Episode: 125
5 Ways To Improve Your Subconscious Mind & Be Happier in 2024
with Dr. Paul Conti, MD
Unlock the mindset shifts you need for happiness and success.
Stanford-trained psychiatrist Dr. Paul Conti, the expert credited by Lady Gaga for “saving her life,” shares how to change toxic self-talk, process childhood trauma, and navigate setbacks.
Learn how your inner dialogue shapes your reality and walk away with practical tools to improve your mental health today.
Listen on:
If we pay attention to it, then we can have control over it.
Dr. Paul Conti, MD
Featured Clips
Transcript
Mel Robbins (00:00:03):
I think some of us are so used to hearing that negative voice that we don't realize that we could get to a point where we could think something different.
Dr. Paul Conti (00:00:13):
If what's running over and over inside is, oh, you'll never succeed, or you'll get in shape, but then you'll lose it again and you'll just feel worse about yourself. It's so much more deterministic than the external factors. It shows where the dialogue that we're having with ourselves or what we're telling ourselves can do to us over time.
Mel Robbins (00:00:37):
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I'm so glad you're here. I know you showed up to spend some time with your friend, Mel, but boy, are you in for a treat today because there is somebody really special joining us and we have a really important and very juicy and cool topic. You're going to love this. And the story about this episode goes back, I don't know, four or five months. I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, the Huberman Lab, and he was doing a four-part series with a renowned psychiatrist that trained at Stanford and Harvard. The guy's name is Dr. Paul Conti. Now, I fell in love with Dr. Paul Conti during this four part series, but it was the fourth part of the series that had me go, ding, ding, ding. We have to get an appointment with him.
(00:01:27):
That man needs to be on this show sharing his heart, sharing his wisdom. We got to unpack the unconscious mind, the little voice in your head. And so I reached out to him, he said, yes, he is here. He's about to join us and wait to hear what we're going to dig into. Dr. Conti says, your unconscious mind, it's the key to everything, all those things that are alluding you, that you think about, whether it's getting a dream job or improving and strengthening your relationships, or maybe you beat yourself up because you have these health goals, but why can't you seem to do it? All of this points to your unconscious mind. The answers are there, and he is going to connect the dots between your unconscious mind, the little voice that's chirping away at you, and how to change the narrative, how to change how you talk to yourself, because it's the key to being a happier, more present and loving you, and you're going to need that if you want to enjoy your life, and I want that for you.
(00:02:27):
Now, a little bit about Dr. Conti. You already know he is at Stanford and Harvard. He's been in clinical practice for over two decades, and he's a renowned expert on trauma, which is connected to the unconscious mind. He's written a bestselling book. You want to know who wrote the forward of that book, lady Gaga. Now, why would Lady Gaga write the forward on a book that a Stanford and Harvard trained psychiatrist would write? Well, I'll tell you why, because she's worked with them and she credits Dr. Conti with single handedly changing her life. And today, there is no doubt in my mind that what he's going to share with you and me, it's going to change your life too. So if you're tired of that negative voice dragging you down, or if you feel like sometimes being in your own head is like being behind enemy lines, I want you to know you're not alone. And my mission today is to inspire you to stop ignoring that little voice and trying to tune it out. Because guess what? It's not working. And Dr. Conti is going to tell you why he is here to teach you how to turn toward that little voice and go into your subconscious because the answers that you need are in your unconscious mind. So please help me welcome the amazing Dr. Paul Conti.
Dr. Paul Conti (00:03:47):
Hello, pleasure to meet you.
Mel Robbins (00:03:49):
Well, thank you for being here. And I just want to jump right in and just start with I guess some definitions. When you talk about the little voice in the back of your head, what does that even mean?
Dr. Paul Conti (00:04:06):
There's often a sort of running dialogue or set of opinions inside of us that are in the background to our experience of life in the present. And this can make a huge difference to how we respond to life in the present, how we think about ourselves and how we think about the world around us, that there's a lot more going on inside of us than what we're taking in at the moment.
Mel Robbins (00:04:31):
Am I ever going to escape the stuff that happened in the past? Am I ever going to get rid of the negativity? That little voice started to already come up, but then you just said that you can take steps to have some control over this. So there is good news here. We're not just at the whim of this, right?
