0
SPEAKER_00
 This is episode number 1202 with Dr. Paul Conti.
0
SPEAKER_00
Welcome to the School of Greatness.
0
SPEAKER_00
My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.
0
SPEAKER_00
And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.
0
SPEAKER_00
Thanks for spending some time with me today.
0
SPEAKER_00
Now let the class begin.
0
SPEAKER_00
 Welcome back, my friend.
0
SPEAKER_00
Today's guest is psychiatrist, Dr. Paul Conti, and he is a graduate of Stanford University School of Medicine.
0
SPEAKER_00
He completed his psychiatry training at Stanford and at Harvard, where he was appointed chief resident.
0
SPEAKER_00
He then served on the medical faculty at Harvard before founding his own clinic.
0
SPEAKER_00
He's written a new book called Trauma, the Invisible Epidemic, how trauma works and how we can heal from it.
0
SPEAKER_00
I was so inspired by this work because I feel like so many of us have dealt with
0
SPEAKER_00
 different types of traumas in our life, from our childhood to adolescence to our adult lives.
0
SPEAKER_00
And sometimes we're not even aware of the types of trauma we're facing.
0
SPEAKER_00
So in this episode, we discuss how trauma is the root of so many problems, yet it's not easy for us to discuss how to better understand and heal from trauma, the first step to take with yourself before seeing a therapist, why your inner dialogue heavily affects your mental health, and so much more.
0
SPEAKER_00
 Again, I was moved by this.
0
SPEAKER_00
I was inspired by this.
0
SPEAKER_00
I think it's extremely important for us to take on this type of information to help us improve the quality of our thoughts, our emotions, and our life.
0
SPEAKER_00
So if you're inspired and moved as well, and find this helpful for yourself, then please share this with a few friends that you think would love this message as well.
0
SPEAKER_00
Post it over on social media and make sure to tag me, Lewis Howes, and make sure to check out Dr. Paul Conti as well.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I want to give a shout out to our fan of the week from Amanda, who left us a review over on Apple Podcast.
0
SPEAKER_00
 And Amanda said, if you could bottle motivation and fuel for action, this would be it.
0
SPEAKER_00
It's like drinking motivation.
0
SPEAKER_00
Every time I listen, I had been feeling invisible and like I didn't know myself and somehow I feel like I'm back.
0
SPEAKER_00
I have the power to remove the cloak of invisibility and make my dreams come alive.
0
SPEAKER_00
Thanks for a great podcast with so many wonderful guests and words of wisdom.
0
SPEAKER_00
So big shout out to Amanda for being a fan of the week and leaving us a review over on Apple podcast.
0
SPEAKER_00
 And again, if you want a chance to be shouted out on the podcast, just go to Apple Podcasts right now, click subscribe to stay notified every week of our incredible content and leave us a review with a part of this episode that you enjoy the most.
0
SPEAKER_00
But before the episode starts, I want to give a quick trigger warning that we do discuss different forms of sexual abuse and healing from those experiences.
0
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
0
SPEAKER_00
In just a moment, the one and only Dr. Paul Conte.
0
SPEAKER_00
 This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I know there's a stigma around going to therapy.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I'll admit it, I used to be embarrassed about it.
0
SPEAKER_00
But I've realized how important and normal it is going to therapy.
0
SPEAKER_00
And going to therapy doesn't mean something's wrong with you.
0
SPEAKER_00
It just means you're investing in yourself to keep your mind and your emotions healthy.
0
SPEAKER_00
 And we get our cars tuned up to prevent bigger issues down the road.
0
SPEAKER_00
We get annual checkups and we go to the gym to maintain physical wellness and prevent injury and disease.
0
SPEAKER_00
We do chores regularly, or at least most of the time, to avoid a giant mess in our houses.
0
SPEAKER_00
So why do we not do the same upkeep for our mental health?
0
SPEAKER_00
Well, BetterHelp is customized online therapy that offers video, phone, and even live chat sessions with your therapist.
0
SPEAKER_00
So you don't have to see anyone on camera if you don't want to.
0
SPEAKER_00
 And it's much more affordable than in-person therapy.
0
SPEAKER_00
And you can start communicating with your therapist in under 48 hours.
