How Increased Self-Awareness Can Heal Your Hidden Trauma with Dr. Paul Conti

27:10Very often, we're still laboring under what we were laboring before, even though we've worked and satisfied a lot of those needs in us. you just described me right there. I have not. My gosh. I mean, that's exactly right. I mean, the truth is if I step away from it many years ago, I should have stopped worrying about ever having to be poor again or without food or when you have food stamps in your life, when you're young, like I did or welfare, no matter what abundance I've created, I've caused myself to still feel afraid of being poor. And that's the truth. That's bizarre to people that know me that are around my life, but what a great conversation, by the way, because that's exactly verbatim me, what you just described still to this day.

28:00And it's just, if you're the quality of your life is the quality of your emotions, then I'm not any more successful than someone who's never made any money or had any abundance in their life because I'm living in the same emotions I had. yes it lacked those things and so you're 100 right let's talk about some solutions what is a mirror meditation what is that so mirror meditation is is a process where sometimes a person will stare at themselves look at themselves in the mirror and they're thinking about themselves right and it's not that everyone should do this i mean it's for some people it's too intense it's not, you know, it's not helpful, right?

28:40But for others, it can be very helpful because it draws the attention to the self of like, what is going on in me, right? What am I avoiding? And oftentimes a person knows, you know, since that bad breakup, I haven't really given myself a chance to meet someone new, right? And I just, I just always keep thinking I'm not meeting the right people or, or I think, oh, it'll never work out or I'm better off without it. Like, but I know that something changed in me during that really awful breakup X number of years ago or months ago. And there might be just an example like that. We could go through where they're just going over and over and over again in our brains without ever changing it.

29:17So anything that makes us stop and really look at ourselves, it could be mirror meditation. It could be writing out a narrative. It could be talking to a trusted friend. It could be talking to a therapist. But the idea is that we stop and we stop going with the automaticity in us because that person could tell themselves for 10, 20 years, right, for the rest of their lives that, okay, no, I stay away from relationships. They don't work for me. No one really likes me enough. I'm not good enough. Whatever it is we tell ourselves, but even though our whole self knows that's not true and knows we didn't feel that way before this trauma, we embrace it because in the short term, it feels like that's keeping me safe today.

30:01I don't have to face what I would have to face, kind of getting back out there. So if we don't stop and look at ourselves, these kind of things can go on forever. Our brains are more complicated than any supercomputer. They are amazingly complex. And also, there are some very simplistic aspects to them, which is we don't just reboot. Even a computer, an old computer, you shut it down, you open it up, it tries to reboot any patches going on. Our brains don't do that. So we can still labor under, for example, I feel like I don't have enough money and I'm going to be in trouble and I'm going to be poor again.

30:40Right. Even though all evidence would say that ended a long, long, long, long, long time ago. But unless you stop and look at that, you carry it forward. The feelings of the fear with you as if it were now. As if it were so true. Yeah. My case almost feel like, well, not in my case and everybody that I've coached to. I become kind of addicted to the story of me. Like there's a story. I almost feel like these patterns we create about ourselves have to be connected to a story. And typically the story, the more real it is to us is the heightened emotion level when we created the story. Maybe I'm wrong.

31:19But there's a story about ourselves. I think most people live the story of whether they're a victim of something or I'm even careful when I talk about that my dad was an alcoholic. because I don't want my identity to be that that's who I am or that that's who my dad was. But I think you would agree with me that we all have this sort of unconscious, maybe we're even conscious of the story we tell about ourselves. I'm divorced. I was abused as a child. I was neglected. I've always been heavyset. I'm not the smartest. I'm not the tallest. I'm not the prettiest. I'm not whatever. A, am I right about this story thing?

31:52And B, is there something that you would suggest somebody do to interrupt the pattern of that story and start to create a new one? And we get a look at the story, right? Put the story out in front of you in words on paper, maybe, or in spoken words. Is that real? Because very often, unless we stop and look, we absolutely think our story is real. Even though if we stop and look, we will understand that it is not. And the example that I give, I tell this example a lot, and it gets so, so compelling. And it's a real story of a young woman who came from a difficult place where not a lot of people got out and were able to live really good lives.

