#2 The Subconscious Isn’t Woo — It’s Biology

When people talk about healing chronic symptoms, they usually focus on the body. They focus on what needs to calm down, what needs to be regulated, or what needs to be fixed. But symptoms are not the starting point of the process. They are the result of something upstream.

This episode is about that upstream layer.

We’re going to talk about the subconscious — not in a mystical way, not in a mindset-only way, but in a biological way. If you want to understand why your body responds the way it does, you have to understand how the message is created.

By the end of this episode, you’ll understand:

• What the subconscious actually is and what it is designed to do
 • How beliefs and perceptions become embedded as safety rules
 • How those safety rules influence your body

When you understand this mechanism, healing stops feeling like something your body is doing “to” you. Instead, you begin to see that your body is responding to information — and that information has a source.

Press play to discover what’s actually at the root of your symptoms — and why focusing on the body alone won’t fix it.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

When people talk about healing chronic symptoms, they usually focus on the body. They focus on what needs to calm down, what needs to be regulated, or what needs to be fixed. But symptoms are not the starting point of the healing process. They are the result of something upstream. And this episode is about that upstream layer. We're going to talk about the subconscious, not in a mystical way, not in a mindset only way, but in a biological way. If you want to understand why your body responds the way it does, you have to understand how the message is created. By the end of this episode, you'll understand what the subconscious actually is and what it's designed to do, how beliefs and perceptions become embedded as safety rules, and how those safety rules influence your body. When you understand this mechanism, healing stops feeling random. It stops feeling like something your body is doing to you. Instead, you begin to see that your body is responding to information and that information has a source. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Rebellious Healer, where we stop chasing symptoms and start leading our healing. I'm Jenny Peterson, a former holistic practitioner turned Mind Body Rebel. I help women break free from surface solutions and rebuild their health from the inside out. If you're done outsourcing your power and ready to do the kind of work that actually gives your body the green light to heal, you're in the right place. Before we talk about how the subconscious influences the body, we need to clarify what it actually is. The word subconscious gets used in many different ways. Sometimes it's treated as something mystical. Sometimes it's described as a hidden part of you running your life without your awareness. Neither of those explanations are very helpful. From a functional perspective, the subconscious is a group of automatic processes in the brain that operate outside of conscious awareness. It stores learned patterns, evaluates safety, and helps regulate many of the systems that keep you alive without you having to think about them. You do not consciously control your heartbeat, your digestion, your breathing while you sleep, or your body responses. Those are coordinated automatically. The subconscious plays an important role in influencing those automatic processes. One of the primary functions of the subconscious is pattern recognition. The brain is constantly receiving information from your senses, what you see, hear, feel, remember, and interpret. If you had to consciously sort through all of that information in real time, you would be extremely overwhelmed. The subconscious filters and organizes it for you. It compares present experiences to stored memories and looks for matches. Its job is efficiency and survival. At the core of this system is a simple evaluation process, safe or not safe. The subconscious does not stop to analyze whether a reaction is perfectly logical. It scans for patterns that resemble past experiences that were stored as threatening. If it binds a match, it activates protective responses. And this happens quickly and automatically, often before you are consciously aware of what you are feeling. An important distinction here is that the subconscious does not determine safety based on truth. It determines safety based on stored meaning. That meaning was built over time through experience. If an event in the past was emotionally intense, repeated, or connected to core needs like belonging, approval, or stability, it was likely stored with strong significance. Those stored meanings become reference points for your subconscious. You can think of the subconscious as operating with a rule book that was written over years of lived experience. Each rule was formed when your brain asked, What does this mean for my safety? If certain experiences repeatedly led to discomfort, rejection, unpredictability, or fear, the brain will create associations. And those associations become rules about how to stay safe in the future. So for an example, if expressing anger in your early environment led to withdrawal or punishment, a rule may have formed that says anger is not safe. If being responsible and helpful led to a lot of praise and stability, another rule may have formed that says usefulness equals safety. These rules are not conscious affirmations, they are adaptations to past environments. So the subconscious uses those rules automatically. When a present situation resembles something that once felt threatening, the system does not carefully evaluate whether the threat is current or historical. It reacts based on similarity. Just as a smoke detector responds to particles in the air without checking the source, the subconscious responds to patterns that resemble stored danger. Now understanding all of this matters because it reframes your symptoms. If the subconscious is designed to detect threat and protect you, then the responses that follow are not random. The responses are your symptoms. They are protective strategies shaped by past learning. Before we connect this directly to the body, it is important to see that the subconscious is not trying to sabotage you. It is trying to follow rules that were once useful for survival. So if the subconscious is constantly asking, is this safe? The next logical question is how does it decide what counts as safe? It decides based on what it has learned. Programming is the collection of interpretations and conclusions your brain formed from repeated experiences. Every experience you have is not just stored as a memory. It is stored with meaning attached. As children, we are constantly trying to make sense of the world. We do not have full reasoning abilities yet, but we are deeply sensitive to tone, emotion, and connection. And we learn quickly what brings approval, what brings tension, what creates closeness, and what creates