#736 - Dr Paul Conti - How To Fix Your Negative Inner Thoughts
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Hello, friends, welcome back to the show. My guess is doctor pau county is a stanford and harvard train psychic, I rist, and an author specializing in unconscious trauma. If our mind was a nice eg, a conscious thought of the tip and a huge mass below the surface are our unconscious thoughts.

Doctor country's research works on bringing the forgotten, traumatic, painful and unseen into the light so that you can heal and improve. Expect to learn what people mean when they refer to the Young, conscious mind. What poll wished people understood about how trauma works, whether ancestral trauma is something that can actually be passed down through your genetics, what happens to your brain and body after experiencing trauma, what we can learn from the little voices in our head, and much more.

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But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome doctor paul county.

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 they gets talked about, but they're not sure. How much of an influence does that have over me? Is that me? But i'm not aware.

Do I know who I am? conscious? Ly, but then there's other things in the background and and anything 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 that mean? That is 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 this sort of height of of understanding ourselves through the lens of understanding all aspects of the mind, including the unconscious, include an awareness of some of what's going on there, but also an awareness that we're not aware of at all.

Yeah, it's a little bit of paradox. why? Why is IT so important? Is there an analogy? Is IT? Is IT like the surface web in the dark web? Is IT ninety nine percent of ourselves unconscious, and only one percent of us is conscious.

Well, far more of us is unconscious, unconscious. Far, far more of us the the iceberg model where 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, just like a car engine might be, you know, rotating several thousand revolutions per minute, right? We're not aware of all those revolutions, but that needs to happen for us to seamlessly be able to manu over the car for so in a far more complicated way that's going on inside of us, where there are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of of calculations that are going on so that we can some things and come up to the consciousness where we can then make conscious decision.

So so even the idea of take walking down the street and seeing someone walking towards you, right? There's so much that then goes on, was that person look like, is that person? Is a person looking you? Are they looking down for looking you? Do they look happy that not happy to recognize them? Do you not recognize them? Other markers of threat? Are there not markers of threat? You you know we're doing all sorts of things.

And lets say that person looks like someone who had been aggressive before, but is not that person, then we're trigger to like have is an extra sense of anxiety intention that all that happens automatically, then we have to say, okay, but it's not a person been aggressive before. But IT all goes on in us in a way of had to 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. Is you 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 that choice that there is to make.

There's obviously lots of other unconscious things that go on the a impetus to breathe and break out the interest for our body to digest the food and for our heart to pump and all the things. But presumably there are certain things that are more silent to our day to day experience, especially a phenomenon. Gc ally, what IT feels like to be a person in the world with thoughts.

There are areas 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 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 yeah like a trios, there is a priority list of things that are uh salient to right .

then the key word there is silence, right? Because in fact we could put two aces here, safety and silence. 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 you are safe.

We can think about other things, we can read a book, we can relax, we can 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 G I system.

But IT, lets say we hope there are ism, but lets say there's some problem now is going to tell you that, right? You're going to have pain and the pain is going to make your G I system sAiling. Then you think about IT. But if there is not a risk that's coming from IT, IT stays in the background. So so first and foremost, our brains want to keep us safe, which is why the triggering of negative events of trauma become so silly.

So in the example I I often give is imagine and where hunter gathering and and if we're hungry and we we go out and we find a new barry to eat, if that taste good and it's nourishing, it's really good to remember that, let's say, IT makes us very, very sick than we Better remember that, right? We have to remember that. So there's more silence 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 of a person has been in a car accident, then gets in a car. I talk to someone this morning who had a very difficult event happened twenty four 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 I was a moment to go, because I was very, very distressing. It's immediate to this person, even after twenty something years, because IT was about safety at the time, and the brain does not want to let that go.

IT wants to be assurances 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. But as first and foremost, that 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 twenty years old, twenty or twenty one years old, at sixty miles an hour with a snow plow on the main british motorway in the U. K.

And for the next, probably six weeks or so after that, maybe, maybe even more, maybe like two months to three months or so a every time that I was close to control low traffic. So traffic coming in the other direction on the side of the road, near the side of the road. I well, that wasn't a barrier between us.

I felt anxious. It's like I guess it's like stubb your toe. You don't realize how often things touch your toe until there is a high per sensitivity around IT. I didn't realize how often I was, you know, five feet away from another vehicle coming basically head on toward me until i've been hit by a snowplow at sixty miles.

Right, right. Then you rain of all the things that could be a risk to you, but your brain is that is a risk to me. Oncoming traffic is a risk to me. And then IT becomes very, very sensitized to IT. And if you're having intrusive thoughts and a high level of vigiLance, no, that's when IT can become problematic. You said for some period of time, right, a few months, then IT settles back down in you, but that makes sense, right? And IT, maybe that you change behaviors or you don't change behaviors or you know it's I don't want to be ond rose with fast 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 think, is this okay? This this really make sense to do now, even if you decide IT does make sense to do, even though something bad is happened, your brain is going to persist in ways because that the trauma has such a deep emotional residents are our memories don't have meaning in and of themselves. They're brought to life by the emotion that attached to them.

So if we had asked you a week before person going one way in traffic and a vehicle coming the other way hits them and OK, that doesn't sound great. But but it's not going to raise a lot of emotion in you. Let's say we ask you one week later, IT will raise a huge amount of emotion because now your brains of all those risks, to me, that is one that is silent.

