our cognitive process are the fruit of our unconscious. The conscious mind is the tip of the ice berg of the totality of our being.
Out of the necessity to orient ourselves and to mediate the inner and the outer worlds, we create narratives based on the information we have access to. The most evident of this information is how we behave, and our behavior is the level on which many people’s narratives are almost exclusively confined to because that is the domain/type of information they’re able to access/perceive. another relatively evident level of information is how we think, because -although not as visibly obvious- we can easily observe what we think about and when and how often and sometimes why. on yet a subtler level, we have information regarding how we feel. This level of information is more nebulous that thought, as it isnt always evident how and what exactly we feel.
And this is the border past which most of our conscious minds stop. It’s extremely easy for the conscious mind to label away the “unconscious” and “subconscious” as something abstract and inaccessible, thereby relegating their role to the margins of our experience.
In this view, when faced with the seemingly irrational or undesirable ways our minds work, we look outside to the dominant systems of meaning-making in our culture to help us make sense of why our brains are “malfunctioning”. A narrative (such as a medial diagnosis) helps us find footing – and a plan of action – in an otherwise overwhelming bombardment by thoughts and feelings. It helps us make sense of the internal chaos.
In my own experience, I am extremely grateful for the “OCD” narrative, because it has connected me to support and experts who provided hope when i was lost and the opportunity to get a handle on the “problem”.
What I’ve also learned through experience and study, is that the paradigm of a “medical diagnosis” is an incomprehensive narrative because it only takes into account the conscious information regarding the mind.
This is a valid basis to draw conclusions and statements from if one is content with living life on the conscious level. to each their own.
but for people with a nagging pull that there is something more going on than just the neurochemical cards that we’ve been dealt – of which our thoughts, emotions and behaviors are supposedly only epiphenomena of- the exploration of the unconscious mind is a tried and true path for offering such insight and profound personal meaning-making.
if there’s smoke coming from a car engine, the way to go about addressing the problem is to lift the hood and see what aspects of the mechanics of the car need rewiring. in this metaphor -lifting the hood doesnt mean getting an mri, but rather lifting the hood on the unconscious. In the paradgim of subjectivity- which is the realm of our identities and thus the reality we inhabit- the physical correlates of our subjective states (like our neurochemistry) are actually the symptoms — not the cause. of course there are degrees of relativity… extreme physical disruptance can cause more subjective disruptance and perpetuate a feedback loop. sometimes we can get too caught up in these loops to be able to approach the inward journey with clarity (or to function even without the desire to pursue the inward journey) and here medication can be beneficial and even life-saving.
In the example of the car metaphor, having so much smoke can inhibit our ability to see or even get close enough to examine under the roof, so aid in the form of medicine can help facilitate a less severe foundation to start from.
so what is this causal dimension of self below the level of the conscious mind? This is the realm of intuition, dreams, biological hardwiring, trauma , archetypes and deeply held beliefs.
if we can develop a relationship with this sometimes dark, nebulous and mysterious world we can slowly uncover the real personal roots of our cognitive dis ease from within. Through this process we may find that how we divided and categorized our experience at one stage (like through a medical diagnosis) may not capture the dynamism of the mechanics of our psyche in the most useful or comprehensive way. What we previously saw as “the problem” may come to be interpreted as a symptom of a deeper unresolved tension… often times originating with some unconscious belief about who we fundamentally are in relation to the world. The contents of the mind come to be viewed from a holistic perspective instead of as isolated occurrences to be treated as separate from our total evolution.
I offer my evolution in unearthing the unconscious roots of my own mental health journey as a case-study in how this process can unfold here.