Healing Trauma with The Power of The Subconscious Mind | with Todd Goodwin

Michael Unbroken: Our subconscious mind has an innate ability to either help us move forward or actually keep us tremendously stuck. And there's so many things that even as we're in 2025, we don't understand about the human brain—things we are learning, things that we're trying to understand, and most importantly, even things we are trying to unlearn. I’m super excited to have Todd Goodwin here today of Goodwin Hypnosis to talk about the power and the effect of the subconscious and the role that it plays in our day-to-day journey, especially after trauma. Todd, my friend, how are you today?

Todd Goodwin: Thank you, Michael. I appreciate it and I'm glad to be here. Hopefully we have a conversation that inspires your listeners.

Michael Unbroken: I hope so too. Now, I've had a couple people who have been experts in hypnosis over eight years of this show, so I think we can just jump to—this isn't turning you into a chicken. We don't need to walk down that whole spiel. What I want to do is jump right into this, right? Because our subconscious is kind of like the tip of the iceberg. It's the real place in which, if you look at most of our root causes, our problems exist. So I guess the first question is, what do people not understand about the subconscious?

Todd Goodwin: I think what I would say, just to slightly adjust something that you said, is I believe our conscious mind is the tip of the iceberg. The conscious mind controls a very small percentage of what we do every day—mostly willpower, logic, analysis, problem solving like that. The subconscious is the vast amount of ice beneath the surface. Here's an interesting way of thinking about it. The Titanic saw the tip of the iceberg, but it was the iceberg beneath the surface that sank the ship. That's how it is for most of us. We all have tendencies driven by the subconscious, which is the irrational and emotional part of us that controls most of what we do.

For better or for worse, the subconscious runs the show. We can try here and there to control it consciously, but over the long term, the conscious mind—given that it's weaker and only works over a short period—tends to lose out. Ultimately, what our subconscious is programmed with, what it has learned throughout our lives, dictates our habitual thoughts, emotional reactions, behavioural habits. That affects everything from health, relationships, finances, career—you name it—coming from self-image all the way up to how we express ourselves in the world. If the subconscious is not aligned with what we want consciously—our goals—we're going to have internal conflict, elevated stress, and frustration whenever we try to achieve what we're trying to achieve.

Michael Unbroken: One of the things I think about is this relationship between our irrational and emotional decision-making. So many of us don't even understand where or why it comes from. We're just moving about the world. When I was younger, I'm a perfect case scenario—especially on the backside of a lot of childhood trauma. When I'm 25, I'm just constantly in the throes of self-sabotage, emotional, irrational decisions. I'm 350 pounds, smoking two packs a day, drinking myself to sleep, getting in fights as a grown man. I'm $50,000 in debt. Car gets repoed. Many of these things I've talked about on the show before.

I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out why bad things kept happening. As we're in this, knowing that without alignment, you walk down a path of conflict. Dude, my twenties were that in a nutshell. It wasn't until I started moving towards compassion, grace, discipline—the things people tell us we should do—that things shifted. But the biggest shifts didn't really come until I started doing inner work that required subconscious reprogramming.

So, talk us a little bit more through the relationship of our subconscious and our day-to-day actions and why, even though we might have big goals, we'll self-sabotage and do things we said we wouldn't do.

Todd Goodwin: Okay, great. So, I tend to, as a hypnotist, speak a lot in metaphors. I feel it's an easy way for people to understand things. So, I'll give you a quick example and then answer it more literally.

Imagine you have a horse and a person who wants to ride the horse. Now, if a horse were to just show up in your field one day, you might say, “Wow, great, I have a horse. It can help me plow my field and do work for me. I can let my daughter play with it. She can have a horsey ride. I can show it off to my friends, and it can be a pet.”

That sounds great, but you don't know where this horse came from. You don't know what it went through before it met you. So, if you try to hop on the horse, it might throw you off. If you try to feed it, it might bite you. It might break the barn door. It might cause a lot of damage.

The way I look at this is the horse represents our subconscious mind. It's very powerful and it can do great harm or amazing, wonderful things. The person who wants to ride the horse is our conscious mind. This is another way of looking at it that's a little more dynamic than the iceberg.

If you want to ride this horse, you need to have some degree of control over the horse, but you also need to have a good relationship with the horse. If the horse is wild—meaning it's never been trained properly or is undisciplined—or even worse, it's been traumatized, mistreated, beaten, starved, or whatever, and that horse is very troubled emotionally or physically or both, then good luck trying to control it.

