Subception: When You Perceive That Something Is Wrong But You Don’t Know What

There are times when one perceives that there is something that is not going well. It is a mist that settles in the mind staining calm and, in turn, a tension that swirls in the stomach as if it wanted to alert us to a danger. Subception is an unconscious mechanism that puts us on alert and defensive against indefinable threats that can be real or imagined.

Thus, while perception defines that process by which the brain interprets every sensation that comes from the outside through the senses, subception is something more indefinable. More than a sensation, it is a feeling, something internal and disturbing halfway between imagination and consciousness, between fear and anxiety.

Somehow, as difficult as it may seem to define, it is something that we have all experienced at some time in times of increased stress and concern. Most of us have said out loud that “I have a strange feeling, like something bad is going to happen . ” Much of the time, nothing happens. Rather, it is an emotional state fueled by anxiety.

Now, despite how anecdotal and curious it may seem, there is an important fact. Many people spend a large part of their life with that threatening feeling: that there is something wrong with them. In these situations, we find something more than a process of anxiety, it is the result of leading an existence little according to what one wants.

There is unhappiness, pain and a very silenced suffering and therefore the constant feeling that there is something wrong.

What is subception?

Subception is a term introduced by psychologist Carl Rogers. Its objective was to define those unconscious mechanisms that we often activate when there is something in our lives that is not going well. They are states in which the human being is not capable of objectively discriminating what happens to him, but there is that internal detector that intuits, feels and perceives a patent suffering.

Jordan Peterson, clinical psychologist, culture critic and professor at the University of Toronto, is one of the figures who has been most interested in this concept. As he himself explains, it is worth keeping this idea in mind to understand that incoherence with which, sometimes, we live. In fact, subception would be one of the most common causes of human distress.

Subception and a meaningless existence

Carl Rogers was together with Abraham Maslow one of the most prominent exponents of humanistic psychology. This therapeutic approach is basically oriented towards the person developing a healthier self-concept, understanding, in turn, the responsibility for their own choices.

Subception forces you to consider several things:

• The wrong approach to life has been taken. Sometimes we do not realize that we are something that is really far from our authentic self. We may have been raised to be obedient, passive, methodical, and aligned with a certain set of values. However, the subception offers us a message that something is not right -> that kind of existence is not the one that goes with us.

• You are living in incoherence. We want certain things, but we do others. In the unconscious we would like to be and act differently, but still we continue to cling to dissonance, to an existence to which we do not find meaning. Despite all this, we continue to change nothing.

Subception, explains Dr. Jordan Peterson, is like a sense that reacts to that internal discomfort of which we are not always aware. We know that something is happening, that there is an aspect that is not going well in us, but we are not able to define it.

Anxiety as a symptom of discomfort and contradiction

Subception often manifests itself in the form of anxiety. All that set of opposing emotions that we tend to drag when we lead an existence that does not conform to our essences, translates into tension, negative and ruminant thoughts.

It is common in turn that the classic feeling of emptiness, of nonsense, of going through the day feeling that nothing motivates or excites us in an authentic way navigates inside us. There are times when we settle. Although soon, the most intense and disturbing anxiety emerges, that which manifests itself with somatic problems (headaches, muscle pain, digestive disorders …).

How to cope with the feeling of subception

To solve, confront and deactivate the discomfort generated by subception, there is only one strategy: to remove those vital inconsistencies that we cling to outside. Something like this goes through a deep psychological excavation exercise from which to bring to light a series of aspects:

• Is this the kind of life I want to lead?
• I need to clarify my true needs.
• I must become aware of those realities that cause me discomfort and unhappiness.
• Do I surround myself with the right people? Is this the type of profession I want to dedicate my life to? Am I, in essence, the person I want to be?

These are sensitive but highly relevant questions that we should answer in order to detect the origin of the subception. Likewise, and to conclude, Dr. Jordan Peterson suggests that we carry out the following exercise. A simple proposal for reflection that can allow us to discover more than one internal truth that is worth bringing to light.