Roll With The PunchesYou Are Not Your Diagnosis (Or Your Bullsh*t Self-Talk) | Dr. Paul Conti - 893
Dr. Paul Conti is back, and we are getting stuck into the real head stuff. Ever feel like life’s charging ahead while your brain’s still trying to process what the hell just happened? Same. Dr. Conti reckons trauma, identity, and mental health all play a bigger role in that than we realise... And given he's one of the leading experts in trauma and mental health, I'm all ears!
We chat about how trauma sneaks in and shapes our thinking, and why so many of us get stuck in identities that don’t even fit us anymore. Turns out, mental health isn’t just about slapping a label on yourself and calling it a day - it’s about actually understanding how your mind works and taking charge of the narrative.
We also dive into self-talk (spoiler: yours might be more brutal than you think), why sarcasm and self-deprecating humor can be a sneaky form of self-sabotage, and how changing up your environment can shift your entire perspective.
If you’ve ever felt stuck in your own head, trapped in old stories, or just unsure how to shift gears, this one’s for you.
SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS
Website: testartfamilylawyers.com.au
DR. PAUL CONTI
Website: www.drpaulconti.com
TIFFANEE COOK
Linktree: linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches/
Website: tiffcook.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tiffaneecook/
Facebook: facebook.com/rollwiththepunchespodcast/
Instagram: instagram.com/rollwiththepunches_podcast/
Instagram: instagram.com/tiffaneeandco
Get a Team. Welcome back to Roll with the Punches podcast. I'm your host, Tiv Cook, and today we are speaking to none other than doctor Paul Conti for the second time. We spoke to him three years ago on the show, and I was every bit as excited to have him back on for this conversation as I was that first time around. If you don't know doctor Paul Conti, you should. He's a Stanford trained psychiatrist to form a faculty at Harvard Medical School, and he's actually a leading expert on trauma, mental health, and human behavior. His book is called Trauma the Invisible Epidemic. And he's a pretty big deal, is what I'm saying. He's a pretty big deal. He's also an incredibly down to earth and wonderful human. I love having the opportunity to converse with him. So thanks again Paul for coming on the show. We're talking about all things mental health and and wellbeing and identity and you're gonna love this chat. I hope you do. Let me know if you do, of course, and don't forget to hit follow on the app that you are listening to this episode. If you don't already follow the show, that will be a thank you very much, enjoy. Nobody wants to go to court, and don't. My friends at test Art Family Lawyers know that they offer all forms of alternative dispute resolution. Their team of Melbourne family lawyers have extensive experience in all areas of family law to facto and same sex couples, custody and children, family violence and intervention orders, property settlements and financial agreements. Test Art is in your corner, so reach out to Mark and the team at www dot test Artfamilylawyers dot com dot au. Doctor Paul Conti, welcome back to Roll with the Punchers.
Thank you, thank you for having me back.
It's a pleasure, It's beyond a pleasure. And I don't know if it feels the same to you, but it feels like six minutes since we last spoke.
Right, A lot has happened in between, but it feels like a very brief period of time.
I do agree with that.
Yeah, yeah. Is that because I'm getting old? Or is that because I keep talking about this time vortex that happened after the pandemic where my relationship with time just changed and it's like it's kept going, but something hit pause in my mind and I'm like, oh, it's must be twenty twenty one. It's like, no, it's twenty twenty five now.
Right, right right.
I think our perception of time and its passage is so impacted by emotion, which could be an underlying kind of emotional tone within.
Us, or it could be acute.
No, it rises of sometimes good but often distressing emotion, and it can seem like a lot of time has passed. If we think from one event to another, how difficult a period of time has spelt, it can feel like a lot of time. But then when we compress like time as well, it's like a string, right, It's not like a rod, It's.
Like a string.
And then you can kind of take both piece of a nounsments like, oh, this seems only a few minutes apart, right, And that's just how our brains work and how our brains are impacted by the emotion within it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Over the last five or four or four to five years since I have spoken to you, is have have you changed your I guess ideas on anything major? Has there? Like, do you have a different perspective on anything in particular over this time?
Yeah?
I think my perspective has evolved. I mean, I certainly believe that much of what ails us in the moment and also going forward is rooted in trauma.
But I've looked sort of broadly out at what does that mean?
Right? Not just in terms of okay, can we prevent trauma? Can we help heal people heal from trauma? But the question of how do we understand ourselves?
Right?
How do we understand what's going on in our minds and be able to build better mental health? Right? The idea that we think about this with our bodies, right, Like we know that our bodies have different parts that we know there's part long kidneys, muscles, blood vessels, we know kind of how it all fits together, and that there's an endocrine system, and we think about all of these things and we think about them from some general theory of hey, I want to be healthy, right, I want to be healthy because I'll live a better life today, and it also prepares me to hopefully live a good life tomorrow. Then it prepares me in case they're challenges right that at some point in time are going to come my way. So we have sort of a theory of physical health, like, hey, understand our bodies understand diet, exercise, how to take care of ourselves, get the right help if we need it, and then we're shepherding ourselves forward. But I think we're only shepherding part of ourselves forward. That we need the same around our mental health. So instead of mental health seeming like, oh, that's a taboo subject, you isn't not a sting oh mental health, right, we don't think that with physical health.
Like physical health, let's talk about that, right, we all want to be healthy.
We need to do the same for mental health because that helps prevent you know what ails us, which often is trauma. It helps us recover from difficult things, and it gives us an empowerment that we don't have now. You know, it's like trying try to take care of a bicycle and they're taking care of one wheel and not the other. No, one is a flat and it's falling apart, and the other really looks looks great. We're paying a lot of attention to it, you know, the whole vehicle. Then the bike isn't going to get very far. And I see more and more than the absence of this that there's not a theory of like how do we work right and not just a theory, but a set of a set of principles that we can understand and ground to, and it can see like, I understand the attributes components of my mental health and I'm going to build better mental health for the future.
We can do that, and.
The primary change in me is coming to a place of feeling that we need to be able to articulate that and to say, like, here, you can look at mental health like physical health, no stigma attached to either.
Now we're taking care of the whole person.
Talk to me about trauma literacy. Do people have trauma literacy? What is people's relationship It's a blanket term because everyone's different, But what do you think overall people's relationship with the idea of trauma is.
