How Your Subconscious Mind is Hijacking Your Actions and Results (and How to Take Back Control)
Updated: Nov 6, 2025
Katie Ruffino, PA-C, NLP Master Practitioner, and founder of Pure Pathways Collective, merges medicine, mindset, and artistry to inspire holistic transformation. Known for her work in detoxification, subconscious rewiring, and her Katie in the Kitchen series, she helps leaders embody health, vitality, and authentic self-expression.
Have you ever wondered why you keep doing the very things you swore you wouldn’t do? You promise yourself you’ll set better boundaries… and then say “yes” when you mean “no”. You want to finally feel confident, rested, and consistent with your health habits… yet end up back in the same cycles. You dream about taking a leap in your business or relationship… but something invisible always seems to hold you back.
You are not lazy. You are not broken. You are not unmotivated. You are just running an old program, and it is located in your subconscious mind.
The real driver behind your behavior
Science shows that up to 95 percent of what we think, feel, and do each day is controlled by the subconscious mind. It is the invisible operating system running in the background, quietly deciding what feels safe, possible, or familiar.
The subconscious learns through repetition, emotion, and experience. It was built when you were young, shaped by your parents, teachers, society, and survival patterns. Its primary job is to keep you safe, even if it does not always make you happy.
If “success,” “love,” or “peace” were never associated with safety for you, then your subconscious mind will subtly resist them no matter how badly your conscious mind wants things to change.
You cannot outthink your subconscious mind, but you can reprogram it.
That is where NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) comes in. It offers tools that can help you communicate directly with the part of your mind that runs the show.
Signs a subconscious program is hijacking your results
You might notice your subconscious patterns show up like this:
You say you want love, but attract emotionally unavailable partners.
You crave freedom but keep overworking or overcommitting.
You want to feel vibrant and healthy, but self-sabotage your wellness routines.
You people-please, even when it leaves you resentful or exhausted.
You chase achievement, but still feel like it is never enough.
Your willpower is not failing you in the above situations. They are behaviors of old beliefs. Somewhere deep down, your subconscious decided that it is safer to stay the same than to risk change.
The tricky part is that these programs run automatically until you bring them into awareness.
Why awareness alone is not enough
We often think transformation is about knowing more. But if knowledge were the answer, we would all be living our dream lives already.
The truth is that change happens when we work at the level where the patterns are created, the subconscious mind.
We think that we are different from technology, but here is something most people do not realize. AI and the subconscious mind actually have something in common.
Both are incredibly powerful, but they only follow the lead of the prompter. AI is limited by the questions you ask it and the direction you give. The same goes for your subconscious mind. It stays neutral until you program it with meaning.
To work with AI, or your mind, you must learn to be an excellent leader, which means asking better questions, giving it specific guidance, and teaching it where to focus.
Otherwise, it simply mirrors your old instructions, your past conditioning, and your cognitive biases.
How to reprogram the subconscious mind
When I guide clients through NLP sessions, we don’t try to force new habits, claiming that “consistency is key”. We retire outdated beliefs and install new ones that actually support who they’re becoming. Here’s how you can start doing that today:
Awareness: Notice the pattern without judgment. You will feel less resistance to change when you accept where you are currently at.
Language: Your subconscious mind speaks in imagery and emotion, not logic. Start speaking to yourself in the language of possibility instead of fear.
Emotional safety: Healing cannot happen in survival mode. Learn to feel your emotions, not suppress them, so change feels safer.
Repatterning: Use visualization, NLP, and affirmations tied to emotion and body awareness, not just words, to rewire the belief.
Embodiment: Reinforce your new beliefs through action. Every time you show up differently, you teach your subconscious a new “normal.”
When you work at this level, change stops feeling like a battle against yourself. It feels like you are updating your outdated software, which we all need to do at various points in our lives.
My personal experience
I used to think if I just tried harder, studied more, hustled more, and learned more, that I’d finally feel at peace. But no matter how much I achieved, those old familiar thoughts of “it’s not enough” played underneath.
When I began studying NLP, I realized the saying “it’s in your head” has some merit to it. I had been following subconscious rules that weren’t helping me achieve my goals, formed from past experiences and societal conditioning. Once I updated the program, life began to flow differently…more ease, more alignment, more energy, and I began to feel differently…more confidence, less overthinking, and more freedom.
I learned that I couldn’t continue living life looking through a foggy lens. I needed to clean the frames and create safety for my truth to come forward.
Taking back control
Your subconscious mind is powerful. It is actually your most loyal student and will believe whatever you teach it.
So what would your life look like if your subconscious mind finally started working for you, not against you?
If you are ready to experience what that feels like, I offer one-to-one NLP sessions designed to help you retire old beliefs and install new, empowering ones. In just one session, you will feel the shift in your nervous system, mindset, and energy.
I received this message from a client that showed me proof of the power of this healing work: “I didn’t realize it at the moment but our session was the catalyst of actually resolving my relationship with money. Before I used to just ruminate over it but after our sessions I’ve actually started to heal my scarcity mindset and being stuck in fear”
You can book a session here.
Because true transformation does not happen when you learn more, it happens when you become the leader of your own mind.
I will leave you with this reflection question:
What story has your subconscious mind been telling you, and are you ready to write a new one?
Read more from Catherine (Katie) Ruffino
Catherine (Katie) Ruffino, NLP Master Practitioner
Katie Ruffino, PA-C, NLP Master Practitioner, and founder of Pure Pathways Collective, is a recognized voice in functional and regenerative medicine. She helps leaders and entrepreneurs achieve holistic transformation through detoxification, nervous system regulation, and subconscious rewiring. Her work emphasizes emotional release and deep reconnection to the self, creating space for clarity, vitality, and freedom. Drawing from her medical background and her passion for creativity, Katie also created the Katie in the Kitchen series, where she shares stories, interviews, and lessons on authentic living. Her mission is to help others enhance their human experience, living in alignment with their truth.