Dr. Paul Conti (00:04:53):
No. If we pay attention to it, then we can have control over it. So many things in life, if we don't pay attention, we're not able to exert control. And here's the place for curiosity about what do I think of myself when I'm sitting quietly? What's running along in my mind? What's my self-talk like? Do I have conclusions about myself that may be in some cases or in many cases unfair. So things that haven't gone well in the past, am I running that forward? Or if the last three relationships didn't go well, is a person running forward that, oh, they'll never go well, or I'm not a person who's ever going to have that, right? These are the things that we can get into our minds that start impacting us very, very deeply that we can change if we go and look at it. So if a person says, wow, there, there's such negativity running in my head that I'm never going to find someone, I'm never going to find someone, and here I am trying to find someone and trying to date and to find a good partner, and I'm doing this, but all the time what's running along in me is, oh, this will never work.
(00:05:57):
And maybe that links to a really bad experience a couple of years ago that is emotionally very powerful, and maybe I can acknowledge that and say it's emotionally powerful, but it's not determining anything. In fact, I don't want that running along in my head. How about I can be a good partner to someone or I can find a better job? How about things that more accurately reflect me as opposed to things that can automatically be going on in our minds that are quite negative, that we're unaware of? So the key here is paying attention is curiosity and interest in ourselves and how we think of ourselves and our place in the world around us, and our ability to navigate in the world around us and looking at perhaps some of what may be negative because negative things are stronger. They're more what's called salient, right?
(00:06:46):
We have a salience bias, which means our brains pay more attention to the negative, which is part of a survival instinct that we want to remember negative things because those memories may help us survive in the future. But then we start to weigh more heavily negative things across the board, and we can go and look at that and decide what is really my opinion? What do I really think as opposed to something that is a reflex inside of me that may have a great deal of influence on my decisions and the outcomes of my strivings in the world?
Mel Robbins (00:07:22):
Well, what was interesting about what you just said is you said this kind of question, what do I really think? What that little voice is saying to you is that I think some of us are so used to hearing that negative voice that we don't realize that we could get to a point where we could think something different. You know what I mean?
Dr. Paul Conti (00:07:45):
Right. It's a way people talk about learned helplessness, and this has been a topic for a long, long, long time, and a lot of learned helplessness is often really that we're not paying attention to something the number of times in the role of a therapist, I've been talking to someone, or even in my own therapy, I've been on the other side of it where either I'm inquisitive about the person, or in this case my own therapist would be inquisitive about me and what's going on inside of me and asking questions and then realizing, oh, I have this conception that is going over and over again in my head and I'm not even aware of it. I've never actually put words to it is going on inside of my mind. That's very, very different than putting words to that. So after a number of traumas, which I write about to some degree in the book, I started to have a feeling that I'm just cursed and things won't really go well.
(00:08:43):
Or if they go well in one way, they won't go well in another. Right? That somehow there is a force watching over me and making sure that things don't go well, and that if something goes well, then negative things will happen too. Because I started to have a very, very different view of myself and how I was able to, or not able to, or I was at the mercy of maybe the world around me because when some negative things happen, especially in sequence or
Dr. Paul Conti (00:09:14):
Even just one big thing or sometimes a bunch of small things that we might not even be aware of, it can change how we feel inside. And then this stream of negativity was making me, for example, my mood was lower. I felt much less hopeful. I felt more beleaguer. There was more anger and frustration in me. And by putting words to that and then challenging that, do I really think that's true?
(00:09:37):
Do I think that people are cursed? But I don't think that anyone else is. I don't think anyone else is cursed, but I am person. You're the one person maybe now I should go revisit that, right? And this is the curiosity. If we start thinking about ourselves, we can change really, we can change everything because we can have so much greater control over what's going on inside of us, and it can match up with what we really and truly believe instead of running along inside of us in a negative way. And we haven't even put words to it or decided if we actually believe it or not.
Mel Robbins (00:10:13):
The stories in your book were so helpful because it allows, or at least it allowed me to see myself in your experience and then extrapolate similar things. Could you explain, for example, just one story and how it relates to what that little voice in your head started to say in terms of, I'm cursed. Bad things are always going to happen to me. It works out for everybody else, but not me.
Dr. Paul Conti (00:10:45):
I think one of the most powerful stories, at least in the way that it impacted me, was the person I wrote about a person who had what is called, it's called tards syndrome. It's a feeling that one has already died when one is still alive. So this isn't a metaphor they're going through. They go to the grocery store, they do all sorts of things in a normal way, but they believe that they are dead, that they have perished, but their body is still moving along in the world around them. And it's quite rare, but it's certainly not unheard of. And the gentleman that I took care of was sure that he was dead, and he thought it was funny that I would put the stethoscope up and listen to the heart of a dead man or that I would come and spend time with him and that it was just the same as if he were in the morgue.
