THE ED MYLETT SHOW - How Increased Self-Awareness Can Heal Your Hidden Trauma with Dr. Paul Conti

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

Are hidden traumas silently controlling your life and health? This might be one of the most important conversations I’ve ever had on the show—Dr. Paul Conti, a world-class expert on trauma, joins me to reveal how the emotional wounds you’re carrying might be holding you back more than you realize. I share some of my own personal experiences growing up with an alcoholic father and how those unresolved traumas affected me in ways I didn’t fully understand until much later. Dr. Conti breaks down the science behind how trauma changes our brains and how two people can experience the same event but walk away impacted in completely different ways. We get into the concept of chronic trauma—those emotional injuries that linger for years—and why feelings of guilt and shame are often at the heart of so many struggles. Dr. Conti introduces the idea of using "compassionate curiosity" to better understand ourselves and our behaviors. And trust me, this is something that can completely shift how you see your life. We also talk about how trauma doesn’t just stay in your head—it can literally show up in your body, leading to serious health problems down the road. What really hit home for me is how generational trauma can be passed down, affecting everything from our mental well-being to how we show up in the world. I get real about how my own drive to speak in front of millions comes from a deeper need to be heard—something that started in my childhood. Dr. Conti and I both agree that while medication can play a role in healing, real growth comes from doing the hard work of understanding the root causes of emotional pain. Key Takeaways: Uncovering Hidden Trauma: How to identify those emotional scars that might be holding you back, even if you're not aware of them. Mind-Body Connection: Why unresolved emotional issues often show up as physical health problems. Generational Trauma: How the pain and trauma of past generations can be passed down and impact your life today. Self-Awareness and Healing: The importance of using compassionate curiosity to truly understand yourself and heal. The Role of Medications: When medication is useful and why it needs to be paired with deeper emotional work. This episode is for anyone who’s ready to break free from the past and truly max out their life. You don’t want to miss this one! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hi, welcome back to the show everybody. So today I've really wanted this man on the show for a while. I've seen a couple of his interviews and I went to my team. I said, go get him for me if we can because today's topic is going to regard trauma, your mind, your unconscious mind, your emotions, your well-being and I think I have the best in the world here today. His name is Dr. Paul Conti.

His background is he's a psychiatrist. He's an author and he's an expert in trauma and overall mental health, but he's also the resident of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. So I think he might know what he's an expert in trauma and overall mental health, but he's also the resident of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. So I think he might know what he's doing. I'm in Portland, Maine. He's in Portland, Oregon, but we're gonna make some magic together today.

So Dr. Conte, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here. You're very welcome. Thank you so much for having me on and thank you for the kind introduction. Yeah, well, it's a true introduction. So I actually undersold you a little bit. So we'll let the interview go. Basic question, First of all, I know I had trauma growing up because I had an

alcoholic father and a drug addicted dad who ended up getting sober. My audience knows that story, but let's assume for a second that I may not know why. How does someone know or realize maybe they've had trauma in their life that's unrealized? How would you know that? A lot of times if we if we start with curiosity about ourselves, right, and sometimes that could take the form of a life narrative. Like let me think of like where was I born? When was I born? What happened after that? What are my early memories? How do I feel? You know, what went on around me? A lot of times we we know it, but we just haven't let ourselves really think about it or let it come to the surface.

And that there are traumas in our background, but we just kind of weave it or incorporate it into our lives. And and much of the time that happens because we don't know what to do with it. If we go back and look and say, hey, something really traumatic happened, maybe all at once, right? Or maybe it was just the situation, right? Especially earlier in life that a person grew up in, you know, we tend to think, oh, that was the past and we make light of it. Right. Or sometimes people feel weak, like, why would that still be with me? And then they look away from it or they know it's impacting them,

but they don't know that there's anything to do about it. So if we start from this idea that we can understand a lot about ourselves through the lens of just compassionate curiosity and building a story and a narrative, maybe in writing, maybe in our thoughts, maybe talking with someone, then we're bringing to the surface often what we already know and it becomes clearer Hey, like something has really affected me or something's really on my mind a lot Even though that was many many many years ago And then we kind of know what we know so to speak

But we can bring it to the surface in a way that it's not scaring us Right so much that we have to push it back under I can look at this. I I can think about this, I can explore this and something good can come of it. So like my family, there's four kids, right? Why does somebody, and as at the height of the emotion during the moment, I'm sure you've looked at this, but why does somebody have trauma or a particular incident affect them, maybe in a dramatic way? the same incident doesn't affect another person that had the same experience in the way that it did. Do we know why that is that like I'm 53 and I'm blessed to help millions of people. I speak all over the world and even now, even the last few weeks of my life, I'm, I've figured some things out about them.

Talk about the last few weeks. Like, well, I really do sabotage things in my life because I don't think I deserve the success I've had. These incidences affected me more than I realized as a little boy. Yet I'm not sure that it affected my siblings the same way. Is there a reason? Do we know why something can make a mark on, I call it a mark I guess, and why in some cases it doesn't? In a general sense, in a general sense. So, so it's kind of like what soil does the seed fall into, right? Some people, for example, have, they have a low feeling and expression of emotion, for example. I mean, some people are just kind of built that way

and things can happen that might be distressing to others, but they don't overwhelm the person's coping skills. They don't make changes in the brain. So it could be say a seed of significant trauma, but it falls in soil that's not so receptive to it. Again, there are ups and downs to that, that that person may have less emotional responses in other areas. So I'm just going to give you examples. So it's what is the seed? And then who

