How To Fix Your Negative Inner Thoughts - Dr Paul Conti

what are people talking about when they refer to the unconscious mind a lot of times people are talking about a mystery that they kind of know is within them because it gets talked about but they're not sure how much of an influence does that have over me like is that me but I'm not aware do I know who I am consciously but then there's other things in the background and and I think often it can be confusing and even scary if we don't understand what does that mean how does it have control over us if we think like us is the conscious part of us and how can we have control over it yeah it's strange to think what does it mean that there's a part of me I'm basically entirely unaware of that somehow influences me in ways that I can become aware of right right right and that's why the sort of height of of understanding ourselves through the the the lens of understanding all aspects of the Mind including the unconscious mind includes an awareness of some of what's going on there but also an awareness that we're not aware of it all yeah it's a little bit of a paradox why why is it so important is there an analogy is it is it like the surface web and the dark web is it 99% of ourselves are unconscious and only 1% of us is conscious well far more of us is unconscious than conscious far far more of us the the iceberg model where the our conscious mind is a little part of the iceberg that's above the water but the vast majority of it is underwater we need that in order to be able to move through time you know just like say a car engine might be you know rotating several thousand uh revolutions per minute right we're not aware of all those revolutions but that needs to happen for us to seamlessly be able to maneuver the car forward right so in a far more complicated way that's going on on inside of us where there are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of of calculations that are going on so that we can sum things and come up to the Consciousness where we can then make conscious decisions so so even the idea of say walking down the street and seeing someone walking towards you right there's so much that then goes on what does that person look like does that person is a person looking at you or they looking down if they looking at you do they look happy they look not happy do you recognize them do you not recognize them are there mark of threat are they not markers of threat you you know we're doing all sorts of things and let's say that person looks like someone who had been aggressive before but is not that person then we're triggered to like have this an extra sense of anxiety and tension that all that happens automatically then we have to say Okay that's but it's not a person who's been aggressive before but it all goes on in us in a way of kind of bringing us up to speed with that moment so that we can make whatever conscious decision we're making so the conscious decision could be walk to the other side of the street or say hello or look down you say oh you're just doing one thing you're only you're doing one thing because it's riding a top thousands upon thousands of things that let you in in the conscious world so to speak do the one thing that there that choice that there is to make there's obviously lots of other unconscious things that go on the impetus to breathe in and breathe out the impetus for our body to digest the food and for our heart to pump and all the rest of the things but presumably there are certain things that are more Salient to our day-to-day experience especially uh phenomenologically what it feels like to be a person in the world with thoughts there are areas I I don't often think about my digestion unless I've got something wrong but I do think about that person or that situation that's kind of similar to one that's from before and made me feel a little bit like I might not be liked by people and what does that mean for me now and there's yeah there's like a triage there a a priority list of things that are Salient to you right the the key word there is salience right because in fact we could put two s's here it's safety and salience so so our our brains want to Keep Us Alive right so we we want to be safe and and what is Salient will be determined by that like if we're safe we can think about other things we can read a book we can relax we can do we can have a podcast we can do whatever we choose to do when we're safe but safety has to come first so as you said you're not spending a lot of time thinking about your GI system but it let's say you we hope there isn't but let's say there's some problem and now it's going to tell you that right you're going to have pain and the pain is going to make your GI system Salient then you think about it but if there's not a a risk that's coming from it it it stays in the background so so first and foremost our brains want to keep us safe which is why the the triggering of negative events of trauma become so Salient so the example I I often give is you imagine in we're hunter gatherers and and if we're hungry and we we go out and we find a new berry to eat right if that's tastes good and it's nourishing it's really good to remember that let's say it makes us very very sick then we better remember that right we have to remember that so there there's more salience to negative things things that are charged with negative emotion because those are more commonly about safety which is why if you see someone who looks like someone you've had conflict before it triggers all sorts of reactions in US same thing if a person has been in a car accident then gets in a car right I talked to someone this morning who had a a very difficult event happened 24 years ago and and was saying but when he's in that similar situation which in the course of his work he is on a daily basis he feels as if it was a moment ago because it was very very distressing it's immed immediate to this person even after 20s something years because it was about safety at the time and the brain w does not want to let that go it wants reassurances that we're safe before it lets those things go that's why trauma and traumatic stimuli are so Salient in us and so dominant in the unconscious mind because first and foremost it wants to keep us moving from this moment to the next moment which means we got to make it to the next moment so we have to stay safe I was in a head-on collision when I was 20 years old 20 or 21 years old at 60 MPH with a snowplow on the main British Motorway in the UK and for the next probably 6 weeks or so after that maybe maybe even more maybe like two months to three months or so uh every time that I was close to Contra flow traffic so traffic coming in the other direction on the side of the road near the side of the road that I was where there wasn't a barrier between us I felt anxious and it's like I guess it's like stubbing your toe you don't realize how often things touch your toe until there is a highper sensitivity around it I didn't realize how often I was you know 5T away from another vehicle coming basically head on toward me until I'd been hit by a snow plow at 60 miles an hour right right then your brain of all the things that could be a risk to you but your brain says that is a risk to me oncoming traffic is a risk to me and then it becomes very very sensitive ized to it and if you're having intrusive thoughts and a high level of vigilance know that's when it can become problematic you said for some period of time right a few months then it it sort of settles back down in you but the that makes sense right and it may be that you change behaviors or you don't change behaviors you know it's say I don't want to be on you know roads with FASTT traveling traffic you know you might change behaviors due to that but your brain is bringing it to the Forefront because in some ways it's saying is this okay is this does this really make sense to do now even if you decide it does make sense to do even though something bad has happened your brain is going to persist in ways because the the trauma has such a deep emotional resonance our our memories don't have meaning in and of themselves they're brought to life by the emotion that's attached to them so if we had asked you a week before um person going one way in traffic and a vehicle coming the other way hits them like okay that doesn't sound great but it but it's not going to raise a lot of emotion in you let's say we asked you one week later it will raise a huge amount of emotion because now your brain says of all those risks to me that is one that is Salient and then it'll want to sort out should you change behaviors but sometimes even after that goes away that that question and you've made an answer to it it can Linger on in the brain and deping on the person and the situation and the specifics for years and years and years with the rest rest of a person's life which if you think from the perspective of safety and salience we can understand why but but also that's not the way we want to be living life if we understand safety salience the unconscious mind how our minds work then we can change that and say I don't want that thing to carry along with me just because something bad happened I I understand what happened I I'm making decisions about it I don't need my brain to continue to shove that to the Forefront it seems like the important thing here is bringing the unconscious I into the conscious how do you how do you do that what does that mean well often times there are other ways we can come at it too you know sometimes there's specific tactics around decreasing