I think there's so much fear around trauma, just as the stigma around mental health and mental health issues as has continued on through the decades. Maybe say, okay, if there are ways in which it's better than it was thirty years ago. I'm sure there's some ways it was that it is better, but it is essentially unchanged, and that we carry forward a stigma, and stigma brings with it mystery and fear. So trauma is just a scary thing. What does it do to us? How does it change us? What happens when a person has trauma? What might have happened to me from trauma? What could happen to me? And then we become very afraid. And you know, fear isn't good for us. Everything that's that's difficult or stressful in our in our lives, that fear is exacerbated, the fear jumps up to high levels if we just don't have an understanding, right and and this is the problem that we don't have an understanding of all our brains work and how we're interfacing with the world, let alone how trauma has affected us or could affect us.
And then I think what happens is we just try away from it.
Right we then we're scared of it and it's a lot easier to focus on the things we think we can understand and the things that don't come with stigma.
So physical health is a great example.
We should be focusing on physical health, but it's so attractive to focus on physical health instead of mental health because we don't we don't have a way of understanding our mental health. And I think that then we don't have trauma literacy we have. We lead with fear, and that is not helping us. As the world becomes more difficult and more fragmented, that we become more afraid because we don't understand ourselves and understand the components of our mental health as we do.
The components of our physical health. So I don't think we've achieved averting stigma for mental health or literacy around mental health topics, certainly including trauma.
I always felt, I know it was true for myself, the relationship with finding something in the physical realm to throw myself into and work on. That opened the door, the trauma door for me. That brought me into my body. My sport was boxing, if you don't remember, So it brought me into my body, It brought me into feeling sensation. It brought me into seeing the version of Tiff underneath the facade and the mask that Tiff had built to present.
To the world.
And with that, I felt like an open updoors in my mind, taking me back to things I'd suppressed and asking me to lean into them. What's the difference between people that lean into or avoid like I do. Some people attempt to get physically fit, and then some of those doorways might crack open, and that's what makes people get out.
Yeah, Okay, it takes a lot of courage to do that, because what you were doing is saying, I'll shine the light around places I don't really understand and I don't really know what I'm going to find there. Right that they that they're they're things to pay attention to and things that have happened, and you know, ways that I have experienced life that have taken a call on me, and I'm going to look at that right like you had if I'm understanding correctly, and a feeling of I'm not going to take care of neck on down unless I'm taking care of neck on up too, right, and I'm a whole person, and like, that's great that you have done that, But it takes it takes.
A lot of courage.
And sometimes you know, there can be a natural kind of genetic predisposition to go places that are mysterious and maybe scary, but more often than not, our response to that is to step away from right, is to maybe double down on the physical health, because you know, that's something to pay attention to that I can control and make better. And I'm not going to go looking up here because I don't know what I'm going to find or know. The thought is, sometimes if we shine the light there, what we're going to see is going to be so scary and we won't be able to handle it, and we just become afraid. And I think that's the normal human response across the population if we are not empowered, empowered with knowledge. There is a way of looking at your brain, your brain function, so to speak. Right, you can look at it and understand it.
What is the.
Structure of the self that I have up here? What is the function of the self that I have up here? What are the components of it? How can I understand it? How can I use a process to look at myself and understand what is not the way I want it to be, or what is keeping me down, or what is fueling the depression in me, whatever it may be, what is causing the fear is and the panic. If we have a way of doing that, then we are much more likely as a population to do it than we are if it remains a stigmatized black box. And that's why, No, you see not all the time, but it's not uncommon to see people who they are doing the physical health things so well, they are paying deep attention to their physical health, but you can look and see that that's not going to be okay without paying attention to their mental health, right that that person that can still be in a very very difficult place because they're paying attention to what they think they can understand and control. And it's I think our job people in mental health, people in the field, or bringing word of this. You can understand what's up here as much as you can understand this. We don't have to be afraid of our physical health because we have kidneys. We can understand our kidneys filter things we want to keep them healthy. We don't have to be a kidney doctor to understand enough about the kidney to integrate it into our physical health. But the brain has remained a black box, and therefore our mental health has remained a black box, so we don't think of it as something that we can understand and build and hence the whole idea. If you say mental health, there's a very different response than if you say physical health, and we need to change that or we're not going to get healthier as a population, and we're facing really difficult situations in the world around us where we need to be healthier as a population.
If people have if people have battled with their own mental health for a long period of time and their relationship with that is this, like this is me, this is what I have, This is what I struggle with. If it's depression or it's anxiety or whatever the if it's this clinical thing that they're late too. Is there a difference between.
Like what.
Mental well being like mental health? What is there a relationship that we need to maybe reimagine or understand differently.
I think so.
I think the idea that we can build good mental health, right, or we can at least build significantly better mental health is so important because what happens a lot is the person then identifies with the mental health challenge, like I'm a depressed.
Person, right, That's just it's how I am.
Or I'm a person who's so antiates I can't you know, just can't make it in relationships, you know, Like this happens a lot, right, I have so much distressed in me, or it's hard to relate to people and I can never get ahead at work. There just could be an acception, an acceptance even when a person isn't built to just accept negative things. So why would someone who's built to strive, not built to just accepting that are negative embrace Yep, that's that's me and it's not going to get any better. It's it's because the thought is there isn't a pathway forward. There's not a steps to take to then to understand and change the mental health of Like, is it really true that I am a depressed person? I mean, maybe that person is is inseparable from depression, but that is very, very very rare. Right, most of the time people who will say that, who will embrace I am whatever the mental health challenges is doing that in the context of thinking I can't make this any better. Right, There's no way to understand this and make this better. So okay, we just identify as and who wants to say, you know what, I'm depressed a lot and it's really impacting my life and I want it to be different. Without any route to making that better, we generally don't do that. We need the empowerment of knowledge in order to tell us go look at what is in your what in your life is not the way that you want it to be. Look at whatever it is. Is it mood, is it how you're interacting with people?
Is it energy?
Is it enthusiasm for things? Is it avoidance? Is it relationships? People want a job, changes?
Whatever?