0
SPEAKER_00
Why invest in everything else and not in your own mind?
0
SPEAKER_00
The School of Greatness listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash greatness.
0
SPEAKER_00
That's B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P.com slash greatness.
0
SPEAKER_00
 It's no secret that my style puts comfort very high on the priority list for me.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I'm all about the simple t-shirts, the joggers or the jeans, and of course, comfy shoes that I can be active in.
0
SPEAKER_00
And that's why I've been loving my Allbirds Wool Runners.
0
SPEAKER_00
And they have redefined what it means to be comfortable all day long.
0
SPEAKER_00
And once you lace up your own pair, you'll see what I mean.
0
SPEAKER_00
The Allbirds Wool Runners will make the perfect gift this season for anyone who loves to be comfortable.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I think that's everyone.
0
SPEAKER_00
 They're made from soft, sustainable merino wool.
0
SPEAKER_00
So not only do they feel like a cozy bed for your feet, they also look good too.
0
SPEAKER_00
The best part is Allbirds is on a mission to reverse climate change.
0
SPEAKER_00
They are a B Corp making the environment a stakeholder in their business, which is pretty cool.
0
SPEAKER_00
And we can create a more sustainable future together, but only if we tread lighter on the planet.
0
SPEAKER_00
So give comfort and feel joy this holiday season.
0
SPEAKER_00
 Find your own pair or one to gift at allbirds.com today.
0
SPEAKER_00
That's A-L-L-B-I-R-D-S.com.
0
SPEAKER_00
 Welcome back, everyone, to The School of Greatness.
0
SPEAKER_00
I'm very excited about our guest.
0
SPEAKER_00
Paul Conte is in the house.
0
SPEAKER_00
Good to see you, sir.
0
SPEAKER_00
Thank you so much.
0
SPEAKER_00
Thanks for having me.
0
SPEAKER_00
Of course.
0
SPEAKER_00
I'm so glad you're here.
0
SPEAKER_00
You've got decades of experience on how trauma works and how we can heal from it.
0
SPEAKER_00
You have this new book called Trauma, The Invisible Epidemic that I think is so exciting for me because I truly believe that it's hard to have a meaningful, fulfilling, peaceful life
0
SPEAKER_00
 if you haven't dealt with your own traumas.
0
SPEAKER_00
You can achieve, you can accomplish, you can explore the world, you can build a big business, you can meet lots of great people, but there's like this something inside that is kind of like creates this anxiety or stress or not enoughness.
0
SPEAKER_00
I don't know what it is.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I had this for many years of my life.
0
SPEAKER_00
I've talked about this publicly many times going through sexual abuse as a kid.
0
SPEAKER_00
 In your book, you say you don't wanna compare people's trauma, but you say sexual abuse for a kid is probably one of the biggest traumas that there is.
0
SPEAKER_00
I'm glad you say that because I think the stat is one in four women have been sexually abused.
0
SPEAKER_00
I don't know if they're all children, but the abuse there for women, and one in six in men.
0
SPEAKER_00
And again, it may not be as a kid, but there's abuse for men that way.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I feel like it's hard for people to understand trauma.
0
SPEAKER_00
It's hard for them to understand it,
0
SPEAKER_00
 It's hard for them to deal with the shame behind it and then how to heal the trauma.
0
SPEAKER_00
So I want to unpack some of this, but I wanted to set the stage for this conversation because you've been doing this work for 20-ish years.
0
SPEAKER_00
 And why did you decide to talk about trauma in this way, and what have you seen from your experience on how it impacts people in a negative way if it's not dealt with properly?
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I didn't set out to be a trauma person or to focus on trauma, but as I gained more and more experience, I thought, wow, this is an undercurrent of almost everything I'm doing.
0
SPEAKER_01
Everything, give me an example.
0
SPEAKER_01
 So it's depression, anxiety, panic attacks, sleep problems, even addiction problems, even psychosis, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
Like trauma pushing people to a point where there's a predisposition to not be able to cope with reality, but it's the trauma that sends the person over the edge, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
Or triggering bipolar episodes.
0
SPEAKER_01
So if you think about the more severe mental health
0
SPEAKER_01
 problems, right, all the way through to problems that have a scale of severity, right, depression, anxiety, and then certainly trauma pushing and promoting abusive substances, drugs and alcohol, and addiction, which then of course furthers trauma.
