The conscious mind is your cognitive thinking process.  It’s accessed when you are confronted with a situation which you have time to assess thoroughly and respond to decisively.  You will go through a 4 step process:  

1. Perceive

2. Analyze

3. Formulate

4. Execute

When there is no time for the conscious mind to rationally think through the problem, the subconscious mind will automatically reference an instinctive response or a general course of action from a previous experience.  If there is nothing in memory that relates to the current situation then cognitive freezing will occur.