Interesting Tidbits on the Unconscious

[Ftaghn!]

I had posted something similar in the chat on Saturday, and I thought it'd be interesting to think about in the context of TMS. This is basically just a collection of fun facts.

- Your conscious mind can process about 50 bits of information per second, while your unconscious can process upwards of 11 million bits per second. The unconscious includes things like regulating body function, and etc.

- Information that reaches your conscious mind FIRST goes through your unconscious. This is why many psychologists will describe emotions as a filter through which cognitions are interpreted.

-Your self is constantly bombarded with stimuli, taken into account by your unconscious, but filtered by order of priority towards your conscious. This is why you are not constantly aware of the shirt on your skin, but can still feel it when you pay attention to it.

-The conscious, rational part of your mind disagrees with your unconscious on a daily basis. This means that people can hold contradictory ideas or opinions, which creates frustration, and is widely known as cognitive dissonance.

-Your unconscious has a plethora of defenses to keep itself from experiencing potential shocks, and it will go to incredible lengths to protect itself. This ranges from simple denial to full-blown regression, in the event of traumatic experiences.

-Your unconscious also communicates without your knowledge! Body language is the prime example, and things like tone of voice, stance, hand movements, etc, are almost always on "auto-pilot".

Given just a few of these tidbits, it's not very surprising that a phenomenon like TMS exists, and it's most likely just the tip of the iceberg. It also opens the question of general psychological education in the treatment of psychogenic disorders -- it's hard to believe the idea of TMS before you know just what your mind is capable of. Food for thoughts!

If you want to read more; here's more tidbits than you can chew in an evening ! http://www.businessinsider.com/48-psychological-facts-you-should-know-about-yourself-2012-4?op=1 .

Sources;
Zimmerman, M. (1989). "The nervous system in the context of information theory." In R. F. Schmidt & G. Thews (eds.), Human Physiology, pp. 166-173. Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag.

http://www.newscientist.com/article...-brains-how-powerful-is-the-subconscious.html

http://www.yale.edu/acmelab/articles/Bargh_Morsella_Unconscious_Mind.pdf

http://www.publicgood.org/wic/Quickly/CognitiveDissonance.html

http://allpsych.com/psychology101/defenses.html

 

[quasar731]

Hi Ftaghn,

What a complex name you got...what does it mean? I like the Avatar is as curious as the name

Thank you for the facts you posted, they are amazing... and we thought we were in control? Not so, the 'unmanned room' the subconscious (as Professor Bruce Lipton calls it) is on more than we possibly think. It is no wonder (as you say) TMS has such an impact. I noticed the psychology academic references you cc, is your background in psychology?

Anyway, thank you for sharing your knowledge. This website is a well of wisdom, there is so much to read and reflect on. This is all part of the journey of healing.

Have a great week!

 

[Ftaghn!]

Hello Quasar!
I actually don't know what it means, but it comes straight out of H.P. Lovecraft's short stories. My background is in economics, but I took a few courses in psychology. Google did the rest of the work! I find that my TMS doubts rest a lot on its status as being on the border between mainstream and alternative medicine, so knowing this stuff helps me, and I hope will help other skeptics out there!

 

[quasar731]

Thank you for the clarification Ftaghn. It is a very cute graphic.

I agree with you that it is a good thing to be informed, it saves us from living in brutish ignorance. Accepting of course that there are limits as to how much we can know of any given subject. So it is good that you are driven to do your own research and compare and contrast the information you come across.

Many people today are conversant in the area of psychology and frankly it is a good thing. Psychology was like a mother to me. In ways I felt that she helped the child within me to take the first steps to psycho-emotional freedom. It has been like holding a mirror in front of me. It allowed me to catch a glimpse of my personality's reflection and observe my thought patterns and behaviors, to an extent of course. I learnt so much more when I read people like Professor Bruce Lipton and Candece Pert. Finally reading Dr Sarno and Dr Schubiner took me up another notch.I feel like I am in a constant classroom.

I do not believe that we can gain full understanding about our human or even animal consciousness. What psychology did was to bring the 'aha!' moment about some things that I could not understand in me and others. There was always that question as 'why do people do the things that they do?' And yet, I always keep in mind the advice of one of one of my lecturers, of our inherent tendency to categorize behaviors and thus fall into the error of stereotyping others. To demonstrate our differences and above all our assumptions, in a tutorial class I was asked if I could tell the class how chocolate tasted? I moved on to describe the taste of chocolate in detail. However, after what I deemed to be a pretty rich description of the taste of chocolate, I also realized that I truly could not say that anyone else would taste chocolate as I did and viceversa. From that moment on I stopped using the expression... 'I know how you feel'. I learned that I could only say.. I may have 'some' idea of what you are experiencing but I truly do not know the depth and width of your experience. This helped me to become more compassionate. I could not utilize the same techniques I used with the self to deal with others' situations for I did not know 'truly' how they felt. It is a good thing to be informed, one learns how little one knows.

Have a great day!

 

[Forest]

Hello Quasar!
I find that my TMS doubts rest a lot on its status as being on the border between mainstream and alternative medicine, so knowing this stuff helps me, and I hope will help other skeptics out there!

This reminded me of one of my favorite quotes of The Divided Mind. On the first page of the introduction Sarno writes, "It is not about alternative medicine, or some trendy New Age regimen. It is about straightforward, clinically tested medicine, as practiced by licensed physicians for over thirty years, working with thousands of patients."

It is common for people, and I include myself in this, to have some doubts when first learning about TMS. It is a different approach to treating chronic pain then what we have tried before, but it is still supported by solid clinical research. (For more about the research check out the Medical Evidence section). I was really able to overcome my doubts by reading all of the stories people wrote about how they got better completely independent of anything else. The stories really just resonated to me. I bring this up, partly, because you seem similar to myself in that I also had some doubts at first and I have a background in economics as well.

As Sarno mentioned, accepting the diagnosis is imperative to recovery. There are a lot of different ways a person can overcome their doubt, and I think understanding the shear power of the brain and unconscious can be really helpful. I really like the tidbits of info from the first post in this thread. Info like that really does help people overcome skepticism.

 

[JanAtheCPA]

Accountants & Economists for TMS!

 

[Lori]

I remember when I saw Dr. Sarno he clearly said this method is not alternative medicine. Hopefully mindbody medicine will become more mainstream.

I like how Candace Pert uses the term bodymind.