Unlocking our subconscious

How being a Hypnotherapist has improved my writing skills

I would honestly say that having an understanding of the human mind has really helped me to create complex and interesting characters. The subconscious mind takes up around 90% of our minds, whereas our logic and reasoning is only 9 or 10%. The subconscious includes our Autonomic Nervous System, which is our primitive survival mechanism, and this will react almost entirely out of instinct when we are either in real danger or perceived danger. Perceived danger includes modern day situations such as job interview nerves, first date anxiety, exam stress and health anxiety.

All our experiences in life are stored in the subconscious mind, such as our deep seated belief systems, which influence our confidence and self-worth, the ‘labels’ that are given to us by significant adults during childhood (i.e. the quiet one, the clever one, the practical one etc), and the positive and negative experiences that we have had throughout our lives that affect our thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

The root causes of phobias are also stored in the subconscious and are often quite different from the actual event. There is a famous study about how phobias are formed called ‘Little Albert and the Rat.’ This human experiment was conducted by a psychologist called John Watson and makes very interesting reading.

For example: I created a character who has hospital phobia. It started when she had to visit her father in hospital at the age of five, and saw unpleasant images in the ward. Years later, her mother has to stay in hospital, and the story is around the conflict and anxiety she experiences when she tries to visit her. Her logic knows it’s a completely different situation but her subconscious overrides this and she experiences extreme anxiety.

When I wrote Sackcloth and Ashes (which won first prize in the Writers Bureau 2008 Short Story Competition), I created a character who has OCD due to his mother’s strict religious beliefs. His behaviour causes him to lose concentration whilst driving, and he crashes into the car in front of him, causing injury to a man and his daughter. When he is sentenced, he doesn’t believe the outcome is harsh enough, and takes matters into his own hands.

Giving your characters issues that come from their childhood are just a few areas to explore in order to make your characters interesting and relatable.