How many times have you asked yourself, "Why did I do that? I should have learned that doesn't work." The answer is a complicated one that psychologists like to call "unconscious motivations."

Dr. Wendy Walsh: I have a favorite metaphor to explain how unconscious processes drive our behavior. Imagine that you have grown up, away from your troubled childhood, and have created your dream adult life. You are in the back of a limo. You have cash. And you look great. The only problem is with the limo driver. You can't see his/her face, and no matter how often you order them to take you to the finest restaurant and most beautiful mansion, that darn driver keeps turning that car around and going back to some dirty bird restaurant you ate at as a kid. And rather than taking you to a mansion, your driver keeps pulling up to the house you grew up in. Urrgh!!!

Whether you are a layperson and (like most screenwriters) use the term "sub"-conscious, or have training in psychology and like to look smart by saying "un"-conscious, the meaning is the same. We all have early life feelings that are out of our awareness, yet drive most of our conscious life.

Here's an example of how our unconscious drives us where we may not consciously want to go: Let's say you grew up with an absentee father whose drop-in parenting functioned to create deep feelings of longing. Today, as a smart, successful adult woman, you find yourself attracted mostly to bad boys (Read: Inconsistent behavior marked by emotional unavailability). Even though you meet nice, kind men, you are unconsciously driven toward those bad boys who seem to get under your skin and are hard to shake. What could be happening is that your unconscious limo driver keeps driving you back to the familiar feelings of your childhood. Even if our life experiences were painful, they are still familiar. We know we can survive that kind of relationship, because we did it once. In truth, happiness might be the strange feeling that our unconscious little child is afraid of. What a thought!

So, are we a slave to our unconscious drives, or can we break the shackles of early life programming and think, feel, and behave as an adult? The answer is yes, but not without help and bravery. If we're super lucky, we have a love relationship that both contains us and challenges us to grow. The rest of us pay for therapists to do that.

Sigmund Freud may have been a victim of his Victorian era, but he was a genius when it came to understanding the unconscious. He believed that by helping the unconscious become conscious, people can be relieved from psychic pain and bad behaviors. He also believed that dreams are the "royal road to the unconscious" in that they contain "pre-conscious" material. Not that dreams are literal, but that dreams are feelings with pictures.

My advice: If you are choosing a therapist, ask them if they do dream therapy. There is plenty of material in the nocturnal theater of our minds that will help you finally confront the face of your limo driver.

Dr. Wendy Walsh holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and her area of interest is Attachment Theory, a psychological, evolutionary and ethological theory that provides a descriptive and explanatory framework for understanding interpersonal relationships between human beings. As a psychological assistant registered with the California Board of Psychology, Dr. Walsh has treated individuals, couples and families for a variety of mental health concerns including personality disorders, anger management, eating and substance disorders, and depression. Connect with Dr. Walsh on Facebook.