It may be right to look at that, and it' say like, why is it that I might I would accept or I could accept that I can't do better or be better. It's my life, right, I'm accepting something that, were it to change, could make my life dramatically better. Right, why would I not go about and go try and do that? And I think there is an answer to that is there has to be a route or someone. You can't put someone in the middle of, you know, in a clearing in the middle of a thick jungle and say, well, figure out where to go. There's no path forward, so it's scary to go into the jungle. The person's likely to stay in the clearing, right, at least they are in the clearing, as opposed to that going into the thick, dangerous jungle when you don't know where to go. And and I think it is the job of the field that the mental health field has failed to identify and educate people that here's how you keep good mental health I mean the physical health field has done a whole lot better job, right saying on better physical health, if you want to lose weight, feel better, have a better diet, I says, we can do that for you.
Right, you want more muscle strength, like, let's understand how to do that. But my field has not done that.
In mental health, it has become obsessed with pathologizing. So we have a book this big with you know, a blether. I've done diagnoses for each of us.
Right, and no way to understand it.
Why is what people call the Bible or religious book of mental health a taxonomy of pathology?
Right?
This makes no sense. The field has not shown people like you can understand yourself and build better mental health, and that is absolutely my thesistent. That's why people come to care and get better, or people follow some out of understanding and can help themselves. So, yes, we can understand ourselves and we can be we can do better, we can be better. The field hasn't guided us there, so I think it it follows.
The practitioners live in the fieldhere.
People think I have something to say about this that can really help people change their lives, and I do believe that.
So thinking about the idea of pathologizing and getting allowing people to have an understanding or a label to lean on, a metric to go this is what's going on. We've got a set of things that we can, you know, identify with, and obviously different therapists. There's good ones, there's bad ones, there's bethowa of different approaches. Do you think that the that the diagnosing and labeling is falls into being a positive thing for the most part or more of an anchor for a lot of people.
I think it's a negative.
I think it is far more an anchor than it is a positive, far more because it gives a way of labeling yourself like, oh, I'm this.
Like how many people have said, well, I'm bipolar. I can't well, what does that mean?
I mean?
I am bipolar.
We think about this statement of identifying oneself with a diagnosis, like people don't say I am high blood pressure. They don't say that, by and large, if you have high blood pressure. The routes of figuring that out and not being high blood pressure. Okay, so we don't identify with the diagnosi and diagnosis is something you could get that then you.
Want to understand and work your way through.
So you don't have to have it anymore, but violize that is not the case in mental health, where we are so interested in just labeling the pathology as opposed to helping people understand themselves even you know the concept of this, there's a structure of self and a function of self, and I do. I'm writing a book that's that in spring of next year, will come out about all of this. It's material from the series I did on the Huberman Lab podcast last September, and it was about let's try and understand ourselves and understand our mental health.
And we got a lot of.
Concepts out in that series of podcasts that then have been moved forward on subsequent podcasts or in writing and writings that really open up this concept of like we can understand our mental health and we can have a template a way of looking at it and saying, this is what is going on in people, right, so I can look at what is going on in me. So just one example being the unconscious mind. The vast majority of what goes on inside of us is in the unconscious mind, but we.
Don't think about that.
You know, how is it that like a million neurons can fire, and one thought or idea can come.
Up to the surface. So what's going on inside of us that determines.
How those million neurons fire and what it kicks up to the surface, which could be you know, maybe I could do that, or that'll never work, you.
Know, I'll fail? Like what is it the difference?
Like these are constructs of self that arise from our minds. And even this first step of the structure of self, the unconscious mind, we don't think about, let alone the things that are built.
On top of it. Of what is our defensive structure? Right?
Well?
The function of ourself?
How do I defense mechanisms work when they're in action? What's stealing it? What do I notice from inside and out of myself? Once we start putting all this together, then there is a model understand this is how my mental health works, and I can make it better, just like there is a model for a physical health. This is how the body works, and you can understand that and make it better.
I love this. I'm gonna I'm going to lean on your professional I'm going to ask for some professional advice here. It's very cheeky on me, isn't it. I started last year running a group ten week mindset coaching facilitation. So I call myself facilitator, not a coach. I'm like all of the knowledge and resources that I feel like I have to point people to in the conversations I've had are a cool place to have conversations, like how to understand ourselves. So the things and some of the things that for me I think are really important that I like to share is that balance of personal responsibility over us and our relationship with our circumstances couple with self compassion in the middle of that. How do I own this? How do I take responsibility for the things that go on or have gone on, but also exercise the correct level of self compassion for the version of me that was in the middle of that, that didn't that didn't know better or couldn't do better in that circumstance. Then, so we look at how we talk to ourselves, our circumstances, how we treat our relationship with our body, our relationship and communication with other people, our environment, what influences me, what environment do I put myself in? All of these things, and very much not having not looking for the answer, like the idea that there's a lot of answers and what I share might and be the answer for you, But there might be some great avenues to look into and be open minded about. So that's kind of a bit of an overview. If there was one really important thing that you would say, you need a week that focuses on this for these people, what would that be.
Well, I think you're talking about compassionate curiosity right that you're coming together and you're trying to help people look at themselves, understand themselves, be compassionate to themselves and be curious like why did I do that that wreck that.
Job, or that really cost something bad? And well, what happened? Said thoughts and ideas like that.
We can look at ourselves with compassion, whether we think we're responsible for something bad that's happened or not. We can look at all that and try and put together a story and a narrative of how did I get here?
What has happened to bring me here?
If I can look at myself through the lens of compassion and be really curious, I want to understand myself more. The word it brings us to is to take responsibility for ourselves in the present right, I mean, I'm not responsible for myself in the past. It's already happened, right, so whether I was responsible or wasn't responsible, it leads me here. But we we do so much of lamenting the past, trying to repair the past, or reading the tea leaves of the past. You know it has it worked, so it won't work again, and we end up with fantasies and myths and so much it just misleads us as opposed to what I think is the simple goodness of like here, I am now, and I want to do the best I can right now, and it's going to really help me to understand myself as best I can. What it is not going to help me is to make false predictions from the past to the present, or to beat up on myself or the things in the past, or to decide I was the one who was okay and everyone else was wrong and no one will ever do right by me. Like we try and work out so much of our past in the present, and then we become not surprisingly not responsible for ourselves in the present. And it's very hard, right, It's hard to let go of things when people feel like they were really really hurt by someone or really hurt by the way they've been treated, say over and over and over again, like go.
On the one hand, we want to say, of course, we want to honor that.
We want to honor what has going on in a person and understand where is that lodged in their brain?
Right is that lodge somewhere?
