The part of our mind that stores what we have learned about ourselves, relationships, and life. It regulates what we pay attention to and what we keep out of our conscious awareness. It reacts to both imagined and real dangers as well as imagined and real opportunities for happiness and success. And it includes thoughts, feelings, and desires that we keep out of awareness for fear that they’d make us not like ourselves or cause problems in our relationships with others. The problem is that these thoughts, feelings, and desires continue to exist and influence the way we feel, think, and act.