Understanding The Unconscious Mind
Think of how frustrating it is when software on a phone or computer hasn’t been updated in a long time. It may still function, but not reliably. Apps freeze, things don’t sync, and features stop working the way they should. Your device isn’t broken, it’s just out of date. It’s still following instructions that were written for an earlier version of the world.
This is what happens in our emotional lives as well. Many of our automatic responses — the ways we react to stress, conflict, closeness, or uncertainty — were shaped by past experiences. Often, those responses were formed early in life, or during moments of difficulty we didn’t know how to handle at the time. The feelings and behaviors made sense then. They helped us adapt. But over time, those same responses became mismatched to the situations we’re actually facing.
Even so, the system keeps running them because once the response is set up they stay active in the background, quietly shaping what we feel and how we behave. And unless something changes, they continue to trigger reactions that don’t fit the present moment.
Just like an outdated operating system can’t keep up with today’s apps, outdated emotional responses can’t fully support the complexity of an ever-changing world. They create friction, confusion, and reactions that feel out of step, not because something is wrong with us, but because we’re still running “code” that hasn’t been updated.
We often try to work through these reactions with insight, logic, or talk therapy. But unless the underlying code gets updated, the pattern repeats and we stay stuck in frustrating and often negative loops that prevent us from becoming the people we can be. The problem isn't lack of effort. The system is running as designed and there is logic in the reaction; it’s just not the logic of the present.
Without the ability to access and update the outdated emotional “code”, it keeps running old patterns, no matter how unhelpful they’ve become.
The consequences are significant. These patterns persist long after the original conditions have passed, continuing to shape perception, behavior, and emotional life in ways that are often out of sync with present reality.
Meaningful change begins when those systems are brought into alignment — not by suppressing emotion, but by restoring coherence between past and present, between conscious intentions and unconscious responses.
The Unconscious Mind & Triggered Responses
At the core of our triggered responses lies a highly important but often overlooked internal system: the unconscious mind.
The unconscious mind governs the vast majority of human functioning. It manages everything from physiological processes — such as regulating respiration, digestion, and immune function — to cognitive and emotional activity that occurs outside of conscious awareness. While the conscious mind offers present-moment focus and rational analysis, it operates much like a display screen on your computer. The unconscious, by contrast, is the underlying system, the “code”, responsible for executing the vast majority of operations.
This distinction is particularly important when understanding our emotional responses, especially those triggers that arise quickly or intensely and appear disproportionate to the situation. Triggered emotional responses are not random or irrational. They are the result of a structured, rule-based system within the unconscious mind — a system designed to detect patterns and generate rapid emotional outputs based on past experiences. The logic is simple but powerful: If this condition is present, then activate this emotional response.
This process originates during moments when an experience overwhelms our ability to handle the situation we’re in. In these moments, our unconscious mind records not only our emotional state but also the surrounding sensory and environmental cues. These cues — sights, sounds, tones of voice, body language, etc. — become part of an automatic pattern-recognition loop.
Later, when a similar cue is encountered, the unconscious mind reads the situation as matching the earlier one and reactivates the associated emotional response, regardless of whether the context is meaningfully similar or the threat of the original experience is present. This reactivation happens rapidly and automatically, without conscious choice, often resulting in what is commonly described as being “triggered.”
This system functions well in nature, where the primary objective is survival. However, in complex human environments, the responses often become maladaptive. The unconscious mind cannot discern that a tone of voice today is not the same threat it once was. Nor does it assess whether the stored emotional response remains appropriate. It simply recognizes the cue and runs the pre-written script.
The result is that people often respond with the emotions of a much earlier time, rooted in a context that no longer applies, while believing they are reacting to the present.
What Keeps Us Stuck
For many of us, a key barrier to change is that we don’t even realize there’s a system running in the background. We experience our triggered emotional reactions — frustration, fear, shutdown, guilt — and assume they’re just part of who we are.
It often doesn’t occur to us that these responses are coming from patterns written long ago, stored in the unconscious mind, and still running quietly underneath the surface. We’re rarely taught to look at it that way. Most of the messages we receive around emotional distress are about managing symptoms — calming down, powering through, or thinking more positively. Therapy may help us understand where our patterns come from, and medication can ease the intensity of what we feel. But most approaches stop there. We end up working around the triggered response rather than changing the system that’s creating it.
Still, many of us operate from an inherent belief that we can and should be able to solve our emotional challenges with logic. We try to reason our way out of reactions that were never chosen consciously in the first place. We tell ourselves to stop overreacting, to be more patient, or to let things go and when that doesn’t work, we blame ourselves for not being able to follow through. But conscious reasoning can’t fix what it didn’t create. And when our conscious thoughts and unconscious feelings are out of sync, the tension between them wears us down.
