If Your Unconscious Mind Could Speak, Here Is What It Would Say

This article is likely to provoke the following defenses:

Anger, disbelief, mirth, shame, confusion, blame, fear, intellectual scorn, emotional paralysis, self-criticism, other criticism, a numb feeling and other means of avoiding the truth.

Read on with caution, and realize we’re all in the same boat.

Some of us remember the book by Nathaniel Branden, If you Could Hear what I Cannot Say (out of print). Like much of Branden’s work, the book suggests we unconsciously seek goals – often negative goals – while pretending something entirely different is going on.

Maybe now is the time to wake up, listen, and learn.

Only by acknowledging the truth can we free ourselves.

Understanding how the unconscious mind works takes guts. Here’s why: To really see what is going on in your life and with your behavior, you need to be willing to look past your ego and the persona of your public self so you can see the truth.

This should begin with the realization that you do not always seek out what is best for yourself or other people. In fact, you may unknowingly be attracted to negative things.

Unfortunately, most of us refuse to acknowledge that we’ve become attached to certain miserable feelings. Because of this attachment, we keep setting ourselves up to feel that way again and again, while hiding the truth from ourselves, blaming others and generally acting clueless.

I can say that because I am in the same boat. Staying conscious is a constant struggle.

I think all of us, if we truly want to see ourselves clearly, can find at least one thing that applies in the list below.

Enjoy the following straight talk from a typical unconscious mind:

I don’t like chronic emotional suffering, but I like the excuses it gives me.

I exaggerate my troubles so that they seem impossible to solve. Then, I do not have to make the effort.

I cherish the mess I have made of my life. That’s the sweetest revenge against my parents.

I am bored and purposeless, so I create drama to amuse myself.

I use my husband for financial support, even though I can’t stand him.

I grew up with shame and now shame myself to keep the family tradition alive.

That empty, hollow feeling inside is what I call “home.” I seek fulfillment in things that do not make me happy (food, TV, alcohol, drugs, empty relationships, star chasing, etc…) to keep the emptiness alive. I don’t know who I’d be without it.

I refuse to take care of myself so that others will have to take care of me. After all, they owe me.

I am out of control so that others will monitor me, even though I resent them for it.

I act annoyingly and find strange satisfaction in the negative attention I get.

I don’t know who I would be without this feeling of worthlessness, so I keep doing things to make myself feel worthless.

I keep myself overwhelmed and busy to avoid my miserable marriage.

I use my wife for sex and meals even though I don’t really care about her.

No matter what I do, I find a way to criticize myself because happiness seems foreign. I choose familiar misery over foreign happiness.

I have always been lonely, and I push people away to keep what I have always had.

Oops, failed again! That will teach them not to count on me. I can’t stand people’s expectations.

The greatest obstacle to change is failing to see the problem. Most of us think we have one set of problems (not enough money, not enough will power, bad luck, poor decision-making skills, etc…) when in reality we have a totally different issue – the issue is self-sabotage.

It’s like we are stabbing ourselves in the leg, but the only problem we can see is that our leg is bleeding. Once we see the knife in our hand, a whole new reality sets in – and a whole new array of choices becomes available.

Now we can say, “I don’t want to stab myself and now can put the knife down.”

So, if you gave your unconscious mind a chance to speak the truth right now, what would it say? And if you could hear the truth, are you willing to accept it?

A good way to find out what your unconscious mind is really up to is to watch this enlightening free video on self-sabotage and negative psychological attachments.