is the person, which is another way of saying what is the soil that the seed falls into? And some of that is biological, which is the genetic combination in a person that either predisposes or doesn't predispose. But there are other factors too. There's something called the multiple hit hypothesis, which might mean if we have multiple hits of trauma, it might be, for example, the fifth one that seems much less than the prior four, but maybe that fifth one really strikes a nerve, right? Or maybe that fifth one is adding on top of the other four, right? This idea that what

doesn't kill us makes us stronger is like not true, right? What doesn't kill us very often makes us weaker unless we look at that and we strengthen ourselves again. So it's very complicated. What are the genetics, the sort of nature, so to speak, in the person and what is the nurture? What life experiences have we had? How armored are we to the slings and arrows of the world around us? What kind of traumas have we had in our life that might predispose us one way or another? So we do understand that in a general way, but to understand it for any specific person, we've got to really talk to think about, you know, that specific person, because that

generality is true. But of course, we're all unique. So so it's interesting you say this. So by the way, everybody, I always try to promote where you'll listen. So Dr. Conti's book is called Trauma, the invisible epidemic. And it's so good. cover to cover in three days. I read it and I'll give you an example of what he just described and I'll ask him a question about it. So in my case, I'm a speaker and I also podcast so I communicate for a living. It's very interesting because people ask me all the time.

Dr. Conti. Why do you do this? You know, because I'm in people know, I'm Because people know I'm a dramatic introvert. I'm very shy, very introverted, yet I speak on stages to 30, 40, 50,000 people on a podcast. I said the last few weeks, I was talking to somebody and I said, one of the things that came with my dad's drinking when I was young is he wouldn't listen to me. So I would talk and he'd be gone and dad are you hearing me and or I'd say something pretty important and my dad would just not react and I remember as a little boy over and over I'm just figuring this out now I didn't feel heard.

I didn't feel heard he wouldn't hear me he didn't see me it was almost like I wasn't in the room and I love my father he ended up getting, but this happened to your point many times, multiple incidences of the same event. And I have to conclude that's because that's why I'm now even though it's contrary to my personality, I want to be heard. I speak in front of thousands of people. I actually need the people here my stuff. And so when you're listening to this today, everybody, this can show up in really fascinating ways and become more self-aware is one of the greatest rides of your life of learning about you. It's so fascinating. Now in the book you talk about, which I want to become more of, having a healthy self. What the heck is that though? What really I know from reading,

but what is a healthy self? It starts with introspection, like we're really looking at ourselves. Like so many times we don't have a narrative, right? So imagine if you didn't have that narrative, then at some point you just think, oh, I've kind of introverted, I want to be heard, but like a lot of times

that doesn't go anywhere, right? Like we often have to know what is actually going on in me. And here, for example, we might honor a chronic trauma as opposed to an acute one. You know, our society is very much built to understand acute traumas. Like, okay, there was a car accident, there was a loss of a

loved one. And a lot of our understanding of trauma comes through the military comes to combat through seeing that, oh, people were different after combat than before combat. That's when we first started really thinking about trauma. So we're very focused on acute traumas. But that's not the only way our coping skills can get overwhelmed and our brains can change. It can be the accumulated weight of a chronic trauma of over and over not being seen, not being heard, and that's notorious in alcoholism where the response doesn't fit what the person expects. So someone, a child might come home and did really, really well on a

test or a project and then gets like, oh, congratulations, and a pat on the head. The child might come home the next day and might get ignored or talked harshly to or something that's not expected. And then what the child learns is that you're not going to be heard, that you can't make yourself heard because whatever you're saying might to be heard, that you can't make yourself heard, because whatever you're saying might get one response, it might get another, right? So then the child takes that frustration in. So that's a very, very interesting thing, right, to know about you, for you to know about yourself, because then we see, well, where does that go

with you, right? And it goes to a place that gets called counterphobic, right? Where you goes to a place that gets called a counter phobic, right? Where you realize, oh, I'm kind of introverted, and I feel this anxiety, fucking in front of other people, but I want to make myself hurt, right? Then you do something that in a sense goes against your natural grain, right? And you're doing it in the service of making some repair, I think, for prior trauma, it's at least part of it, right? It's saying, if no one heard me, you know, I've got something to say now, right? And you felt you had something to say, and you do, right?

Because people wanna listen. It tells you, hey, do you have something to say? And I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do that counter-phobic against the fear thing, because that's part of how you're dealing with, and in a sense, overcoming the prior trauma. But we have to understand ourselves, like a lot of people don't get to that place, right, because we don't have an understanding of why is it that I may feel very introverted but I want to express

myself, right? I mean, often without a narrative of that, we don't necessarily lead that forward. So there's a lot of ways we can have a healthy self, but it has to start with, you know, the compassionate curiosity towards self. Like I just want to look at myself and understand myself and what are the things that don't quite add up in me, right? Don't quite understand like, let me look at that because probably it does add up. You know, they're just factors I'm not looking at it, I'm afraid to look at it on earth. But when we become curious about ourselves, we answer these questions. And I think there is a very interesting narrative of how do you get to this place

that fits with childhood trauma and fits with efforts to overcome the childhood trauma, even if that means you're acting against your own fears. That's so good, Dr. E, this idea of compassionate curiosity. I think everyone just, if you're driving right now, just hold onto that word, compassionately more curious about yourself.

I read your book actually about six months ago. And so I've had the last six months to think about a lot of things. And one of the things I started to be aware of, it's interesting, after reading your book is, I paid attention to most of the new people I met since then. You meet somebody new, whether it're, it's a new friend or if you were single, you're dating.