symptomatology so there are other ways of coming at symptoms we may have on the mental health front right including symptoms after trauma but a big part of what we're doing is what you're saying is to be aware of what is in the unconscious mind and to be able to bring it to consciousness so a lot of times if the brain is saying you are not safe if you're in a car going at un coming at oncoming traffic you are not safe you are not safe you are not safe it's going to say that over and over unless you can validate hey let's bring that to Consciousness and say I understand why I feel that way I understand why that is that is in me and I am aware of it and then that enables a set of processes some of them can occur through therapy some don't have to though where get your mind around it so to speak and then your brain doesn't have to continue to push it to the Forefront I mean that that's what trauma therapy is doing in in some sense but it doesn't often require therapy sometimes it does but bringing the unconscious to conscious to the conscious mind lets us have much greater control over it including often validating hey I know why that's in me like thank you in a sense brain but I don't need it at the Forefront and it's remarkable how much like that works I mean it's it's part of what trauma therapy is and it can take symptoms and decrease them through Insight what do you wish more people knew about trauma I wish that more people knew that it comes so frequently to so many of us and that it is Insidious and the meaning of that word like something that is sneaky and like a a wolf and sheep's clothing like it doesn't announce itself that I'm now in your brain and changing you and including changing your memories so and I don't know what happened to you a after and and again I'm sorry to learn about what happened but an example would be on the other side of that a person who's gone through what you've gone through could conclude I never feel safe in a car I've never felt safe in a car I don't like driving I don't feel could conclude that without it being true oh so they've retroactively gone back and changed their memory of sit situations prior to that trauma as a compensatory mechanism as a story they tell themselves well it's it's a way because the the brain is going to paint with a broad brush if we're not bringing the trauma to conscious understanding then it's saying it's a very simple conclusion right being in car coming at opposite traffic is not safe right and that's all the brain knows like we got hurt doing that so we can't do that anymore so it'll bring that to you and the emotion is so strong that it can color the old memory saying but you never want to be in a car anyway right you never felt comfortable in fact you don't even want to travel places like it can bring these things to the surface it's remarkable how many people will say I never had Faith or confidence in myself I never thought I could do well at my job I never thought I was smart enough I never wanted to get out of my hometown I never wanted to be in a relationship people says but when you talk to them that's not true I mean I'm saying it's always not true but in many many situations it's not true it's the brain trying to keep them safe but that's where the brain will like I'm exagger ating a little bit like have you hiding under the bed all day to keep you safe right when that's not what we want we want to be able to keep ourselves safe so maybe if you were in the accident when the road conditions were poor that's why a snowplow was out you might say look I don't want to be going against oncoming traffic if its speed is more than 30 kilometers per hour whatever it may be in bad conditions like maybe you learn that and you're like I you know what I take that away with me and I'm going to change that you might conclude that or you might conclude not that but you're concluding something that tells your brain it doesn't have to be lost in that trauma now for you it sounds like it went down after some period of time but for some people it doesn't until it's processed like again person I saw earlier today 20s something years ago it is still with the person as if it were yesterday and I see this many days not just that I happen to see that today it's like I see that a lot which is why I had a conversation about it just this morning so Insidious more frequent than people think more persistent than people think and changeable and and uh not uh locked set in stone for the rest of your life it's not hardwired in us uh it we don't have to be afraid of it because trauma triggers a reflex of guilt and shame so if we are traumatized there is some reflex and and I don't know if you had that after your trauma people so I shouldn't have been where I was when someone attacked me or when there was an accident now sometimes we may have some bear some responsibility but that's different than a reflex of guilt and shame which tells you shove the trauma down below don't look at it if you look at it oh Lord knows what you will find if you look at it what's the function of the shame and the guilt so the the function is probably around behavior modification again it's all theoretical right but if you think about psychological history of humans and even an anthropological psychology like how humans develop that we have what are called affects and I don't want to get too off into the weeds but neurobiologically there's a difference between affects feelings and emotions and affects are just aroused in us like if you're just walking down the street and someone jumps in front of you and shoves you you're going to feel anger or fear or boast before you know it think about that you're going to feel anger or fear or but it'll be coursing inside of you and then you be become aware why because affects are create they create change in us if someone just jumps in front of you and shoves you or yells at you you better be ready to fight to flee right you boot up all these systems and then you're aware so these very deep affects in us very primary fear love joy shame they they they anger they they're created in Us in order to protect us so shame is very very powerful for altering Behavior so imagine if you're in small groups of people and you know you've got the food inside the cave and you close the cave door and then somebody wakes up in the middle of the night and eats a bunch of the food the rest of the people may make that person feel ashamed right or they you know they're they're keeping they're doing something that makes the supply at risk you know whether people are are relieving themselves is too near the food like it then shame is a mechanism of change don't do that any don't do that again it puts you at risk it puts others at risk so it has a very strong impact upon us but it gets harnessed in ways that are not about survival like we're not living in a hunter gatherer Society where if you and I go faring for berries and we almost die we better never forget it right like it's different from that we live longer lives right that are much more diverse and can be impacted by shame in ways that can have a person who was attacked by someone else decades ago with no fault of their own still feeling guilty that they were attacked ashamed that they were attacked and deeply altering their behaviors because of that that's Survival mechanisms hijacked in a way that shuts down people's lives and Trauma does not have to have this kind of control over us but in doing what I do for a living I've seen whoa the greatest external control mechanism upon us is the one we don't see that alters even our memory so we don't even recollect accurately wow that's so interesting and it it's so crazy to think that scenarios we go through become interpreted by ourselves and woven into a story that we tell ourselves about who we've always been right then the incident that was the Genesis of that is not forgotten but it being the Genesis of it is forgotten right and it just becomes a part of us and then people will begin to identify with that oh that's me that's how I've always been I've always been an X or a y or a zed person and if you we all know how much people try to defend their egos and their personalities if you tried to say well you know why don't we go away on holiday you know I don't like going away on holiday I've never liked going away on holiday no you had a very turbulent flight when you were 7 years old or 13 years old or 25 years old and this Landing came in and you told yourself a story that you no longer want to go on what I'm fascin ated by not only that not only the fact that instances formative instances can change the story tell ourselves about ourselves and then make us forget the fact that that is what caused it to happen but that shame and guilt are almost like the delivery mechanism for enforcing the change and it doesn't need to come from other people you know you're right that you do a thing and guilt is the uh internal version of the external eye that your tribe would have had on you saying you probably shouldn't be doing you shouldn't be eating those berries oh God I hope no one catches me but you're deploying this to yourself about yourself and maybe about something that wasn't even your fault yes it's something yes it's all of that so you're really getting it's all of that and it's even worse because that shame and guilt all the things you just said are like centuries protecting us from Insight protecting us from help that say it's not safe to go look at that it's not safe to talk about that you want to go talk about something you're ashamed about that that's not going to