0
SPEAKER_01
 So I started seeing, hey, it kind of doesn't matter really what I'm engaging with someone about.
0
SPEAKER_01
More often than not, there's an undercurrent of trauma that unless that's thought about and addressed, we're kind of like polishing the hood when we need to get under the hood and really get into the engine.
0
SPEAKER_01
And there's a mental health system that loves polishing the hood.
0
SPEAKER_01
Like a lot of things,
0
SPEAKER_01
 we do in life in this country now, we kind of want to spruce things up and make them look a certain way and not look at what's really going on underneath the surface.
0
SPEAKER_01
And then I started seeing that the sort of reflexive creation of shame, when a person suffers trauma, the sort of immediacy of that sense of shame and the response to it to keep everything inside, right, is one.
0
SPEAKER_00
 Why do we not wanna communicate about the shame that we have?
0
SPEAKER_00
Why is that so hard for us?
0
SPEAKER_00
Well, it's the shame itself.
0
SPEAKER_01
Shame is synonymous with the message of you must keep this secret.
0
SPEAKER_01
And if shame is evoked, so if it's in a reflexive way created by trauma, in the vast majority of circumstances, I believe that to be true because I've seen that play out in front of me over 20 years.
0
SPEAKER_01
 that the reflexive shame is in and of itself a message of secrecy, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
And that's why, as you were saying at the beginning, people are carrying burdens around with them.
0
SPEAKER_01
And you can look from the outside and say, look, this person's achieved this, and this person's achieved that.
0
SPEAKER_01
And what we see from the outside is so often not at all reflective of
0
SPEAKER_01
 what's going on in the inside, and part of the wonderful privilege of being a psychiatrist and consulting to people through the psychiatric lens is you get to learn what's on the inside, and then you see a commonality that I've seen across the whole socioeconomic spectrum, across any
0
SPEAKER_01
 different factor you can identify, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
This is present in people across that spectrum.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_00
What would you say is the percentage, rough estimate, of people in America that have faced, that have experienced some type of trauma in their life?
0
SPEAKER_01
You have to stratify by severity.
0
SPEAKER_01
 And if you could say, okay, we can identify.
0
SPEAKER_01
Trauma is negatively impactful in that person's life, and we can take stock of it and describe it.
0
SPEAKER_01
I think we're well over half the population.
0
SPEAKER_01
We just have to be.
0
SPEAKER_01
The clinical work bears it out.
0
SPEAKER_01
The statistics bear it out.
0
SPEAKER_00
The mental health challenges, yeah.
0
SPEAKER_01
 I figure one in four women suffering from sexual assault, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
One in six men.
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, so that's one aspect of trauma, and we're already up to 20, 25% of people, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
So then there's the fact that trauma just pervades the environment we all live in, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, we experience it vicariously.
0
SPEAKER_01
We look at the news, which is now really more,
0
SPEAKER_01
 it's more marketing, right, of like a click on this.
0
SPEAKER_00
Trauma marketing.
0
SPEAKER_01
Right, it's repetitive, incessant trauma marketing.
0
SPEAKER_01
Look at what could happen to you.
0
SPEAKER_01
Look at what could happen to your kids.
0
SPEAKER_01
Look at what could happen to anyone around you, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
Over and over and over again, and you combine that with the political strife in the country, the worries about terrorism, and we're living kind of like this.
0
SPEAKER_01
We're living with a sense of very much escalated tension
0
SPEAKER_01
 So I think it pervades the whole world around us.
0
SPEAKER_01
So I think in that way, we're all subject to it.
0
SPEAKER_01
I don't know anyone who doesn't know someone closely or intimately that has identifiable significant trauma.
0
SPEAKER_01
So in that way, it does affect all of us.
0
SPEAKER_00
 You know, if you could talk about the theme of all the people that come to you, what would you say are like the five to seven main reasons they come to you?
0
SPEAKER_00
Maybe it's not what's under the hood, but the main things that come to you.
0
SPEAKER_00
Is it stress, anxiety?
0
SPEAKER_00
Is it, you know, depression?