And their coping skills and how they're approaching with like, let's understand all of that and honor all of that. But also we have to put it in its place, which is in the past, and say, Okay, what am I going to choose now? So if the last eleven times I tried to find a good relationship or a new job or whatever it is did not go well, then it's my responsibility to look at why, because my life is going to go well unless I make a twelfth that effort, right, twelfth attempt, And I don't want the twelfth to be like the first eleven. By what I'd like to do is understand so that I can see, Okay, what has happened, right, no harm, no foul. I'm not looking at it to beat myself up. I just want to understand so I can do the best I can now. And it's so hard for us to do that, especially without a template that says, let's.
Help you understand how your mind works.
I mean, as part of what you're doing is letting people be in a place, in a setting where they can be curious about themselves. They could talk about themselves, they could talk about certain they feel bad about it, ashamed about her, whatever the case may be, and.
They can orient Okay, what does that mean? What might you do for that? And now how do you point yourself forward?
And I think the mental health field does not do that, and there needs to be a shift where we help people do that.
If there's pathology, we'll.
Label it when you put a number on it, or we can treat it, but how about looking at what the constituents are the components of our mental health and how we can understand them in ourselves and build better. That's the forward looking part of it, and I think that's what you what you're doing the right You're helping people look forward when there's a lot to weigh them down from.
The path.
I always talk about my relationship with the mind slash brain being like almost describe it like a naughty puppy, a girl like we have to understand because we it's like I have a body, but I'm not my body. And then there's this part of our mind that's doing its own thinking and decision making and behaviors. It's acting them out, which confuses is because then we take ownership and go, I'm so stupid because I did that again when I said I wouldn't, but I'd always talk about it like training in or if you bring a new puppy home and you don't teach it where to we a thousand times it was just we on the carpet for the rest of its life, and it's like your mind is kind of the same thing. You have to go up weed on the carpet, Hey don't we there? Go away on the out on the grass. And yeah, I feel like for myself somehow, developing that kind of metaphor in my mind about how we think has been really helpful about giving me separation between going, oh, look, I've told myself a story and I've I used to think I'm such a bloody masterful storyteller that I always have this great, feel good story about the reason I do particular things, and then you know, like, for example, we went into lockdown, I started a podcast. I was fucking killing it right, And I'm like, oh, my businesses a shutdown. This is really bad thing. But I hear I am killing it at something new? Is this a coping mechanism? Because I do great when there's chaos. And I spent a long time waiting for me to just let the podcast fall on its backside, And I was like is this and like, am I going to wake up tomorrow and be like, all right, that's do unseea And that didn't happen. But I just knew enough about my storytelling ability to be like, yeah, you'll be a superhero for five minutes and then you crash.
And I think there's a lot. There's a lot to that.
I mean, certain person does very well under a lot of stress and pressure. Is you just do what there is to be done. You don't have time to stop and think and second guess. And what happens if I feel you know, sometimes with pressure it can be I mean, it can do negative things, but it can also be a very good thing where you just go out and do what there.
Is to do, right.
I think this a lot where I'll use this example when when person said I can't do any thing, I can't function, you know, I'm so depressed or I'm a loser on this. I'm that it's nothing to offer. May hear a lot of this, and then I'll think of this idea of you know what if that person I'll ask, I'll ask the person, I'll why.
This conversation of Now.
I used to imagine a thought experiment that that that person shows up lands in a refugee camp, say, and that person isn't a refugee, but he's witnessing Oh my goodness, like, look at what is going on.
You're right there, people who are desperate.
There's not a food like you imagine the scenarios it can happen, right, And I think that that would go away.
The thoughts of oh I'm not this, I'm not that.
And you see that in real life situations, that person doesn't think they can do anything. You come back two days later and they've done nothing but work on other people's behalf because the situation is dire and they're needed, and they feel a sent ofm like I can make a difference here, and then they can spring into action.
And but we don't get those situations.
We can't wave a magic wand and have the person show up where it's chaos and other people are in need. Right, But if we if we use that thought experiment, many people did they understand we see inside and them oh of course, Well, then they could rise to the occasion.
You see that a lot because they don't have time to second.
Guess themselves and be so self Consciousome, Okay, what I don't want to make a mistake?
What am I going to do? Wrong? Am I going to do that thing I did before? Right? We get me very very self conscious. Let alone. If there's a mental health issue in there.
We're depressed, we're anxious, are having panic attacks, I mean, insomnia.
It becomes so hard to have faith.
And confidence in ourselves to go to just do it in that sense, like I want to make my life better, Let.
Me do that. Let me say what can I do differently? Right? Let me think about what's going on when things have been going well? What can I change? Who can I talk to? You know, we don't do that. We could kind of tend to stop and then feel afraid.
And if we feel ashamed to ourselves and afraid, what we don't want is more fear and more shame, and then we just get shut down and we're shut down because the system doesn't the systems around us don't help us, right, So people are isolated and with the problems inside them, and they can kind of spin down and stay in one place metaphorically and sometimes actually, and this is just very very.
Bad for us.
And it doesn't have to be this way, right, It can be very it could be different, It can be very very different.
I think everything it's true in my life, like everything that is. I realized everything that was the hardest gave birth to everything I cherished the most. So everything that was horrific was brilliant because I look at what I most value and the things that mean the most to me, and they are born from the adversities that I went through. They were born from that. And even the things that I've chosen to do, things like speaking in public, filled me with terror. And I used to used to be like, I can't wait to not feel like this. I can't wait to feel good enough that I won't feel this sickening level of nerves. But then after I do the thing and I feel this, it's incredible. Other side of that, I'm like, oh, this is hardwired to me. This is actually not a case of getting good enough if I didn't feel like that, I wouldn't want to do this. There'd be no drive because I wouldn't get to this feeling of elation at the end. But simultaneously, you know, like I think having choice, realizing that when that happened to me in business, I went, oh, very limited choices. Right now, the one choice I can make is the attitude I'll have. So I'll pretend that the worst scenario has played out, and I'll play that game, and I'll get busy working on things that can't be taken away, like material or monetary things. But once I built myself away from that old things are the worst they could possibly be all of a sudden, then you have choice. And when there's choices and decisions all of a sudden, there's a cost. There's something to lose. And I recognized that I was. I felt more free and more comfortable working from a place of well, can't get worse in this, Let's get busy. Then all we didn't fall completely off the cliff, So now what if it.
