Surreal Experiments

Pillar 08

Tap into the Power of the Unconscious

Most of the decisions you call "yours" aren't made consciously. They're made by older, faster systems, pattern recognition trained by your earliest experiences, reflexes installed before language, beliefs absorbed from environments you can't even remember. The conscious mind shows up about half a second later and writes a tidy story explaining why.

This is uncomfortable but useful. It means the patterns you can't will-power your way out of are running on a layer that willpower can't reach. It also means that learning to read and re-train that layer is one of the most leveraged things you can do in adult life.

This pillar pulls together the practical work, depth psychology, parts work, somatic awareness, without the spiritual cliché it usually comes wrapped in. We cover the difference between unconscious and subconscious, the protective logic behind your most stubborn patterns, and how to read body, behaviour, and language as windows in.

The aim isn't to make all of yourself conscious. That's neither possible nor desirable. The aim is to stop being run by parts of you that you've never met.

1 article in this pillar

Why you can't put your phone down: the neuroscience of phone addiction

Your phone runs on three mechanisms your willpower was never built to fight. Here is how the habit works, and why blockers, greyscale and deleting the apps keep failing.

6 August 20268 min read

Field essays

Brand & concept pieces

Stop Analysing: Your Answer Is Already in You

A 5-minute guided visualisation from a hypnotherapy conference that surfaces the answer your unconscious mind already knows, when overthinking will not.

16 October 20265 min read

How social media hypnotises you: 5 techniques it borrows from hypnotherapy

Social media uses five hypnotic techniques, borrowed from hypnotherapy, to keep you in a trance. Here is how the induction works, and how to break it.

9 July 20265 min read

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