You have another mind, previously called the “unconscious” or “subconscious” mind. This mind records and stores mental image pictures made during painful or traumatic experiences, or instances of partial or full unconsciousness. These memories are not normally accessible to you analytically—witness a person’s inability to recall a surgery or severe accident.

In Dianetics, this mind is called the “reactive mind.” When you encounter similar circumstances to those in past disturbing moments, this mind reacts on a stimulus-response basis. Statements you heard in the original incident, such as “I have a headache” or “I feel terrible,” will act upon you like post-hypnotic commands, making you say and do things you don’t understand. It is WHY you have inexplicable feelings, strange aches and pains—why you can’t be yourself.

In fact, it is the SINGLE SOURCE of your irrational fears, self-doubts, uncontrollable emotions and even your childhood nightmares.

The reactive mind is also the source of psychosomatic illnesses—meaning illnesses caused by the mind. Experts estimate that psychosomatic illnesses account for up to 70 percent of Man’s ills, including migraines, allergies, colds and many other afflictions.

Illogical feelings of unhappiness, grief, fear and the like are no more than the “memory” of past painful experiences being replayed by your reactive mind.

How can you handle these negative effects?