Can't get worse than this, then your efforts are going to make things better. And that's very different than if things are going well. And then we think well, how could I fail?
Right?
I mean a lot of that is natural, you know, in us, but if we understand it, we can resist it. If I build something for myself and now I have choice, you know, that's really good. It shows I built something for myself and now I have choices. Right, But there's also the pressure that comes along with the fear of failure and what those choices bring, and choices can bring risks.
So you know, the choice is great. We want to be aware.
That we have choice, but we want to be healthy enough that we can handle choice right, that we can look at choice and not feel that is overwhelming to us, or that the choice that can.
Fall back into the same powers. I'm not going to make it. I'm going to same place I was when I get back on my feet again.
Right, So choice can be so so brightening and part of a huge problem in our societies. Are in sort of Western thoughts it we're so over reductionists. We wanted we wanted to distill everything down to one thing, right, like do you like chocolate or vanilla? Or high school? Like it's like you can't be the boat or can't you know what? Some days I don't like either.
Some days. I love both, Like we always we have to distill down to how do you feel about that?
Right? And I think that is so limiting because that's not our human state. Our natural human state is to feel conflicted and pulled both ways, Like how do you feel about that having made some success in having some opportunity? The answer is both elated and incredibly frightened, right.
So you know, I mean that's been the case in my life. I'm both like really really happy about that and I'm scared of it.
And it's not strange, and I don't reduce that down to one thing, and I feel like there's so much pressure, But how do you think about it?
How do you feel?
Then it gets inside of our hands as opposed to just acknowledging that we feel so many different ways about so many different things, and that, okay.
Also leans into our identity, doesn't it. I just late last year I went to the Himalayas on this retreat, and the feeling I had it was a fairly last minute ish decision to jump on this experience, And in the few weeks lead up, I was like, I don't really know what this whole holiday's holiday retreat's going to be like, but what I'm really looking forward to is getting away from all of the influences that are reflecting a certain identity on me of Tiff the boxer, Tiff the person in the gym, Tiff the podcaster, and I just want to get away from all of the people and familiarity and see who's left seat and reconnect with all the parts of me that aren't those parts that have just ran the show for the last few years, right.
Right, Absolutely, we get lost in role performance, right, which is what role are you playing? And it's like, okay, well you are that role and you are the podcaster, you're in the gym, you are the boxer, right, And then we get so many roles coming at us.
I am this, I am that, And it's almost.
As if we have a dial and we're just shifting the self and the self is being this now the self is being that.
And that can be.
Very confusing, you know, very confusing, and it can lead us away from feeling an identity of self, which is probably why when you turn, when you get.
Out of the roles, what you're just left with is you, right.
And then you might think something like, you know what, I'm a curious person who really is interested in learning and doing new things, like oh, okay, that's the you that flows through all of the roles, right, I'm a perseverant person who decides upon something and I'll keep going forward and I'll try and learn. And then even if they're obstacles, they're going to try and because that's why.
And then we start thinking about.
Who actually we are instead of being being defined by our roles, because even when the roles are going well, that is difficult, let alone. If we're defining ourselves by our role and wonderful role isn't going well, the job isn't going well, and that person might lose the job.
Then you know, people, how many times we hear people paying with a.
Broad brush like that's it, I'm done, or I'm the worst person painting with a broad brush.
I'll never make it, I'm a failure to my family, whatever it is.
Because if we're so lost in the roles, then we don't see the whole person that we are, right and if we don't understand how our minds work and how and don't build good mental health, then we will fall back on something or rather that's not healthy, like oh, I'm these roles, right, or I'm that role. Well, now we're really at risk because what if that role changes or goes away, or something happens in it. So it's bad enough when they're good role Rob Burns is going well, and we identify with our roles. But a lot of times what happens in societies, we identify ourselves by the roles we think we're faitailing at or we're.
Not good enough at.
And this is why you mentioned earlier that you're when you're facilitating, you're trying to get people to talk about, Hey, what's yourself talk inside? Right? I mean, I think very little could be more important right after that to understand what is going on inside the person in quiet moments. And a lot of times it's fear of not being good enough, or it's it's some negative tape that's running over and over again. You're never gonna make it, You're not gonna be good enough for whatever it is.
That person's gonna dump it, you're gonna get fired, you're gonna fail at that over and over.
You're a loser. Look what happened then or here? I mean, the things that go on inside of our minds are very, very striking, Right, what goes on inside of us and to have with compassion and curiosity? Why is that going on inside of it? They say, No one comes out of the womb and thinks I'm a loser. I'm never gonna be okay, Right, this comes into us from life experiences that we have, and then we reinforce it over and over again.
You get a puppy example, I think is a very good one.
The example that I use is like you imagine if we just picked a random word and said it a thousand times, but it's going to be in our head.
It's going to be on our head tomorrow.
If you said it five thousand times, give me in our head two days from now.
Right.
So what happens is we reinforce this negativity to us, to ourselves so much, and then we just want to change it. Oh, I did that thing again, or I said that thing again so much times. Like, of course you've said it yourself one hundred thousand times, right, you're not going to not say it again. Right. That the path to health is a process, and it's a process that occurs over time. And it's okay that this negative self talk is in your head and you can't get it out.
It has to be okay.
Because we can't just get it out. What we can do is understand it and take away the ways in which it is threatening. Now, the fact that a person maybe said is many times people, over and over, you're saying you're a loser.
But the only threat to that is that you may believe it. Right, there's no intrinsic press. It's something who say to yourself.
Right, then you say it so many times that you're not going to just stop having it come to your mind.
But can you challenge it and say, why is it right?
The Little Devil's advocates I said, we want to be the judge right, and then have.
The two sides like why is it? Why do I say that to myself? Is it really true? Right? Is there anything in my life it's not that?
And often people my goodness of course that I love people, they love me.
I do this good thing and that good thing.
But there then what can happen is they drop something or something bad happens like oh I'm a loser, comes back so strong like this is all normal because we reinforcing so strongly inside of our brains. But we can start to detach from that, like I am not what I am thinking, right, I am not what I am feeling. Right. It may be that what I'm thinking is really congruated bits with who I am, or it may not at all, right, and what I'm feeling now if I make a mistake or make an error and you know, feel embarrassed and like I mean, I can absolutely feel like a complete loser, right, so it stop?