distance. Repetition is what makes programming strong. One uncomfortable event may create a memory. Repeated similar events create a pattern, and a pattern then becomes a rule in the subconscious. I want you to imagine building a trail in the woods. The first time you walk through tall grass, you know it's difficult to see the path. And then the second time it gets a little bit easier. And after walking the same route dozens of times, a clear trail is formed. It becomes the default path because it's the most familiar and easiest to follow. And programming works the same way. Repeated interpretations are going to carve mental trails. And the brain prefers those familiar trails because they are efficient. They require less energy than creating a new route. So over time, those trails turn into safety rules. I must not disappoint. I need to be in control. I can't slow down. If someone is upset, it's my fault. These are not just thoughts, they are embedded conclusions based on our perception. And the subconscious uses those conclusions automatically in every situation you're in. When something happens in your current life, the subconscious does not evaluate it from scratch as if it doesn't have any files to reference. It looks for the closest match to existing programming. If the situation resembles a stored pattern, it activates the same safety strategy that worked before. So for example, when someone grew up in a household where tension was unpredictable, as a child, they learn to scan constantly for changes in mood. And that vigilance is going to help them to avoid escalation and to keep them safe. And the brain stored that strategy as useful. So years later, well into adulthood, they are going to still be this hyper-aware in relationships or work environments. And even neutral situations can trigger alertness because the old rule is still active. It's referencing these old programs, despite how old you are, they were all formed when you were a child. Our programming is up until the age of 12. So everything that happens to us before the age of 12, we're walking around with as adults and replaying unless we choose to change them. The key point with all of this is that the subconscious is not generating signals randomly. It is following learned rules that we once used for survival to keep us safe. And sometimes keeping us safe was doing things that doesn't serve us when we become adults, because we're in an adult world and we had all these perceptions from childhood where we didn't have the tools to look at the situation differently. So now let's talk about the biological bridge to how these rules and patterns within our subconscious activate our specific body systems. So when the subconscious interprets something that isn't safe, the response is not broad or just generalized. The brain does not just simply activate a single stress switch in your body. Instead, it's going to have specific relays that are activated based on the meaning assigned to the situation. Perception determines which relay is engaged. So the brain is constantly evaluating survival. It's not just asking, is there danger? It is asking what kind of adaptation is required here. And the answer to that question determines which body system is influenced. If the perception centers around not being able to process or digest something, whether that's something emotionally or actually physically not able to break something down that you ate, the digestive system is going to be activated because that's the system that says from a survival perspective, it's about processing what we take in from the outside world. And that is the system that says, I need to break this down. If the subconscious interprets something as indigestible, something that can't be processed, it sends a message that adaptation is required in the digestive tract. And it responds because it's the system responsible for processing and assimilation. So the body adapts in order to manage what the brain believes cannot be handled as it is. The digestive system is essentially taking the hit for the emotional perception so the person can continue functioning. The adaptation, which are symptoms, is protective. It is an attempt to maintain survival in the face of something perceived as too much to process. And if the perception centers around a weakness, not being strong enough, capable enough, or not able to handle what life is demanding, the structural system may be activated. So from a survival perspective, this makes sense because weakness is a risk. If the brain perceives that the body is not strong enough to survive its environment, it sends a message that adaptation is needed. We need to become stronger. The muscles, connected tissues, bones all need to shift over time because the body is being instructed to become stronger. Here's another example. If the perception involves fear and powerlessness, oftentimes someone that is a worrier is worrying about what if this happens. Okay, that is a combination of being fearful and feeling powerless and can't do anything about it. And a belief is that I can't control this, I can't escape this, or I'm not safe. And this is going to activate the anxiety-related pathways in the brain. From a survival standpoint, powerlessness and being in a state of fear is dangerous, right? If the brain interprets a situation as one in which action may be required, but control is limited, it mobilizes the system. So your heart rate is going to increase, your breathing is going to shift, your alertness is going to heighten, and the body prepares for potential action. So anxiety, again, is just not random. It's a mobilization in response to perceived lack of control or safety. And the subconscious is sending a message that readiness is required. The nervous system answers that call. So in every case, the body system that adapts reflects the type of survival demand the brain believes is present. So symptoms aren't random, they're following a message, and the message is coming from perception. So let's talk about perception. You can have two people that can live through the same external event and walk away with completely different physical responses. One can develop digestive issues, and another may develop anxiety, another person might not have any symptoms at all. And the event itself is not the deciding factor. The perception of the event is. Perception is the filter between experience and the biological changes in your body. It determines the meaning assigned to what is happening. And meaning determines which survival relay is activated. The brain does not respond to events directly, it responds to your interpretation, which in turn comes from your experiences in life that your subconscious has stored. So I want you to imagine two employees, let's say, being called into a meeting and told that their company is restructuring. The first employee might interpret the situation as a temporary uncertainty. There may be stress, but underneath is the belief, all right, I got this, I can adapt, I've handled changes before. And the survival system registers