That internal misalignment between what we know and what we feel, between who we are now and the outdated patterns we’re still carrying, creates a persistent conflict that can last indefinitely. We try to move forward, but it keeps pulling us back into the same loops. It’s not because we’re broken. It’s because we’re still running “code” that doesn’t match our current reality, and it will continue to do so unless we can change these responses on the unconscious level where they are created and activated.
The Everyday Reality of the Unconscious Mind
For some, there’s a real fear that connecting too closely with their inner world will make their emotional distress worse. That opening the door to where their old memories or buried feelings are stored will be overwhelming or destabilizing.
We imagine losing control, being flooded with emotion, or reliving things we’d rather forget. That fear is understandable. But it’s also built on a misconception that connecting with the unconscious means falling down a rabbit hole of uncontrollable memories and emotions.
In truth, the unconscious mind is a space that is already a constant and familiar presence in our everyday mental life. We move in and out of unconscious processing states regularly, especially during moments when attention turns inward. This includes common experiences such as:
Daydreaming
Driving on autopilot (“highway hypnosis”)
Internally rehearsing conversations
Sudden memory recall
Spontaneous emotional associations or creative activities
These moments are times when the unconscious system guides thought or behavior in subtle, routine ways. They are not exceptional or destabalizing. They are part of how our minds naturally function. In fact, much of what we describe as deliberate thinking or decision-making is already in motion before it reaches conscious awareness. The brain continuously processes far more than we’re aware of at any given time.
Understanding this helps clarify how change at the unconscious level is possible. Techniques that work with stored emotional patterns do not need to rely on deep dissociation, emotional flooding, or re-experiencing trauma. They can operate within the same light, internally focused states we already access during daydreaming or quiet reflection.
The process simply involves redirecting attention away from the external environment and toward information held internally, something the mind is already doing, without effort, throughout the day. It is focused, safe, and accessible — not foreign or extreme.
In this sense, approaches like our Emotional Updating technique that work by connecting with the unconscious mind are not introducing a new way of thinking, but offering a structured method for working with a system that is already active. The goal is not to hurdle through jarring, unfamiliar territory, but to navigate familiar territory with greater clarity, precision, and purpose.
Taking Control Of Our Internal Climate
Our emotional state is like an internal climate. It sets the tone for how we experience everything around us. Just as the weather affects how we experience our physical environment, our emotions shape how we interpret, engage with, and respond to the world. And like the weather, our emotional climate is always present, whether we’re paying attention to it or not.
When emotional patterns are driven by old, unresolved responses, that climate can feel heavy, unpredictable, or disconnected from what’s actually happening. We may find ourselves caught in fear, tension, or withdrawal, even in situations that don’t call for it. The atmosphere inside us doesn’t match the environment around us.
But when those outdated responses are no longer running, something shifts. The emotional tone becomes more stable, more appropriate to the moment. We still feel, but what we feel reflects what’s actually happening now, not what happened years ago. Triggered emotional reactions stop dominating the experience, and we’re left with a clearer headspace to move, think, and choose.
Techniques that work at the unconscious level — like Emotional Updating — make this possible. They don’t require reliving the past or unraveling everything consciously. They work by directly accessing the part of the system where the old pattern is stored and giving it the opportunity to update. When that update happens, the climate inside becomes more livable since we aren’t carrying around an internal storm of emotions.
Accessing The Peace of Inner Harmony
To be human is to feel. The goal isn’t to stop feeling. It’s to stop being driven by feelings that no longer belong to the moment we’re in. To have emotional responses that are grounded, healthy, and appropriate to the present, the conscious and unconscious systems need to be brought into alignment.
When our thoughts and feelings are aligned, we move through life more clearly. We act in ways that reflect what matters to us. We respond in ways that feel consistent with who we are. But when we’re triggered, that alignment breaks. The unconscious mind takes over, and we react from a place that doesn’t reflect the present, or our current intentions.
Untriggering these responses allows that alignment to return. The conscious and unconscious systems are no longer in conflict. We stop being pulled in two directions, trying to reason our way forward while being emotionally dragged into the pain of our past. When those systems are working together, the internal struggle quiets.
And that matters because when we’re at odds with ourselves, everything else gets harder. The effort it takes to manage internal chaos adds weight to whatever challenges life brings our way. But when there’s less conflict inside, there’s more capacity to deal with the world outside.
The goal is internal harmony and coherence where thought and emotion support one another instead of compete. That’s what makes it possible to move through difficulty without being destabilized. It’s also what allows us to fully experience what’s good without being cut off from it by distress that doesn’t belong.
The past doesn’t have to keep deciding how we respond. When the unconscious mind is updated, we gain the ability to meet life as it actually is.