You can have the reins, the bit, all of that. But if you try to steer it one way and it doesn't want to follow your direction, it sure as hell is not going to go where you want it to go. A lot of the time, when we try to control ourselves through willpower or try to stand there and reason with the horse when it doesn't speak English, we're not going to get results. We're just going to get frustration.

So, as I mentioned, if the horse has been traumatized or undisciplined, the key to taming this horse is rehabilitation. It also needs to be cared for and disciplined in a healthy way—not beating it up, but encouraging it and correcting it. This is similar to how we ideally would raise our kids.

Most of us were raised by people who were physically able to have children but emotionally were still children themselves. They were dealing with their own emotional problems. Just because they could reproduce doesn't mean, as you know from your experience, they were ready. They took out their unresolved issues on us—not because they're evil, but because they can't help it.

When the subconscious is upset, misaligned, or troubled—especially with unresolved trauma, which is our specialty—there is very intense energy within that needs to come out. That's where emotional pain or suffering develops from unresolved trauma. It manifests as anxiety, depression, addiction, suicide attempts, or even things that are less significant like mild phobias or panic attacks.

Whatever it is, most people's emotional and behavioral problems really stem from unresolved trauma, whether it's big “T” trauma or the relatively minor traumas most of us have experienced, especially when we were children.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah. And I think so much of it is being dysregulated. If you look at the reality of the space and time we live in—between online content, social media, and the constant draw to be distracted—people have failed to recognize the present moment. I think that's a big reason why they fall into the trap of the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. That dopamine hit.

Which, ultimately, is what our conscious and our subconscious are seeking because it feels good. But when it feels good for three seconds at a time, we would call that being a drug addict. You're always chasing your next high.

I've had the benefit of interviewing some really amazing people like Dr. Anna Lemke, who wrote Dopamine Nation, on the show a few years ago. We had a very similar conversation. We're chasing this hit because, if you think about it, I have this idea in my head that a big part of this journey for us as individuals is reparenting.

If a parent had taken care of you the way you were supposed to be—nurtured you, loved you, spoke into you, showed you it’s okay to fail, not belittled you or put you down, and not done so many of the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, or sexual abuses—you would’ve gotten little dopamine hits. Your little subconscious brain would've been like, "Oh, it's nice. It feels good to be touched by a human," not, "If somebody touches me, I'm going to have a panic attack."

With us being so unbelievably dysregulated, are you finding that sitting with people in hypnotherapy and hypnosis is actually harder to get to the subconscious than maybe it used to be?

Todd Goodwin: Hmm. I don't think so. I've been practicing since 2007. Since 2020, I've seen all clients by Zoom only, and I haven't noticed any drop in effectiveness either due to that way of working or due to the elevated stress level we've all been experiencing for five years now.

Michael Unbroken: Mm-hmm.

Todd Goodwin: I don't know if it's harder. In some ways, maybe it's harder, but in some ways, it's easier. That's kind of a wishy-washy answer. But when people are in touch with their suffering—which varies from person to person—we've had clients who are so overwhelmed by how their life is, they don't know if they can continue living like that. Then there are others who are just bothered and inconvenienced by certain things. It runs the full spectrum.

I think the more pain someone's in, the greater the potential that they want to do something about it. I wrote a book about quitting smoking in 2019. One controversial thing I said in there—based on my experience working with hundreds and hundreds of people to help them quit—is that someone who smokes a pack a day potentially could find it easier to quit than the person who smokes two or three cigarettes a day.

The reason has nothing to do with nicotine. It has everything to do with the amount of emotional suffering they experience being controlled by something like that—the amount of physical discomfort they might feel from the effects on their body. Because they're suffering more, they're more motivated to do something about it, to seek help, to be relentless in the pursuit of resolving it. They're not just like the dog lying on a nail where it's uncomfortable but not uncomfortable enough to get up and move. It kind of likes lying down.

Michael Unbroken: I think the issue with, to kind of go back to what you were saying before...
I mean, look, unfortunately, I think it's an inevitability. It might be a little Pollyanna-ish to assume that someday we could all be so well-adjusted that we raise our kids perfectly. I don't know if that's in the cards.

