13 spooky facts about your subconscious mind now let’s begin number one mental specs how much information can your brain store at any given time well after movies like limitless and Lucy you might think your mind has infinite possibilities the human brain is often called one of the most complex structures in the universe yet you still manage to lose your keys or forget someone’s name even after meeting them a dozen times so what exactly is our brain capable of if it were a computer what would be your mental specs the average brain has about 100 billion neurons each one connects to about 10,000 other neurons resulting in 10,000 synapses per cell every synapse passes electrical signals around the brain which basically tells your body when to do stuff now it might help to think of each synapse like one data point every signal is basically a 1 or a 0 in total that’s about 1 quadrillion ones and zeros in other words your brain works as fast as a computer that processes 1 trillion bits per second and we haven’t even talked about memory a few years ago neuro scientists figured out how many bytes your brains can actually hold it turns out it can contain up to 1000 terabytes of data that’s a hundred times the size of the US Library of Congress now of course most of that power is hiding below the surface about 95 percent of your brain activity is completely subconscious so the next time you lose your sunglasses when they’re sitting on your head mm-hmm remember that you’ve got way more going on up there than you realize number two absorbing data do we really need all that power how much of your brain does it actually take to process the world around you you’ve probably heard that you only use 10% of your brain but is that really true any neuroscientist will tell you it’s not we use the vast majority of our brains on a daily basis we’re constantly jumping from hemisphere to hemisphere lobe to lobe now of course that doesn’t mean each part of our brain is always performing at its best every second our subconscious takes in around 2 million bits of data that sounds like a ton but remember that our subconscious is capable of processing a million times more than that while our conscious is usually working in overdrive our subconscious can handle just about anything you can throw at it number three cognitive randomness have you ever been sitting at home watching TV when some person that you hated years ago randomly pops into your head to your conscious mind these thoughts come out of nowhere and sometimes they do but not every random thought is completely meaningless neuroscientists call these intrusive thoughts they tend to infiltrate your mind when you’re zoning out some are weird and goofy like wondering how dogs would wear pants hmm others can be dark and creepy even if some disturbing mental image shows up right before you fall asleep it doesn’t mean you’re a terrible person everyone’s mind wanders to strange places but there’s only one reason to take them seriously if you find yourself having the same thoughts over and over again your subconscious is trying to send you a message number 4 hates questions your subconscious doesn’t like to ask questions it isn’t designed to analyze or have opinions it’s often compared to a computer or robot because in many ways it acts like one as important as our subconscious is we would be an absolute mess without our consciousness we need that part of our brain to make us rational analytical and objective number five subconscious symptoms sometimes your subconscious mind speaks through your body when it’s feeling frustrated or distressed it stimulates all kinds of physical symptoms you might notice a rash or pimples pop out of nowhere or maybe your joints start randomly aching these are some of the most commonly misdiagnosed symptoms because there’s no illness involved it’s all your subconscious remember that your subconscious controls pretty much everything in your body so when it’s stressed many of those automatic functions start going off the rails for example your brain might subconsciously tighten your abdominal muscles or stop producing digestive hormones both cause stress induced stomachaches yet people are way more likely to blame something they ate number 6 imaginary danger your subconscious has a hard time distinguishing between what’s real and what’s imaginary a study from the late 90s tested this by asking two groups of people to play the piano the first group actually touched the instrument while the second just imagined they were playing after scanning the participants brains researchers discovered that the subconscious couldn’t tell the difference it reacted the same way to the imaginary notes as it did the real ones but no one in the second group actually believed they were playing the piano so how do we tell the difference this is where your conscious comes into play it analyzes all of the information your subconscious takes in and then decides what is and isn’t real now of course our conscious can’t always make a clear distinction which is where fear and anxiety come from imagine danger can be terrifying because your subconscious reacts like it’s really happening when your conscious brain sees your body freaking out it sometimes gets fooled into thinking you’re really in danger number seven unresolved fatigue when life is moving a million miles an hour even eight hours of sleep might not feel like enough you might notice yourself being less productive or having a harder time concentrating the quality of your work may start to suffer try as hard as you want to fix it but no amount of conscious effort can fix this subconscious issue you feel drained like this when there’s a deeper unresolved problem while your conscious mind is trying to be productive your conscience has been working overtime it’s exhausted from trying to keep that issue from affecting your daily life the only solution is to take a break and focus on your mental health our brains aren’t designed to work 24/7 some of the most ambitious people work through the pain by stuffing their problems deep down but those issues can and will leak back into your conscious mind leaving you feeling cloudy and tired number eight subconscious repetition your brain absorbs massive amounts of information every single day to make sense of it all it needs some way to differentiate between things that are important and things that are extraneous repetition is one of your brain’s most useful tools when deciding what to pay attention to it’s actually pretty simple the more you perceive something the more priority it gets this rule applies to everything from people to subjects in school affirmations are one of the best examples now at first they don’t do anything because your subconscious doesn’t really take them seriously but each repetition reinforces the idea your brain starts to dedicate more and more space until finally the affirmation is important enough to change your behavior but repetition isn’t just for the healthy things in life repeated fears are often way more terrifying because those negative emotions are ingrained in your subconscious you might tell yourself you’re not scared but your subconscious will quickly tell you otherwise number 9 the power hours unlike your conscious mind your subconscious doesn’t go to sleep when you do in fact it does more work when you’re down for the count your subconscious uses those eight hours to catch up on all the processing it couldn’t do during the day so while you’re lost in dreamland your subconscious is wide awake this is one of the main reasons why our dreams tend to contain memories and information stored in our subconscious while you’re sleeping your subconscious mind has full control so your dreams are often a blend of automatic thoughts most of the time they’re just random slices of your imagination but sometimes you can new things about yourself that your conscious mind would never discover number 10 cognitive chunking since our subconscious is constantly handling huge volumes of data it needs some way to organize everything because our conscious might need it at a moment’s notice it isn’t going to sit around waiting for our subconscious to make sense of it all so our subconscious uses a time-saving strategy called chunking chunking is when you group similar pieces of information together in your memory the closer they are the easier they are to remember think of it like the search bar in any search engine when you start typing it shows all kinds of shortcuts to related searches to speed up the process in other words your subconscious makes a habit of telling you what to think before you think it number 11 premature development one of the biggest reasons why children act so innocent is because they haven’t developed the kind of consciousness that adults use every day instead they’re primarily using subconscious functions this means they can’t do things like distinguishing between real and imaginary you see most of our consciousness doesn’t develop until we’re around 9 years old but our subconscious grows the most from 2 to 7 in other words you spent the first decade of your life doing whatever your subconscious told you number 12 living in the present your conscious has no problem thinking back to the past or picturing the future your subconscious on the other hand isn’t nearly as flexible it’s constantly focused on living in the present it’ll always lean toward actions that are going to help you right here and now sometimes that can be a good thing but more often than not you need your conscious to give you some sense of perspective number thirteen speech deficiency your subconscious doesn’t communicate in the same way your conscious does it can’t really use words because it doesn’t have a verbal processor your subconscious relies on images and feelings to get its message across this is another reason why the subconscious is easiest to understand when you’re dreaming after a dream you often can’t make much sense of what happened yet somehow the emotions seem clear as day