(00:11:40):
But that part of it hadn't happened yet. And when you look at the history of a person like that, this was a person who was very affable. He had a good sense of humor, and it was kind of fun to be around. But he had been around no people for so, so long. He had lived in loneliness and isolation without any real human connection. And the dialogue in his mind had gone from say, bad to worse, to almost unimaginable to, well, I'll be okay even though I don't have anyone in my life. I don't have any friends. I don't have a partner, but I'll find one too. I won't find one too. That's not for you to, you don't get to have any people in your life. And this was running along over and over for many, many years of loneliness and isolation that got to the point of feeling so little human connection that the man was sure that he'd actually died already. It's a strong, strong example, but it shows where the dialogue that we're having with ourselves or what we're telling ourselves can do to us over time. So if it can make us believe that we're dead, what impact can it have on a person who says, I'll never get a better job, I'll never find a partner. I'll never have a better relationship with my kids. If we can make ourselves believe that we're dead from the distress that's going on, we can do almost anything to ourselves that limits our horizons, limits our health and our happiness.
Mel Robbins (00:13:24):
What I'm processing right now is the connection between the little voice and the kind of story that you keep telling to yourself and how that then becomes the actions that you take or not.
(00:13:41):
And so as you started to tell that story about a person who is lonely, and there's a lot of loneliness in the world right now, and the story if you were paying attention started to shift from, I'm lonely to, I'm not going to, I'm always going to be like this. And if you are telling yourself that you're never going to find friends, you're not going to feel motivated to leave the house, you're truly convincing yourself. And in a more pedestrian kind of example that we can all relate to is if you've ever fallen off the wagon with your own health and you start to feel like, oh my gosh, I'm never going to get back in shape again, or I don't have the willpower to eat healthy, all of that little voice is instrumental in you not taking the actions that would change that situation. Is that why this is so imperative that we pay attention to one of the reasons?
Dr. Paul Conti (00:14:41):
Yes, I believe in 25 years of doing what I do for a living, taking care of people and being a psychiatrist, being a therapist, I have seen over and over and over again that what we're telling ourselves in here is far more deterministic than any external factor. So someone who wants to go back to the gym and wants to be in better shape, wants to lose weight again or whatever it is that person's trying to achieve, we could say, well, they should carve out the time for it. Or Gyms are close and they should make that a priority. And how can they change your scheduling? And we can look at that in so many ways, but if what's running over and over inside is, oh, you'll never succeed, or you'll get in shape, but then you'll lose it again and you'll just feel worse about yourself.
Dr. Paul Conti (00:15:27):
It's so much more deterministic than the external factors often without us being aware of the tremendous impact of what is going on inside of us. And this is where we often carry along. I'll imagine sometimes a person who could be living life so much better, they have everything inside of them. They have everything they need for life to be so much better, but I'll imagine it's as almost as if they're dragging around the weights of the past and they're taking them from the past and projecting them into the future. And we can all do this, and one might argue to some extent all of us, or at least the vast majority of us do this to some extent, but we often do this to an extent that is actually deterministic about what happens next in our lives. And this is where repetition makes such a difference that often if something doesn't go right, we try again, but we try again in the same way.
(00:16:28):
So people will come in just to take the relationship example. This happens a lot and would happen a lot when I saw I was seeing a lot of new patients all the time for many, many years. And people would come in and say, oh, you can't. I know you can't help me. I'm only here because someone thought I should go or because I'm just desperate, but I know you can't help me. And then they would tell me about repetition. There's no way I'm going to have a good job my last four jobs, and then they'll tell me about the last four jobs or I'll never have a good relationship. Lemme tell you about my last five relationships. And they're not the jobs, the relationships are not different, and they're the same thing that has happened multiple times. And I found myself saying to someone who'll tell me they'll never have a good relationship and I cannot help them because the last seven have been so bad.
(00:17:21):
And then sometimes I'll say, if you can tell me how they've been bad in seven different ways, then I might have to agree with you, but that's not what you're going to tell me. You're going to tell me something that's seven variations of the same thing of the same story, and that can provide us with so much help. If you realize I haven't done something that's failed seven times, I've done one thing that hasn't gone the way I wanted it to. Now the fact that I've done it multiple times just tells me, Hey, I need to look at that. How can I do that differently? And now we can open up a world of change because we can learn from the past. The past is good information, but it no longer seems as if it's fate that's projecting into our future, and this is the benefit of exploration, whether it's in therapy or it's reflecting about ourselves. It's much better done if we're writing or we're talking with someone of, Hey, what's going on inside of me? And how do I understand that, but understand it so I can use it to my advantage so that it's not then controlling me and making foregone conclusions to my next 15 decisions.