go well right it has us keep it all inside because guilt and shame keep us stuck inside of ourselves which is the reason why people don't don't go and get help they don't go in process because guilt and shame tells us to keep it private and it tells us well people say all the time I'll start crying and never stop I'll curl up into a fetal position and never get out that is never what happens those are the lies of trauma driven guilt and shame that keep us in places where we not only don't know who we are but we forget who we are how many times I've had a person tell me I've always been someone no one likes no one was and I learned like that's not that's not true at all people this person understood themselves to be different and and interacted in the world differently until that trauma happened because the thing you said about the airplane flight could happen when someone is seven happen when they're 57 too right and then we go back and we map the past which English interestingly um English modernism really really captured this so so it's not only this wasn't known before but the English modernist like Ford madx Ford Virginia Wolf's writing really there were others too that started writing about how we retroactively change I think it was Ford madx Ford who wrote about if you're eating an apple and it's a goodly apple I think he wrote and you get to the center of it and there's a worm is it retroactively a bad apple right and and that that was quite a revelation that was part of the English modern movement that that that really realized and I in my opinion I think Virginia wolf captured it the most deeply of of how time uh changes for us in in the context of how we see things in retrospect how we see ourselves that the the past is malleable and and it is our our responsibility to ourselves that our past isn't malleable if something changed in me after a trauma I want to know how I was before what that trauma was how it impacted me how it changed me how I am different afterwards so that I can decide what that means and how I'm going to go about doing about it whatever it is I choose to do are different categories of trauma do you do you bucket them into broad types somehow well on the one hand this is where I emphasize here that this is based in science right this is not um some soft concept of oh anybody who has trauma or anything bad not chosen for the team or no no the answer to your question can be answered through the lens of hard science but in two ways on the one hand the answer is no in that if my brain changes because of let's say vicariously experienced trauma through sitting with other people through their trauma or being present for something and your brain changes because of some acute trauma that happened to you our brains look the same afterwards the patterns of neurotransmission change we're both more Vigilant we will both tend to have different patterns like if you see a new face coming at you instead of being looking at it objectively I wonder who that is or what what that person's expression is or feelings we look at it biased is that person going to harm me right we change and we change in the same way so in one sense no because the brain changes are the same and and physical data like heart disease risk for example can be higher and when trauma is really manifesting itself aging can be greater so so think about this because of the impact of trauma we can be older than we are where the calendar says that person is 42 years old but if you go and you kind of think about tiir and how the person is actually 46 by the by the actual biology of it so the hard brain biology and and physical biology tells us that the final common pathway is the same but we can get traumatized in different ways the easiest way to see is acute right you told me about a head-on collision like whoa I mean anyone can understand yeah that will traumatize a person you know I've as I've written about and talked about in podcasts I lost my youngest brother by Suicide everyone can understand like that's a big trauma we're less likely to understand chronic traumas so chronically be being um made to feel less that so people who are chronically denigrated whether it's it's ethnicity it's sexual preference or identity like there are many many things that that we in society socioeconomic status lead people to feel chronically less than so there's research showing when immigrant groups when people immigrate to a country with very different traditions and they tend to live together there's a lower uh incidence of schizophrenia so people live apart there's a higher incidence this is fascinating right because when people are living together there's more of a sense of belonging right we don't know this for sure but the data points that way and it fits with this idea that we see like we see it to be true that chronic trauma is impactful so someone who's in an an abusive circumstance and nothing has risen to some drama where they went to the hospital or police came but it's always they're always denigrated that will make brain changes just like acute trauma so acute chronic and vicarious trauma where which why I often am telling people my prescription for you is less News Right Use the news to inform yourself right use use the news to learn when I was young there was a newspaper that came you look through it that was it now people are often they're looking at news so to speak but what they're doing is experiencing by cariously other people's trauma and we need to be very careful about that it happens in the helping professions it happens if someone's near someone who's been hurt and it happens if we're constantly inundating ourselves because of our own anxiety with other people's suffering I read a study from the Boston Marathon bombing which was a few years ago and they looked at people who had actually been at the marathon during the bombing and compared their levels of stress to people who had watched 90 minutes or more of news coverage about it the people who watched 90 minutes or more of news coverage on average showed higher levels of stress yes that does not surprise me that that fits with all the other data which say if you're there yes something very bad has happened and you're in proximity to it but we're talking about people who then weren't hurt in it right or didn't have someone close to them who was hurt then you realize that there is safety right now that doesn't mean it's not going to have an impact on the person to realized that happened and I was close to it but should it surprise us that if n in 90 minutes of oh my goodness you know that could have been me or someone I love and you know just imagining that and feeling for the people gu we are so fortunate as humans we have empathy if we didn't we wouldn't be here right we're lucky in some ways we're here anyway with how close we come to destroying ourselves even with empathy so empathy is wonderful if someone is hurt and they're on on the ground that's why we lend them helping hand metaphorically and and truly empathy is great but empathy can work against us that's why we see people who have a full blown trauma syndrome and it's all through vicarious trauma and that is real because the brain science will show it to be just as real as someone who's had the trauma in a more acute and obvious way I'm going to guess that chronic and vicarious trauma are the ones that sneak up on people you know when we think about trauma we think about a single formative uh fireworks event that goes on we you know if you were to say well you've been in a relationship where your partner has always put you down for a decade you would say well are any of those instances by you know the lay person definition of trauma are any of those instances traumatic well no like it's just a joke they're just saying like oh like you know oh going out for a run good luck trying to get past one kilometer again this time you know but over time there is a point there is a point in which something which is not necessarily traumatic in isolation becomes traumatic just due to like weight sure sure right the area under the curve right the increasing weight of the The Chronic denigration you can see how in our Medical Systems and I've been fortunate to spend about a year of my life in the UK and I I love coming uh to to England but I think I understand the Health Care System enough that there there are problems in the US Health Care system that are that are in other systems too right which is just being too concrete about about things where it's it's hard to get attention and Care especially human driven attention like psycho therapy right so so our system wants to look at hey have you had the big fireworks event okay if not we'll put you in a different in a different category it doesn't want to say are there changes in your brain because of trauma whether that was acute or chronic or vicarious that's what we would look at but that the systems aren't sophisticated or or often interested enough to do that I went to my GP when I was probably 21 or 22 in the UK Northeast of the UK classic very working class town and I go in and I sit down and I'd been sad for quite a while on and off and then every so often there would be maybe a couple of days where I couldn't get out of bed and I would feel quite ashamed about this and I wouldn't want to talk to people and I'd keep the curtains drawn and you know I'd make excuses about why I couldn't see people or do things or whatever and uh I went in and I sat down with my GP and the way it works in the UK for the people that aren't from there you have a 10-minute window with your GP and