Who's Really Making Your Decisions?

How subconscious patterns shape our behaviour, and why understanding them isn't always enough to change them.

We like to think that we make our decisions consciously.

We weigh things up. We consider our options. We decide what we want and then act accordingly.

But so much of what drives our behaviour happens beneath the level of conscious awareness.

Our brain is constantly drawing on previous experiences, learned associations, emotional memories and patterns to predict what is safe, what is threatening and how we should respond. And it can do this before our conscious mind has had a chance to make sense of what is happening.

In other words, sometimes we think we are making a new decision when we are actually responding from an old pattern.

When the past is influencing the present

Most memories are adaptive.

We have an experience, learn from it and continue gathering new information. As we grow and have different experiences, our understanding can change too.

Something that felt devastating at 20 may look very different to us at 40. We can place it in context, integrate what happened and move forward.

But experiences that are highly stressful, overwhelming or traumatic can be different.

Instead of feeling safely relegated to the past, aspects of an experience can continue to be activated by something happening in the present.

It might be a particular tone of voice. A smell. A facial expression. A situation at work. Someone withdrawing from you. Being criticised. Feeling rejected. Losing control.

You may not consciously connect what is happening now with anything from your past but you react to from your subconscious mind.

And sometimes the reaction feels far bigger than the situation in front of you.

Consciously, you may know you're safe.

You may know that your new partner isn't your previous partner. You may know your boss isn't your father. You may know that making one mistake doesn't mean you're a failure.

You might even understand exactly where one of your patterns came from, and yet you still respond as though the old threat is happening again.

Your heart races. Your stomach tightens. You shut down. You become defensive. You overthink. You people-please. You procrastinate. You pull away. You become hypervigilant.

Then your conscious mind comes in afterwards and tries to explain it.

This is why insight can be incredibly valuable, but insight alone doesn't necessarily change every deeply conditioned response.

You can tell yourself, I don't need to react this way anymore.

And still react that way.

The patterns we don't realise we're repeating

Over time, these automatic responses can become conditioning.

Something happens → your system interprets it in a particular way → you respond.

Do it often enough and it can begin to feel like simply "who you are."

I'm just anxious.

I always choose the wrong relationships.

I never follow through.

I don't trust people.

I'm not confident enough to do that.

But what if some of these aren't fixed aspects of your personality?

What if they're patterns your system learned somewhere along the way?

That distinction matters, because a pattern that has been learned has the potential to change.

This is where working with the body becomes important

If the pattern is operating beneath conscious awareness, we can't necessarily think or talk our way into changing it.

We need a way of accessing what is happening at that deeper, subconscious level.

This is where the body becomes incredibly important.

When we focus on an unresolved stress or traumatic experience, the body will often respond before we consciously understand why. There may be tightness in the chest, a sensation in the stomach, a change in breathing, heat, heaviness, tension or simply a feeling that is difficult to describe.

The body gives us another way in.

Rather than needing to consciously remember, analyse or retell everything that happened, Kinesiology and Mind Body Medicine use the body to help us access the stress, associations and underlying patterns connected to what is happening now.

By bringing awareness to the body, we allow the subconscious to take a much greater role in the processing.

Following the feeling, rather than searching for the memory

This is an important distinction in the way I work.

We don't necessarily need to go searching for the traumatic memory.

We can follow the feeling.

A physical sensation can act almost like a thread. As we bring attention to it, different associations, emotions, images or memories may arise. Sometimes there is a very clear insight. Sometimes an unexpected memory appears. And sometimes there is no conscious memory at all.

The conscious mind doesn't have to know the whole story for the body to give us information.

Rather than trying to work everything out intellectually, we're becoming receptive to what the subconscious brings forward.

The feeling itself may have something to communicate.

Accessing the pattern so it can be reprocessed

This is where Kinesiology and Mind Body Medicine differ from simply understanding why you behave in a particular way.

Through muscle monitoring and a range of somatic and mind-body techniques, we work with the body's response to identify and access the stress associated with the pattern.

The intention is to allow that unresolved experience to be reprocessed, rather than continuing to be activated as though it is still happening now.

And this doesn't necessarily mean reliving an experience in all its intensity.

In fact, one of the things I love about this work is that we can focus on the feeling rather than forcing someone back into the memory itself.

The original experience may have been overwhelming, but the process of releasing some of the stress associated with it can feel surprisingly gentle.

People will sometimes describe it as a shedding, or sense of something loosening, or simply relief.

When the past stops driving the present

When we process the unresolved emotions and experiences behind our patterns, something begins to shift.

We become less entangled with the past. The emotional charge that once triggered an automatic response can soften, and situations that previously brought up fear, anxiety or defensiveness may no longer affect us in the same way.

Our subconscious no longer needs to keep repeating the same old patterns of protection and conditioning.

Instead, we can begin responding to life from a clearer, more grounded and embodied place, rather than being driven by unresolved experiences.

And this is where real transformation can happen.

Not simply understanding our past, but no longer being unconsciously directed by it.

Freeing us to make decisions that align with who we are and what we truly want, and putting us back in the driver's seat of our own lives.