0
SPEAKER_00
What are the main kind of themes that you're seeing consistently?
0
SPEAKER_01
 What people mostly present with is just a sense of angst, a sense of frustration.
0
SPEAKER_01
Sometimes a person will present and say, well, I have depression.
0
SPEAKER_01
And they may know that because maybe they do have very clearly delineated cyclical depressive episodes, or they've been diagnosed with depression.
0
SPEAKER_01
But when people present kind of de novo of like, well,
0
SPEAKER_01
 I don't care what your diagnoses are.
0
SPEAKER_01
Let's just talk about what's going on in you.
0
SPEAKER_01
Why did you come in?
0
SPEAKER_01
Then what people talk is that sense of angst inside of them, the sense that something isn't right.
0
SPEAKER_01
And if they've checked a lot of boxes, then we have an expectation that if I'm doing the right things, and I have a good stable career, and I have a good roof over my head, and everyone's healthy around me, I should feel good.
0
SPEAKER_01
And that was part of my own
0
SPEAKER_01
 challenges where I saw that develop even in myself, where I start to develop an anger and a resentment that I don't feel good even though I've worked hard enough to check all of these boxes.
0
SPEAKER_01
So I think even in those situations, let alone how many people are struggling with financial insecurity, occupational insecurity, housing insecurity,
0
SPEAKER_01
 And so you add that on top of it, and we just keep raising and raising and raising the level of tension, which then of course propagates and perpetuates trauma.
0
SPEAKER_01
And we thought of it as an epidemic, predates the pandemic.
0
SPEAKER_01
We started writing this and thinking about it that way a long time ago, with the idea that we don't know this is here, and it's spreading from one of us to another to another and back.
0
SPEAKER_01
 and we're not aware of it.
0
SPEAKER_01
It's invisible.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_00
But it's spreading quickly and it constantly stays with us.
0
SPEAKER_00
Like you were writing in the book about how just because an event happened in the past five, 10, 20, 30 years ago, doesn't mean it's not still carrying with you today until you address it, until you start to really process the integrating of healing, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
Right.
0
SPEAKER_01
 Right, and I saw that over and over again.
0
SPEAKER_01
Maybe, gosh, it was probably 17, 18 years ago, I covered about a dozen nursing homes along the seaboard of Massachusetts.
0
SPEAKER_01
And a lot of people in the nursing homes you could do therapy with, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
 And I would see over and over again, what's plaguing this person, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
It could be trauma from 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago that was so fresh and alive, as if it had happened yesterday or last week, yet it could be a half a century ago.
0
SPEAKER_01
And that struck me so strongly that we tuck these things away inside of us, and then they're sort of sealed in us.
0
SPEAKER_01
And if we don't go back and look at them,
0
SPEAKER_01
 we carry with us the burdens, which are often burdens of shame.
0
SPEAKER_01
They're burdens of self-blame, they're burdens of inadequacy, and unless we go back and look at that, we don't challenge those lessons.
0
SPEAKER_01
Trauma teaches us these terrible lessons, and then we just hide it away, and then it becomes immutable.
0
SPEAKER_01
There's no way of then going and accessing, saying, well, what's actually true about that?
0
SPEAKER_01
What do you actually believe about that?
0
SPEAKER_01
How many people have told me about something so very clearly traumatic done to them?
0
SPEAKER_01
 So they're walking down the street and they're attacked.
0
SPEAKER_01
And they talk about it through the lens of shame.
0
SPEAKER_01
 right, that it was their fault.
0
SPEAKER_01
It shows that they're not a worthwhile person.
0
SPEAKER_01
They can't really make their way in the world.
0
SPEAKER_01
They can't keep themselves safe.
0
SPEAKER_01
No one will ever like them, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
No one will ever care for them.
0
SPEAKER_01
And these lessons are there for years and years about something, once you start talking about it and unpacking it, they logically know there's no shame to feel, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
But the logic doesn't matter if the emotion is telling us something different.
0
SPEAKER_00
Right.
0
SPEAKER_00
Now, if we go through a traumatic experience and we hold onto this shame,
0
SPEAKER_00
 Can it change our biology, our genes?
0
SPEAKER_00
What's it do to the chemistry in our brain, to our heart?