that's your general practitioner that's the person you go to and you book in for and it's usually kind of hard to get an appointment again National Health Service it's free great but the standard of care perhaps leaves a little bit be desired so I sit down and I said I'm uh I'm I I think I might be depressed or something I probably mumbled some word out about sad or depressed or something like that but I'm pretty sure I used the word depression and this GP said uh have you had a recent family B bereavement no says are you in financial trouble no did you recently lose a job no did you recently break up with a relationship no no no no no no all the way down like acute trauma acute trauma acute trauma acute trauma no and sort of got toward the end of it and essentially said well what are you sad about I was I don't know like just the [ __ ] crushing weight of existence I don't know I don't know what I'm sad about and then she printed off this single piece of A4 paper that was like oh here's some website URLs on the NHS website about how to improve your mental health like and go along your way and you left worse than when you came in I I I felt like I don't know like I was making a mountain out of a mole hill uh it definitely taught me the lesson that I took away from that I think was um I'm blowing this out of proportion I mustn't it mustn't be that big of a deal and that's why we have so much to loss of productivity because often people in in power uh in decision-making capacities think about dollars and cents or pounds and and are we what are we losing economically we lose a tremendous amount of human productivity because of depression and if we want to Anchor to what is of course infinitely more important we lose human life to depression so when you walk out of there you're walking out at Great risk you have a real medical problem if you went in and you had right lower quadrant abdominal pain that had been Amorphis and then and then all of a sudden it started being focused here no one would say why do you have a pentis why does your abdomen hurt no one would say that right they would honor what was going on with you but here you get a a a a non-response and you leave worse than you came in because it's so invalidating and no one is then looking at hey if we could take a picture of your brain chemistry we're not sophisticated enough to just do that we'd see yeah you have a medical problem no different than if you had a pend thetis but you walk out and validate it and this is the problem and it's part of why at some point realizing that most of what I was treating was coming from trauma whether I was treating treating substance abuse depression panic attacks insomnia right even the the the more medicalized like schizophrenia higher incidents when people are are feeling a a a sense of aloneness and isolation and vulnerability that we need to understand this because a huge part of what ails us what makes all of us suffer is coming from this it's coming from unrecognized and unaddressed Trauma and unrecognized and unaddressed mental health issues because look people can get depressed because their brain chemistry is off right so there doesn't have there could be no reason whatsoever the people everything in their life is as good as possible but cyclically their brain chemistry comes offline and now they're depressed so what about a purely biological depression there isn't always a reason I mean there's a lot of times a reason but think about how we're just invalidating people and then is it a surprise that substance abuse substance dependence addiction overdose rates go up and up that suicide rates go up and up it is not a surprise it is a predictable outcome it's a predictable consequence of how the Health Care System handles it itself and and what you described so many years ago is not different in in many settings now so that's what would happen now and and even the doctor I have so much compassion for GPS primary care physicians because what are you supposed to do in 10 minutes how you supp have a real conversation in in 10 minutes and that's why there's more depression and self harm and suicides in Physicians has grown over time that's an interesting question what about you know you talked about vicarious trauma firefighters that need to cut people out of cars paramedics that are unable to resuscitate people therapists that are dealing with uh masses that are permanently working with people who are in pain is this something that you see sure there there are higher rates of all that ails Us in in populations that are exposed to to situations that can make fear or Terror if you're coming up to cut someone out of an accident is it's it's hard to do that without some if you're doing that you're a person who has empathy so you're a person who's going to feel something as you're doing that and and sure people have Education and Training and support to try and make boundaries but that doesn't mean that that works all the time we we don't give people enough ongoing support and and and we see that on the other side of it where people in th these kinds of helping professions have higher rates was depression substance abuse suicide the rates are higher and again it all makes sense like there's this concept in a certain um type of therapy that says everything is as it should be it doesn't mean that it's right morally right or or just what it means is that it's predictable it's predictable so if you see the the increasing rates of loneliness isolation depression substance use suicides in in the general population and more specifically in in in people who are caregiving that's not surprising since everything is as it should be meaning we've made these decisions as a society how many healthcare workers came to the other side of covid traumatized by all the things that the awful things they saw and they need to work double shifts because the co-workers aren't coming in they're so so much of that and what happened after the pandemic go back to the same unreasonably High work lows and the way everything was before that we don't we don't put resources in society towards the people who help us which is also us like you know we're all part of this and you know we we we waste so many resources in so many ways our political struggles and strivings and it's the idea isn't to get political but just to say how much resources we waste and we often don't have resources to like give the person with depression more than a 10-minute misleading questionnaire right or help that person who who has a real post-trauma syndrome get better but that's going to take some human time and we look at the at the short end of it which is why I focus on the economic cost of course the human costs are more but but we can get money allocated sometimes resources allocated when we look at the cost the for everyone we don't treat for trauma who then uses Hospital resources coming to emergency rooms or we lose out of the workforce it's you know it's like we would say like a borrow a penny today to pay a dollar tomorrow you know it it's but we treat ourselves that way we treat ourselves that way as societies and you know people don't see it until they often need to go to an emergency room and they have good insurance but guess what you're still out the hallway right you still sat there for seven hours you know you still went in and had somebody ask you a 10-minute questionnaire when you're really in trouble inside you know maybe you know it's you know we don't handle things in a way that uses a lot of foresight and we pay for it and we pay for it I believe around trauma more than anything else I should say one more quick fact that more than half we don't know exactly how many but more than half of the physical health complaints people make they go to a physical health doctor something hurts they have shortness of breath they're feeling something inside half of those complaints they're not mental health complaints they're physical health complaints that come from mental health yet how much are we integrating mental health into our physical Health Care Systems very very very poorly and and therefore you have physical health Physicians who want to help people they know so much that's coming to them as mental health but they're not equipped they're not trained they don't have enough time and and that's part of the frustration is people are coming with mental health problems but they're presenting as physical health problems and it's it's not because the person wants to say that it's because they often don't know they are hurting but they do have depress they just don't know and the Health Care system is so dumbed down that we're not asking the right questions to try and figure out what is actually going on with you and how do we help you talk to me about what actually happens to the brain and body after someone's gone through trauma so there' be very complex changes but we can sort of summarize to some degree by saying that there are alterations in the balances in our brains you know our brains are trying to maintain and bodies homeostasis means things are in balance and there are hundreds of thousands of things that happen inside of us in each moment to Hold Us in Bal in in Balance what happens is that we get imbalanced so for example vigilance mechanisms in the brain their whole systems of the brain salience mechanisms start looking more for negative things so someone who for example Le is interested in finding a relationship who who is walking down the street or a hallway and sees someone look at them instead of being curious oh how's that person looking at me or or might