The subconscious mind

To keep things simple, I am assuming that the subconscious mind and the unconscious mind are the same thing, because they sit in the same place (i.e. below the conscious mind). Getting into the differences between the subconscious and unconscious won’t particularly help us, so, out of preference, in this website l only use the term subconscious mind. If you are more familiar with the term unconscious mind, then think of it in that way

Right, now let’s get back to the explanation

We cannot control what thoughts the subconscious generates. It is where unwanted thoughts come from, and therefore where OCD thoughts come from. This is the most important section in the website, I encourage you to read it thoroughly

In the previous section, I mentioned that the conscious mind has a slow and narrow connection to the brain. The subconscious mind is the opposite; it is able to send thoughts to the brain in a super quick time; typically, in a fraction of a second. It is also able to send a high number of thoughts to the brain at any one time (you could say the cable from the subconscious to the brain is wide). For example, if you are running away from a vicious dog, the subconscious mind instructs (sends thoughts) to the brain, so that the brain can do some of the following: (a) release a large amount of anxiety so that the person knows they are danger (b) increases blood flow to the legs so they can run faster, (c) makes the eyes sharper, so that they can look for an escape route, (d) stops digestion so that the body can focus on the more pressing issue of running away. There are more things the subconscious does in that situation, but those four examples give you an idea of the types of thoughts the subconscious sends to the brain. It also sends those thoughts to the brain in a super quick fashion, so the person has the best chance of running away.

The reason the subconscious mind has a fast and wide connection to the brain is that is what it needs to perform its two main jobs which are:

(a) to ensure the body is safe
(b) that the body is operating as efficiently as it can

In regards to the safety aspect, we have already mentioned an example of this i.e. the person running away from a vicious dog. The subconscious mind is very quick in emergency situations

In regards to the efficient operating of the body, it basically monitors everything that is happening in the body and if it finds a non-complicated issue, it tells the brain how to fix it. If the problem is too complicated to fix (e.g. trauma) then the subconscious mind asks for the help of the conscious mind.

However, the subconscious cannot speak directly to conscious mind, as they are on two different systems. You could say they speak different languages

This is one of the most important things to understand about OCD. If the subconscious could talk directly to the conscious mind, it would say something like, ‘there is too much trauma in the body, please can you figure out how to fix that?’

But the subconscious cannot directly talk to conscious mind

So, how does the subconscious mind get the attention of the conscious mind?

It does this by getting the brain to generate anxiety. That is, the subconscious mind knows that it is the conscious mind that experiences emotions, so it needs to generate an emotion. The subconscious does this by producing a thought which causes the brain to get scared and generate anxiety

So, what kind of thoughts can the subconscious generate to scare the brain?

Well, I classify the thoughts into two broad categories

Category 1 is to produce a thought that is totally made up. For example, it can generate thoughts like ‘What if I pick up a kitchen knife and stab someone’.

This category contains the following sub-categories:

· Harm OCD (e.g. fear of picking up knife and stabbing someone)
· Symmetry and Ordering OCD (e.g. arrange books according to height)
· Relationship OCD (e.g. you fear your partner is cheating)
· Numbers OCD (e.g. some numbers are considered unsafe)

Category 2 is the exaggeration of real thoughts. The subconscious can exaggerate a real thought to such an extent that it becomes irrational. For example, a real thought is that we should wash our hands once after going to the toilet. But the subconscious will take that thought and exaggerate it by saying we need to wash our hands ten times, to make sure we don’t get an illness

This category contains the following sub-categories:

· Contamination OCD (e.g. the need to wash hands many times)
· Uncertainty OCD (e.g. checking that the door is locked many times)
· Getting It Right OCD (e.g. repositioning items so that they are facing the “right” way)
· Religious OCD (e.g. if you get an immoral thought are you committing a sin?)

While above I have mentioned eight subcategories, there are actually many more subcategories. In fact, the list of subcategories is infinite, because the subconscious can use the person’s imagination to create any kind of thought, hence why OCD thoughts can be so irrational

Speaking of irrational thoughts, there is a person in a two-part BBC documentary (called 'Extreme OCD Camp') whose OCD thought is that if she eats an M&M chocolate, her family is going to die ! You can find the documentary on YouTube, I recommend you watch both parts, to see the different varieties of OCD thoughts

It may be helpful if you write down which of the broad categories your OCD thoughts fall under, and also the sub-categories.

Every OCD sufferer gets an anxious thought from at one least one of the two broad categories.

If one thought is not enough, then the subconscious could generate additional thoughts, so that the person ends up having multiple thoughts. That is, it could start off with a thought about contamination, and when that is not enough, it can also add thoughts about harm and symmetry, so that the person ends up having three OCD thoughts to deal with rather than the original one thought

If multiple thoughts are not enough for the person to start fixing the root cause of OCD, then the subconscious can also impact our beliefs (about ourselves) in two ways to generate even more anxiety.

