Never underestimate the power of the subconscious mind. You might think your conscious mind and subconscious are on an even keel, however when push comes to shove the subconscious can make itself known in amazing and sometimes scary ways.
One Thursday afternoon on my way home from work I pulled into the supermarket carpark to pick up some milk and bread. Since the local liquor store entrance was right next door to the main entrance I had an internal conversation about getting some beer as well.
The consensus was no, no beer tonight, I'll leave it even though its been a long week and I haven't had a drink since Sunday... or so my logical conscious mind thought.
I made my way to the supermarket entrance for the milk and bread, then before I knew it, my body did a hard left turn into the liquor store, walked into the cooler, selected a six pack of beer, paid for it and made its way out. While it was happening I felt weirdly detached. WTF???
I went back to the car and sat for a few moments feeling rather unsettled and out of sorts, what the hell just happened? It was weird, like I was on autopilot, fascinated but unwilling or perhaps unable to interfere. Was I going insane?
I have since learned that the subconscious can take action and even suspend the conscious mind if it perceives it is going to be denied something it considers absolutely essential to its survival. This could be literally be, confronting a life or death situation or being denied something it considers essential for its survival.
The subconscious learns something is essential to its survival through instinct, experience, environmental and social cues, conditioning and activation of the reward system.
Guess where alcohol neatly slots into?
Your subconscious can consider alcohol as essential to its survival, I believe this was the case for me when I had this bizarre experience.
It may seem like you're really up against it if you want to change your drinking but your subconscious believes alcohol is essential for its survival!
However, what is learned, reinforced and conditioned can be reversed.
Once the subconscious is shown that much of what it believes is untrue, then you can really be in control of your life and make the changes you want, without your subconscious autopilot sabotaging your efforts.
I never want to be on autopilot again.. unless my life is in danger! Amen!
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