And then you'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 lingon in the brain, in behind, on the person in the situation and the specifics for years and years and years of the rest of a person's life, which, if you think from the perspective of safety and sAilings, we can understand why. But also, that's not the way we want to be living life.

If we understand safety, silence the unconscious mind, our our minds work, then we can change that. So I don't want that thing to Carry along with me just because something bad happened. I understand what happened I making decisions about. 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 into the conscious. How do? How do you do that? What does that mean?

Well, often times there are other ways we can come at IT tours. You know, sometimes there are specific tactics around decreasing symptom ethology. 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're not safe, if you're in a car going on, coming in, on coming traffic, you are not safe, you are not safe. You are not safe.

It's gonna say that over and over unless you can validate hi let's bring that to conscious ness and say, I understand why I feel that way, 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 do though, where you get your mind around IT, so to speak, and then your brain doesn't have to continue to push IT to the forefront. I think 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 let us have much greater control over including, often invalidating. Hey, I know why that took me like, thank you in a sense, brain.

But I don't needed at the forefront and it's remarkable how much like that works. I mean, is, is, is part of what traumatic erp y 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 in city in the meaning of that world, like something that is sneaky. And I go a wolf sheep clothing. IT doesn't announce itself that i'm now in your brain and changing you, including changing your memories.

So I don't know what happened to you after and again i'm sided learn about what happened. But an example would be on the other side of that. A person who has gone through what you've gone through could conclude I never feel safe in a car.

I never felt safe in a car. Don't like driving. I don't could conclude that without IT being true.

Oh, so you've retroactively gone back and changed the memory of situations prior to that trauma as a compensatory mechanism, as a story they tell themselves.

well, it's it's a way because the brain is going to paint with a broad brush. If we're not bringing the trauma of conscious understanding, then it's saying it's a very simple conclusion, right? Being in car, coming at opposite traffic is not safe, right?

That's all the brain knows like we ve got hurt doing that. We can do that anymore. So it'll bring that to you.

And the emotion is so strong that I 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 you can bring these things to the surface.

Remarkable how many people will say, I never had faith of confidence in myself. I never thought I could do well at my job. I never thought I was smart enough.

I never want 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, saying is 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 exaggerating little bit like have you hiding under the Better 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 snowplow was out.

You might say, I don't want to be that going against oncoming traffic if its speed is more than thirty kilometers per hour, whatever IT may be in bad conditions, like maybe you learn that, you know, i'd take that away with me and i'm going to a change that you might conclude that or you might conclude not that, but you're concluding something that tells your brain doesn't have to be lost in that trauma. And now for you, that sounds like you went down after some period time, but for some people, IT doesn't until it's process like a person I saw earlier today, twenty something years ago. IT is still with the person as if I were yesterday. And I see this many days, not just that, I happen to see that today. I see that a lot, which is why I had a conversation about IT .

just this morning. So in syria, more frequent than people think, more persistent than people think.

and changeable and changed.

not lock set in stone to the rest of your life.

is not hardwired in us. We don't have to be afraid of IT. As trauma triggers a reflex of guilt and shame. So if we are traumatized, there is some reflects on, 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 action.

Now sometimes we may have some Better, some responsibility, but that's different than a reflection of guilt and shame, which tells you shove the trauma down below. Don't look at IT. If you look at IT, god knows what you will find. If you look at what's the .

function of the shame and the guilt.

so the function is probably around behavior modification, and it's all theoretically. But if you think about psychological history of humans and even anthropological psychology, how humans develop that, we have what are called affects. And I don't want to get two off into the weeds.

But neurobiological ally, there's a difference between affect feelings and emotions that affects are just arouse in us like if you're just walking down the street and someone jumps in front of you and shows you you're going to feel anger or fear or both before you know, I think about that need to feel anger or fear or but you'll be coursing or inside of you and then you be come aware why? Because affects are they create change in us. If someone just jumps in front of you and jobs you are yells at you, you Better be ready to fight, to flee where you boot up all these systems, and then you're aware.

So these very deep affects, in its very primary fear, love, joy, shame, they, they anger, they caught. They are 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've got the food inside the cave, and you close the cave door, and then somebody wakes up in the midnight and needs to want to the food, the rest of the people may make that person feel ashamed, right? Or they, you know, they're keeping, if they're doing something that makes the supply at risk, whether people are, are relieving themselves as toner, the food like IT, then shame as a mechanism of change. Don't do that and 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 hardest in ways that are not about survival. We're not living in a hunter gathering society where if you I go forging for berries, we almost die.

We Better never forget IT, right? It's different from that we live longer, lives like 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 attack, and deeply altering their behaviors because of that, that survival mechanisms hijack 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, wow, the greatest external control mechanism upon us, IT, is the one we don't see that authors, even our memory, so we don't even recollect accurately.

Wow, that's so interesting and it's so crazy to think that scenario we go through become interpreted by ourselves, 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's 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 I always been i've always been an x or a war as ad person and if you we all know how much people try to defend the eagles and their personalities, if you try to say, oh, you know, why don't we go away on holiday?

You know, I don't like going on holiday. I've never like going away on holiday. No, you had a very turbulent flight when you were seven years old or thirteen years old or twenty five years old.

And this landing came in and you told yourself the story. You no longer want to go on what i'm fascinated by. Not only that, not only the fact .

that instance .

is 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, right? You do a thing. And guilt is the, uh, internal version of the external I that your try would have had on you saying you, yes, but you shouldn't be, do you shouldn't be eating those barriers 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 is all of that and it's even worse.