0
SPEAKER_00
What does it do to us physically?
0
SPEAKER_01
What is so amazing is we have proof of things that even 20 years ago, if one had said, oh, trauma can change
0
SPEAKER_01
 the genes that you pass on, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
Not necessarily maybe the actual gene itself, but whether it's active or not, which makes all the difference, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
If you have it and it's not active, you may as well not have it, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
If you don't have it, that's the same as you got a good gene, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
But now it's not turned on.
0
SPEAKER_01
 And the thought that how we genetically present what's going on inside of us can be impacted by trauma that happened years before conception would have sounded crazy.
0
SPEAKER_01
So someone who is deeply traumatized, you look at rape as a tool of warfare, and the thought having been
0
SPEAKER_01
 that it's a crime committed on one day by one person against another.
0
SPEAKER_01
That narrow conception doesn't even begin to touch what actually happens.
0
SPEAKER_01
That person is, without the right intervention, likely changed for the rest of their life.
0
SPEAKER_01
And if they have a child five years later,
0
SPEAKER_01
 The genes that are active in that child are changed as a result of the trauma.
0
SPEAKER_01
And it sounds shocking.
0
SPEAKER_01
I interviewed Darren Richarder, who's a friend of mine and an academic psychiatrist who's done a lot of the work around this.
0
SPEAKER_01
And he speaks to it so eloquently that, yes, what's going on here is not, oh, that crime happened on that day, but that trauma is transgenerational.
0
SPEAKER_01
And it impacts us.
0
SPEAKER_01
 from head to toe.
0
SPEAKER_01
It impacts our cardiovascular health, so therefore our risk of heart attack, our risk of stroke, our risk of autoimmune diseases.
0
SPEAKER_01
So it's not theoretical and esoteric.
0
SPEAKER_01
It impacts us from head to toe, and we know that now.
0
SPEAKER_01
We have the physical proof of it, which is, in ways, very gratifying, as opposed to making assertions like this even a decade ago, or closer to 20 years ago, when you couldn't really get any
0
SPEAKER_01
 Traction is what's that?
0
SPEAKER_01
So Tara did something have the person looks the same.
0
SPEAKER_01
So like there's still okay, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it was 20 years ago so let it go or whatever right, right what was a Trauma that was extremely hard for you to heal or that took you the longest to kind of overcome
0
SPEAKER_00
 And does it still impact you today or is there hope for us that, hey, if you go through something traumatic, there are ways to heal so it doesn't have to impact you in a negative way for the rest of your life?
0
SPEAKER_01
 Yeah, there's definitely hope for that.
0
SPEAKER_01
And since you'd asked about me, my brother's suicide when I was in my early 20s was so dramatically impactful on me, on my family.
0
SPEAKER_01
And at the time, I was very fortunate.
0
SPEAKER_01
I knew nothing about mental health.
0
SPEAKER_01
I was in an entirely different career.
0
SPEAKER_01
 Field and you know, I was fortunate to have good people around me Like it was a really good supportive people and that helped get me through it and the knowledge of hey Maybe I should get some help right like, you know, no one really got therapy, you know It was it was an interesting strange thing to do right as well.
0
SPEAKER_01
There's this helping resource there and
0
SPEAKER_01
 And it was immensely helpful.
0
SPEAKER_01
Someone just asking me, well, how do you feel about that?
0
SPEAKER_01
And this sense of, I feel doomed, I feel ashamed, I feel despondent.
0
SPEAKER_01
And that doesn't lead a person to good places, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
That leads a person to depression, to self-destruction, to drugs and alcohol.
0
SPEAKER_01
 And even just having some basic help like that helped me stay on track.
0
SPEAKER_01
And then as time has gone on and I've accumulated more really significant traumas since then, the first half of my life I didn't have major trauma.
0
SPEAKER_01
And then sort of the second half I've had a bunch of major trauma.
0
SPEAKER_01
And being able to sort of see it through that lens of like, oh, I just naturally felt differently.
0
SPEAKER_01
I had a different view of the world as a place where I could make myself
0
SPEAKER_01
 felt and seen and I could impact and good things would come to me.
0
SPEAKER_01
I had a whole set of beliefs that then really changed.