I think what is realistic is that, despite the bumps and bruises people get growing up—childhood, adolescence, and so on, where I’ve found most traumas—even little ones like, you know, the adverse childhood experiences (which I’m sure you're familiar with, those studies and everything), the little things that may not be a horrific trauma but can cumulatively affect someone in a negative way and how their sense of self develops and how they relate to the world.

So, childhood could probably be defined as the period during which you get screwed up. And then it's up to you, if you choose to accept the responsibility as an adult with self-awareness and perseverance, to get "unscrewed up."

If you drive a car for long enough, it's going to get scratches. It doesn't matter how well you protect it—if you use it, it's going to get dents and bird crap and other things on it.
The key is not how do you protect it from ever happening? There are things we can do to help in society, but ultimately, people are going to get traumatized.

What I’ve found—and this is inspiring to me consistently—is that pretty much no matter what kind of trauma it is, how long it's been since it happened, or how big it is, the mind (the brain, however you want to look at it) can unlearn the trauma.
It can de-energize the traumatic memories, which are filled with a lot of strong, negative emotional reactions, and that can be neutralized usually very quickly.

Then someone who had learned that they're not worthy of love or that the world is unsafe—based on the evidence of their experiences—once those memories change, the anchor holding those limiting or disempowering beliefs in place has been released.

That's where a lot of the hypnosis comes in—to change the beliefs.

So, hypnotists do not—at least my kind of hypnotist (my wife and I are both board-certified hypnotists; we both work with different clients, but the same material, same stuff)—we don't make people cluck like a chicken.

We help people relearn things. We help people change how they think because how you think will dictate how you feel, and that will dictate how you act.

If you don't change—if you have an unhealthy way of thinking, which was learned in most cases—then you're going to have unhealthy ways of feeling.
That’s why there are so many people on antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds.

And that's going to lead to unhealthy ways of acting, which is why—what—70% of the country is overweight?
15% smoke or vape nicotine.
Who knows what percentage are hooked on marijuana or alcohol or social media?

So, you probably have 95% of the population that is struggling with some form of addiction or emotionally compulsive behavior.
And just trying to control it without dealing with the root issue—which is how the person is thinking—is not going to work.

Really, as far as I'm concerned, Michael, it all comes down to the subconscious.
If you know how to communicate with it in a way that it will actually be agreeable to change, then you can create a mental handshake between your conscious and subconscious.
That creates a congruency which allows people to move forward much more easily and naturally than they would if they're fighting themselves.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah. I want to stay—I do want to talk about how we do that.
But I want to stay in something that I think is actually provocative and really needs to be spoken about right now.

We see many people—and I've coached thousands and thousands of people over almost a decade, and I've seen it in every single one.
I saw it in myself. I'm sure you see it in yourself and many of your clients.

They come to me and they're like, I have this addiction to this thing.
And then on the backside of it, they go, Well, I just have an addictive personality.

And then I go, Wait a second—you’re telling me you're addicted to chaos?
How does being addicted to chaos serve you? How does that make your life better?

So, if we have these addictive personalities that lead down this path of thoughts, feelings, and then the actions that create this life...
It's like, okay—we can rationalize, like, smoking the cigarette is bad.
We can rationalize, I'm not going to eat this.
Or, I'm going to McDonald's 'cause it's there and it's convenient.
We can rationalize cheating on my wife or husband.
We can rationalize all of it.

But it is not until we unlearn the traumas and the behaviors that anything actually shifts.

One of the things that I saw in myself—which now I'm heading to 40, and I've been doing this work for 14, 15 years (constantly in the journey of the healing)—and another thing just comes up, and comes up, and comes up.
And I've just kind of relegated myself to the notion that this is reality.

Every new—as TD Jakes said: new levels, new devils.
You start leveling up. You start shifting. And then—boom—the next thing presents itself.

But we're talking about this idea of unlearning, especially compulsive behavior.
Because I would have to assume that's generally the thing most people are coming to you for.
I mean, I don't know, but I'm curious.

Because it's like—I know I'm doing this thing that is completely ruining my life, but I can't stop.
Again, addicted to the chaos.

So how in the world—not only do we unlearn—but how do we then take that unlearning, that knowledge, and all the information we're getting, and distill that down into something that actually helps us change our life?

Because one of the things I think is that a lot of people get stuck in knowledge and they do nothing with information.

Michael Unbroken:
Okay, so let me unpack that. There was a lot there.