I am I attract to that person might I Smile Back the immediate is like does that um the person's looking negatively at me what's wrong with me right why are they looking at me like it's hard to make life move forward then right there's a change towards vigilance and vulnerability inside of us so you don't see maybe that's a coworker we could collaborate at on something maybe that's a potential romantic partner who's smiling at me people don't don't see that because the brain is shifted from Curiosity how is that person looking at me to there must be something wrong they're looking at me in a negative way because there's something negative about me so those things change in Us in very complicated ways but it changes the whole climate so to speak within us and then it changes endocrinologically so then we have more stress hormones flowing in us and stress hormones predisposed to vast ular disease to heart disease to Strokes to autoimmune diseases to to aging faster than our calendar age so to to G to gaining weight when we don't want to gain weight to not being able to lose weight when we're working hard to lose weight so then what happens we get change from head to toe because these systems shift and again we don't realize that you know the person who says I'm I'm a loser because I can't lose weight and I'm and I'm trying how many times do I hear that and then you see they're actually do doing the right things they they have a good diet they have exercise they're not losing weight because there's so many stress hormones in them that it triggers all these don't lose weight systems in us so it's just these are just examples but you can see I hope from the examples that what we're talking about is whole life change from top to bottom again it's not happening in everyone but this is happening a lot in small medium or big ways but any amount of it is unacceptable and then we just don't know it I've always been someone nobody likes or no one I no one likes how I look right and people said they'll say this and they don't was before that trauma that's not how they felt and that's why they were they got better jobs they would leave one job for another if it was better they had good relationships they didn't stand up they didn't stand for denigration in a relationship that kind of off-putting they didn't stand for that now they do and they don't even realize that they never did and like how are we gonna get out of it right if we think this is how I've always been when that's not true it seems like the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves is so important that it's such a huge part this narrative that we weave together yes yes yes I'm so interested in knowing people's life narratives because I'm in the business of trying to help people so you have to understand what their narrative is as I say no one no one comes out of the womb thinking you know abuse is okay for me no one thinks that right so how do we get to the point of thinking that even being in a relationship as you said there's not physical violence but it's always denigrating oh sure you're going to yeah that's going to go well for you this time give it a try see what happen why would people put up with that all the time instead of saying hey I don't I don't want this this is worse than not having a relationship I'll not have a relationship till I find one that's better we we have to trace what is the roots of that was there some trauma and that person started feeling differently does that come from early formative years was that person seen is less than or denigrated because of race because say gender in the home right for just one example because of sexual orientation socioeconomic status in the communities around us was that bred into that person because that's not natural either you get to feel that you're good enough to have a safe life in which you strive for good things and if a person doesn't I want to understand where that came from what just implicated informative years or big trauma at once we've got to understand it yeah I I think so many people you know myself uded the voice in our heads is so regularly negative that it seems like that's just the physics of brains that the texture of mind not my mind the mind yes the factory settings are yes critical self-deprecating uh fearful Vigilant uh mocking you know risk averse all of those things um are you you know there is a negativity bias we are concerned finite creatures infinite surrounding you know this asymmetry between things that can make us a little bit more alive and make us a lot more dead and how much worse those are but are you saying that that's not the way that we should be because that I think to a lot of people maybe myself included is like a rather wild claim that we shouldn't our minds aren't built to just be negative we're not built to be that way and the salience of negative things doesn't have to make us that way so in the berry example like what does that mean don't eat that Berry again it doesn't mean be afraid of any food now but be afraid of any berries be afraid of being outdoors it doesn't mean that it's the the negativity bias is meant to protect us it's what happens inside of us in complex situations because we live lives that are complicated have different phases and we're often not aware of our life narratives it's it's that negativity bias that can help us to feel negative all the time but it certainly is not deterministic of that which is why in an oversimplified example I'm simplifi if you say hey realize you shouldn't eat that Berry you're not a dummy for eating that Berry it look like a good Berry you don't have to feel like you're incompetent and you're not worth anything because you ate the be like you're okay you came through it here's the lesson don't eat that Berry again and maybe be just more careful about berries is that good okay it's good but that's often not how it goes it's like I don't I don't know how to pick what to eat and you know and I you know I gave someone to someone else that person got sick to I'm a terrible you know this is what we do to ourselves and it is not our Natural State we're not built to be like that but we end up like that because we are trying to keep ourselves safe in a difficult and complex world and we accumulate more negativity bias more negativity now I've got a voice in my head telling me what's wrong with me all the time and well you know I had this voice in my head for a long long long long time and through a lot of psychotherapy I I've been able to to move it out of my primary Consciousness but there was a time when I thought that shadow voice was normal you know if I dropped something or oh so stupid or what's wrong with you like I was I mean that was a shadow to me inside of me and I had to realize that's not normal I said I didn't come out of the womb metaphorically we don't have words but you know what I mean like no one comes out of the womb thinking that way it's not normal get our minds around it that does not have to stay with us I'm not saying I'm a paragon of mental health and I still need my work and I do my work but I'll tell you that oppressive miserable Mir robbing depression you uh producing voice is not in my head anymore because I had to realize that is not natural I do not want it there I want to understand and get my arms around why it's there and I want it to go just like I never I always felt I could go out and work hard and Achieve things I did not feel like I was cursed I did not feel like there was something wrong with me or the place or people I came from but I certainly did after my brother died by Suicide what's wrong with me that I didn't didn't see that what's wrong with us that that would happen to us I would never say that about someone else what's wrong with you that a family member died by Suicide but I would say it to me and that's how we are like you know good people don't want to denigrate someone else but we'll say it to ourselves and we'll take it inside and I started realizing I was feeling so differently about myself and wait I never felt like this before and I had good people around me enough to realize I started getting myself some help but it shows if we don't know our narratives and that this negativity is not natural to be at the Forefront it can become the new normal and then we think it was the old normal too wow how much can we change that voice can we actually get rid of negative Pathways I remember once reading something about once neurons are laid down there is no undoing them there are only building up other neurons so is it a case of layering better voices on top of worse voices or can worst voices actually go away entirely yeah worst voices can go away entirely now again I put a little asterisk and I'll explain this is both very very complicated and very very simple okay we don't this complicated part is for the neuroscientists that of how do neurons M uh how does neurotransmission work and how do complex systems work like there's a there's a lot a lot lot there but let's just go to the the simple part anything that has been overlearned doesn't go away overnight okay so here here's the example I this example I use all the time and I I I think it's it captures it I think let's say you and I randomly took a word we just picked a word I look around like I the word simply is staring at me from something else on my Des let's say we random word let's you and I say it together 500 times let's say we did that then this evening my time your Tom tomorrow morning it's going to be in your head or in my head right let's say we say instead of 500 times 5,000 times it'll be in