Is that shame, man, and guilt to all the things you just said are like centuries protecting us from inside, protecting us from that, say it's not safe to go look at that. It's not safe to talk about that. You want to go talk with something you ashamed about that that's not gonna.

Well, right? IT has us keep IT all inside because guilin chain keep us stuck inside of ourselves, which is the reason why people don't don't go get help. They don't go in process, because guilt and chain tells us to keep IT private.

And IT tells us, will people tell them i'll start crying and never stop curl to position and never get? That is never what happens. Those are the lives 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 you've had a person tell me i've always mean someone no one likes, no one was. And I learned that that's not true at all. The people this person understood themselves to be different 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 fifty seven, two. And then we go back and we map the past, which english interesting, english modern m really, really captured this. So, so only this was IT known before.

But the english modern is like ford metics, ford Virginia wolves writing, really. There were others too, that started writing about how we retrolental vely change. I think that was ford matic s.

Ford, who wrote about, if you're eating an apple and it's a goodling apple, I think you want, you get to the center of IT and there's a warm, is IT retroactively a bad apple, right? And then that was quite a revelation. That was part of the english modernist movement that that that really realized.

And I, in my. opinion. Now I think Virginia will have captured IT with 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. The past is valuable and and IT is our our responsibility to ourselves that our past is IT. Marable is 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 the different categories of trauma. Do you do you bucket them into broad types somehow?

On the one thing this way, I emphasize here that this is based in science, right? This is not um some soft concept of anybody was trauma anything bad not chosing for the team? 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 a 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 neurotransmitters were both more vigilant. We were both ten 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, what that person's expression is, our feelings we look at a biased, is that person going to have, 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 Thomas really manifesting itself, aging can be greater. So to think about this, because of the impact of trauma, we can be older than we are, where the counter says that person is forty two years old bit if you go, and you can think about tulum ers. And how the person is actually forty six by the, by the actual biology of IT.

So the hard brain biology and and physical biology tells us 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 wo I mean anyone can. And yeah, that automates ze a person as i've written about and talk about in podcast. I lost my Youngest brother.

right? Suicide everyone can understand like that's a big trauma. We're less likely to understand chronic trauma. So chronically be being um made to feel less that. So people who are chronically denigrated, whether it's it's ethnicity, it's a sexual uh h preferences identity.

There are many, many things that that we in society society omy that is leave you would 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 is a lower incidence of schizophrenia. A so people live apart. There is a higher instance.

This is fascinating, right? Because when people are living together, there's more of a sense of belonging. We don't know this for sure, but the data points that way and IT fits with this idea and that we see like we see to be true that chronic trauma is impacted.

So someone who's in an an abusive circumstance and nothing is rising to some drama where they went to the hospital, the police came. But it's always there are always denied that will make brain changes, just like acute trauma. So acute, chronic and vicarious trauma, where I was way, I often am telling people my prescription for you is less news.

Use the news to and for itself. Use the news to learn. When I was Young, he 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 carouser other people's trauma. And we need to be very careful about that.

IT happens in the helping profession. IT happens if someone's near someone who's been hurt. And IT happens before constantly innovating ourselves because of our own anxiety with other people suffering.

I read study from the boston marathon bombing, which was 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 would watch ninety minutes or more of news coverage about IT. The people who watched ninety 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. But we said, if you're there, yeah something very bad has happened and you're in proximity but we're talking about people who then I weren't hurt in IT, right? I 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 have an impact on the person. Have realized that happened and I was close to IT.

But should IT surprise, I said if in ninety minutes of, oh, my goodness know that I could have been me, someone I love, and imagining that and feeling for the people, because we are so fortunate as humans, we have empathy. If we didn't, we wouldn't be here. I, we're lucky.

In some ways, we're here anyway. Without close, we come to destroy ourselves even with empathy. So empathy is wonderful.

If someone is hurt and their on on the ground, that's why we lend them helping him 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 Victorious 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 speak up on people. In what we think about trauma, we think about a single formative fireworks event that goes on.

We you know, if you were to say, well, you've been in a relationship where your partner is 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? You know, like it's just a joy that just saying like like, you know, h going out for a run. Good luck trying to get past one kilometer again this time, you know but over time there is a there is a point of which something which is not necessarily traumatic and isolation becomes traumatic just due to like wait.

sure sure rate, the area under the curve, right? The increasing rate of the the chronic dev gration. You can see how in our medical systems.

And i've been fortunate to spend about a year of my life in the U. K. And I, I, I love coming to england.

I think I understand the healthcare system enough. There are problems in the U. S.

Healthcare system that are that are in other systems to which is is being too concrete about about things where it's was hard to get attention and care, especially human driven attention like psychotherapy, right? So so our system wants to look at, have you had the big fireworks event? okay.

If not, we will put in the for me, in the different category. IT doesn't want to say other changes in your brain because of trauma, whether that was acute or chronic or ricci ous. That's what we would look at. But that the systems are aren't sophisticated or are often interested .

enough to do that. I went to my G. P. one.

I was probably twenty one or twenty two in the U. K. Northeast of the U.

K. Classic, very working classroom. I go in and I sit down. And i'd been sad for quite a while on enough. 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 keep the curtains drawn, and, you know, i'd make excuses about why I couldn't see people or do things or whatever. And I went in and I SAT down with my G. P.

And the weight works in the U. K. For the people up from there, you have a ten minute window with your G P, and that you're general practice that 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 is free, great, but the standard of care perhaps leaves a little bit to be desired. So I sit down and I said, I think I might be depressed or something.