Okay, wa wait a second, you.
Know, like you know, that's how you feel because something happened that's embarrassing, Like it's you know, this is okay. We're not what we think, We're not what we feel in any given moment. We have to have curiosity about ourselves and understand ourselves and this is who I am. So for example, it could be I'm a person who tries very hard and I do well when it's just interpersonal.
I'm being kind to someone, they'll be good back to. That goes well.
But then there are other situations where I have more trouble, like maybe work situations where there could be more conflict, and I have more trouble with that, and I want to look at the things that are good in me, and I want to work on.
The things that aren't the way I want them to be.
But think about how reasonable and measured that is, as opposed to the reflex of like, I'm a loser?
Why is that?
And you learn they're identifying with this one thing. You know, I don't do well with conflict at work? Like, okay, you don't do well with conflict at work? That's what that means. Right Now, let's look more how do you deal with conflict other places? Now we are bringing curiosity instead of I'm a loser, and I can tell you why, But even the why is an afterthought, right. We need to be curious about ourselves, challenge about ourselves, and realize we can change. I see the process of change through mental health work all the time, and I have for almost a quarter of a century. Now it does happen, and it happens a lot, and it can be robust and joyous, but it has to be framed in a certain way of like what does it take to get there? How long does it take to get there? Like what does it mean when you have a setback? Like okay, they're setbacks all the time. When people have diabetes and it's difficult to control one's blood sugar. Very oftentimes they're setbacks. A person ends up in an emergency room. You know, it didn't go well. We end up in a hospital and we look at that. We don't tell the person it's the third time you come in because you haven't mattered your blood sugar.
Like, this is it. We're done now.
We don't do that with physical health, but we do it with mental health. I made that mistake again. I'm done with Like, you know, we paint with such a broad brush about ourselves, and the mental health system puts people in buckets, right and labels people in ways that don't allow for that process of change. Is it kind of medically too, when a person comes in and they just get the butcherers.
Where they need to be, send them back out, that's how they come back in again. Right.
But if we can say, ok, you're important, you're worth taking care of, Let's look at how you ended up here again because like you can do better for you. Let's talk about that, and let's say you have that conversation. A person comes in again, let's have that conversation again. Right, But we tend not to do that with mental health topics either. Really helping resources through the mental health field. And I don't mean there aren't great people practicing in It's just a field in general.
It isn't doing that, and we tend not to do it ourselves either.
We tend to paint with a very, very broad brush about ourselves when things aren't the way we want them to be, and that we're scared of our mental health. And now we're doing that. Whole thing we started talking about is being afraid, being ashamed, avoiding, And now I think I am I am depression, or I am some label somebody put on me years ago, or some label I put on me that I've repeated to myself ten thousand times.
It's not true.
Yeah, I remember looking at so Gem facilitated the retreat, and like, I find it really interesting to lead conversations, take on understandings, develop beliefs and perspectives, but also like that naughty puppy at times, I'm like, you can still sit in the middle of that and then struggle to notice what you're what some underlying thinking or behavior is, or be really challenged at shifting it. So I remember sitting on the mountain and hearing Jem who he's on my podcast once a month so I know quite heard to call a lot of stories. Who's sitting on the mountain and he took his guitar and he's singing. And his fiance now fiance, proposed that She said, oh, did you tell them that he was in an album? Like he was in a band and they used to play him on Triple J. And I was like, oh really, And I just thought he's been He was on a few TV shows, so he was an actor, then he was a musician. At one stage he went overseas and he traveled under the guise of almost being a homeless person in India. He wanted to take him wanted to have no possessions and just live on the street and be just find himself. And I just and I kind of flicked through that in my mental filing cabinet, and when here I am with some bound attachment to this current identity. I only started boxing a decade ago. That's twenty five percent of my life. For seventy five percent of my life, I've not been a boxer. I've been a podcaster for ten percent. For ninety percent of my life, I wasn't doing this skill set. And yet sometimes that stuckness of this is what I am and who I am? It's like it's not at all, And it's curious to me that we can still with all the knowledge we have to find. So for me, it's looking at what's my ecosystem? Do I get out and have perspective and I have and good conversations. Who's influencing me, who's challenging me? Am I challenging myself? What do I need in order to maintain a healthy perspective of what I'm thinking and believing along the way? Great?
And how do you knit it together into a conception of self that includes all of those things? And you can say, well, I'm you know what I have had for the whole time I've been here is I'm perseverant, I'm willing to take chances. Right if you knock me down, I'm going to get back up. Right of it that goes through your life, Right, so you can look and say, okay, that's how a person ends up at boxing ten years ago, right at podcasting. There are truths about you that those facts informed, right, But what happens we'd end up taking facts about ourselves or others and making the definition so so people may or you in your own mind some of the time. We've been a lot of time. May want to reduce yourself down to that identity. I'm a boxer, I'm a podcaster. It'say, No, you're doing those things now and they're really important pieces of data and information about who you are.
How does that fit into the broader picture? You know, what is the story? So I'm so.
Just so strongly in favor of life narratives, right of stopping and thinking about our So sometimes people.
Never do this, like we never do it.
You can talk to somebody's ninety years old and as a very disjointed sense of something. More often than not, this can be the case because they haven't mitted their life together, right, They haven't thought about like.
Oh, what is this trajectory of me and the us?
We never do that, and there's a call to do that so we understand ourselves better. Where as happy and healthy as we can be, there's certainly a call.
To do that. If we're looking at things in ourselves that aren't.
The way that we want them to be, right to look at it, Okay, look when did that happen or come did? I always have a tendency to that, right, like someone who wants to over control and then when they can't avoid.
Have I always been like that? Is that something that's kind of in me?
That predisposition because I could understand that and work against it. Maybe I wasn't like that, but a couple of life experiences where I couldn't control things that I felt very very hard to control, maybe some situation or could even be like violence in a home, or could be any prejudice or whatever it may be that.
I wanted that to be different.