the information, but there's no reason to escalate it. There's no reason to say, hey, we need to adapt. There's a message of threat because this person is saying, I can adapt. I've handled this before. It's not a message that feels unsafe. But then we could have a second employee that interprets the same meeting as instability and threat. Beneath that reaction might be a long-standing belief of if I lose security, I'm not safe, or I'm not going to have enough money to survive. And the subconscious is going to interpret that as danger. Again, survival. If I'm not safe, if I am not financially secure, that's going to give a specific command to a relay to activate my body to adapt and save me. Because my brain at this time, the way I'm perceiving it, isn't helping me. My body is going to respond accordingly. In this situation, same meeting, different perception, and different biology change in the body. And the difference isn't about intelligence between the two people. It's not logic, it's stored programming. Perception is shaped long before the moment we think we are reacting. It's built from our memories, the repetition, and emotional meaning that we've given our life experiences. When a new situation resembles an old one, even in small ways, the brain will reference the stored file. It does not ask, is this actually dangerous right now? It asks, have we experienced something like this before? How do we view this? What is our perception based on all of the proof that we have in the files that we've stored? And this is how past perception is going to shape your present biology. The subconscious is not working against you, it's working from the information it has stored. So at this point, you might be saying, okay, I understand this. My perception is based on all the patterns that I have accumulated from all my years in life experience. And based on how I respond, will activate this relay in my brain, and my body then responds out of adaptation for survival. The next question that you might have is so if I just change my thoughts, shouldn't that solve it? Well, not necessarily, because programming is not stored as words. When a belief has been reinforced over years, the brain does not treat it as just a thought. It treats it as a survival rule. And survival rules are prioritized over logic. You can consciously understand that you are safe. You can intellectually recognize that a situation is manageable. But if the stored programming predicts a threat, that relay activates before conscious reasoning has time to override it. This is why someone can say, I know I'm safe, but my body doesn't feel safe. The body is responding to stored prediction, not current analysis. The brain's protective systems are fast and automatic. They are designed that way for efficiency. If the brain had to wait for full conscious evaluation before responding to threat, survival would be compromised. So insight is important, but it's not sufficient. Understanding the mechanism of what's happening gives you direction. It tells you where to put your focus. But updating programming requires new experience, not just new thought. The brain updates survival rules through repetitive, corrective evidence. When the subconscious predicts danger and a different outcome occurs repeatedly, the stored rule begins to weaken. We want to weaken these old patterns. And the brain will revise its predicted model, but that is based on repetition and specific actions to you in your patterns. So then the relay in your brain, that activation is going to be decreased because there's not going to be survival demand anymore because those patterns change. And this is how programming shifts. Those old patterns that have been worn in your brain and you traveled many, many, many times over and over again, we have to stop traveling down them and create new patterns based on our the actions that we're doing and give our subconscious proof of hey, this old program, it's not valid anymore. We're not going to give it attention anymore. And once we do that, then there's no reason for our body to continue activating and adapting. That's how you get rid of symptoms. And it's not through forcing positive thinking, suppressing your symptoms, or just walking around convincing yourself you're fine. There are specific actions and ways of creating new patterns that are going to get you out of this survival response that your body is doing, which is back to your symptoms. So let's bring everything full circle here of what I've talked about and what this means for your healing. When you understand that your symptoms are a biological adaptation, it's adapting for survival. And that adaptation happened based on your perception, and your perception was based on past programming, then your approach to healing is going to change because we're no longer looking at symptoms because the symptoms aren't the problem. They're just the messenger. You stop treating the symptom as if it's the problem and you start looking at the message behind it. And if the subconscious is activating based on stored survival rules, then surface level regulation with stuff is only going to go so far. You can work on your vagus nerve, do cold plunging, you can work on regulating your nervous system, all that is surface level stuff, and it'll be temporary and it's going to help reduce some intensity. But if the underlying pattern has not changed, that same relay is going to continue reactivating in the next similar situation. And this is how chronic symptoms continue. And this is why people often feel like they're managing symptoms rather than resolving them. Healing at the root means updating the survival rules, the patterns in which that have been programmed for your survival. It means creating new experiences that show the brain something different than what it has predicted for years. And when the prediction shifts, the internal message will shift. And when that message shifts, there's not going to be a reason for your body to activate the survival programs. When the focus is on subconscious patterns and nothing else, and you can choose to do other things if you want, but myself and all of our clients, all we do is work on subconscious patterns. It changes the response in the body and symptoms go away. The overall idea of it is simple. The work is not easy. And it may feel like this is just too simple to heal. And that's because the entire world has complicated the shit out of our bodies and healing. It can be this simple by just focusing on your subconscious patterns if you are open to seeing it that way. So as you leave this episode, consider this. What would change if you stopped seeing your symptoms as problems to fix and started seeing them as responses to information? How would your healing shift if you focus less on controlling the body and more on understanding the message guiding it? This way of thinking changes everything. It moves you out of fear and into direction. It moves you out of reacting and into leading. Thanks for listening to the Rebellious Healer. I'll talk to you next time.