I probably mumbled LED some word out about sad or depressed or something like, i'm pretty sure use the word depression. And this G, P. Said, uh, have you had a recent family? believe? Ment, no.

So are you win financial trouble? no. Did you recently lose a job? no.

Did you recently break up with the relationship? No, no, no, no, no, no. All the way down, like acute trauma, acute trauma, acute trauma, acute trauma. no. And you, so i've got to all the end of bit and essentially said about what you said about, I don't know, like just the fucking crushing weight of existence. I don't know, I don't know what I said about and then SHE printed off the single piece of a 4 paper that was like， I had some website, U R, S, on the N, H, S. Website, about how to improve your mental health, like, and go along your way .

and you look worse.

When you came in, I felt like, I don't know, like I was making a mountain out of a model. I definitely taught me the lesson that I took away from that I think was um i'm blowing this out of proportion and I must be that big .

deal and that's that we have so much to me a loss of productivity because often people in in power um in decision making capacity are think about dollars and cents or pounds and and are we where we've losing economic, 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 coordinate of domino pain that had been a morph, and then and then over and started being focused here, known would say, why do you have a pencil? What does you have them in? Hurt, we known, would say that they would honor what was going on with you.

But here you get 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 see here you have a medical problem no different than if you had a pendens tis, but you walk out and validated.

And this is the problem is 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, even the the, the more medicalized like schizophrenia, a higher incidents when people are are feeling a sense of alone as and isolation and vulnerability that we need to understand this. Because a huge part of what else us, what makes all of us suffer is coming from this is coming from and recognize and unaddressed trauma and unrecognizing unaddressed mental health issues, because people can get depressed because the brain chemistry is off. So there dos enough.

There could be no reason what, whatever the people, everything in their life is as good as possible. But specifically, the brain chemistry comes off line. And now the depressed, what about a purely biological depression? There is always a reason there.

I mean, there's a lot of times the reason, I think about how we're just invalidating people and then is IT a surprise that substance abuse, substance dependence, addiction over those rates go up and up, that suicide rates go up and up? IT is not a surprise. IT is a predictable outcome as a predict table consequence of how the health care system handles itself.

And and what you described so many years ago is not different in many setting. Now see, that's what would happen now. And and even the dark driver.

I've so much compassion for GPS primary care physicians because of what are you supposed to do in ten minutes? Houses have a real conversation in in ten minutes. That's why there's more depression and self harm and suicide in physicians has grown over time.

That's an interesting question. What about 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 a Matthews 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 else 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, this is start to do that without some. If you're doing that, you a person who has empathy, so you a person who is going to feel something as you're doing that and ensure people have education and training and support to try and make boundaries.

But that doesn't mean that, that works all the time. But we we don't give people enough ongoing support and and we see that on the other side of IT, where people in these kinds of helping professions have higher rate of his depression and substance to be suicide, the rates are higher. And again, IT all make sense.

So 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 is write, morally write or or just what IT means is that is predictable, predictable. So if you see the the increasing rate of loneliness, isolation, depression, substance use, suicide in in the general population and more specifically and in in people who are caregiving, that's not surprising since everything is is that should be meaning.

We've made these decisions as a society. How many health care workers came to the other side of covered, traumatized by all the things, the awful things they saw? They need to work double shift because the coworkers aren't coming. And there's so, so much of that.

And what happened after the pandemic go back to the same unreasonably high work lows that the way everything was before that we we don't put resources in society towards the people who help us, which is also us, the new world part of this. And now we, we, we wait so many resources in so many ways, are political struggles and strivings. And that the idea isn't to get political, but just to say how much much resources we waste.

And we often don't have resources to, like, give the person with depression more than a ten minute misleading question air right, or hope that person who who has a real post trauma syndrome get Better. But that's going to take some human time. We look at the at the shirt end of that, which is why I focus on the economic cost.

Of course, the human coster more, but but we can get money allocated, sometimes resources allocated. When we look at the cost 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 like you was A A borrowed penny today to pay a dollar tomorrow, you know.

But we treat ourselves that way. We treat ourselves that way as societies and in the people don't see until they often need to go to an emergency room and they have good insurance. But guess what, you're still out in the whole way.

You still SAT there for seven hours. You know you still went in and had somebody ask you a ten minute question air when you're really in trouble inside, you know may be 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 and I believe around trauma more than anything else.

I say one, we're 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 shorted to breath.

They're feeling something inside half of those complaint. You're not meet tal health complaints. They're physical health complaints that come from mental health.

He had 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 as coming to them is 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 as people are coming with mental health problems, but they're presenting his physical health problems. And it's it's not because the person wants to say that is because they often don't know they are hurting, but they do have the pressure, they don't know. And the health care system is so dumb down that we're not asking the right questions, are trying to figure what is actually going on with you, and how do we help you .

talk to me about what actually happens to the brain body after someone one's gone through trauma?

So there be very complex changes, but we can so IT summarized to some degree by saying that their alterations in the baLances, in our brains, you know, our brains are trying to maintain embodying es homeostasis, means things are in baLance. And there are hundreds of thousands of things that happened inside of us in each moment to hold us in in baLance. What happens is that we get embed ced.

So, for example, vigiLance mechanisms in the brain, the whole systems of the brain, silents mechanisms, start looking more for negative things. So someone who, for example, is interested in finding a relationship, who who is walking down the street or holy, and see someone, look at them, instead of being curious, oh, how's that person looking at me? Or or might I might attracted that person? Might I smile back? The immediate is like just the person is looking negatively at me.

