The Subconscious Need Always Overrides the Conscious Want

If there is one thing that all of my patients learn from me, it is that the subconscious need will always over ride the conscious want. What this refers to, as I have said in other articles is that no matter what we may wish for, intention, visualize, desire, need, or want may be subject to sabotage due to a deeper psychological core issue that is not in sink with our getting more.

The subconscious is the psychological DNA, built from birth to eight denoting who one believes he/she is, and how one believes they are seen by the world. Once this is laid into the personality foundation, it is there forever until it is unlearned at the level it was originally implanted. The conscious wants on the other hand, are all the things we want to achieve and accomplish in our lives. Such things as an education, a profession, a career, make good money, have healthy relationships, i.e., romantic and friends, create abundance, change, or have peace and goodness in our lives. All of these things are the overt desires that are not only normal, but appropriate.

Hence, what happens when we want to drink pure water and only have a muddy glass to drink from? Obviously, we choke on the muddy water that gags us as we whole heatedly ingest bad water. And no matter how hard we want to believe, deny or make the muddy water into clear water, the only result we are going to get is gagging. What this means to each of us is that until the glass is cleaned out, we can not truly get what we want. So too, is it with the subconscious. If housed in the subconscious sense of self is negative miss-beliefs, then the well of our desires will be tainted.

Specifically, if at our core psychological DNA there lies a miss-belief that we are unlovable, how can we find a healthy love? We can't! How if at our core, we hold a miss-belief about ourselves that we are unworthy, can we be given wealth? How can, if at our psychological core we hold a miss-belief that we are bad, can we find goodness? Again, though we may find some of what we want there will be sabotage. As we hold a learned miss-belief about our selves as our truth, we will not be able to rise above it and allow what it is we want because at our core, we do not believe we are really deserving of it.

Now, when I say we do not believe we are truly deserving, I am not taking about a figure of speech. I mean that in the core of your being is a sense that this is all you get, and you are not about getting anything more. This belief system runs our behavior, our choices, our intentions, and our ability to expand in life. If, for instance you grow up in an alcoholic family, one of the common reports of home life is that one never knew as you walked through the door what was going to happen. Therefore, whenever you come home having had a good day, the alcoholic would lash out at the family due to his/her intoxication and ruin the good moment. As that pattern gets laid in the subconscious, the Adult Child of an Alcoholic (A.C.O.A.) takes in at their core psychological DNA that goodness is only temporary and that at some point the 'other shoe will drop.' Now remember, this is not an intellectual construct.

It is a psychological core belief that is a true a reality as the sun coming up in the east and setting in the west. Hence, in their adulthood, A.C.O.A.s have a core mistrust of goodness. In fact, as goodness increases, so does their sense of agitation, expecting that it is going to be sabotaged. As this agitation increases, it becomes so uncomfortable that at some point the A.C.O.A. sabotages the goodness just to get rid of the agitation. Here, there is the reality of the unconscious need to minimize agitation, and the resulting sabotage over rides the conscious want for goodness.

This premise can be seen in many other examples, but lets take one more. What if you grow up in a family where you take in at the psychological DNA core that you are unworthy of love. This is predicated on the situational reality that your parents were unloving, disallowing, non-nurturing, deeply wounded, etc. Once this is in your belief system remember it is there for life until you unlearn this miss-belief at the level you learned it at.

So as you venture into adult relationships wanting to find healthy love and acceptance, you end up with people who are distant, non-nurturing, and unavailable. How again does this happen? If the subconscious holds that you are not worthy of love, it sabotages the conscious want for a healthy loving relationship. What typically happens is that the person usually finds someone to keep proving themselves to, so that they can "try" to earn love from an unloving source.

There are many examples of how the subconscious need over rides the conscious want, but the important point to make is that you have to do the inner work of unlearning the core psychological DNA miss-beliefs to be able to attract and keep your conscious desires and intentions.

Gary Richman has an masters in clinical social work and a masters and Ph.D. in clinical psychology. He has over the last thirty years practiced psychotherapy in private practice and at such institutions as Children's Hospital, Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Glendale Memorial Hospital, and Santa Monica Hospital. He has lectured on such issues as Occupational Burnout, Surviving Adolescents for Parents, Assessing Depression and Suicidal Ideation, and Trans-personal Psychology.

His web site is http://www.drgaryrichman.com where you can read about his educational background and his current book: The Road To Me: Reclaiming Your Power. His blogs can be found on Word Press.com and he is on Facebook.