32:35And where she came from didn't think much of her or think much of her capabilities. So she goes through life. And then in high school, she earns an award that said, hey, you're smart and you're capable and you can go places. That's basically what the award said. And that's how she felt about it. She felt she got empowered by it. I can get out of here. I can do good things for myself. Like she really understood that at the time. So then subsequent to that and not that long after, she has some very significant trauma in her life. Very significant trauma and her feelings about herself. The brain is overwhelmed.

33:13The brain changes. Now she has a different story about that award. and the story is that it was a mocker you know it was telling her you're not going to go anywhere this is the best thing you're going to get in life and you're going to you're staying here even if you're trying to you know go somewhere else why would you think you could right so she thought that about it and had no understanding no recollection that she had thought differently right and this is happening in us all the time where if you ask her what's your story and she talked about the award it was completely different with no knowledge that the story is now the opposite because trauma makes in us a reflexive response of guilt and shame.

33:52It's a reflex. And unless we fight that, we start redoing our stories through the lens of guilt and shame and through the lens of oppression. But most people who are talking to themselves or thinking in their head about themselves aren't doing it with compassionate curiosity, right? They're doing it in a persecutory way. They're telling themselves you're not good enough and over and over and over again, and why they're not good enough? Why no one's going to like you? This is what's going on in our minds. So how are we supposed to realize the truth? Oh, I didn't always think about myself. I say, no one comes out of the womb thinking I'm not worth anything.

34:26And again, I'm exaggerating a little bit. No one's thinking that much when they're coming out of the womb, but we don't feel that way initially. So how did we get to feel that way? Let's go look at that and let's go look at what our stories are and if those stories are true. And very often the story is the opposite. So for example, someone who really behaved their best and did the best they could in a difficult situation. And all of us would think that that person has reason to feel proud. And even more, that person looking at anyone else would think the other person has reason to feel proud, but that's not what's felt inside.

35:03What's felt inside is shame, guilt. So unless we step outside of ourselves and look at ourselves, it's amazing the delusions of self we can labor under, including having, I've got a story of my whole history and I don't realize it's entirely false, even by my own assessment, if I just stop and look at it.

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35:54Mutine. Adjective. Used to describe an individual whose spirit is unyielding, unconstrained. One who navigates life on their own terms, effortlessly. They do not always show up on time, but when they arrive, you notice. an individual confident in their contradictions they know the rules but behave as if they do not exist new teen the new fragrance by mu mu defined by you you led me right where i wanted to go which was shame it's a biggie this is a biggie like yes i coach privately and obviously in your background as in psychiatry, you're dealing with this a lot. But I have to tell you, even with very successful people that I coach, shame comes up a lot.

36:42I mean, I almost feel like this is one thing that's not discussed a lot in mental health. There's obviously depression and anxiety, but like shame is a major topic that keeps rearing its head. Is it in your practice? And if it is, just talk about uncouple shame for us a little bit and anything someone can do to alleviate the burden of it? There are a lot to that. When I didn't start off deciding, oh, I'm going to be a trauma person, so to speak. Now, having done this now for over 20 years, I just see over and over and over again that trauma is at the root of the vast majority of what ails us. Why does that person have a substance dependence?

37:22Why is that person depressed? Why is that person avoiding good things? Why is that person having anxiety and panic attacks? So many things I can say over and over examples that if you trace them to the root, where did it come from instead of modern mental health, which often just wants to take an inventory of symptoms with no knowledge of you whatsoever. Let me see how many boxes we can check. And I'm not criticizing that often practitioners are doing the best we can, but we work in these systems that are so dumbed down that they're giving a person 15 minutes with someone, all they're trying to do is take an inventory.

37:56Oh, you have depression. Let's treat your depression. I'll give you a medicine. This makes no sense. If you trace people's stories back, what you find like 80 % of the time, like I really believe that across 20 years of doing it is the roots of the problems we're seeing are in trauma and trauma makes reflexive shame, right? There's probably an evolutionary adaptation. If you did something and it made you feel really, really bad or the group of people around you. And we all lived in small groups, you know, through human evolution. It probably made sense to feel such powerful shame that you didn't do that thing again, right?