What's wrong with me? right? Why they're looking at me? It's hard to make life move forward. That right is a change towards vigiLance and vulnerability inside of us.

So you don't see maybe that's a cold or we could collaborate on something, maybe that's a potential romantic partner who smiling at me. People don't don't see that because the brain has shifted from curiosity. How is that person looking at me to? This must be something wrong.

And look at me in a negative way. 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, with us. And then IT changes into chino logically.

So then we have more stressed hormones flowing in us and stress hormones pretty posed to vascular disease, to heart disease, to strokes, to oto immune diseases, to to aging faster than our calendar age. So to to gaining weight when we don't want a gain weight, to napped up 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 the person who says I am a loser because I can't lose weight and and i'm trying how many times do I hear that? And then you see actually doing the right things. They they have a good diet.

They have exercises. They are not losing way because there are so many stress harmony in them that IT triggers all these don't lose weight systems in us. So is just these are just examples.

But you can see, I hope, from the examples that we were talking about, this whole life change from top to bottom and is 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 I no one likes how I look. Great people say they'll say this and was before that trauma is not how they felt.

And that's why they were they got Better jobs. They would leave one job for another. Who was Better.

They had good relationships. They didn't stand up. They didn't stand for denigration in a relationship.

They are of off put. They didn't stand for that. Now they do, and they don't even realize that they never did. And how we're onna 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 is such a huge part, this narrative that we weave together.

Yes, yes, yes. I am so interested in knowing people's life narrative because I I mean the business of trying to help people you have to understand what they're narrative is. And I say, no one, no one comes out of the room thinking, you know, abuses OK 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 wear you this time. Give IT a try. You would have to, why would people put up with that all the time? Is saying, I don't, I don't want this.

This is worse than not having a relationship or not have a relationship. So I find one that's Better. We have to trace what is the root of that.

Was there some trauma and that person started feeling differently? Does that come from early formative years? Was that person seen as less than or denigrated because of race, because the gender in the home? Right folks? Just one example, because of sexual orientation, national economic status in the communities around us.

Was that bread into that person? Because that's a natural leader. 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. Well, just implicated informative years or big trauma at once we've gotten understand IT. Yeah.

I think so many people, you know, myself included, 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 the mind, the factory settings.

critical.

self deprecating, a fearful, vigilant, a mocking, you know, risk of verse, all of those things. Um you you know there is a negativity bias, we are concerned, finite creatures, infinite surrounding, you know, this actimel between things that can make us a little bit more alive and make us a lot more dead. And how much was those but 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 silence of negative things doesn't have to make us that way. So in the barry example, what what does that mean? Don't eat that, barry.

Again, IT doesn't mean be afraid of any food now, but I will be afraid of any barriers, be afraid of being outdoors. IT doesn't mean that is 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 at different phases, were often not aware of our life narratives. It's that negativity bias that can help us to feel negative all the time. But it's certainly is not deterministic of that.

Which is why, in an oversimplified example, i'm simply have you say I realized you shouldn't that berry, you're not a dumping for eating that barry IT looked like a good barry you know have to feel like you're incompetent and you're not worth thing because you had really like you're OK you came through here's a lesson don't eat that berry again and maybe we ve just more careful about barriers that good okay, it's good. But that's often not how IT goes is like I don't I don't know how to pick what to eat, you know and I know and I gave someone to someone else, that person got to be a terrible you know with this is what we do to ourselves and IT is not our natural. So we're not built to be like that, but we end up like that because we are trying to keep ourselves ves safe in a difficult in complex world.

And we accumulate more negativity bias, more negativity. Now I i've got a voice in my head telling me what's wrong with me all the time. And I had this voice ahead for a long, long, long, long time. And through a lot of psychotherapy, 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 h so stupid, what's wrong with you? Like, I I mean, that was a shadow to me inside of me, and I had to realize that's not Normal, said I didn't come out of the womb. Metaphorical would not have words, but you know I mean, like no one comes out of the one thinking that way.

It's not Normal. You are minds around IT that does not have to stay with that. Some that would say my paragon of mental health. And I still need my work and I do my work.

But i'll tell you that oppressive, miserable, robbing, depression, uh, producing voici is not in my head anymore because I had to realize that is not natural. I do not want IT everyone to understand and get my arms around why it's there. And I wanted to go just like I never.

I wish I T. 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 where people I came from. But I certainly did after my brother died by suicide. What's wrong with me that I didn't see that? What's wrong with us? 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 to me then, that's how we are.

Again, good people don't want to take grate someone else, what will say to ourselves? And i'll take IT inside. And I started realizing I feeling so differently about myself and weight.

I never felt like this before. And I D, D, 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, we can become the new Normal. And then we think that was the old Normal.

too. Wow, how much can we change that voice? Can we actually get rid of negative pathways? I remember one's reading something about one's neurons are laid down.

There is no undoing them. There are only building up other neurons. So is IT a case of learning Better voices on top of worst voices? Or can worse voices actually go away entirely?

Worse voices can go away entirely. Now going to put a little astro going to explain, this is both very, very complicated and very, very simple. And we know this complicated part is for the neuroscientists, that of how do neurons may, uh, how does newer transmission work and how to complex systems work? A A lot there.

But this just go to the simple part. Anything that has been over learned doesn't go away overnight. Okay, so here, here's the example, like this example I use all the time and I I think it's IT captures that.