The first way is to get the person to question their beliefs about themselves. For example, if they get an OCD thought of ‘What if I pick up a kitchen knife and stab someone’, the subconscious can also generate the thought ‘you must be a bad person if you get that thought’. Hence causing the person to question if they are actually a bad person, which will cause more anxiety

The second way is to exaggerate our beliefs so that the OCD thought is even more effective in generating anxiety

Let me give an example. Let’s say a religious individual (before they got OCD), would not get anxious when they heard a song on the radio that contained immoral lyrics. This is because their belief is that if they are not deliberately listening to the song (it just came up on the radio), then it can’t be sinful.

But once that individual gets OCD, the subconscious can change this belief to something like ‘it doesn’t matter if I am listening to the song deliberately or not, I will still be committing a sin’.

So, that individual will now rush to close the radio, otherwise they will get anxiety (around committing sin).

So, how does the subconscious exaggerate the individual’s belief. Well, the first thing is that all beliefs sit in the subconscious mind. The second thing is that a belief is just a thought that has become entrenched. So, one part of the subconscious can generate a new thought and send it many times to the part of the subconscious that contains the beliefs. This could be done in a quick time, perhaps in a matter of hours. The person will not even be aware their belief has changed!! But even if they realised that their belief has changed (by looking back before they had OCD) it won’t help them, as the brain, which generates the anxiety, doesn’t care what the old belief was, it only goes by what the current belief is

Have any of your beliefs been changed by OCD ?

The ability to change/exaggerate our beliefs is a very sneaky tactic from the subconscious mind.

Another sneaky thing the subconscious can do is to change where the anxiety hits the body. That is, when you get an OCD thought, the generated anxiety may hit one part of the body e.g. the chest. If that doesn’t have the desired effect, the subconscious can change it so that the anxiety hits the arms. This is a problem if the person’s job involves lifting heavy things, they will no longer be able to do that job, as their arms will now be unstable because of the anxiety

There are two more things that the subconscious can do, which are strictly speaking not OCD, but have the same objective as OCD i.e. to stop you living your normal life, so you can fix things like trauma and self-esteem issues

The first is generating psychosomatic symptoms in our bodies

Psychosomatic means ‘mental factors cause physical symptoms where there is no physical disease.’

For example, a person could have had no pain their foot for the first half of the day. But then in the second part of the day, the OCD person needs to go out (for a walk) and the subconscious could generate a made-up pain in a foot, so that it makes it more difficult. Or it could give the person irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) in effort to get them to stay indoors.

The second thing the subconscious can do is to get you to associate an OCD thought with an object/area. For example, if you are eating a particular brand of chocolate bar and you get the OCD thought ‘what if I pick up a kitchen knife and stab someone’, then you may avoid buying that particular chocolate again, as it might remind you of the time you had that OCD thought. Overtime, the number of objects/areas you avoid will be greater, and so potentially every room in your house could have objects/areas you ‘need’ to avoid. Your life will become difficult

I appreciate the above is a lot to take in, you may need to read it a number of times. It may help if you write down which of the above has impacted you

You now know what OCD is. This explanation should help all OCD sufferers, because it provides the reason as to why you are getting these thoughts and why they are so irrational/scary. The explanation is particularly helpful to people with harm OCD, as they now know that the thought isn’t an instruction to harm someone, it’s just a made-up thought. In fact, it is quite common for OCD thoughts to be ego dynastic i.e. against one’s nature. For example, a teacher that teaches young kids may have OCD thoughts about punching a child in the face. The teacher will never do that, their moral code will always override the nonsense thoughts that OCD produces

As a side note, some therapists/psychologists say uncertainty is a part of OCD, and that we can’t say for sure the teacher won’t punch the child. In my opinion this a cruel way to administer the therapy, as there has never been a documented case of an OCD person causing harm to someone else because of an OCD thought. In fact, OCD people typically go to extreme lengths to avoid harm

If you have read the sections on the brain, the conscious mind and now this chapter, you should have a good understanding of how OCD works.

So, at this point, the OCD sufferer will think ‘I know it’s my subconscious mind that is generating these OCD thoughts, so how do I stop it generating those thoughts’

The bad news is that in the short run, you cannot stop the thoughts. This is because the thoughts themselves are symptoms of an underlying issue, and solving that underlying issue typically takes time, possibly years. Solving underlying issues will be discussed in the section ‘psychoanalysis’

But don’t despair, the good news is that in the short run (i.e. within six to twelve months), you can stop your brain from generating anxiety when it receives those OCD thoughts. This is the aim of one part of CBT therapy, to eliminate (or largely reduce) the amount of anxiety the brain releases.

We will come to CBT therapy in two sections time, but the next section is an overview of the recovery process - please click the button below