38:33And you didn't risk harming the whole group, right? Or you didn't risk the group rejecting you. So there's some evolutionary mechanisms. But what matters to us in the modern world is that trauma makes a reflex of guilt and shame. And now we're off to the races. What does that mean, the guilt and shame? Do I change my own story? I mean, I write about losing my youngest brother to suicide. And I absolutely felt I wasn't a psychiatrist. I wasn't in mental health at the time. I had a business career at the time. But I absolutely felt shame. Like, oh, my gosh, this happened to us. And it doesn't happen to people whose families are put together and are OK.

39:13And I'm not OK. And we're not OK. So then I start hiding that away. and I felt very different about myself and where I had come from. And then you can see the behaviors in my life change. I'm not as healthy, right? I start drinking more than I should. I start having unhealthy friendships and relationships. It was very, very clear that things changed afterwards and it wasn't just as if that weren't enough, right? The death of a brother by suicide and everything it did in my family, there was something else on top of that that was toxic and poisonous, which was this sense of guilt and shame. Like, I should feel ashamed that I didn't see it, that I wasn't able to stave it off.

39:52And what kind of person am I in? This happens to us as a reflex. And if we don't go and look at trauma and its reflex of guilt and shame, then it's like, hey, trauma and the reflex of guilt and shame are going to be in the driver's seat of our lives in one way or another. The driver's seat. You know, I've had a chance, I just share this with the audience as we're going back and forth, But one of the compliments that I get from time to time that I really appreciate is that I have humility for whatever blessings or success I've had in my life. And you know what? I think the trauma in my life gets credit for that, ironically.

40:27And what I mean by that is that some of the hard things that have happened in my life have reminded me of my humanness. And in my case, my need to rely on a power greater than myself. And so all of you that had some trauma, maybe you can pull some good from it that you've not pulled from it before. Maybe there's some really great things about you that come from the fact that you suffered through something. And maybe it's not just the story you need to tell, but the conclusion you reach about it. And the blessing that can be your way. People write and talk a lot in the field about post-trauma resilience.

41:02And we absolutely can grow from the traumas that happen to us. We can have a deeper understanding of ourselves, you know, greater compassion for ourselves and others and a desire to be in the world in a different way. But we don't get to the silver lining, so to speak, the post-trauma resilience, unless we understand what the trauma has been and what it's doing to us. So sometimes with traumas that are, say, small t, and we have to define the word. I'm defining trauma as overwhelms our coping skills, changes our brain, right? Things that are sub-threshold to that, we can realize like, oh, that didn't feel good or I didn't like that.

41:41That was kind of bad for me and I want to be different and we can grow from it. But when the traumas are at the real level, a real trauma that changes our brains, it's very hard to get to a place of post-trauma resilience and growth if we're laboring against the sort of secret messages of guilt and shame. I mean, we can get there, but the odds are very much against us because now we're feeling guilt and shame. We lose insight. We start remaking our stories. So we can grow after trauma, but we don't do the right things in society to help us do that. So many more times what happens is just bad and bad and bad.

42:19Or if there's a little bit of good, it's overwhelmed by the bad. But I don't think that's our fault as individual people. We live in a system that doesn't talk to us about this. And in many ways, what I'm saying, I mean, I do think there's something to pulling it all together. And the way that I think I'm able to pull it all together, I feel good about. But I'm not saying things that are new, right? This is known and understood within a field that has really lost its way and has a book of diagnoses, like a thousand pages long, that just looks at symptom inventories. And we've really lost the thread of like, what is going on?

42:56So we just look for completely different things defined by different symptoms instead of saying what's going on in all of us. If we can get to the common roots of what is ailing us, then we can help ourselves better. But the field that I work in does not come from that perspective and I think does us, you know, very much a disservice by not coming in a holistic and even in many ways just common sense, obviousness manner. I agree with you. I, uh, by the way, the way that you all might not know this, but you will, once you start to read his work, the way that I found Dr. Connie is my friends in the music businesses said, Hey, this guy saved Lady Gaga's life.

