that make it happen.

Its value is more psychologically interesting than that.

The question interrupts the usual description of the problem and asks us to construct a detailed picture of a preferred future. In doing so, we may notice goals, possibilities and assumptions that had remained obscured while our attention was organised around what was wrong.

Turning insight into action

Imagining a different future is not the same as creating one.

Once you have developed a detailed Miracle Scenario, look back through what you imagined and identify the smallest observable difference.

Suppose your imagined future involved feeling much more confident at work. Rather than setting yourself the enormous goal of “becoming confident”, ask what the confident version of you did differently.

Perhaps they spoke once during a meeting.

That is something you can test.

If your imagined future involved a better relationship, perhaps the first observable difference was putting your phone down and having a conversation over breakfast.

If it involved less anxiety, perhaps you imagined yourself doing something you currently avoid.

The question then changes from:

“How do I become that person?”

to:

“What is one small piece of that future I could experiment with now?”

That shift matters because psychological insight becomes much more useful when it can influence how we actually live.

Journalling can help you notice what you normally miss

Writing can be another useful way of slowing thought down enough to notice recurring themes.

Rather than using a journal only to record what happened during the day, try periodically asking yourself:

What affected me more strongly than I expected today?

What did I avoid?

What did I tell myself I had to do?

When did I feel most like myself?

When did I behave differently from how I intended?

What pattern have I seen before?

What am I reluctant to admit that I want?

You do not need to interpret every answer. In fact, trying too quickly to explain everything can become another way of imposing a story on your experience.

Sometimes simply noticing the recurrence is enough to begin.

[LINK: Reflective Journal]

What about dreams?

Dreams have occupied an important place in theories of the unconscious, particularly within psychoanalytic traditions.

They can certainly provide rich material for reflection. A dream may bring together emotions, memories, images and concerns in unusual ways, and discussing it can lead to associations that someone had not previously considered.

What I would avoid is treating a dream dictionary, symbol or interpretation as though it revealed an objective hidden message.

If a dream matters to you, the more useful question is often not “What does this symbol mean?” but “What does this bring to mind for me?”

Your associations are generally more psychologically interesting than somebody else’s universal interpretation of the symbol.

Psychotherapy and the unconscious

Psychotherapy provides a particular setting in which patterns that are difficult to notice alone can sometimes become more visible.

That can happen through exploring past and present relationships, emotional responses, repeated narratives, assumptions, avoidance, imagery, dreams, bodily experience or even what happens within the therapeutic relationship itself.

Different therapeutic traditions understand these processes differently. Psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapies have historically placed unconscious processes near the centre of their theories. Cognitive and behavioural approaches may speak more in terms of automatic thoughts, learned associations, schemas and habitual responses. Experiential and integrative therapies may work with emotion, imagery, bodily experience and different aspects of self.

I work integratively, and I find that distinction useful. We don’t have to force every psychological phenomenon into one theoretical vocabulary in order to become curious about influences that have previously escaped our attention.

A psychotherapist’s perspective on accessing the unconscious

In my experience, some of the most significant moments in therapy are surprisingly ordinary.

Someone hears themselves say something they have probably said hundreds of times before:

“I have to…”

And this time they stop.

Why do I have to?

Who decided that?

Do I actually believe it?

What am I frightened would happen if I didn’t?

Sometimes a belief that appeared to be an unquestionable fact becomes recognisable as a belief for the first time.

At other times, a person notices that the same emotional sequence has appeared in several relationships, or that what looked like procrastination contains a conflict they had never articulated.

None of this requires us to imagine that we have somehow opened a door into a mysterious second mind.

Something has simply become available to awareness that wasn’t sufficiently available before.

That distinction between possessing a capacity and having access to it is something I have become increasingly interested in more broadly. It also sits behind my work on intelligence availability and PIIA, which explores not simply what capacities we possess, but how available they are to us in the way we are functioning now.

And once we can see it, we have a different relationship with it.

You don’t need to uncover everything

There can be a seductive idea in self-development that somewhere inside us lies the final explanation for why we are the way we are, and that enough introspection will eventually uncover it.

I don’t think human beings work quite like that.

We are influenced by history, learning, relationships, biology, culture, present circumstances and processes that may never become completely transparent to us. Even when we understand where a pattern may have originated, understanding alone does not necessarily change it.

The purpose of exploring unconscious influences is therefore not to achieve perfect self-knowledge.

It is to increase the amount of choice available to us.

A reaction we cannot see is difficult to examine. A belief experienced as fact is difficult to question. A pattern we do not recognise is easy to repeat.

But when something previously outside our awareness becomes visible, even partially, another possibility appears.

We can become curious about it.

We can test it.

We can decide whether it still belongs in the life we are creating.

And sometimes that is where meaningful change begins.