Todd Goodwin:
First of all, I don't buy the "addictive personality" concept. I think that's an easy thing for people to say. You know, a person smokes, drinks, gambles—whatever—and people say, Oh, addictive personality.

I don't believe it's a personality type at all. I think it's simply a measure of how much discomfort the person is in emotionally, and how much they have to do to alleviate that discomfort temporarily.

So the person who can get away with smoking three or four cigarettes a day—and that may be their only, quote, vice—maybe they're not as overwhelmed as the person who smokes two packs a day and drinks a six-pack of beer every night to wind down.

In most cases, the person who thinks they have an addictive personality—and has multiple compulsive habits they struggle to control—those people tend to be either unfulfilled or emotionally dysregulated, or emotionally distressed for any number of reasons.

It can come from unresolved trauma. Not always. It can just come from feeling overwhelmed with the events in their life.

But whatever the case, Michael, if someone has multiple compulsive tendencies or addictive tendencies—I tend to use the word compulsion more than addiction. There are fine differences between them, but I think compulsion has less baggage than the word addiction.

If someone is emotionally dependent on some behavior or substance to temporarily feel better, they're going to keep doing it until they resolve the reason they're not feeling good in the first place.

One of the things I often say is: If you didn't feel so low, you wouldn't have to get so high.

Addiction and compulsive habits—even if it's just overeating or eating junk food or cookies—if the person seems to have no self-control, what I think is really helpful as a first step is to ask:

What is my subconscious trying to do for me as a favor?

We can think of the subconscious as the devil on one shoulder and the conscious mind as the angel on the other. They're whispering in each ear, telling us what to do, battling it out.

But the subconscious is not the devil. It's not trying to hurt us.

What I find is that most issues fall into one of two categories:

The subconscious, represented by that part of you that's sabotaging—like you mentioned, self-sabotage—is either:

1. A misguided friend
   Saying: Here, have a cigarette. Here, have your fifth or sixth drink. Go cheat on your spouse.
   It's trying to help you feel good because—ironically—based on its own beliefs, it created the bad feeling it's now trying to help you escape.

So it creates emotional distress, and then offers a behavioral solution to feel better temporarily.
If it really fixed anything, there would be no addictions—you'd do it once and problem solved.

The misguided friend is like the one who, if you're on a diet, imagines you must be suffering eating kale. And they say, Come on, just have one cookie. It's not going to kill you.
They're not trying to sabotage you. They're trying to help you feel better because they think you're suffering.

1. The overprotective parent
   Now, if you didn't have an overprotective parent, this might not resonate.
   But generally, think of the mother who says, Oh my gosh, don't go outside after dark. The world is a scary place. Make sure you wear your mittens or you'll freeze.

They implant a lot of fearful thinking—not because they're trying to mess us up or send us to therapy—but because they're trying to protect us.

So the subconscious creates fear, phobia, panic, anxiety, and stress as a way of helping us avoid or escape from a perceived threat—even if it's not rational or real.

Case in point: fear of flying. Flying is safer than driving.
But some people won't get on an airplane because their subconscious says, This is the one plane that's going to crash.

So they avoid getting on, or they escape at the last moment before the door closes.
That's a sensible response if the belief is correct—but it's not.

Most of our problems come from misunderstandings and mislearning at the subconscious level.

So I think I may have touched on some of your questions there.

Michael Unbroken:
Let's walk it a little bit more.

Because when I think about compulsive behaviors—which I think is a great way to phrase it in correlation to addiction—I don't recall ever doing anything compulsive and being aware of doing it.

Whether it was binge drinking, hooking up, smoking a pack a day—whatever it was.

Even today, sometimes I have these compulsive behaviors that I have to catch myself.
Like, Why did I have to go to the gym again today? I could have rested. Why did I have nine coffees today?

(Which—that's my number one vice, by the way.)

So I’m like, Okay, wait a second. Where does this sit? Why do these behaviors keep coming up?

When you talk about the correlation to being unfulfilled—what I want to discover is:

If that's the problem, why aren't people just doing things that make them fulfilled?
Wouldn't that eliminate compulsive behavior?
Wouldn't that unlearn the trauma?
Wouldn't that get rid of addictive personalities and tendencies?

So how do you get fulfilled, then?

Todd Goodwin:
That's one cause of someone's emotional discomfort.

I wouldn't say it's the primary one.