43:34And I'm like, well, that's a bold statement, but okay. And so I started to, and by the way, whatever you did there, thank God for you. And, and, and, and there's many other very well-known people that he's, that credit them with like literally saving his life. And, um, I was telling somebody this weekend, right in the room that I'm who I know has struggled with anxiety and fear. This is leading to a question, by the way. And he said, well, he said, you know, I was on medication for a long time for this. And he goes, Ed, have you ever struggled with anxiety? I'm sure you have never. And I said, actually, I have.

44:04I have, you know, I don't, you know, I have trauma from when I grew up in different things and I've struggled with anxiety and worry and probably even depression, even though I'm a pretty resilient, tough dude. And, but I think I've, you know, struggled with that a little bit. And he said, have you ever had medication? I said, I did for a bit. And I concluded that that wasn't for me. I'm certainly not a psychiatrist. And I certainly would never, ever suggest somebody should or should not be on medication. But this particular person said, yeah, man, I went in and he said, three weeks later, I'm just this numb human.

44:38So although I wasn't feeling the worry and anxiety I was feeling anymore, I also had no joy, no bliss, no drive, no ambition, no drive in any area, physical, sexual, ambition, anything. And so I wonder, this is a hard question because you're not diagnosing somebody in person, but I know you've spoken about this before. How do you feel about the medication or over-medication of our population? And what are your opinions about that? How do you feel about that? So medication can, absolutely can help us. I mean, there are situations where we can get benefit from medication, but the medication has to be well-chosen, chosen to the situation, chosen to the person with reasonable expectations.

45:25If I get in my car today and I expect that it's going to fly, right? And it's going to fly me somewhere. I'm going to be disappointed that it's just staying on the road. But if I understand what can it do for me, what can it not do for me? Then I have rational expectations and we live in a world. I mean, And if all we're going to do is have 15 minute appointments that are taking an inventory of symptoms, we're going to have a reflex of a medicine. Medicine can be answered to everything. But of course, medicine isn't the answer to everything. Now we're overselling it. It's not going to do what it's built to do or it's used for the wrong purpose.

46:01The person doesn't know what to expect of it or what not to expect of it. And then the system, I think, is by and large responsible for that. Because if we have a reflex where we take symptom inventories and prescribe medicines, like how is it going to help a person versus saying, for example, after talking to someone, this is very, very common. There's a lot for you to think about and a lot for you to work on. And I think we could do that. We could start talking about life narrative. What has gone on in your life, right? How have things changed at times? What are you happy with right now? What are you not happy with?

46:35Can we look at some of that and change some behaviors or some framings? and that's like 80 % of the work. I mean, imagine we're saying this to like the average person who has issues of self. And also I might say something like, like there's some medicines that could kind of take the edge off, maybe give you a little bit more distress tolerance inside as you're thinking about these very difficult things. We might be able to use a medicine to kind of stand by your side a little bit and help you get to this place. But medicine is not gonna be the answer. It's not gonna think for us. It's not gonna figure things out.

47:04Then, you know, people have a much different view of medicines because they understand what it can do for them and what it can't. They don't have the experience, unfortunately, that your friend had. And so many people have where there's something going on that's complicated that warrants really thinking about that person. But the system doesn't see in any way, shape or form. The person takes a symptom inventory, prescribes a medicine like that's going to fix everything, which is ludicrous. But then it doesn't work. And all the person gets their side effects are not helped. And then the person thinks, oh, medicine isn't good or they avoid the field.

47:37But that's the fault of the field. And again, I'm not trying to fault individual practitioners. There are many people out there doing the best they can. But the whole framing of medicine in our society and the framing of mental health, which resides within the framing of medicine, is extremely unhealthy and makes predictable that it's going to go the way that it did in many situations. Many, many, many, many thousands upon thousands of situations. what happened to your friend is going to happen because that's what the system makes. Yeah. And by the way, everybody to be very careful and cautious, just in a, if you are on medication, neither one of us is saying, get off that medication right now.