How quickly they begin to tell you about their youth. Quickly early on, it's almost commonplace now, we take it for granted that you meet somebody and part of what you do when you meet someone is they tell you how they grew up and they actually illustrate something about their parents or a story. And to me, it's illustrative that man, we are really so many of us, most of us, maybe all of us are operating out of our childhood still because even as adults, it's one of the first things we introduce about ourselves to new friends or a significant other is our childhood story or our version of that story. And it's interesting if you all pay attention to that when you meet somebody new,

pretty quickly they want to tell you about their childhood or their mom or their dad or how they were raised or a divorce. That's the impact these things are having. That's why his work means so much. So hey guys, I want to jump in here for a second and talk about change and growth. And you know, by the way, it's no secret how people get ahead in life or how they grow and also taking a look at the future. If you want to change your future you got to change the things you're doing. If you continue to do the same

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One discount per household. Bizarre question. I talk a lot about the unconscious and also the subconscious mind in my work of personal development and productivity. And I had a friend of mine ask me, so where is the unconscious mind then? Like, where's it located? And I said, I should probably have a better answer than I'm about to give you. And so I wanna ask an expert on mental health and the mind, what is your definition of the unconscious mind? We know, we know that there are millions and millions

and millions of neurons firing in our brains right now. Everything is moving so, so, so fast. You know, there's thousands upon thousands of things going on that pushes to the surface, like the words I'm saying, right? And it may push into the surface the words you respond with, but those words come on top of it, like the very top of an iceberg that is at thousands

and thousands of events underneath of it. And the very top of an iceberg that is at thousands and thousands of events underneath of it. And that's how we're built. So the answer, where's the unconscious mind? It's both everywhere and nowhere. Like we cannot pinpoint a part of the brain, so it is there, right? Because our brains are working like looms, right? They're shuttling information, almost at the speed of light. It's, I mean, it's wildly complicated what's going on underneath the surface, and it's accessing all parts of our brain and pinging back and forth. So it's in us and it's the vast majority of what's happening in us. So you can see how it can be determinist.

Right. So if the unconscious mind, for example, is afraid, right? Or fears, fears, maybe that I can't make myself heard. And if I talk to you and say some things, you're not going to like it, or you're not going to like me, because that's what my experience has been. Maybe I'm carrying childhood trauma into the present, right? Then what's going on as I may be meeting you, sizing you up, seeing what you may think, but I'm not really sizing you up, right? I'm going through things in my own

mind, that on an unconscious level, or saying, for example, when you meet a new person, that person is not going to like you, that person is going to be threatening, right? So, for example, after the traumas that change our brains, we respond to new people and new faces differently. So instead of seeing like, oh, I see you in front of me and I see your face and I look and I see that you have a neutral expression

or maybe you're smiling. I think, okay, we can talk. I can feel safe to talk, but my brain may not see that. Because my unconscious mind may do a million neuro-inspire. And then what comes to the surface is, hey, this person doesn't like this person is frowning at me. This person seems, you know, it seems like they don't mean well to me.

But this is what we do. Because our brains have changed. And we don't know that. Right? We don't know that. That's why people say, I'm not making new friends, or I can't find anybody to date or but but it may be that, you know, two or three three people smiled and were interested in talking a little more one person who who I could be romantically interested in Smiled back and seen receptive, but I didn't see that right because inside of me that The unconscious mind is determining the lay of the land which is saying be afraid don't quite feel comfortable. Don't feel like you're good enough the land, which is saying, be afraid, don't quite feel comfortable, don't feel like you're good enough, fear a negative response to you. So if we don't go looking at our unconscious mind, we don't know what our reflexes are.

So it's undergirding absolutely everything that's going on inside of us and in a sense determining the climate within us. And if we don't go and look at that, we don't know that the climate may not be in a healthy place inside of us and if we don't go and look at that, you know, we don't know that the climate may not be in a healthy place inside of us and that we can change it. What if you can't see it? So by the way everybody, we're defining the problem right now in a minute. We're going to go to Dr. Conte's solution, so stay with us. But what if you can't see it? And I know you talk about this and the more and more in my own life as I get older, I'm a believer in this, which is some sort of ancestral trauma. And I want your opinion on this. I think I know it,

but I want the audience to hear it and how it actually could even affect, you talk about those neurons in your brain, you know, the expression of our genes. So the Bible talks about the sins of the Father, right, affecting a child. Is there some validity that you could have a grandparent in your opinion who experienced some form of trauma and that's actually impacting you genetically somehow in the expression of your genes? Or is it the environment in which you grew up in because of the trauma they experienced? And how does that impact you? But the answer is both. And I would say it's not an opinion. I mean, the science tells us absolutely 100%.

The answer to that would be both. So if there was a trauma, say two, three generations ago, say a significant trauma in that ancestor's life, right? So a significant trauma in that ancestor's life, right? That can change what genes are on or off inside of that person and also how that gets passed along, which is really quite remarkable. So you can see that after that trauma, the way that genes are passed along is different. So maybe a good gene that was passed down through generations, now you get the gene but it's not active anymore. It's as if you didn't have it. Or maybe there's a negative

gene that says just be a little more suspicious and a little more avoidant, right? And that's what the product of that gene is kind of pushing towards, so to speak. And that could now be on when it wasn't on. So intergenerational trauma is expressed at times through the environment. Absolutely, it's best. So that person who may have had a trauma behaves differently when they're raising a child, right? But that's to say the nurture part of it, right?

