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How Your Brain Filters Reality – and How Hypnotherapy Helps You Retrain It
- Jane Crossley
- Feb 10
- 3 min read
Every single second, your brain is taking in millions of pieces of information — sights, sounds, thoughts, memories, body sensations. If you were consciously aware of all of it, you’d feel completely overwhelmed.
Thankfully, your brain has a built-in filter that decides what gets your attention and what gets pushed into the background. This filter is called the Reticular Activating System (RAS).
What Is the Reticular Activating System?
The RAS is a network of neurons in the brainstem that acts like a gatekeeper for your awareness. Its role is to filter incoming information and highlight what it believes is important, relevant, or meaningful to you.
A simple example many people recognise:
You decide you want to buy a red car. Suddenly… red cars seem to be everywhere.
It’s not that more red cars have appeared overnight. Your RAS has simply been given a new instruction: “Red cars matter now.”
So it starts noticing them.
Your brain does this constantly — often without you realising.
The Problem: Your Brain Learns What to Look For
Your RAS doesn’t decide what’s important randomly. It learns from:
Past experiences
Repeated thoughts
Emotional memories
Beliefs about yourself and the world
If you’ve spent years worrying, being self-critical, or scanning for danger, your brain becomes very good at spotting:
Threats
Problems
What might go wrong
Evidence that supports anxious or limiting beliefs
This is why someone with anxiety can walk into a room and immediately notice what feels uncomfortable — while missing what feels safe or positive.
Their brain isn’t broken. It’s simply been trained that way.
The Good News: The Filter Can Be Retrained
Just as your brain learned to focus on problems, it can also learn to focus on:
Safety
Calm
Strengths
Opportunities
Positive change
When new ways of thinking and feeling are repeated, the brain starts to treat them as important. Over time, this happens automatically — without effort.
This is where hypnotherapy can be especially powerful.
How Hypnotherapy Helps
In hypnotherapy, we work with the subconscious mind — the part of the brain that sets the “rules” for what your RAS filters in or out.
In a relaxed, focused state:
Helpful suggestions are absorbed more easily
Old patterns can soften
New perspectives feel safer and more believable
Rather than forcing “positive thinking” (which often feels exhausting or unrealistic), hypnotherapy gently helps the brain update its internal instructions.
For example:
Someone experiencing anxiety may begin to notice moments of calm more naturally
A person with low self-esteem may start recognising evidence of their abilities
Someone stuck in unhelpful habits may become more aware of choices and possibilities they previously overlooked
Just like the red car example — once the brain is trained to look for something new, it starts to see it everywhere.
Small Shifts Can Create Big Change
One of the most empowering parts of this process is that it doesn’t rely on willpower or constant effort.
As the RAS updates its filter, people often say things like:
“I don’t spiral like I used to.”
“I notice when things go well now.”
“I feel calmer without trying so hard.”
This isn’t just mindset work — it’s change happening at a neurological level.
In Summary
Your experience of the world isn’t shaped only by what happens to you, but by what your brain decides to focus on. The Reticular Activating System plays a key role in this — and it can be retrained.
Hypnotherapy offers a gentle, supportive, and solution-focused way to help the brain move away from fear and limitation, and towards calm, confidence, and possibility.
Change doesn’t always come from doing more. Sometimes it comes from teaching the brain to see differently.
If you’re curious about how hypnotherapy could support you, feel free to get in touch for a friendly, no-pressure chat.
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