48:16That's, that's not something that you should do. You, you should be in consult with your doctor, but before you get on medication, you should heed what the warning and the information that Dr. Connie just provided for you. But if you are on medication, it can also be dangerous to just stop taking it immediately as well. So please be careful about that. Absolutely. Whether someone's on medicine or not on medicine, we want rational use of medicine for everyone. So if you're on medicine and you're not sure what it's for, what it's doing, if it's making side effects, talk to that person who's prescribing it.

48:47You know, there are times when medicine can have an immensely helpful effect to us. Right. And there are times when it doesn't. So everyone's responsibility to themselves, I think, is to understand that. And if you're on it, understand the what and why and what it's doing. And if you're not and you think you might benefit from it, have conversations. We all deserve to be knowledgeable, informed consumers of medical care and mental health care. And that certainly means we want to know about the medicines that we're on. When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter.

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49:48It should matter, everybody, for you when you're listening to, by the way, not just for your well-being, but your longevity and your health in general. And so I want to talk about that with you for a second. My dad died pretty young, like early 70s of cancer. And by the way, very fit guy, like trained hard, worked out hard, walked every day, exercised every day. But man, he was a chronic worrier. I mean, just heavy duty worry. And I would say the best way to say it would be trended towards the melancholy most of the time, and that's being polite. And so I've always had this theory that potentially that turned on some form of gene expression for cancer early on.

50:31I know you would never claim that, but I believe his mental health contributed to his physical decline. Almost in my own mind, like it affected him on a cellular level. And I'd love to know your thoughts about trauma impacting aging, health, and even on a cellular level. Absolutely. Again, I'll say things, but most of what I'm saying is not opinion. I'm just relaying what science knows, which is if we have these unprocessed traumas in us, they make us less healthy. They make there be more stress hormones within us, inflammatory hormones within us. They push us not just towards depression, but they push us towards heart disease.

51:20They push us towards strokes. They make us more vulnerable to cancers. These things are true, and we know that they are true. The science shows us this, but we don't honor that. We don't look and say, hey, we're whole beings and whole creatures from head to toe. And if there's tension in us all the time and we're laboring on our fears inside of constant negative self-talk or never feeling safe, like someone who's achieved so much for themselves but can't own what's theirs and still feels the fears they had before, that's harmful to us from head to toe. And do we know that, for example, increases risks of heart attack, increases risks of autoimmune diseases?

52:03The answer to that is absolutely yes. But, you know, we can know a lot of things that don't help us, right, because we're not bringing it to bear. And the medical system and the mental health system and the social systems around us don't acknowledge these things. We know you'd have to make a lot of changes, you know, to acknowledge them. So a lot of the things that I'm saying that seem like, oh, my goodness, like, isn't this such an amazing thing that that, you know, trauma can change the genes that are passed on or trauma can ultimately make us more susceptible to autoimmune disease? I'm not saying anything new here.

52:38This is just me saying things that science understands. So we should all stop and think, why is it that way? It's something that's so known to science gets said in a way that seems like it's new, even though I'm just repeating things that are out there. You know, that's because the zeitgeist in the world around us is like, what's going on inside of us? How does it affect us? They're things that are obvious. They're known and they're very, very important. but they're on the back burner or we just don't understand. What about the reverse? So we've got a couple more questions. One of the things I noticed right when the Zoom came on is you're fit.

53:14You're in good shape and you're not 25 years old, so you're fit. And I try to stay very fit as well. So we know that our mental health trauma, those scars, those marks can affect our physical wellbeing. What about the other way around? I can be honest with you. Like, I don't know what I would have done in my life. I'd be a completely different human if I couldn't train five days a week and lift weights and cardio, etc. So as a practical step, how important is whatever it might be, massage, working out, stretching, walking, heavy lifting of weights, impact on these other things mentally in our life?

53:51No, absolutely. There's a strong impact. The brain and the body are attached, and it's a two-way street. so if you're not taking care of yourself somebody who's eating a poor diet is sort of lethargic isn't exercising isn't getting their blood moving there's no cardiovascular exercise that's good that affects how what's circulating in our blood like how our bodies are functioning markers in our blood are things okay or things not okay right so so from endocrine uh examples inflammatory examples that there are there are all sorts of examples in us and neurotransmission examples from transmission from the brain down into the body and back that show us absolutely it's a two-way street and then what's circulating inside of us goes into the brain and pushes us towards you know being less cognitively acute having less energy inside or it maybe pushes us towards depression or towards more anxiety so we have to look at ourselves holistically again that's not new age softness.