The nature or the genetic part is that genes are turned on and off in us as if we had them or didn't have them, based upon trauma in people who we may not even know because they came so far before us. The science of the last couple of decades or so, last quarter century has told us that, which is really an amazing thing. I think it points to this idea of trauma overwhelming our coping skills,

changing our brains. It's not a soft concept. Right. It's, it's a hard science driven concept. It's not saying, Oh, every time someone has a disappointment, we're pretending it hurts their brain. And then they're not responsible for things like there's nothing soft about this. It's based in hardcore science that tells us, yeah, this is absolutely true. I'll share with everybody and you where I think this can show up.

So I come from a long line of, we'll call it alcoholics or drug addicts in my family, not just my dad. Also, I would just say some trauma, mental health issues throughout my family, yet a beautiful, loving, amazing family. I'll make sure my family gets Yet a beautiful, loving, amazing family. I'll make sure my family gets all the credit in the world. But I'm the one in my family that sort of broke that chain. I'm not addicted to drugs or alcohol or this or that, and I've become financially successful and had influence,

and I've got a beautiful family and all that. But how did that trauma stay in my family? The gene expression of worry, of concern, probably a serotonin and dopamine issue, frankly, in my brain, where I still am addicted, my obsessive personality, I didn't lose from my grandfather, I just didn't turn it to alcohol, I turned it to business and worry and anxiety. But if you have some obsessive personality thing that

doesn't serve you, and you can't figure out in your own life where it came from, but it's manifesting itself in a different symptom in this life. It may be some ancestral trauma that you've got that's worth evaluating because it's just showing up the same disease I guess is showing up in a different symptom with me. I guess is the way that I would explain. Does that make sense when I say that and am I right when I say that probably? Yeah, yes, I think there's some complexity. We don't know exactly what genes were passed along and what genes were say changed by prior trauma within the family. So it may be, you know, we as as humans are selected for a little bit more anxiety, a little bit more vigilance, right?

That's how our ancestors survived and maybe others didn't. So some of this gets passed along to us, but then it can be impacted by nature, changing gene expression and by nurture. So yes to what you're saying, but it's complicated. How much of it may be genetic? How much of it may be our own life experiences? But the point of what you're saying is 100% true

is that's not going to change unless we go and look at it. So one way that we can, one way we could frame this is, and a question people can ask themselves of am I owning what's mine? Am I owning what's mine? So here's an example, say someone who's worried about financial security, right? Who is worried about financial security because at one point they didn't have it. But now we see this so often where that person works hard, builds financial security, and

they're safely invested. It's not going to just all go away, but they don't see that. They're feeling inside and behaving the same as when they didn't have that security. And this happens a lot where we're not owning what's ours. And that's kind of the catchphrase to think about compassion and curiosity about yourself. Are you owning what's yours? Or are you still trying to, for example, feel good enough, but you've already proven that in the ways you need to years and years ago? Are you trying to feel secure

enough when you've already proven that in the ways you need to years and years ago. Are you trying to feel secure enough when you've already attained that years and years ago? Because the trauma and how it changes our brains doesn't go and look at that in a way that could be very, very simple of like, have you achieved that? It could be clear to everyone else on earth if they look at the answers, obviously, yes, but our own brains don't know that. Don't know that I did the things I need to boxes I need to check to feel secure to feel safe to feel like I've achieved something very often We're still laboring under what we were laboring before even though we've we've worked and and Satisfied a lot of those needs in us

You just described me right there. Hey, I have not My gosh, I mean that's exactly right You just described me right there. I have not my gosh. I mean, that's exactly right. I mean, the truth is if I step away from it many years ago, I should have stopped worrying about ever having to be poor again or without food or, you know, but when you have food stamps in your life, when you're young, like I did or welfare, no matter what abundance I've created, I've caused myself to still feel afraid of being poor. And that's the truth. That's bizarre to people that know me that are around my life. But what a great conversation, by the way, because that's exactly verbatim me, what you just described.

Still to this day. And it's just, if you're the quality of your life is the quality of your emotions, then I'm not any more successful than someone who's never made any money or had any abundance in their life because I'm living in the same emotions I had. Yeah. I lacked those things. And so you're a hundred percent right.

Let's talk about some solutions. What is a mirror meditation? What is that? So mirror meditation is a process where sometimes a person will stare at themselves, look at themselves in the mirror and they're thinking about themselves. Right? And it's not that everyone should do this. I mean, for some people it's too intense. It's not, you know, it's not helpful, right? But for others, it can be very helpful because it draws the attention to the self. Like, what is what is going on in me? What am I avoiding? And oftentimes, a person knows,

since that bad breakup, I haven't really given myself a chance to meet someone new. And I just always keep thinking, I'm not meeting the right people or I think, oh, it'll never work out or I'm better off without it. But I know that something changed in me during that really awful breakup X number of years ago or months ago. And there might be just an example like that we could go through where they're just going over and over and over again in our brains

without ever changing it. So anything that makes us stop and really look at ourselves, it could be mirror meditation, it could be writing out a narrative. It could be talking to a trusted friend. It could be talking to a therapist. But the idea is that we stop and we stop going with the automaticity in us.

Because that person could tell themselves for 10, 20 years, right, for the rest of their lives that, okay, I know I stay away from relationships. They don't work for me. No one really likes me enough, I'm not good enough, whatever it is we tell ourselves, but even though our whole self knows that's not true and knows we didn't feel that way before this trauma, we embrace it because in the short term it feels like that's keeping me safe today. I don't have to face what I would have

to face kind of getting back out there. So if we don't stop and look at ourselves, that these kinds of things can go on forever. Like our brains are more complicated than any supercomputer, right? They are amazingly complex. And also there's some very simplistic aspects to them, which is we don't just reboot, right?