I think trauma—big T and especially little t—which are much more common, are.
That makes up the vast majority of the clients my wife, Gina, and I see.

It's not compulsive behaviors—though those are symptoms of emotional disturbance.

People typically have persistent emotional disturbances.
They may or may not act out in unhealthy behavioral ways.
If they do, they might not even see it as a compulsion because they don't drink, they don't smoke, they don't overeat, maybe they don't over-exercise.

But they might work too hard.
They might think they love their work—talking about fulfillment—but really, they're workaholics. Type A personality behavior.

They're putting way too much pressure on themselves, even at the expense of relationships or health.
Because they feel like if they slow down or don't achieve X, Y, or Z, they're not going to be good enough.
Or they'll think they're a failure. Or less than. Or not living up to someone's ideal—theirs or their parents’.

This affects CEOs, entrepreneurs, high-performing athletes.

Most of our clients are everyday people.
But occasionally, we get the high-end performers: professional athletes, CEOs of companies with thousands of people.

And they have the same issues everyone else does.

They just push themselves harder because they're compensating for something inside they perceive as missing.

They may not even be aware of it. Like you mentioned, they might be compulsively engaging in some behavior without self-awareness.
Most people don't have that awareness—through no fault of their own.
No one teaches us this stuff.

But it’s the most important thing to understand.

Because if you don't know what goes on between your ears, how the hell are you going to live a life that truly inspires you?

So, how do people get fulfilled?

Realistically—not everyone can have a job or career that's fulfilling.

There might be people making minimum wage who are truly fulfilled by what they do.
But let's assume they're rare.

It may not be practical.
If someone loves being an artist or throwing pottery—but they have to put food on the table and they're at the poverty line—you can't realistically say, Just follow your bliss and the money will follow.

In the universe I live in, Michael—that's fairytale speak. That's not realistic.

But—they can add a few hours a week doing something that inspires them. That fulfills them.

Usually a hobby. Or listening to certain music.
Or whatever it might be.

Even having good conversations like we're having now—to me, that's fulfilling.

So—even though I love my work most of the time—even if I didn’t, if I have a few hours a week doing something I enjoy...

Like, personally, I love gardening.
I love playing with my dog.
I love taking a walk with my wife.
And having these kinds of conversations.

That might be enough.

Not everyone is going to spend 40 hours a week doing what they love.

But if they give themselves a few hours a week doing something that lights them up—that gives them energy—that they love to talk about—that they'll do without anyone reminding them...

That can really make up for a lot of the soul-draining that happens during the rest of the week.

Just a little reality check there.

Michael Unbroken:
Yeah, no—that’s a great point.

Because, on paper, you look at my life and you think:
This guy must do what he loves—huge podcast, travels the world, billboards in Times Square, written four books, coaches all these people.

But I realized—four months ago—I don't have a hobby.
I have nothing fun at all in my life.

And it was a real "aha" moment for me.

All the creativity I’d leveraged my whole life had gone away in the last few years.

I got zeroed in, started working really hard, changed what I was doing.

And then I was like—oh, maybe this is why I burned out.

But like you mentioned, I couldn't see that because I didn’t know.

I didn’t know fulfillment could be going to a concert.
Going for a walk.
Hanging out with friends.
Watching the game.

All the things I threw out of my life for the sake of career and drive.

That’s a really good point.

I think doing an inventory of your life can play a big role.

And here's the thing that has happened for me:

There's always been this ebb and flow.
As someone with an ACE score of 10—I'm like the Kobe of this shit.

And it’s really hard.

A lot of days are really, really difficult, Todd.

What it takes for me to just make it through the day is sticking to my routine.

Meditation. Journaling. Yoga. Working out. Not eating processed foods.

All the things that, for many people, it's one or two habits.

But for me, it's literally all of them—otherwise, I can't function.

It's wild.

But here's the thing that’s happened for me:

Because I've done hypnosis and hypnotherapy seven or eight times now...

Something started happening that I know you talk about, but I don't think is talked about enough.

That’s the notion of memory reconsolidation—loosening trauma’s grip on our natural brain processes.

Over the last five or six months, I started realizing...

Oh, wait. I can have fun.

And here’s the crazy part:

I can have fun for the first time.

And I’m sitting in that.

As I’ve reconsolidated all these memories—every single time I had fun as a kid and there was some kind of punishment or ramification—I’ve been able to put that to the side.

Now, there’s still work to do. I know there’s always more work to do.