54:51I mean, we are one thing from head to toe. And of course, what's going on in our mental health is going to impact our bodies, like even to the point of making a heart attack likely or not. And of course, what's going on in our bodies is going to affect our brain, including making a difference of whether depression is likely or not likely. And again, I would say there are interesting and maybe sophisticated things to say about this. But a lot of it is just so clearly known and it's in the realm of basic knowledge, but basic knowledge that isn't acknowledged and acted upon by the systems that are supposed to be taken care of us.

55:31Yeah, knowledge and acknowledged are very different things. First off, I'll tell you, A, I just really enjoyed this today, but I'd like to have you back on. I would really like to do this again. Sure. There's so much more. I enjoyed it. Yeah, I really have too. let's start let's finish with one thing and this is a broad stroke question but it's just worth asking you so they're not a part of your practice but you're in line at starbucks and the guy goes hey i saw you on ed my let's show or i saw you on huberman i saw you on the diary of the ceo whatever you've been on any show you've been on and they say hey um i i'm struggling with some anxiety and fear and maybe anger issues i'm depressed a little bit maybe just like ed my let's dad, I drift towards the melancholy and I'm not going to be in your practice.

56:20Tell me something I should do when I leave here right now that I could implement as a practice that could alleviate some of my suffering and that I could start on the right road to making progress towards my mental well-being. What would you say to them? Yeah. Well, when it comes up and things like that, do come up. The first thing I say is I always want as a person to know that if things are in a really bad place, if you have thoughts of, I think I don't want to be alive, you have thoughts of harming yourself, like there are times to get some help. So I will say that if things are in a place that's really difficult and you're feeling some of these things inside, you need to get some real professional help.

56:59So guide that way. If it's not that, then I talk about these basic things of being curious about ourselves, compassionate curiosity. What's going on inside of me? What am I telling myself in quiet moments? And, you know, in the car, in an elevator, in the shower, there aren't other things going on, but the things going on in our, in our brains, what are we saying to ourselves? What do we think about ourselves? What's going on that we may be hiding from ourselves? There's so much we can learn about ourselves by compassionate curiosity and just bringing it to the fore. Let me just try and guide people towards that because something good is going to come of stopping and thinking about ourselves outside of the usual reflexes.

57:41And it's remarkable how many times a person will just stop and think, what is it that I'm saying to myself and realize, oh, a thousand times a day or 5 ,000 times a day, I'm saying this awful thing to myself inside of myself. And the person may never have stopped before and realized this is going on inside. So compassionate curiosity and what we may learn from it is a great starting point. And if we're really not in an okay place and we need professional help, if that's not the case, let's think about ourselves with interest and curiosity and the excitement. I mean, I really mean it. The excitement that if I do this, if I think about myself and shine the light around inside of me, it's not that, oh, it's useless.

58:21It's not that it's going to ultimately make me feel worse. This is how we help ourselves. So if we do that, we're not hiding from what's inside of us. That's often the very first step towards just being healthier and happier. It's really, really good. You know, everybody, when you're listening to Dr. Connie, I hope it dawns upon you that there's the potential for a whole new you. There's a whole new life awaiting you, a whole new set of emotions awaiting you that you can get. And I'm so grateful for your work. I'm grateful for the conversation today. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. You're very welcome.

58:52Yeah, so good. The book is called Trauma, the Invisible Epidemic. And I got to tell you, the subtitle is the most telling to me because I really believe this is an invisible epidemic. I really do. I meet very few people, ironically, who aren't suffering with some of this. And it's why what you do matters so much in this conversation today. So thank you again. God bless you. You're very, very welcome. And thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. Thanks, everybody. Share the episode. If it meant anything to you or you love anybody who may be struggling with this stuff, share today's episode with them like you always do.

59:24God bless you, everybody. Max out your life.

59:29This is the Ed Myland Show. We'll be right back.