0
SPEAKER_01
It changed in a way that made me feel much more defensive of the world and afraid of the world.
0
SPEAKER_01
It was really getting very, very good psychotherapy.
0
SPEAKER_01
 in that second part of my life, I went to medical school and started training as a psychiatrist and started really getting good therapy, that I realized, yes, this doesn't have to control your life, but it is a struggle.
0
SPEAKER_01
It's on my mind, it's an active part of my self-care and my psychotherapy, and sometimes use of medicines.
0
SPEAKER_01
So I have to actively really take care of myself to maintain a perspective where I'm aware that it's there, but it's not,
0
SPEAKER_01
 in a sense, pulling the wool over my eyes and telling me things that can really lead us down a path of, sometimes a path of destruction, but other times, just a path of sadness and sort of despondency and not living up to what we wanna be, not just career-wise, but interpersonally, like the kind of parent I wanna be and the kind of husband and friend.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I think with a real awareness that like, hey, I'm laboring against this, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
Then it doesn't have to control me.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I found that,
0
SPEAKER_01
 in so, so many of the people that I take care of.
0
SPEAKER_00
I found that to be true.
0
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
0
SPEAKER_00
So the first half of your life, pretty happy, normal, healthy lifestyle, no major traumas.
0
SPEAKER_00
Second half, a bunch of major traumas, it sounds like, starting with a suicide to your brother.
0
SPEAKER_00
 Where do you think you would be without having healing therapeutic modalities to process over the second half of your life?
0
SPEAKER_00
Where do you think your life would be?
0
SPEAKER_00
You know, if you can think about it.
0
SPEAKER_01
 I think probably not in a good place.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I don't know exactly what that means.
0
SPEAKER_01
One worry would be the specter of depression, which runs in me and runs in the family.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I could see getting lost in that in a way that then narrows one's horizons and promotes frustration and anger, and at times even bitterness.
0
SPEAKER_01
 in people and it can lead us away from just like being a good person in the world, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
You become more isolated from care and concern to or from other people.
0
SPEAKER_01
And then I think it's a very small step from that to abusive substances.
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, they're just so there in front of us to say, yeah, like, you feel awful, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
And you feel,
0
SPEAKER_01
 awful and angry and frustrated and an injustice about feeling awful, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
Don't you wanna soothe this now?
0
SPEAKER_01
Don't you deserve that now?
0
SPEAKER_01
That's a very, it's a self-seduction, but it's a self-seduction that leads so many of us to a path of short-term healing at the expense of the long-term of the rest of our lives.
0
SPEAKER_00
Is almost all addiction stemming from some type of shame based on a trauma, would you say?
0
SPEAKER_00
Or can addiction happen from other ways?
0
SPEAKER_01
 I think addiction can happen in other ways, especially their genetic components to how we respond to certain substances.
0
SPEAKER_01
And there can be substances that are, well some of them for everyone, like opiates, are so powerful that it probably doesn't matter what our genetic predispositions are.
0
SPEAKER_01
Like that can get the best of any of us.
0
SPEAKER_01
 by creating such euphoria followed by such withdrawal from that euphoria that there are substances that can just take a hold of us no matter what our state of health is.
0
SPEAKER_01
But there are also then genetic predispositions of one person to another of what we may be exceptionally vulnerable to.
0
SPEAKER_01
So substances I think can have a life of
0
SPEAKER_01
 essentially have a life of their own and creating problems in us.
0
SPEAKER_01
But that being said, the vast majority of dysfunction I see in people, whether it's substances or it's acting out against the self.
0
SPEAKER_01
It may be self-harm, physically, or it may be just keeping a
0
SPEAKER_01
 a sort of sadistic accounting in our minds, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
Of, well, I'm not doing well enough in life, so you don't get to go do that.
0
SPEAKER_01
You don't get to do that enjoyable thing.
0
SPEAKER_01
You don't deserve to have a good meal tonight.
0
SPEAKER_01
You don't deserve to get enough rest.
0
SPEAKER_01
You don't deserve to go out with that person who might really be a really good partner.
0
SPEAKER_01
This sense of there being an accounting inside of us that oppresses us.
0
SPEAKER_01
 We've known for many, many years.