Even a computer, an old computer, you shut it down, you open it up, it tries to reboot, any patches going on. Our brains don't do that. So we can still labor under, for example, I feel like I don't have enough money and I'm gonna be in trouble and I'm gonna be poor again, even though all evidence would say that ended a long, long, long, long, long time ago,

but unless you stop and look at that, you carry it forward, the feelings of the fear with you as if it were now. Yeah, my case almost feel like, well, not in my case and everybody that I've coached too. I become kind of addicted to the story of me. become kind of addicted to the story of me. Like there's a story, I almost feel like these patterns we create about ourselves have to be connected to a story. And typically the story, the more real it is to us is the heightened emotion level when we created the story, maybe I'm wrong. But there's a story about ourselves. I think most people live the story of whether they're a victim of something or I'm even careful when I talk about that my dad was an alcoholic because I don't want my identity to

be that I'm that's who I am or like that that's who my dad was but I think you would agree with me that we all have this sort of unconscious maybe we're even conscious of the story we tell about ourselves. I'm divorced, I was abused as a child, I was neglected. I've always been heavy set. I'm not the smartest. I'm not the tallest. I'm not the prettiest. I'm not whatever. A, am I right about this story thing?

And B, is there something that you would suggest somebody do to interrupt the pattern of that story and start to create a new one? And we get a look at the story, right? Put the story out in front of you in words on paper, maybe or in spoken words, is that real? Because very often, unless we stop and look, we absolutely think our story is real. Like, even though if we stop and look, we will understand that it is not. And the example that I give, I tell this example, I think it's so, so compelling. And it's a real

story of a young woman who came from a difficult place where not a lot of people got out and and, you know, were able to live really good lives. And and where she came from didn't think much of her or think much of her capabilities. So she goes to life and then in high school, she earns an award that that's a, hey, you're smart and you're capable and you can go places. That's basically what the award said. And that's how she felt about it. She felt she got empowered by it. I can get out of here, I can do good things for myself. Like she really understood that at the time. So then, subsequent

to that, and not that long after, she has some very significant trauma in her life, very significant trauma and her feelings about herself, the brain is overwhelmed, the brain changes. Now she has a different story about that award and the story is it was a mockery. You know it was telling her you're not going to go anywhere, this is the best thing you're going to get in life and you're going to you're staying here even if you're trying to go somewhere else. Why would you think you could? Right. So she thought that about it and had no understanding, no recollection

that she had thought different. Right. And this is happening in us all the time. Where if you ask her, what's your story? And she talked about the award. It was completely different with no knowledge that the story is now the opposite because trauma makes in us a reflexive response of guilt and shame.

It's a reflex. And unless we fight that, we start redoing our stories through the lens of guilt and shame and through the lens of oppression. Most people who are talking to themselves or thinking in their head about themselves aren't doing it with compassionate curiosity. They're doing it in a persecutory way. They're telling themselves you're not good enough and over and over and over again and why they're not good enough, why no one's going to like you. This is what's going on in our minds. So how are

we supposed to realize the truth? Oh, I didn't always think about myself. I say no one comes out of the womb thinking I'm not worth anything, right? And again, I'm exaggerating a little bit, not thinking that much when they're coming out of the womb. But like, we don't feel that way. Right, initially. So how did we get to feel that way? Right? Let's go look at that. And let's go look at what our stories are. And if those stories are true, and very often, the story is the opposite.

So for example, someone who really behaved their best and did the best they could in a difficult situation, and all of us would think that person has reason to feel proud. And even more, that person looking at anyone else would think the other person has reason to feel proud, but that's not what's felt inside. What's felt inside is shame, guilt. So

unless we step outside of ourselves, look at ourselves, it's amazing the delusions of self we can labor under, including having, I've got a story of my whole history and I don't realize it's entirely false, even by my own assessment, if I just stop and look at it. This message is sponsored by Greenlight. So I keep saying on the show over and over again, financial literacy is a huge deficiency in the world today and families that become financially literate, especially with financially literate kids have a leg up on the world that you cannot even imagine.

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fieldofgreens.com promo code ED. You led me right where I wanted to go, which was shame. It's a biggie. This is a biggie. Like yes I coach privately and obviously in your background as in psychiatry you're dealing with this a lot but I have to tell you even with very successful people that I coach shame comes up a lot. I mean I almost feel like this is one thing that's not discussed a lot in mental health. There's obviously depression and anxiety,

but like shame is a major topic that keeps rearing its head. Is it in your practice? And if it is, just talk about uncouple shame for us a little bit and anything someone can do to alleviate the burden of it. There's a lot to that. When I didn't start off deciding, oh, I'm going to be a trauma person, so to speak, no, having done this now for over 20 years, I just see over and over and

over again, that trauma is at the root of the vast majority of what else. Why does that person have a substance dependence? Why is that person depressed? Why is that person avoiding good things? Why is that person having a substance dependence? Why is that person depressed? Why is that person avoiding good things? Why is that person having anxiety and panic attacks? So many things I can say over and over, examples that if you trace them to the root, where did it come from instead of modern mental health, which often just wants to take an inventory of symptoms with no knowledge of you whatsoever.

Let me see how many boxes we can check. And I'm not criticizing that often practitioners are doing the best we can, but we work in these systems that are so dumbed down that they're giving a person 15 minutes with someone, all they're trying to do is take an inventory, oh, you have depression, let's treat your depression, I'll give you a medicine.

