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Keep It Simple, Stupid: Simplicity As A Cornerstone of Modern Mental Health
Life is complicated.
No, seriously, your body is made up of trillions of cells, connected across dozens of systems with countless enzymes, hormones, neurotransmitters, proteins, and other kinds of hyperspecific mechanisms that all seem to work together to keep you functioning.
If you were acutely aware of all of the things happening in your body to keep it going, meaning if you were conscious of all of the little processes necessary for biological life, it would be entirely overwhelming. It would be like trying to multitask and keep track of 100+ different things at the same time; impossible.
Biology fixed this problem by making the vast majority of these processes subconscious, meaning that they happen largely automatically and outside of our awareness.
This is the central paradox of psychology
On one hand, most processes were supposed to be subconscious. On the other hand, we spend a decent amount of time trying to uncover the very mysteries of the psyche through the study of the mind and the brain.
It is quite literally the study of something that was intentionally obfuscated from our consciousness…