0
SPEAKER_01
In my field, people thought about people a lot more like 100 years ago, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
Because we didn't have the advancements we have, which in many ways are wonderful, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
But we think less about people.
0
SPEAKER_00
And this idea- What do you mean we think less about how other people are doing?
0
SPEAKER_00
Is that what you mean, or what do you mean?
0
SPEAKER_01
No, we think less, like in my field, we think less about, okay, if you're my patient, what's going on in you?
0
SPEAKER_01
How do you feel about life, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
And what are the dynamics?
0
SPEAKER_01
 of that.
0
SPEAKER_01
We've stepped away from that in very much a polish the hood kind of way.
0
SPEAKER_01
Well, whatever's going on with you, like your insurance authorizes 10 sessions of CBT, and you'll get that, and you'll take a medicine, then you're gonna be better, or you will have failed the intervention, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
That's not helpful in most cases, and when people thought more about other people, they thought about ideas like, for example, there's no internal victim without an internal persecutor.
0
SPEAKER_01
 Which I don't mean feeling victimized, like somebody steals your wallet, you're like, I'm a victim, I fill out a report.
0
SPEAKER_01
But the idea that, no, no, I'm a victim.
0
SPEAKER_01
I stand out as a mark to people.
0
SPEAKER_01
That if people are looking for someone to hurt in a relationship, they're going to look to me.
0
SPEAKER_01
 People are looking to someone to abuse and bully around, whether it's on the playground or it's in the office, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
It's gonna be me, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
When people think like that, they also internalize the persecutor.
0
SPEAKER_01
I've worked with people who are still in their minds being actively persecuted by someone who's been dead for 20 years.
0
SPEAKER_01
 Because that person doesn't need to be alive anymore because they're doing it to themselves.
0
SPEAKER_01
And we can get like that.
0
SPEAKER_01
In fact, I think the internal dialogue in us that can say, oh, what an awful person, or you're never gonna get anywhere, and how stupid.
0
SPEAKER_01
How many of us have that going on inside of us?
0
SPEAKER_01
And that arises from trauma, and it blinds us to like, look, who am I?
0
SPEAKER_01
Who do I wanna be in the world?
0
SPEAKER_01
What do I have to offer?
0
SPEAKER_01
How are you gonna make the best of that if there's a running dialogue in your mind saying, you're so stupid, you messed that up again.
0
SPEAKER_01
 present in so, so many of us.
0
SPEAKER_00
Is there a way around trauma?
0
SPEAKER_00
Like, I grew up thinking to myself a lot, like, you're stupid, you're never gonna amount to anything.
0
SPEAKER_00
Like, saying these things internally all the time as a child in like elementary school.
0
SPEAKER_00
 not knowing why I was doing it, but I just kept doing it.
0
SPEAKER_00
I didn't have the tools to heal.
0
SPEAKER_00
When I was growing up in the 80s, early 90s, there wasn't models of grown men that I could look to on TV or athletes or whatever who were openly talking about their emotions, talking about traumas, talking about here's what you should do to heal if you've been hurt or something.
0
SPEAKER_00
 And so I felt like I had to stuff it in until I turned 30, and then I started to realize, wow, I've accomplished all these external things, but I feel like something's still missing.
0
SPEAKER_00
I feel like, why am I not fulfilled?
0
SPEAKER_00
Why am I not peaceful?
0
SPEAKER_00
And then I went on a journey for many years of healing and letting go of the shame.
0
SPEAKER_00
 And as my therapist says now, healing is not an event.
0
SPEAKER_00
It's not a one-time moment where you're like, I'm healed because I talked about it.
0
SPEAKER_00
It's a journey.
0
SPEAKER_00
It's a process of integration.
0
SPEAKER_00
 Is there a way to go around trauma, to just shine the hood and be okay, or do you feel like the only way is to go to the core root of it and deal with the process of healing it?
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think the only way is to go to the root of it and try and heal that core process.
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, sometimes, you know, there are always outlying situations, right, where a person can just polish the hood a little bit, go on with,
0
SPEAKER_01
 with their life and sort of have things be okay.
0
SPEAKER_01
That's the rarity, though.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I've seen over and over and over again that it festers inside of us.
0
SPEAKER_01
And some people are blessed with a sort of resilience gene.