This makes no sense. If you trace people's stories back, what you find like 80% of the time Like I really believe that across 20 years of doing it is the roots of the problems We're seeing are in trauma and trauma makes reflexive shame, right? There's probably an evolutionary adaptation if you did something and it made you feel really really bad Or the group of people around you, and we all lived in small groups through human evolution, it probably made sense to feel such powerful shame that you didn't do that thing again, and you didn't

risk harming the whole group, or you didn't risk the group rejecting you. So there's some evolutionary mechanisms, but what matters to us in the modern world is that trauma makes a reflex of guilt and shame, and now we're off to the races. What does that mean, the guilt and shame? Do I change my own story? I mean, I write about losing my youngest brother to suicide, and I absolutely felt, I wasn't a psychiatrist, I wasn't in mental health at the time,

I had a business career at the time, but I absolutely felt ashamed. Like, oh my gosh, like this doesn't, this happened to us. And, you know, it doesn't happen to people whose families are put together and are okay, and I'm not okay, and we're not okay. So then I start hiding that away, and I felt very different about myself

and where I had come from. And then you can see the behaviors in my life change. I'm not as healthy. I start drinking more than I should. I start having unhealthy friendships and relationships. It was very, very clear that things changed afterwards and it wasn't just. As if that weren't enough, the death of a brother by suicide and everything it did in my family, there was something else on top of that that was toxic and poisonous, which was this sense of guilt and shame. Like, I should feel ashamed that I didn't see it, that I wasn't able to stave it off and what kind of person am I?

This happens to us as a reflex. And if we don't go and look at trauma and its reflex of guilt and shame, then it's like, hey, trauma and the reflex of guilt and shame are gonna be in the driver's seat of our lives in one way or another. The driver's seat. You know, I've had a chance, I just share this with the audience, this is we're going back and forth,

but one of the compliments that I get from time to time that I really appreciate is that I have humility for whatever blessings or success I've had in my life. And you know what? I think the trauma in my life gets credit for that, ironically. And what I mean by that is that some of the hard things that have happened in my life have reminded me of my humanness and in my case, my need to rely on a power greater than myself.

And so all of you that had some trauma, maybe you can pull some good from it that you've not pulled from it before. Maybe there's some really great things about you that come some trauma, maybe you can pull some good from it that you've not pulled from it before. Maybe there's some really great things about you that come from the fact that you suffered through something. And maybe it's not just the story you need to tell, but the conclusion you reach about it. And the blood in the career way. Sure, people write and talk a lot in the field about post-trauma resilience. And we absolutely can grow from the traumas that happen to us.

We can have a deeper understanding of ourselves, greater compassion for ourselves and others and a desire to be in the world in a different way, but we don't get to the silver lining, so to speak, the post-trauma resilience, unless we understand what the trauma has been and what it's doing to us. So sometimes with traumas that are, say, small T, and we have to define the word, I'm just

finding trauma as overwhelms our coping skills, changes our brain, right? Things that are sub threshold that we can realize like, oh, that didn't feel good, or I didn't like that. That was kind of bad for me. And I want to be different and we can grow from it. But when the traumas are at the real level, right, a real trauma that changes our brains, it's very hard to get to a place of post-trauma resilience and growth if we're laboring against the sort of secret messages, guilt and shame. I mean, we can get there, but the odds are very much against us because now we're feeling guilt and shame,

we lose insight, we start remaking our stories. So we can grow after trauma, but we don't do the right things in society to help us do that. So many more times what happens is just bad and bad and bad, or if there's a little bit of good, it's overwhelmed by the bad. But I don't think that's our fault as individual people. We live in a system that doesn't talk to us about this. And in many ways, what I'm saying, I mean, I do think there's something to pulling it all together. And the way that I think I'm able to pull it all together, I feel good about. But I'm not saying things that are new. This is known and understood within a field that has really lost its way and has a book of diagnoses, like a thousand pages long,

that just looks at symptom inventories and we've really lost the thread of like, what is going on in us? So we just look for completely different things defined by different symptoms, instead of saying what's going on in all of us, if we can get to the common roots of what is ailing us, then we can help ourselves better but the field that I work in does not come from that perspective

and I think does us, you know, very much a disservice by not coming in a holistic and even in many ways, just common sense, obviousness manner. I agree with you. I... by the way, the way that you all might not know this, but you will once you start to read his work. The way that I found Dr. Connie is my friends in the music business and said, hey, this guy saved Lady Gaga's life. And I'm like, well, that's a bold statement, but okay. And so I started to, and by the way, whatever you did there, thank God for you. And there's many other very well-known people that he's,

they credit them with like literally saving his life and I was telling somebody this weekend right in the room that I'm in who I know has struggled with anxiety and fear. This is leading to a question by the way and he said, well, he said, you know, I was on medication for a long time for this and he goes, Ed, have you ever struggled with anxiety? I'm sure you have never and I said, actually I have, I have, you know, I don't, you know, I have trauma from when I grew up in different things and I've struggled with anxiety and worry and probably even depression, even though I'm a pretty resilient tough dude and but I think I've, you know, struggled with that a little bit and he said, have you ever had medication? I said, I did for a bit and