I think let's say you and I randomly took A D we just pick the word I look around like the word simply is sharing at me from something else on my dance. Let's say, with anymore, let's you and I say IT together five hundred times. Let's say we did that then this evening, my time you're to our morning is going to be in your head or in my head, right?

Let's say, we say, instead of five hundred times, five thousand 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 is our brains are gonna. I know that was just a silly experiment. Let's get rid of that.

No, it's going to keep the word coming in. The word is going to keep becoming that's what goes on with the negative biases inside of us. So you you have a set of feeling state and and a set of words and self toxic.

I'm not good enough. I suck. I 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 you get ten 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 ply out a several month course to getting IT out if it's been in your head for years or we're going to have to work on IT over time. But that doesn't mean nothing good happens in two years down the road. That 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 of thousand times that we didn't save any more, it'll fall out of our brains.

And the same is true with the lives of trauma that we tell ourselves. Now again, there's something has been so impacted upon us. IT can still come back. People have 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 and go you're an idiot, right? So so but I recognize that doesn't mean i'm back at square one. That just means if there's a strong stimulus that reflects and come back.

But now with me, just I push you back out like I I get. And I made a mistake. I don't need this assignment.

Lets have IT back out. So sometimes we can. You can kind of russia once or twice.

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. That neurosis is more complicated than rocket science. So in some sense, IT, is that why there are countless brilliant people who spend their careers in psychiatry, roscius psychology?

That's wonderful that that happening what you and I and everyone listening needs to knows, not that I take comfort the people are doing that, what we need to know. This is absolutely approach and and we understand that. But 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. The E C. A formative experience, particularly stressful experience, can cause something like this to to reemerge.

So a while ago as doing a very important podcast episode, high stakes, and I tend to fast before I do this. Just good, keeps me nice and alert little bit. Court is all in the drone running through the blood is is nice for for mental focus.

But I overshot IT and I went hypo part way through the podcast. 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 minds gone blank.

And I like, well, that's not good. I'm supposed to be here and i'm here ba a ba a ba. 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 are not supposed to be here.

You are 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. Nobody likes you. No one ever likes you.

And I thought, like, where has that voice coming from? Because I thought i've got rid of that voice, I spent fifteen hundred sessions of meditation, like five years of daily journal, all of that stuff. And I looked at me in wildly as well as I could, and try to look at that part of me.

I don't know where IT comes from, something from my childhood. I didn't like this very negative, very cutting, very cynical voice. And during a period of super, super, super high pressure.

yes, here I came back. Yes, which makes sense. And this is the danger. What's the danger? The danger is, is of a self fulfilling propac's.

right? Because because when those thoughts are going through your head, as you said, when you try to tune in on the person again, you hearing the ba ba, you're not hearing the words. why? Because all you've done in between is increase of to stress level. So then there is the danger of IT coming off the rails, so to speak.

But because, because you could inadvertently kind to make that true, at least in the moment, where, like, if that goes too far, you done, have something to say back, right? And then, and then, when that happened to a person, now IT really tells them all, 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 will say, were working together clinically, and I knew the strength of that in your past, I would try to prepare you the old as just be clear, that's gonna come back to you at some point in time. And IT doesn't mean anything.

You are the best thing you can do. And IT comes back, please yeah I just laughed out a little bit, little bit like that kind of like good humor or like I get IT I get IT that your media comes back to my here or you're stupid, you're not good enough to be here. What made you think go to medical school? Like, I get that.

And like, look, this is, this is coming from the past, right? And then IT IT takes the power out of IT. Then if if you can do that, then you can go back.

And now you're going to hear the words the person and say, but you have to be prepared for if you don't know that that Normal for you to come back when you can just, you know, do that. What you do is you give IT. You inadvertantly give IT so much power. Oh my goodness, back now I really can't pay attention. Oh god.

sh IT must be true. I knew that all of that meditation was a waste, knew that the journey, this isn't the true me. That was the true me at such right.

That's why I thought 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 work 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, just not how works, but it's okay that they encroach back in.

If you say, I know that messages and I rejected, let me stop and ground myself. I'm not at my best. I overshot the mark with not eating before, whatever, like i've learned from that. okay? I'm here for a reason and other things. I will work with athletes who are at the highest level of of whatever they do and you see them in the slump and like I don't deserve to be here as if like they should be on the sand light instead of in the major leaked stadium, like you didn't accidentally get to the stadium, right? But even in a slump, the person can tell themselves there are no Better than someone even know how to play the sport like IT shows what our brains can due to us and and how dramatically we can lose our confidence.

What about trauma being passed down? Is that a thing? I live, I live in uh, Austin taxes now. So ancestral trauma a is kind of a bit of A A super meme over here with the psychiatric trips and the iowaka retreats and the indigenous cultures and stuff like that. What's the what's the the truth in the B S around epi genetics, ancestral trauma, all of that stuff .

IT is remarkable. What epigenetics is contributed um is is just immense to our understanding. The thought was for a long time that trauma is passed down by roma.

So someone say, who has been through trauma in his very anxious? Communicate to that, to children. I did 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 do my best, have control over that. I don't want a role model that for my children.

But but what we've learned is really quite remarkable. Their 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 Richardson, R R E I C H E R T E R doctor darren n. Richardson, who I interviewed for the book, is is a, uh, 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 this testimony has been around rape as an instrument of a war. And IT was seen through a criminal justice lands. 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. You might not be born until ten, twenty years later, because the trauma in the person creates change in the person that can then be transmitted.