But I really want to dive into this because I don’t think it’s talked about enough.

People don’t understand it.

And I think if they did, they’d see it’s more practical than they realize.

Todd Goodwin: As you would imagine, I'll start with an analogy or a metaphor. Many of us played a game called telephone when we were kids, or we’re familiar with it. You have a bunch of kids sitting in a circle, and one starts with a message, like a sentence, and whispers it in the ear of the person next to them. Then the next one whispers into the ear of the person next to them, and by the time it gets around a minute later to the original person, it’s been spoken 10 or 15 times. Usually, the message has changed—not intentionally, it just changes because little details get lost or heard differently.

So, the way our memories work is kind of similar to that game. Each time we access a memory, and let’s just for simplicity purposes, call it consciously accessing it—like, let me tell you about a time when I was so-and-so age with so-and-so, wherever I was, and I’m going to tell you about that experience—what I’m actually recalling is not the original imprint, it’s the last time I recalled it.

Each time you recall a memory, you’re accessing the circuitry in your brain. It becomes malleable. Think about it like a ball of clay. It actually becomes soft and malleable. Now, most of the time, when we talk about a memory or an experience we had, the differences from one time to the next are very subtle, and we usually don’t notice that there could be a mild drift over time. And it’s usually not important. But every time we remember it, we’re remembering the latest version—like software, the last time we saved it.

Think of it this way. You pull that clay ball out of your head. That’s the memory, okay? And now it’s soft. You don’t have to change it, but you could. If you do change it and then it goes back into your head, it goes back into long-term storage in your memory. It solidifies, usually in a span of minutes or hours, and that becomes the new state that you remember.

The reason why this is important is that when people who have experienced traumatic events—again, it doesn’t have to be a horrifically large “T” trauma—could just be any emotionally upsetting experience that we have not properly addressed, which most people haven’t, through no fault of their own. So, we all have, almost all of us, have experienced some trauma in our life—generally, when we were children or adolescents—and when we talk about it, especially if we repeat the same story again and again, all we’re really doing is reinforcing that story.

In a way, we’re strengthening the circuitry in our brain because we’re giving it more life. We’re giving it more legitimacy by telling the same story again and again. This is one of the problems with identifying with your problem, as opposed to seeing it as a tendency, behavior, or something you learned. Like the person who struggles with alcohol, saying, “I am an alcoholic.” Show me someone who says, “I am an alcoholic,” and they can’t stop saying it to themselves again and again, and I’ll tell you they stand a much higher likelihood of relapsing than the person who says, “I am a person who, for whatever reason, tends to choose to use alcohol to make myself feel better.”

Because one is the identity, which predicts behavior, and the other is just behavior, which you can change. So identity is important. If we have a traumatic experience and we identify with that trauma, and that becomes our persona, that becomes how we think of ourselves, then that can inform, that can become like a foundational operating system in our mental computer. It can run so much of what we do unintentionally.

So, what memory reconsolidation does—and that’s a big part of the work that Gina and I do to resolve trauma, usually very quickly, at least the memories—is we have our client access that memory without needing to give us the story. So most of the time, we have very little information about what their experience was—not because we don’t care, just because it’s unnecessary. It just eats up a lot of time, and there’s no point in reinforcing it for the hundredth time.

We don’t need to know much at all, but they think about it. They’re probably feeling emotional discomfort. It might affect them for a minute or so. They might feel their heart rate increasing if it was a very upsetting experience. And then we go through a variety of different techniques and methods that are innovative and often improvised. It changes how they think about that experience, but not at a conscious level. Because that doesn’t matter. It changes how their subconscious represents it—how they see it in their mind, the dialogue that is the soundtrack or the audio track to that experience, and the emotional tone that they experience while recalling that memory.

All of that can change in minutes. We use a variety of tools to do that. What happens, though, Michael, which is remarkable, and it never gets old, quite honestly, is that for most people, they can go from being really agitated or upset or angry or sad or scared—whatever it is—recalling it, which they’ve done a hundred times on their own, to either feeling neutral about it or maybe minimally bothered. They might go from a 7 or 8 out of 10 down to a 1, or sometimes, even laughing.