our brain several days later but it can atrophy and go away in this case it's just a a silly experiment but our brains still won't let go of it if you and I say that word a thousand times our brain isn't gonna our brains aren't going to say I know that was just a silly experiment let's get rid of that no it's going to keep the word coming and the word it's going to keep it coming that's what goes on with the negative biases inside of ourselves you keep you have a set a feeling State and a and a set of words and selft talks like I'm not good enough I suck I this you keep doing that over and over again it is not going away quickly but we live in a society that wants rapid results that often packages Psychotherapy as we get 10 sessions of this and then it's over all that stuff can get better tremendously better but it takes time if that's been in your head for three four months to a moderate degree let's plot out a several month course to getting it out if it's been in your head for years well we're going to have to work on it over time but that doesn't mean nothing good happens until we're years down the road it means we start working on it now and it starts getting better and that's the Simplicity of it that example really holds if we said that word a thousand times and we didn't say it anymore it'll fall out of our brains and the same is true with the lies of trauma that we tell ourselves now again if something has been so impactful upon us it can still come back people have had who have had thoughts of hurting themselves or hurt themselves at some point in time who haven't for years could still have something really bad go on and the thought will come into their head if I make a very big mistake I can still that voice can come back in go you're an idiot right so so but I recognize that doesn't mean I'm back at square one it just means if there's a strong stimulus that reflex and come back but it's not with me I just I push it back out like I I I get it I made a mistake I don't need this inside me let's have it back out so sometimes it we can it can kind of Rush us once or twice if it's been strongly in us but the answer to your question about change is a very strong yes all of that can change and it's not rocket science like Neuroscience is more complicated at in rocket science so in some sense it is that's why there are countless brilliant people who spend their careers in Psychiatry Neuroscience psychology that's wonderful that that's happening what you and I and everyone listening needs to know is not that I take comfort that people are doing that what we need to know is this is absolutely approachable and and we understand it but the but the mechanisms of helping around us don't help they don't teach us how to understand it they don't tell us that things take time but there's an understanding driven by science and experience of of the profession that tells us the answers to this and gives us a road map to how to make it different it's so interesting that you say uh a formative experience particularly stressful experience can cause something like this to to reemerge so a while ago I was doing a very important podcast episode high stakes and I tend to fast before I do this which is good it keeps me nice and alert little bit of cortisol and adrenaline running through the blood is is nice for for mental focus but I overshot it and I went hypo partway through the podcast and as I'm watching this person talk in front of me all that I can hear in my own mind is blank there's nothing my whole mind's gone blank and I'm like well that's not good I'm supposed to be here and I'm here in and I'm thinking wow I've got nothing to say and as soon as that happened the first thought that came to my mind was you're not supposed to be here you never supposed to be here everyone's laughing at you you're boring no one thinks that you've got anything interesting to say you're blowing it this was your shot you're useless nobody likes you no one's ever liked you and I thought like where has that voice coming from because I thought I'd got rid of that voice I spent 1500 sessions of meditation like five years of daily journaling all of that stuff and I looked at me inwardly as well as I could and tried to look at that part of me I don't know where it comes from something from my childhood that I didn't like this very negative very cutting very cynical voice and during a period of super super super high pressure yes yes it came back yes yes which makes sense and this is the danger what's the danger the danger is is of a self-fulfilling prophecy right because because when those thoughts are going through your head as you said when you try and tune in on the person again you're hearing the you're not hearing the words why because all you've done in between is inre your to stress level so then there's the danger of it coming off the rails so to speak but because because you could inadvertently kind of make that true at least in the moment where like if that goes too far you don't have something to say back right and then it then when that happens to a person now it really tells them oh this is back with you this is all true that can be very very difficult for a person if they have a bad outcome when things are back in their mind what we want to do if you and I let's say we're working together clinically and I knew the strength of that in your past I would try and prepare you that hey let's just be clear that's going to come back to you at some point in time and it doesn't mean anything you know the best thing you can do and it comes back please you know just laugh at it a little bit a little bit of like that kind of like good humor like I get it I get it when that that when that you're an idiot comes back into my head or you're stupid you're not good enough to be here what made you think go to medical school like I get that I'm like look this is a this is coming from the past right and then it takes the power out of it then if you can do that then you can go back and now you're going to hear the words the person is saying right but you have to be prepared for it if you don't know that that's normal for it to come back then you can't just you know do that what you do is you give it you inadvertently give it so much power oh my goodness it's back now I really can't pay attention oh my gosh it must be true I knew all of that meditation was a waste I knew that the journaling wasn't there this isn't the true me that was the true me Etc right that's what I talk about dismissive humor is our friend in situations and I will prepare people for that because it's inevitable if you had these voices in your head if you've worked very very hard to get them out of your head that's the victory the victory isn't they never ever encroach back in that's just not how it works but it's okay that they encroach back in if you say I know what that message is and I reject it let me stop and ground myself I'm not at my best I overshot The Mark with not eating before whatever like I'll learn from that okay I'm here for a reason I A lot of times I I um work with athletes who are at the highest level of performance of whatever they do and you see them in a slump like I don't deserve to be here as if like they should be on the sand lot instead of in the major league stadiums like you didn't accidentally get to the stadium right but even in a slump the person can tell themselves they're no better than someone who doesn't even know how to play the sport like it shows what our brains can do to us and and how dramatically we can lose our confidence what about trauma being passed down is that a thing I'm living I I live in uh Austin Texas now so ancestral trauma is kind of a bit of a a super meme over here with the Psychedelic trips and the iasa Retreats and the indigenous cultures and stuff like that what's the what's the the the truth in the BS around uh epigenetics ancestral trauma all of that stuff it's it's remarkable what epigenetics has contributed um is is just immense to our understanding the thought was for a long time that trauma is passed down by role modeling so someone say who has been through trauma and is very anxious communicates that to children that the world is an unsafe place and they role model anxiety and that can happen we we can nurture children to be like us in all sorts of ways right so that's why if I have a lot of anxiety in me I I do my best have control over that I don't want to role model that for my children but but what we've learned is really really quite remarkable there are epigenetic changes in Us in people that then can be passed down to children who aren't even conceived of yet and that's where Darren richer re i c h ER t r Dr Darren Richard who I interviewed for the book is a is a a trauma expert he's an academic at Sanford and he testifies about trauma and this idea so for example in the world court that that if someone is traumatized for example some of his test testimony has been around rape as an instrument of of war and it was seen through a criminal justice lens this person ordered that and that was wrong okay that's true but we also need to look at that can extend across years and across Generations that could impact children that aren't even thought of yet and might not be born until 10 20 years later because the trauma in the person creates change in the person that can then be transmitted to children just through the changes in genetic expression years and years and years later and and that shift from looking at like a war crime as something criminal that's just that's bounded by it happened in this period of time is is it is