Unwittingly assaulted by flavor, aroma, pleasure, friendship, adventure, rebellion, or affordability marketing, our subconscious is the target of nicotine addiction industry marketing.
If it didn't work they wouldn't annually spend billions doing it. The subconscious is listening. It sees the store's cigarette powerwall, magazine tobacco ads, the website address on littered packs, and Marlboro's red race cars. It hears the tease of every e-cigarette television ad use invitation.
Twice the traveling cessation hypnotist sold me a full day of unbelievable hypnotic bliss before I tested it and relapsed.[1]
But looking upon our subconscious only in terms of being the playground of others cheapens and makes it look dumb while ignoring our conscious ability to retrain it.
If so dumb, why can our subconscious see subliminal messages invisible to the conscious mind, or feel the influence of tobacco marketing that our consciousness has totally ignored? Why can it react to triggering cues written upon it by hypnotic suggestion or self-conditioning, cues meaningless to conscious awareness?
Dumb? When typing on a keyboard, what part of the mind and level of awareness is locating and correctly striking each key? While operating a vehicle, who is really controlling which foot needs to push on which pedal and how hard, or doing the driving as we read billboards, talk on the phone or daydream?
Our conscious mind has unknowingly aided in helping teach our subconscious skills and how to perform activities, including using nicotine.[2] Now, it's time to knowingly teach it how to function without it.
Whether referred to as our subconscious, unconscious or preconscious, science is still in the early stages of discovery in understanding the scope of its involvement in day-to-day life.
It's every bit as real as the never-seen portion of an iceberg. Think of Disney World and awareness of the magic above ground, while a massive unseen city beneath lives and breathes in bringing the magic to life.
It's normal for us to deeply believe that our consciousness is the one doing things, that it causes our actions after careful deliberation, that our behavior was our idea.
While this is our self-perception, a growing body of evidence suggests that like Disney's puppets, the conscious mind is not the primary source in motivating behavior, that in many cases our subconscious has already made up our mind for us.[3]
It's suggested that our subconscious has evolved as a highly adaptive "behavioral guidance system" which acts on impulse. It's becoming more widely accepted that the impulse for behavior flows from our subconscious, that our consciousness then seizes upon the idea as its own.
It's suggested that the real role of our consciousness is as impulse gatekeeper, and trying to make sense, after the fact, of behavior that the gatekeeper allowed to occur.[4]
Sources of subconscious impulses can include evolutionary motivations, past personal preferences, cultural norms, family values, past experiences in similar situations, or how others in the same situation are currently behaving. They can also be the product of conditioning, both through reinforcement (operant) and association (classical).
Multiple sources of subconscious behavioral impulses make conflicts inevitable. Drug addiction reflects a conflicts war zone.
Our subconscious has its own behavioral goals, goals hidden from awareness.[5] Reading these words is clear evidence that "you" want to break free. It's likely that, deep down, your subconscious does too.
But after being conditioned by years of urges and wanting for more, and by false gatekeeper explanations as to why use was again about to occur, without honesty and teamwork, subconscious recovery can be messy and longer than necessary.
References:
2. Bargh JA, et al, The Unconscious Mind, Perspectives on Psychological Science, January 2008, Volume 3(1), Pages 73-79.
3. Galdi S, et al, Automatic mental associations predict future choices of undecided decision-makers, Science, August 22, 2008, Volume 321(5892), Pages 1100-1102.
4. Wegner DM, Precis of the illusion of conscious will, Behavioral Brain Science, October 2004, Volume 27(5), Pages 649-659; as reviewed in Bargh JA, et al, The Unconscious Mind, Perspectives on Psychological Science, January 2008, Volume 3(1), Pages 73-79.
5. Bargh JA, et al, The automated will: Unconscious activation and pursuit of behavioral goals, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, December 2001. Volume 81, Pages 1004-027.
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