The really cool part is once we’re done doing that—and like I said, that can often be minutes, 3 minutes or 20 minutes—when it’s done, that becomes the new way that their subconscious stores that memory. Importantly, they don’t suddenly say, “Oh, nothing ever happened to me in the past.” So, it’s not like the neuralizer from Men in Black. It doesn’t erase their mind. What it does is, they still have a full knowledge of what happened. They can still say, “Oh, yeah, sure, I was attacked. I was held up at gunpoint, and the guy had a gun to my head and stole my purse.”

But now they can talk about it and feel little or nothing as they talk about it. Whereas before, they might not have even been able to think about it without getting really nervous and panicked. But when they think about it, it doesn’t bother them. But they still know what happened.

So, in a nutshell, that’s what memory reconsolidation could do. I do want to say this other thing. That is a natural state. That’s a natural process in the brain. It happens anyway, like the game of telephone. But if it’s going to happen naturally, why not intentionally guide the change in that memory instead of just saying, “Well, let’s talk about it a hundred times”? That’s hugely important.

And the work we do, it’s maybe the most fun part for our clients as well. When most people would think trauma work is horrible and difficult and painful, usually, it’s painful for a minute or two, and then it’s actually kind of fun—weirdly.

Michael Unbroken: I mean, this is a big reason why I personally—this is just my own personal thing—I’ve always said I wish that I’d gotten a coach or a hypnotherapist before a regular therapist in this journey because I just... you know, there’s behavioral changes that are associated with those memories that I think, when not... I think, I know, that when I shifted those, my life changed. Like it was crazy. I can almost track it. Yeah. Like a watch, like I could look at some of these experiences, whether it was CBT or EMDR, and while those were very powerful, honestly, for me, it was hypnosis and then having a coach that carried the most weight. Because I felt like if I could control my behavior, I could change my life. What I didn’t know 15 years ago, which I know now obviously, is what it actually is: it’s controlling your mind, it’s controlling your emotions that then, in turn, impact and control your behaviors, that then, in turn, change your life.

So, somebody’s listening, they’re deep in this conversation. They’re like, okay, I could see the benefit of what Todd’s talking about, but what’s actually happening? How do I actually change my mind? How do I actually change my identity, my beliefs? How do I, you know, change and resolve these emotional and behavioral issues? What is happening when I sit down with somebody like you, Todd?

Todd Goodwin: Well, first of all, hypnosis is a part of what we do. Most of the memory-related work and other things that we do are in the realm of NLP, or neurolinguistic programming, which basically puts a turbo boost on hypnosis. So, hypnosis is great, but by itself, it wouldn’t be nearly as powerful as combining it with these other modalities. So, all of them are based on having a more receptive state of mind.

If a person... and I don’t mean consciously, like, “Okay, I’ll unfold my arms, I’ll listen to what you have to say, I’m receptive.” Again, that’s a conscious level. We’re interested in... how can we help this person access a natural state? Hypnosis is a natural state. Everyone experiences it daily—daydreaming, playing video games and responding emotionally to what you’re playing, or reading a novel or watching a movie and emotionally responding. Even zoning out when driving—those are all hypnotic states. So everyone experiences hypnosis constantly. It just happens automatically.

What we do is we help, through a variety of different techniques, help our clients access that state. However we’re doing it—whether they’re closing their eyes and breathing deeply and zoning out in what we would think of as a hypnosis session, or looking eye-to-eye like we are right now, or you might imagine something—whatever the case is, it’s simply about helping someone get into a speed-learning state where they can unlearn, relearn, and learn something new. That updates the software in the mental computer. I think that answers your question on some level.

I’m not going to get into a full neuroscience explanation, but there are certain things that happen in the brain where our imagination is more augmented, more empowered, and the critical part of us that tends to reject things becomes less active. That allows us to think about possibilities using our imagination, through storytelling or “What if?” So, we don’t have to believe something like, “Oh, I no longer have interest in junk food.” Or, “Oh, I’m over my trauma.” They don’t have to believe that, but what if that were true? How would you feel? What would your day-to-day be like?

So you can imagine what it would be like to overcome that problem. As that happens, a person is now open. They’re receptive—not to having their mind controlled, which is the common myth of hypnosis, which is complete nonsense—but to being basically de-hypnotized. Because really, what we do is we de-hypnotize people. People have already been hypnotized by their society’s beliefs or by whatever their parents told them that is hobbling them in their life today, or whatever experiences they’ve had. They’ve already been imprinted and programmed.