a crime but it's it's not only a crime in that moment it's a crime against that person for the rest of their lives especially if they they don't get the help to deal with it and it can be a it's a crime against children that aren't even thought of yet it's a it's a transgenerational crime and that truth that epigenetics and and epigenetics through the neurobiological lens tells us that's true I was talking to Robert spolski a couple of months ago and he was talking about how mothers that enter poverty during um uh pregnancy the changes that you see epigenetically in the children from that poverty you know perfect example I would guess of a a pretty good chronic trauma chronic stressor it's not it's just ambient concern right it's just there in the background and uh yeah the the difference that that people go through and he reminded me something that I learned in year nine in biology that when a female is born they have all of the eggs that they are going to have for the entirety of their life mhm yes so inside of this as yet unborn child this infant baby fetus that's inside of you is the next Generation so right you've got grandmother to mother that's about to be born and inside of mother you have daughter who is about you will be born in however many 25 30 40 years time yes yes right and you're wow that that warrants it warrants that kind of wow this is the impact of trauma truly transgenerational and think about the example you gave was not someone who has lived chronically in poverty people can live in poverty without poverty itself being traumatic it predisposes to trauma but poverty doesn't have to be in and of itself traumatic but imagine you said a woman entering poverty while pregnant I mean even that if I if I stop and think about that too much I could I can generate a panic attack in myself of how that would feel you're carrying a child and you feel respons and now you go from not being in poverty to being in poverty what is the Cascade of stress hormones neurobiologically and cascading throughout the body it's it's huge and that's why it makes the the significant changes that Dr spolski is talking about it's a huge trauma during a period of time that is a very very crucial period of time to that developing fetus which is crucial to the developing fetus to the adult that fetus will become and and if that fetus can have children to the subsequent children of that fetus if this isn't a reason for us paying attention it's not like borrow a penny today pay back a pound tomorrow but are we going to borrow Penny today and pay back 10 pounds tomorrow and what 100 pounds in 10 years and a th000 pounds down the road I believe that that is not an exaggeration that is what we are doing as a society by turning away from trauma and we see it in death rates through overdose and death death rates through suicide there there are many many things we could talk about where we see that right now and what we see now will continue on and worsen it's a guarantee it will continue forward and worsen because we've planted the seeds of that into the future unless we do something about it so we've talked about the impact of trauma and unwinding of that trying to make the unconscious into the conscious what about trying to get out ahead of that a little bit more are there any predictors or ways that people can increase their resilience so that the bar for whatever could cause a a traumatic interpretation sort of bounces off during the event what what's the the physics of that system oh it's it's the same Paradigm as for physical health right the better health you're in the better you'll be able to withstand an insult to your physical health an injury and illness and the same is true in our mental health so the healthier we are if someone has say a chronic low-grade trauma they're in a relationship and the relationship is just kind of dismissive or denigrating they're not valued but they're putting up with it you know that predisposes to trauma having more of an impact there's something called the multiple hit hypothesis where we have more uh insults we're more likely for the next insult to have a disproportionate impact so be as healthy as we can I mean part of the reason we want to be in physical shape is people want to look good and be healthy now but we also want to just preventive medicine right I'm I'm looking ahead to what could happen in the future and the same is true about our mental health and this is why when we talk about a narrative it doesn't cost any money you don't need insurance you don't need to be able to access care to to sit and and think about or write about your own life your own life narrative what's in your life that's not okay and imagine a job you see people who are in jobs where know they're not really liked by the people around them and maybe that's because they're good and other people don't want the good person to shine or whatever it is and they're just kind of putting up with it note that that's something in your life that is causing misery and distress now that predisposes to problems in the future so to be aware and to be honest about that instead of it's easy to shove it under the rug because like you said it isn't the big fireworks thing so look at what what it what are our life narratives from past to present and what's going on in my life now what's okay and what isn't because how many times will a person tell you everything's okay sure things are fine but then you ask okay let's talk about a little bit more things are not fine they'll tell you what isn't fine but the default of things are fine why that default it's you know partly because if we don't feel we can really change anything then we want to just kind of say it's all okay and if we feel some guilt and shame about the things that aren't okay more reason to sweep it under the rug so that there are a lot of reasons where we're not honest with ourselves if you say someone tell me what's okay and what's not everything's okay usually that person isn't just lying to you the question they're lying to themselves and and it's not because they like lying to themselves so life isn't as good it's because there's a sense of I should be ashamed of that there's no way I can change that I don't understand myself well enough I'm afraid of that and like it just does not have to be that way and there are routes to change that aren't rocket science routes to change which is another message that I'm bringing it's not like we need the most sophisticated help sometimes in extreme circumstances but think about your life write a life narrative talk to somebody you care about and trust these are things we can do for free that can really make a big difference in our lives talk to me about again this is not medical advice please seek your psychotherapist of choice etc etc but in your experience what are the modalities that uh are the biggest movers when it comes to helping people to sort of make the unconscious conscious to unpack the experiences of their lives to stress test these assumptions and narratives that they have that may be erroneous and due to one incident or a number of incidents that's kind of whitewashed everything what are the biggest modalities the most effective ones that you like I mean there are ways to get to come at it but most of the ways that would come at what you were talking about is an Insight oriented Psychotherapy and that could be a kind of psychotherapy psychodynamic Psychotherapy for example that is very very interested in the unconscious mind or it could be Psychotherapy that's not just focused on the uncons conscious mind but focused on self- understanding can you tell me about you now can you tell me about you growing up how much can you tell me can you link the two okay so that can be Insight oriented Psychotherapy too it doesn't have to go right for the unconscious mind but it's some aspect of curiosity about the person when we just go strategies to make things better so to speak like cognitive behavioral strategies can be they can be very very helpful but we need to understand understand what what is underlying first so otherwise we just go to what else so we're going to polishing the hood instead of looking under the hood maybe it's maybe we don't feel so great about the car and we really should polish the hood maybe but maybe if we're not so happy with the car let's look underneath at the engine so let's look at where is something coming from because then we can gain greater insight and that in and of itself can make a difference bring the unconscious to conscious then we have strategies that can actually help sometimes if strategy just decrease symptoms without going to where the problem is that doesn't necessarily help maybe that allows the person to tolerate the abusive situation longer that's not so good so we want to come I I don't with rare exceptions I don't understand not coming at the process through the lens of insight like let's start there we might spend a lot of time there or a little bit of time there so maybe we get the insight for example that this person who is depressed is experiencing a purely biological depr de they're handling their life quite well they've had some trauma but they've dealt well with it they're they have a good job a good relationship they're meditating they're taking care of themselves the the problem is neurobiological oh then there's a family history where on that side of the family people get depressed out of the blue we might rapidly go to just the psychopharmacological happens at times but we haven't just gone there we've gone there because we've investigated and decided that that's