I wanted it to be different, couldn't control it, and then I just had to get away from it. And now is that person repeating that pattern where if they understood, like it made sense that I did that that one right, But that's not defining who I am. Maybe the more defining characteristic of that story I'm making up could be resilience. Right, the things I couldn't control so I left and had to opt out, and then I started again. It's not that I'm a person who I want to control things. I want to control things, and then if I can't have my way, I leave, Like maybe I've stereotyped myself that way. Then the story of my life is actually some difficult things happened to me, and I'm pretty resilient, and I can change, including now that if I don't want to be following pattern that ruins my relationships or ruins my employment, or it gets in the way of nownfunctioning in my family, I can look at that and I can make change. I'm not a person who does this acts like that, right, I can understand myself. What are the underlying qualities in me? And do I want to change them? Maybe I am.
Over controlling and it comes from trauma. Say okay, that doesn't mean it's okay that I'm over controlling. Right, it's negative in my life now. So I can look and.
See if I can understand how did I get to this place, and I can say, okay, this doesn't serve me now, So I want to change this step. And it's not going to change just because I want it to change, right, It would change if I understand myself as best like and I work right and work on understanding myself. I work on change, and I handle setbacks. I often say, if we're going to move our mental health boward, that's like almost always three steps forward, one step back, right, two steps forward, two steps back, maybe four steps forward, one step back. That's a good period of time. Sometimes it's one step forward and two steps back. But we don't have that framing in a mental health world that wants to just put like a numbers on the person right and not help that person understand themselves and understand like this is just an assessment of your condition. Now, even with mental health issues that they require warrant medicines, the person still isn't defined by that person who absolutely needs an antidepressant or they.
Just can't function, or a person needs a medicine. They're hearing voices.
It doesn't mean that person is defined by whatever illness diagnosis they have. And we don't do that, or we fight hard against that in physical health, but we don't in mental health. It's so easy to identify and label ourselves by or others by the things that we don't like.
When we're talking about our narratives and our language and how we talk about or relate to ourselves. What is the danger or is there a danger behind because this is very much the Australian way sarcasm and self deprecation in a humorous manner. Is there a danger of using that and then maybe implementing a negative narrative of badass elves.
Absolutely, humor is interesting, right, because humor, as you said, could be self deprecating, and it's just a person like you know, saying something negati about themselves.
Everyone else will feel a little better or whatever. It is like that.
It can be that way, but that same thing can occur, the same looks the same from the outside, and it's actually vicious, right, I mean, humor can also be a way of being vicious to self and others.
So yes, the question is how is it being used.
Self deprecating humor is great, right, we don't take ourselves too seriously and we can laugh with other ears and you know about ourselves. Like, self deprecating humor is great, But is that what it is? Is it self deprecating humor in that lighthearted way? Or is that just the way that I get away with saying awful things to myself both inside and out, or awful things sometimes to someone else.
But yes, what's going on.
Underneath the surface of the humor is that lighthearted or is that a way that is a person permission to lets that person say things that are actually that are actually quite awful to say a lot of times that is what it is to look at what's going on.
What's the community, what is the communication, what is really going on? If I say that self.
Deprecating thing, is that funny or is it just a way that I can just needle myself again about something that I'm not happy about myself?
What sort of work can people do themselves to get a really honest understanding of how do I speak to myself or think about myself? What is my relationship with self?
Yeah?
I think the first thing to do is to engage that compassionate curiosity is to stop and think about self, like, Okay, here I am, you know, how did I get here? Sometimes just having an a timeline even then then think about some aspects of that timeline. So oftentimes there are parts of our lives we don't even think about.
You know, in difficult.
Times, I thought very very little about nurturing and raising and things that came into my life from my grandmother who who is such a huge force in my life and molded like how to be in the world and how to treat other people. And there was a long period of time when I was depressed, angry, miserable, like I had no idea it wasn't ever in my consciousness, like I forgot about that.
Well, it doesn't mean I forgot it, could never remember. It just wasn't in my brain.
And that's an example of something that happens pretty commonly that if you go back and you think about a narrative of self, you remember things about self. You know things about self. There was a time I felt differently than this. There was a time someone else had faith and hope and confidence in me. I learned a lot of things then that I can apply now and including to me. Right, I can maybe be a little night ice, a kind of myself, more nurturing to myself, be out there in the world in the way I want.
But unless we make narratives like what's going on in my life? And how do I get here? Always supposed to understand ourselves.
I mean, I do hope to add to the to the literature, to the to the thought like here is a way of working through an understanding of self of what is the structure of you in here? What is the function of you in here? How can you look at that and map it to what's going on in your life? Like I do think.
There's a call for that at the moment.
I think the best way to do that is to have compassionate curiosity about self, and curiosity means like make a timeline, think about what happened, think about.
Major changes in your life. You know what happened when? And why? Are there characteristics of you that carry through your whole life? Are there characteristics that are really different, better or worse? If so, why?
I mean, we should be infinitely interesting to ourselves, right, That's how we.
Can make our lives better. But often we are not.
We're scared to look at ourselves and then we're ready to accept the label that someone outside of us or us puts on ourselves, and we don't feel curiosity about ourselves. We're afraid to go and do that. We're afraid to look inside. And I think that is really a tragic shortcoming of the field that.
I work in.
What are the do you have non negotiable practices for yourself? What are the things that you either practice or fall back on or keep in mind when it comes to just I don't know your own well being and mental health.
I think what I try and do is really be aware of what's going on inside of me and not let it kind of run away with me. So if I'm stressed about something, I'm worried something isn't going to go well, or I'm worried something I is gonna be good enough or whatever it is, I can start creating a whole story around that, and then a whole, a whole what's kind of self state? Where like now I feel anxious and I feel sort of maybe even unsafe and afraid to some degree, and it's inside of me, and I'm bringing that everywhere, right, and then maybe what's going on inside of my head are memories of things that didn't go so well, like a long way. Why am I thinking exactly about those things?
Right?
Because I'm afraid that feeling I had when something didn't go what was going to happen again? The whole climate inside of me is now different, and I do my best to pay attention to that, to pay attention to that and think, I can you know what, right now, I'm not a loser, I just feel like one.
That's okay. I get to feel like a luzi mean anything right, Okay? Then then I can kind of.
Set aside how I might feels just one example, right, including good things too. I feel great about that like, Okay, I worked hard, like we feel.
Good about it, and then I want to you know, I want to ground.