We simply help them use their natural abilities because they don’t have the guidance. We guide them to unlearn it, to shift. Hypnosis, as we do it, is kind of like a dance. You have a lead, and you have a person who follows. The person just needs to be able to follow directions. The lead has to know all the steps. As long as the two want to work together and dance, you can have magic. But as soon as one person says, “Okay, I don’t like this. I don’t want to do it,” the dance is over.

That’s kind of what it’s like working with a hypnotist. So, basically, it’s creating an open mind that will allow a person’s subconscious to think about things the way their conscious mind wants them to. Meaning, “I’m a non-smoker. I can feel confident. I don’t have to keep defining myself as needing other people’s approval in order to feel like an okay person.” So really, most of the work, Michael, is just unlearning.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah. De-hypnotizing is a great way to phrase it. Whenever I have people come into my programs, I always tell them that I’m going to brainwash them, but only because their brain’s dirty. You know? And I think that’s a big part of it is looking at the reality. When you take the willingness to walk this path and do this work, what comes on the backside can be very beautiful. And it’s not that it’s easy because most of the time it’s not. And it’s not that it’s a one-size-fits-all because trust me, name a modality and I’ve tried it, and most of it did nothing for me. And so it’s about finding the right fit. And then ultimately, I think what it’s really about is not giving up—it’s the willingness to keep showing up, to keep doing the work, to know, like, I mean, again, as I mentioned, 15 years into this, just myself and more money than I care to even mention, just trying to be this normal. The next thing is coming, and that’s just what I’ve discovered is the nature of life.

Todd, this has been an amazing conversation, man. I really, really appreciate it. Before I ask you my last question, where can everyone find you, learn more about you, and come and work with you?

Todd Goodwin: Yes. Thank you, Michael. Like I mentioned, we see all clients by Zoom, so time zone permitting, no matter where someone lives, we can potentially help them one-on-one if they’re struggling with unwanted thoughts, feelings, behaviors, or trauma. If you’re listening to this and wondering, “Hey, could this help me? Is this the kind of thing that could really make a difference?” We created a one-minute survey on our website, and it is literally like 60 seconds to do. If you go to goodwinhypnosis.com/survey and just take one minute to answer, I think it’s 8 or 10 little bullet-point questions, that will indicate whether, based on your answers, we think we might be a good fit for you and you might be a good fit for what we do.

Make sure you’ll have an opportunity to put in your email address and mention Think Unbroken because you’ll immediately get two free gifts that we’re offering. One is a deeply relaxing self-hypnosis audio called Go With the Flow, and it’s really great for gaining perspective and reducing emotional reactivity. It’s just really good for practicing that relaxation response to lower stress. The other is an educational video called 17 Facts You Need to Know About Yourself Before Seeing a Hypnotist or Therapist. It covers a lot of different topics that most people don’t know much about, including some of the things we talked about today.

You’ll get those immediately. We also occasionally have free live Q&A where we teach a concept or two and take live questions from whoever’s attending. We do this by Zoom. So, when you submit your email and get those two free gifts, we’ll also let you know when our next one is, and you’re welcome to register and come to that. There’s no pressure in any of this. It’s just a free and easy way to get started and see if it helps you. So, go to goodwinhypnosis.com/survey, reach out to us, and maybe we’ll be able to help.

Michael Unbroken: Perfect. Yeah, and guys, of course, go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com for that and more in the show notes.

My last question for you, my friend—what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Todd Goodwin: So, I would say that, like I mentioned, few people reach adulthood without some dings and dents and scratches, bumps, and bruises. That’s part of life. Some people more than others. So I think being unbroken is to be resilient. Despite whatever dings and dents we got, it’s our responsibility, if we choose to accept that, to adapt, to heal, to learn, and to grow from that experience so that we can hopefully take it from being baggage to actually turn it into fuel to inspire us and frame it in a way that we can actually build on what we’d have thought of as trauma, but actually look at something that can really help us turbocharge our life in the direction of fulfillment and wellness.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah. Beautifully said, man. I want to encourage everyone to walk that path because, while it can be very difficult, it’s also incredibly rewarding. Todd, thank you so much for being here. It was a pleasure to speak with you today. Unbroken Nation, guys, thank you so much for listening. If you got any value out of today’s episode and you think it will help someone in your life, share it with them. Follow us on Instagram at Michael Unbroken. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other.

And Until Next Time.

My Friends, Be Unbroken.

I’ll See You.