I concluded that that wasn't for me. I'm certainly not a psychiatrist and I certainly would never, ever suggest somebody should or should not be on medication. But this particular person said, yeah, man, I went in it. And they said, three weeks later, I'm just this numb human. So although I wasn't feeling the worry and anxiety I was feeling anymore, I also had no joy, no bliss, no drive, no ambition, no drive, no ambition,

no drive in any area, physical, sexual ambition, anything. And so I wonder, this is a hard question because you're not diagnosing somebody in person, but I know you've spoken about this before. How do you feel about the medication or over medication of our population? And what are your opinions about that? How do you feel about that? So medication can, absolutely can help us. I mean, there are situations where we can get benefit from medication, but the medication has to be well chosen, chosen to the situation,

chosen to the person with reasonable expectations. If I get in my car today and I expect that it's gonna fly, right, and it's gonna fly me somewhere, I'm gonna be disappointed that it's just staying on the road. Right, but if I understand, hey, what can it do for me? What can it not do for me? Right, then I have rational expectations and we live in a world, I mean, if all we're gonna do

is have 15 minute appointments that are taking inventory of symptoms, we're going to have a reflex of a medicine. Medicine can be the answer to everything, but of course medicine isn't the answer to everything. Now we're overselling it. It's not going to do what it's built to do or it's used for the wrong purpose. The person doesn't know what to expect of it or what not to expect of it. And then the system, I think is by and large, responsible for that. Because if we have a reflex where we take symptom inventories

and prescribe medicines, like how is it gonna help a person versus saying, for example, after talking to someone, this is very, very common, there's a lot for you to think about and a lot for you to work on. And I think we could do that. We could start talking about life narrative. What has gone on in your life? How have things changed at times? What are you happy with right now? What are you

not happy with? Can we look at some of that and change some behaviors or some framings? That's like 80% of the work. Imagine we're saying this to the average person who has issues of self, and also I might say something like, like there's some medicines that could kind of take the edge off. Maybe give you a little bit more distress tolerance inside as you're thinking about these very difficult things. We might be able to use a medicine

to kind of stand by your side a little bit and help you get to this place. But medicine is not gonna be the answer. It's not gonna think for us. It's not gonna figure things out. Then, you know, people have a much different view of medicines, because they understand what it can do for them. And what it can't do, they don't have the experience, unfortunately, that your friend had. And so many people have where there's something going on that's complicated,

that warrants really thinking about that person. But the system doesn't see in any way, shape or form the person takes a symptom inventory, prescribes a medicine like that's gonna fix everything, which is ludicrous, but then it doesn't work and all the person gets their side effects are not helped. And then the person thinks, oh, medicine isn't good or they avoid the field, but that's the fault of the field. And again, I'm not trying to call individual practitioners.

There are many people out there doing the best they can, but the whole framing of medicine in our society and the framing of mental health, which resides within the framing of medicine is extremely unhealthy and makes predictable that it's gonna go the way that it did in many situations. Many, many, many, many thousands upon thousands of situations what happened to your friend

is gonna happen because that's what the system makes. Yeah and by the way everybody to be very careful and cautious just in a... if you are on medication, neither one of us is saying get off that medication right now. That's not something that you should do. You should be in consult with your doctor but before you get on medication you should heed what the warning and the information that Dr. Connie just provided for you. But if you are on medication, it can also be dangerous to just stop taking it immediately as well. So please be careful about that. Absolutely. Whether someone's on medicine or not on medicine, we want rational use of medicine for everyone. So if you're on medicine and you're not sure what it's for, what it's doing, if it's making side effects, talk to that person who's prescribing it. You know, there are times when medicine can have an immensely helpful effect to us, right? And there are times

when it doesn't. So everyone's responsibility to themselves, I think, is to understand that. And if you're on it, understand the what and why and what it's doing. And if you're not, and you think you might benefit from it, have conversations. We all deserve to be knowledgeable, informed consumers of medical care and mental health care. That certainly means we wanna know

about the medicines that we're on. Think about something you're good at. Now think about how you got there. Chances are you had someone to help you get started. If you're thinking about starting to invest, Questrade's award-winning support team is here to help you learn how to become a better investor. From placing your first trade to setting up customized stock alerts, we're always by your side.

Just a few of the reasons why we are Canada's number one rated online broker by MoneySense. Get started today at questrade.com. It should matter everybody for you when you're listening to by the way, not just for your well-being, but your longevity and your health in general. And so I want to talk about that with you for a second. My dad died pretty young, like early 70s of cancer. And by the way, very fit guy, like trained hard, worked out hard, walked every day, exercised every day. Um, but man, he was a chronic worrier. I mean, just heavy duty worry. And I would say the best way to say it would be trended towards the melancholy most of the time. And that being polite and so I've always had this theory that potentially that turned on some form of gene expression for cancer early on. I know you would never claim that but I believe his mental health contributed to his physical decline almost in

my own mind like it affected him on a cellular level. And I know your thoughts about trauma impacting aging health and even on a cellular level. Absolutely. Like again, I'll say things, but most of what I'm saying is not opinion. I'm just relaying what science knows, which is if we have these unprocessed traumas in us, they make us less healthy. They make there be more stress hormones within us, inflammatory hormones within us. They push us not just towards depression, but they push us towards heart disease. They push us towards strokes. They make us more vulnerable to cancers. These things are true and we know that they are true.