where to go so it's just an example even when the answers are not through the psychotherapeutic lens we have to have some insight to decide that and if I learn that you were never depressed until a certain thing happened or until something big didn't happen but you change maybe from one place to another a job a relationship and then things started changing and then you become depressed well we may still think maybe is medicine's a good idea or this or that but we're not going to leave it at that we're going to go to why that is different than what you understand about it or you don't understand we can bring to to the surface so it's a process that honors I think people and our stories and what goes on inside of us and and I think we deserve that from the systems that are allegedly taken care of us you've mentioned a couple of times about uh writing things down journaling or something analogous to journaling is there a process that you're a particularly big fan of when it comes to that no not a single process because it works differently for different people and some people like like doing that or if they don't know if they like it can take to it pretty readily for others it can be painstaking and it's it's too much to do now maybe then they could speak words and then listen to the words back from them so it's not how it's done it's that when we when we make words whether we say them out loud it's kind of better in some if we say them out loud or if we write them but when we make words it's different than things bouncing around in our minds there are different systems of error checking that come online which is why it's kind of a joke in psychotherapy but it is true that every now and then someone will come in and they'll talk the whole time and then at the end they'll be oh my gosh thank you you solved all my problems we didn't say anything right so so sometimes that happens it happened in my own therapy a little while ago I said wait that thing happened I I I actually solved the problem by talking about them because in talking about them they become real in a different way I'm putting words and the words the therapist is still relevant because I'm putting words that are listened to by another person that I know and trust and feel safe with and they're going to be scrutinized by them as well they're going they're going to be there to to you need to not just say complete gobleg you need to not just Trail off in the middle of sentences there's a a type of structure that needs to be there as well right it's a communication structure right it scrutinized not in a way that that person's going to fault me but that person's interested in what I'm saying and I want to convey it then in this case what it allows is not that I conveyed it to the other person it's that as I conveyed it I understood it better and it's that that we're going for if you get that through lhand journaling and you're like whoa I read that and I understand myself better do that if you get it through more sparse journaling but it's putting together hey there are these patterns of how I feel or or what I do and how it links to how I feel then do that if you kind of can't do that but you can talk to somebody trusted do that the idea is to get it out of just bouncing around in our our minds because we often don't solve our problems that way and then we make like we talked earli about the self-fulfilling prophecy then we make a self-fulfilling prophecy I must be dumb I can't solve my own problems I've been thinking about it for years like no all I'm doing over that time is spinning wheels how about another modality that makes things different actually brings different brain centers online and then I can solve those problems that's the that can be the tremendous benefit of writing or talking and again it doesn't cost anything you don't have to go anywhere people can do this if they have what a pen and paper or another human being they trust so there are ways we can really help ourselves that we can do quite readily what should we be paying attention to when it comes to the little voice that sometimes appears in our heads the things that we take for granted the the words that are said the the the presumptions and assumptions when we encounter a situation uh is there something I is there a process that you advise people to go through when it comes to that repetitive thought that the sort of uh narrative that we say yeah well I can say it in two words and I'll expand a little bit but the two words are be curious be curious it's interesting what's going on in our minds if there's a shadow voice telling you how bad you are be interested in that don't be cowed by it don't be frightened by it be interested in what comes into our minds because it's that Curiosity that lets us better understand and it lets us put it in its place I have this voice in my head not literally the voice of like my own shadow voice I kind of know where it comes from now that I think about it right it came from that denigrating person that bad trauma how I was raised how I was treated because I was a little bit different and it's saying things to me do I think they're true do I believe they're true I mean give give an opportunity I said well how about instead of that negative voice just having the whole playing field it's in your brain and it's got a megaphone how about let it have its say but let the other side have its say too do you really believe that maybe you do maybe you don't it's a little bit of Devil's Advocate but maybe you do maybe you don't do you believe it or not believe it if you don't believe it like I'm the worst person in the world I can't do anything right okay do you believe that if you don't well now we want to look at that for what it is not telling you anything except that there's something in your head that's not real or true or fair and you don't want it there now you more get conce it as other that's an otherness how'd that get in my head now I start seeing it as alien that doesn't really belong in me now I can start so putting my foot in the door so to speak you give me a little bit of room you put your foot in the door and next time that person goes I'm stupid and I can't do anything okay wait wait a second that just goes on in my head and it's gone on in my head for a long time and maybe even I know why it's it's gotten there that is not what I believe so now so let's start again can I do this thing now it's a different decision Mak making process oh no one ever likes me I shouldn't go say hi to that person is that really true that no one ever likes youve been taking it for granted for a long time if there's a life narrative actually a lot of people like me but I had a bad relationship outcome and now I feel like no one likes me if they're a potential relationship candidate okay we put things in place and now maybe instead of that person going away from the potential romantic partner they say hello now they start changing things because they're not making self-fulfilling prop you know many people said I can't meet anyone why can't you meet anyone I never meet anyone okay then we look they're avoiding everyone they could meet right so you have to meet some people in order to meet some people that's how that has to go so then we try and prepare the person because especially in relationship is kind of the law of large numbers so there's a lot of rejection involved so then we think okay if you're going to go try something we need to know what the expected outcome is right if you want to say hello and be nice to a child that lives next door and that's gone well in the past that's probably going to go well if you're going to approach a potential relationship partner then be aware it's a law of large numbers because if it doesn't go well well we don't want that person to then feel bad about themselves like yeah I got to you I got to bring myself I got to be able to do this a bunch of times then there going to be some some good things are going to come of it so so there are nuances to it but you can kind of see I think the basic premise of it is be curious about what's going on in here so it doesn't control you because if it is controlling you that's not the whole you the whole you isn't to be controlled in some automatic way it's to bring yourself to bear and think about things and arrive at conclusions and decisions Dr Paul Cony ladies and gentlemen this dude I'm so impressed with you Andrew told me to reach out and uh you are beyond the real deal I love your a effect I love how sort of caring and and and sort of gentle you are with this and insightful I think you're absolutely fantastic and I I really really appreciate your work where should people go that so many people are going to want to find out more about what you do where should they go well I'm I'm out there in in podcast you can find me through just Googling and and I think they all get information out there there in in great ways everyone interviews in a different way and then I enjoy them all but they get information so they're more out there in the podcast realm the book that I wrote is called trauma the invisible epidemic and that also can be just searched and uh and found there's a website that just has links to some of the other podcasts and to the book which is just it's um um uh Dr Dr Paul Conti so d p Au l n ti.com and that has links to some of the other places that I've that I've appeared Dr Cony I really appreciate you thank you for today you're welcome thanks so much for having me if you enjoyed that episode then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks and don't forget to subscribe