Have you ever wondered about the hidden powers in your brain? Beneath the surface, your subconscious mind is constantly at work, driving your thoughts, actions, and even physical reactions.
Mysterious as it may seem, the subconscious exerts remarkable control over our daily lives—storing massive amounts of information, processing countless data points, and subtly guiding our behavior.
In fact, many seemingly “random” thoughts or impulses can be traced back to this powerful inner circle. Are you ready to uncover some spine-tingling truths about your subconscious? Here are 13 scary facts that will change how you think about your brain’s hidden depths.
Table of Contents
1. 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 as one data point.
Every signal is basically a one or a 0 in total; that’s about one 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, neuroscientists figured out how many bytes your brain 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, and 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.
2. 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, which 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.
3. Cognitive Randomness
Have you ever been sitting at home watching TV when some person that you hated years ago randomly popped into your head? To your conscious mind, these thoughts come out of nowhere, and sometimes they do. However, 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. I’m wondering how dogs would wear pants —hmm— and how 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 will try to send you a message.
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.
5. 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 are no illnesses 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.
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 to 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 consciousness 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.
7. 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 subconscious 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.
8. Subconscious Repetition
Your brain absorbs massive amounts of information every single day. To make sense of it all, there needs to be 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.
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 learn new things about yourself that your conscious mind would never discover.
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.
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, which 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.
12. Living In the Present
Your conscience 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 conscience to give you some sense of perspective.
13. 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.
Conclusion:
Our subconscious mind is a complex, fascinating, and sometimes terrifying companion that shapes our experiences more than we realize. From storing memories to processing emotions and even affecting our physical health, the subconscious mind’s influence is undeniable.
The more we understand these hidden processes, the better we can harness their power for personal growth and self-awareness.
So the next time your mind wanders or you experience an “inexplicable” reaction, remember that your subconscious is always working quietly in the background—sometimes in ways that surprise you.
Founder and CEO of Lifestyleflux.com, I bring years of expertise in self-improvement, wellness, and personal development to help you lead a happier, more balanced life. Through practical insights, eBooks, and consultations, I share actionable strategies rooted in experience and a passion for empowering others to unlock their full potential.