Two children just throw the changes in genetic expression years and years and years later. And and that shift from looking at a war crime as something criminal that's just dismounted 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 don't get to help to deal with IT and IT can be it's a crime against children that are not even fun of you yet. It's a trans generation. And the truth that epi genetics and and epi genetics through the neurobiological lens tells us that's true.

I was talking to Robert super ski a couple of month ago, and he was talking about how mother's the enter poverty during um uh pregNancy, the changes that you see epigenetics and the children from that poverty you know perfect example, I would guess, of a pretty good chronic chronic is not just ambient concern, right it's just there in the background uh yeah the the difference that the people go through.

And he reminded me something that I learned in you're 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. So inside of this as yet unborn child, this infant, baby, fetus, that 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 will be born in however many twenty five, thirty.

forty years time. Yes, but your well that that warrants IT warns that kind of, wow. This is the impact of traut truly transgender tional.

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 get pretty disposes to trauma, but IT probably doesn't have to be in enough itself traumatic.

But imagine you said a woman entering poverty while pregnant. And even then, if I, if I stop and think about that too much, I could, I could generate a panic attack myself. How that would feel? You're Carrying a child and you feel responsible.

And now you go from not being in poverty to being in poverty. What is the cade of stress? Cormon's new biological casgar throughout the body. It's it's huge. That's why IT makes the the significant changes that doctor suppose he's talking about is a huge trauma during a period of time that is a very, very crucial period of time to that developing fees, which is crucial to the developing fears, to the adult that matters will become and and if that fetus can have children to the subsequent children of that fears, if this isn't a reason for us paying attention, IT is not like borrowed penny today, pay back a pound tomorrow.

But are we going to borrow a penny today and paid back ten pounds tomorrow? When when one hundred pounds in ten years and a thousand 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 promise.

And we see IT in death rates to overdose in death, death rates to suicide. There 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 worsening 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 predictions, ways that people can increase their resilience so that the bar for whatever could cause a traumatic interpretation sort of bounce is off during the event? What's the the physics of that system?

What is the same paradigm for physical health? But the Better health you're in, the Better you'll be able to withstand and insult to your physical health, an injury and illness. And the same is true in in our mental health.

So the healthier we are, if someone has, say, 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 that predisposes to trauma having more of an impact. There's only called the multiple high hypothesis where we have more insults. We're more likely for the next insult to have a disproportionate impact.

So be as healthy as we can be. 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 is preventive medicine, right? I'm i'm looking ahead to what could happen in the future.

And the same is true about our mental of this is why, when we talk about a narrative, IT does IT cost any money. You don't need insurance. You don't need to be able, able to access care to sit and and think about or write about your own life, your own life narrative.

What's in your life is not okay. I imagine a job you see people are in jobs where, no, 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 did to shine to whatever IT is and they're just kind of putting up with IT know that that's something in your life that is causing misery and distress now that pretty poses to problems in the future.

So to be aware and to be honest about that, instead of its easy to show up under the rug because like you said, IT isn't the big fireworks things to look at what what, what are our life narrates from past to present and what's going on in my life. Now, what's OK and what isn't there is how many times of a person to everything's okay ay, sure, things are fine, but they knew as cki like to talk about a little bit more, things are not fine will tell you what isn't fine. But the default of things are found.

Why that defauts? It's little partly because if we don't feel we can really change anything that we want to just kind of saying it's all OK. And if we feel some guilt and shame about the things that aren't okay, more reason to sweep IT under the rug.

So there are a lot of reasons we are not honest with ourselves. If you saying someone, someone was 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 is good. It's because there's a sense of I should be ashamed to that. There is no way I can change that and understand myself well enough.

I'm afraid of that. And he just doesn't have to be that way. And there are routes to change and 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 talking about your life, right to life and narrative, talk to somebody you care about and trust with. 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 you up psychotherapy of choice at seta. But in your experience, what are the modalities that are are the biggest movies 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 ironic, and due to one incident or a number of incidents that kind of White washed everything, one of the biggest modalities, the most effective ones that you like.

mean there ways to get to come at IT. But most of the ways that will come at what you are talking about is an insight oriented psychotherapy. And that could be a kind of psychotherapy, psychodynamic psychotherapy to, for example, that is very, very interested in the unconscious mind or IT could be psychotherapy that's not just focus on the unconscious ind, but focus 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 so that can be inside oriented psychotherapy? IT doesn't enough 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 cogito behavioral strategies can be. They can be very, very helpful, but we need to understand what what is underlying first. So otherwise we just go to with us.

So we're going to polishing the hood instead of looking under the hood. And maybe it's maybe we don't feel so great about the car and we really shooting lish the od, maybe, but maybe for not too 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 innings of itself can make a difference, bring the unconscious, unconscious. Then we have strategies that can actually help sometimes if strategies just decrease symptoms without going toward the problem is that doesn't necessarily help. Maybe that allows a person to tolerate the abusive situation longer.

That's not so good. So we want to come. 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, this person who is depressed is experience ing a purely biological depression. They're handling their life quite well.

They've had some trauma, but they're dealt well with IT that they've a good job, a good relationship, they're meditated, you can care themselves or that 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 psychophysical logical happens at times, but we have IT 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 psychotherapy glands, we have had some insight to decide that. And if I learned 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 this medicine a good idea, or this, so that weren't onna. Leave IT at that, what we're going to go to, why that is different than what you understand about IT, what you don't understand, and we can bring 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 writing things down journal of something analogous to is there a process that you're a particularly big final when .