Myself and move forward, like we can keep ourselves grounded to the whole self, but we have to pay attention to what's going on. Otherwise we our brains will run away with us. And now I'm in a place where I'm irritable, kind of feel behind the eight ball. I don't know why I don't feel so good, and now I'm being irritable with people around me, and I have some inter personal conflicts. I'm like, nothing is going well now. But nothing is going well because I'm not paying attention to what's going on inside of me, and it'll run away from me unless I actively keep control over it, keep taps on it, keep me interested in what's going on inside me, and decide am I okay with that going inside me or not? I won't have the negative self talk, you know. I put a stop to itty, no matter what I have to do. They put on music. Always say put on music you really don't like if you really can't shift your thoughts, because for most people, you can't carry on other lines of thought if music is coming into you that you really don't like, cause that's what it takes to get rid of a stream of negative self talk.
Do that, but if you.
First have to be aware of what is going on inside, and then you can interesceee.
I just went to Chazzi, which is where I'm from, for a couple for a week. And once I got there, so i'd had my trip last year, made a lot of changes, landed in Tazzy and went still, something's not sitting right still in my resting heart rate drops. I'm like, oh, okay, well, okay, Well, if it's dropping ten beats a minute, it means that I'm still switched on. So I'm switched on too much all the time I was taking I take clients seven days a week. But I've got a lot of flexibility. I do a lot of things. I love everything I do. Came back from India, I do weekly hikes by myself. So I'd started adding more joy and more social activities. So when I got to Tazzy and had that kind of oh of the nervous system, it made me think and I was like, oh, okay, okay, Now I realized there's still some more adjustment to figure out here. And then upon coming home. There was a change at the gym that I take some of my clients from, and I had to find a new venue, and I was and I was that blew up a bit, and I was like, ah, the silver lining was put me in a different environment from which I finally made change and said, well, I'm gonna have these two days their client free days, and which for years now that conversation was roadblocked by me. I bottlenecked myself. I would complain about it and someone would suggest it and I would say, well, I can't my rules, I'm the boss, my barriers, and I'm the bottleneck. And I find that so interesting because then with that shift, temporary shift in environment, the decision was easy to make. And so I'm always looking at things like that, what influences us, what do we need? What is going to support me positively that I can add as a practice or an environment or a support based so that I can not have a year waiting for myself to actually get the clarity to make a good decision or make a good move on a good decision.
And I think it's both as simple and as complex as being able to check in with yourself.
You think about what you're doing describing are changes? Right, they're real disjunctions.
Right that you are at one gym, Now that's not going to work anywhere, you have to go to another. Right, Or now you're in Tasmania, how do.
You feel there? Right?
They're primers right to say something has happened or something has changed, and now it opens up a window of opportunity.
How do you respond to that? What do you think about that?
But we want to be able to do that, not just when there's a change in the world around us, right, because otherwise that year when you don't make any change, will just go along.
Right, And if you're not, in a sense fortunate enough it's.
Something either good or negative, like the gym happening happens, then maybe that goes on for longer and you never have a way of assessing, like I think there's too much tension to me, Like why am I you said taking clients seven days a week?
Why? Right?
And then it lets you you really think about that and say, okay, like I'm motivated, Like you have a bunch of good reasons for that, right.
Okay, So you take those good reasons and you.
Look at what are the counterpoints to them? Because maybe there are good reasons, but maybe there are better reasons. Say I'm just making this up, and it might be well, sometimes we have a fear that if we don't keep doing doing what we're doing and we take a break.
It'll all fall apart.
Mean, it could be that, or it could be a feeling of I really want to help people, and like it's great to help people, but to some of that at the expensive self.
And so you.
See how there could be a lot of answers to that, but you won't get any.
Of them unless you ask the question.
Right. What we don't want is I get asked the question because something else happens around me. Right, I want I want to be able to ask the question because I can sit with myself and ask that question honestly, and if not, I can write about it. I can talk to other people about it. I go to therapy, I can talk about it in therapy. There in a lot of ways I can try and get at that so that I'm actively living, you know, in the most sort of conscious way about myself, my decisions. I Mean it's hard enough, like life is running forward, you know, all of life runs forward at fast forward, right, So it's hard enough anyway, So we have to we have to stop and say, like, I'm not going to allow that, or the fast board could carry me through the rest of my life, right, Like, I have to stop, like what is going on? What am I happy about? What am I not happy about? What am I doing that? Like, I, even in my own mind, I know because somewhere in you said, if you're making the rules and you're deciding, and you're the bottleneck, then you're aware that in some way I'm working against myself. I see myself as a bottleneck and my own health and happiness in this way.
Then I don't want that, right, I want to stop and look.
At that and diffuse that one way or another. I don't want to be my own bottleneck. We still will be for ourselves in some ways, because we all can't avoid entirely that, but that that can very much fade into the background when people talk about feeling in the driver's seat of their life right or.
Feeling feeling in control, or feeling like, oh, people will talk about I feel like I can rise above and I can see around me.
Are that There are metaphors that are people use, but it's a metaphor for feeling different and feeling instead of dragged by bard by life.
But the sense that I'm going.
Forward and I'm going at I'm going into paints that I'm part of decide you know what that piece is. And now we're moving towards more healthy control. And that works for everything good and it works against everything.
That You're the best? You are the best. Where can my listeners get more of you? I've got your first book? Is it your first book? Bit trauma book? Yeah, that's sitting on my bedside table. Where can I order that? What else? You've got another one coming in spring? What else is available from the world of Paul Conti?
Thank you. I appreciate that very very much.
I do podcasts intimittently, so that's the best way to find me. The book will come out next spring and spring of twenty twenty six, but the way to find me between now and then, order to find the book, it really is is podcasts. And I have a website that here's a link to the book and as a link to podcasts that I've done, and it's just doctor Paul.
Conty is just Dr Paulconty dot com.
And I also I work with a clinic that I started ten years ago called Specific Premiere Group. They're about thirty of us who work here together. We do individual work, we do a couple's work, we do intensive work, we do clinical work, consulting work. We do a lot of consulting outside of the United States. So you can also find us and find me through Pacific Premieregroup dot com.
Amazing. I'll have that in the show notes, so if anyone wants to reach out, I'll be able to click the link. Thank you so much for your time today. It's as usual amazing. And also if anyone wants to go and check out your four part series on the Human Lab podcast that was and I remember listening to it and that was an absolutely brilliant series, very in depth and very practical. So thank you, thank you.
Thank you very much. I appreciate your kind words and I appreciate you having me on. Thanks so much.
Thanks everyone,