The science shows us this, but we don't honor that. We don't look and say, hey, we're whole beings and whole creatures from head to toe. And if there's tension in us all the time and we're laboring on our fears inside of constant negative self-talk or never feeling safe, like someone who's achieved so much for themselves but can't own what's theirs and still feels the fears they had before is that's harmful to us from

head to toe. And do we know that, for example, increases risks of heart attack, increases risks of autoimmune diseases? The answer to that is absolutely yes, but we can know a lot of things that don't help us, right? Because we're not bringing it to bear and the medical system and the mental health system and the social systems around us don't acknowledge these things. We know you'd have to make a lot of changes to acknowledge them. So a lot of the things that I'm saying that seem like, oh my goodness, like, isn't this such amazing thing

that trauma can change the genes that are passed on or trauma can ultimately make us more susceptible to autoimmune disease. I'm not saying anything new here. This is just me saying things that science understands. So we should all stop and think, why is it that way? Like there's something that's so known to science gets said in a way that seems like it's new,

even though I'm just repeating things that are out there. You know, that's because the zeitgeist in the world around us, like what's going on inside of us? How does it affect us? There are things that are obvious, and they're known and they're very, very important, but they're on the back burner or we don't understand. What about the reverse? So we've got a couple more questions. One of the things I noticed right when the Zoom came on is you're fit. You're in good shape and you're not 25 years old, so you're fit. And I try to stay very fit as well.

So we know that our mental health, trauma, those scars, those marks can affect our physical well being. What about the other way around? I'm also the like, I don't know what I would have done in my life, I'd be a completely different human if I couldn't train five days a week and lift weights and cardio, etc. So as a practical step, how important is whatever it might be massage, working out out, stretching, walking, heavy lifting of weights, impact on these other things mentally in our life? No, absolutely. There's a strong impact. The brain and the body are attached and it's a two-way street. So if you're not taking care of yourself, somebody who's eating a poor diet is sort of lethargic, isn't exercising,

isn't getting their blood moving, there's no cardiovascular exercise. That affects what's circulating in our blood, like how our bodies are functioning, markers in our blood, are things okay or are things not okay? So from endocrine examples, inflammatory examples, there are all sorts of examples in us, and neurotransmission examples from transmission from the brain down into the body and back that show us absolutely it's a two-way street. And then what's circulating inside of us goes into the brain and pushes us towards

being less cognitively acute, having less energy inside, or maybe pushes us towards depression or towards more anxiety. So we have to look at ourselves holistically. Again, that's not new age softness. I mean, we are one thing from head to toe, and of course what's going on in our mental health is gonna impact our bodies.

Like even to the point of making a heart attack lightly or not lightly. And of course what's going on in our bodies is gonna affect our brain, including making a heart attack likely or not. And of course, what's going on in our bodies is going to affect our brain, including making a difference of whether depression is likely or not likely. And again, I would say there are interesting and maybe sophisticated things to say about this. But a lot of it is just so clearly known. And it's in the realm of basic knowledge, but basic knowledge that isn't acknowledged and acted upon by the systems that are supposed to be taken care of us. Yeah. Knowledge and acknowledged are very different things. Just, I, first off,

I would tell you, A, I've just really enjoyed this today, but, um, I'd like to have you back on. I really like to do this again. Um, there's so much more. Yeah, I really have to have you back on. I would really like to do this again. Sure. I enjoyed it. I loved it. Yeah, I really have too. Let's start. Let's finish with one thing. And this is a broad stroke question, but it's just worth asking you. So they're not a part of your practice, but you're in line at Starbucks and the guy goes, hey, I saw you on Ed Mylett's show or I saw you on Huberman. I saw you on The Dire, the CEO, whatever whatever you've been on any show you've been on

and they say, hey, I'm struggling with some anxiety and fear and maybe anger issues. I'm depressed a little bit. Maybe just like Ed Mylod's dad, I drift towards the melancholy and I'm not going to be in your practice. Tell me something I should do when I leave here right now that I could implement as a practice that could alleviate some of my suffering and that I could start on the right road to making progress towards my mental well-being. What would you say to them? Yeah, well when it comes up and things like that do come up, the first thing I say is I always want as a person to know that if things are in a really bad place, if you have thoughts of, I think I don't want to be alive, you have thoughts of harming yourself, there are times to get some help. So I will say that if things are in a place that's really difficult and you're feeling some

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

stopping and thinking about ourselves outside of the usual reflexes. And it's remarkable how many times a person will just stop and think, what is it that I'm saying to myself and realize, oh, a thousand times a day or five thousand times a day I'm saying this awful thing to myself and signing myself and the person may never have stopped before and realize this is going on inside. So compassionate curiosity and what we may learn from it is a great starting point and if we're really not in an okay place and we need professional help, if that's not the case, let's think about ourselves with interest and curiosity and the excitement. I mean, I really mean

it the excitement that if I do this, if I think about myself and shine the light around inside of me, it's not that, oh, it's useless. It's not that it's going to ultimately make me feel worse. Like this is how we help ourselves. So if we do that, we're not hiding from what's inside of us. That's often the very first step towards just being healthier and happier. It's really, really good. It, you know, everybody, when you're listening to Dr. Connie,

I hope it dawns upon you that there's the potential for a whole new you. There's a whole new life awaiting you, a whole new set of emotions awaiting you that you can get. And I'm so grateful for your work. I'm grateful for the conversation today. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. You're very welcome. Yeah, so good. The book is called Trauma, The Invisible Epidemic.

And I got to tell you, the subtitle is the most telling to me because I really believe this is an invisible epidemic. I really do. I meet very few people, ironically, who aren't suffering with some of this and it's why what you do matters so much and this conversation did today. So thank you again. God bless you. You're very, very welcome and thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. Thanks everybody. Share the episode if it meant anything to you or you love anybody who may be struggling with this stuff. Share today's episode with them like you always do. God bless you everybody. Max out your life!