IT comes to that? No, not a single process because that works differently for different people. And some people like doing that or if they don't know if they like, IT can take to a 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 is kind of Better and something 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 mind, there are different systems of error checking that come online, which is why is kind of a joke in psychotherapy is true that every now and then someone will come in and they'll talk the whole time. And then at the end of this, oh my god, thank you.

You solved on my proud. We didn't say anything, right? So, so sometimes that happens. That happens in my own therapy. Little while guys wait, that thing happened. I, I actually solve the problem by talking about them, because in talking about them, they become real in a different way on putting words. And the words of therapies is still relevant because i'm putting words that are listened to by another person that I know and trust and feel safe with.

I think we retied by them as well. They're going to be there to to you need to not just say complete gobble guk. You need to not just trade off in the midst sentences. There's a type of structure that needs to be there as well.

right? It's a communication structure. It's scrutinized not in a way that that person is going to a fault me, but that person is interested in what i'm saying. And I want to convey IT. Then in this case, what IT allows is not that I conveyed to the other person is that what I conveyed I understood IT Better and it's that, that we're going for if you get that through long hand journey in IT.

Wow, I read that and I understand myself Better do that if you get IT through more Sparkle ling, but it's putting together, hey, there, these patterns of how I feel are, or what I do, and how IT links to how I feel. Then do that if you can, can do that. But you can talk to somebody trusted do that.

The idea is to get IT out of just bouncing around in our minds, because we often don't solve our problems that way. And then we make, like we talked early about the self fulfillling propac's. Then we make a cell fulfilling propac's.

I must be done. I can solve my own problems. I am thinking about a few years. They know all i'm doing over that time is spinning wheels have about another modality that makes things different, actually brings different brain centres online.

And then I can solve those problems that that, that can be the tremendous benefit of writing or talking. And again, IT does IT cost anything. You have to go. And anywhere people can do this if they have about a pendent paper or another human being, they trust. So there 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, the granted, the, the words that are said, the the, the presumptions and assumptions when we encounter a situation, um, is that something? Is there a process that you advise people to go through when IT comes to that repetitive thought, that the sort of narrative that we say.

yeah, I can say in two words and all expand little a 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 called by IT. Don't be frighten by IT. Be interested in what comes into our minds because it's that curiosity that let us Better understand and IT let us put IT in its place. I have this voice and I had not looked the voice of like my own shadow voice.

I kind of know where comes from now that I think about IT that you may 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? Give an opportunities as well.

How about instead of that negative voice, just having the whole playing field, it's in your brain and is got a mega phone habit, let IT have to say, but let the other side have to say, too. Do you really believe that maybe you do, maybe you don't a little bit of devils advocate, may be you be you don't. Do you believe IT or not believe that if you don't believe that, like i'm the worst person in the world, I can do anything, right? okay.

Do you believe that if you don't? Or now we want to look at that for what IT is not telling you anything except that there's something in your head is not real or true or fair and you don't want IT there. Now you more get conceded as other.

That's an otherness. Had that get in my head now I started seeing IT is lion that isn't really belong in me. Now I can start up putting my foot in the door, so to speak.

You give me a little bit of ruby, put your foot in the door and next time that person goes, i'm stupid. I can't do anything or 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 what it's is gone there.

That is not what I believe. So now let's start again. Can I do this thing? IT now is a different decision making process. Oh, no one ever likes me. I shouldn't say hi to that person.

Is that really true that no one ever likes you been taken to for granted for a long time if there's a life narrated, actually, a lot of people like me, but I had a bad relationship outcome, and I feel like no one likes me. Their potential relationship candidate. Okay, we put things in place now, maybe instead that person going away from the potential romantic partner, they say hello.

Now they start changing things because they're not making self for filling problems. You know me, people said, I can't meet anyone. Why can't you mean anyone? I never meet anyone.

Okay, then we look, they're avoiding everyone they could meet. You have to meet some people in order to meet some people that that has to go. So then we try and prepare the person because especially in relationships, 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 wanted, say, how long be nice to a child that lives next store and that's gone well in the past, is probably going to go well if you're going to approach a potential relationship partner, then be aware to love large numbers.

Because if IT doesn't go well, we don't want the person then feel bad about themselves. Guy to and I got to bring myself, I got going to do this a bunch of times, then they're going to be some, some good things. We're going to come of IT.

So so there are new artist too, but you can kind of say that the basic premise, if 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 arrival, conclusions and decisions.

Doctor paul county, ladies gentlemen, this did did. I'm so impressed with you. Andrew told me to reach out.

嗯， you are beyond the real day. I love your affect. I love how sort of caring and and sort of gentle you are with this and insightful. I think you absolutely fantastic, and I really, really appreciate your work. Where should people go that so many people going to want to find out more about what you do?

Where should they go? Well, i'm i'm out there in in podcasting could find me through you just googling and and as they they all get information out there in in great ways, everyone interviews in a different way and and I enjoy them all, but they get information so they're more out there in the podcasts room. The book that I wrote is called a trauma, the invisible epidemic and that also can be just searched in and found out there's a website that just has links to some of the other podcast and to the book, which is just it's uh doctor D R paul counties of D R P A U L C O N T I dot com and that has links to some of the other places that i've that i've appeared.

dr. County, I really appreciate you. Thank you.

But like, you are welcome. Thanks so much for having me.