Mel Robbins (00:18:32):
I am so happy you're here because I feel a level of hope, happy
Dr. Paul Conti (00:18:37):
To be here.
Mel Robbins (00:18:37):
Well, I'm glad you're here because I feel a level of hope and let me explain why we can see this in other people. I'm thinking about a bazillion examples. For example, when one of our daughters was in her, she was 21, 22, and she would constantly lament to me, oh, every time I go out to the bar, everybody's all over my roommates, nobody even talks to me. And it was this repetition of this story that I'm never going to find somebody that loves me. I'm not good enough, I'm not pretty enough, I'm not thin enough. And it just over and over and over again. And as I would hear her, as her mother and I would look at her objectively and go, what are you talking about? This is complete fiction. And seeing it in somebody else is so easy, but it's so hard for us to gain that objectivity with ourselves. And so maybe a place to start in terms of the person listening is could you share some of the most common things that you have heard in terms of that little voice rising up in someone's head that somebody just repeats to you, but they might not even hear themselves saying it?
Dr. Paul Conti (00:19:58):
Very often, it paints with a broad brush, or if it's not painting with a broad brush, it'll come at the thing that is most distressing to us. So the broad brush part could be just saying, oh, I'm a loser. Or even sometimes we see ourselves in the third person, you're a loser. You'll never make it. You're just not good enough or no one's going to want me, or no one's going to want you. We're talking to ourselves and it's painting with a very, very broad brush that is really kind of striking to the core. I mean, it's hard to argue with something like that because it is so pervasive. So instead of arguing with it, the idea is to recognize it and reject it.
Mel Robbins (00:20:44):
How do you do that? The
Dr. Paul Conti (00:20:45):
Broad brush is important to realize because it will impact absolutely everything. If it's not so broad brush, then often it'll come at the thing that we most want. You'll never have a better job or your relationship will never be better. You'll never find anyone you'll, you'll never reconcile with a certain family member, whatever it may be. You'll never be healthy or you'll never lose weight. You'll never be in better shape. Whatever it may be that this comes at us. And if you imagine, I mean, imagine that someone shadowed a person all day and just whispered in the worst possible thing. We would be distraught. I mean as someone to follow someone around and just tell them that all day. But we can do that to ourselves. And that's not an exaggeration of what would it be like to have someone following behind doing that all day?
(00:21:38):
It's not an exaggeration. What we can do to ourselves is far worse than that. I think of the example of a young man who liked music and was really interested in music. It was a true story who had a job that was farther away than it needed to be and it wasn't paying well, and there were probably better jobs closer. And I thought at one point that the duration of the drive was about music. This person loved music so much until I learned that the radio or there was never music on in the car, it was a longer drive, so this could run over and over in the person's head because they were ashamed of the job that they were doing. They knew that they could do better. They knew that they could earn more and be a stronger support to their family. So the job was chosen through the lens of self punishment.
(00:22:28):
Don't choose one that's just 10 minutes away. Choose one that's 50 minutes away so you can tell yourself the whole way there and back, just what a loser you are. It's so awful. But this was not looking as you said about your daughter. You look from the outside. This person was intelligent and personable and diligent, and none of those things were true, but we had to identify. It was the shock of it was like, wow, oh, you're not even listening to music. And then my shock and his shock and what's going on there? And that is a person whose life is vastly different now, and that person has a fantastic job, and this is really true compared to what they were doing. Then they sought more education as they knew that they could do, but couldn't quite step up to that plate, came through it.
(00:23:19):
Well, everything is so much better. But that was the turning point of the realization of, oh, right, nothing can possibly go Well if this is what's going on inside of me, and do I believe that? Is that really true? Where did that come from? A lot of it came from prior trauma. This is someone who suffered abuse when they were younger. So this was going on in person's mind since that period of time. And we had to go back to the roots of it of what it felt like to be abused and to feel like he couldn't tell anyone and no one would help and felt so bad about himself and responsible for it, even though of course he was not. And the genesis of it all was then and going through and exploring some of that, including the shame because traumatic events generate shame in us that there was absolutely shame to feel, but the shame was to feel on the part of the people who were hurting him, not him, and to be able to, right, this is not my shame. I reject this and it doesn't determine who I am or where I can go. Now his life starts changing and that is a true story, and it's not a rare one either. This happens when we can reflect on, get a handle on wait, what is going on inside of me? And it starts with curiosity.
Mel Robbins (00:24:41):
When you were talking about going back, I kept thinking to myself, we weren't born trashing ourselves. I think a lot about a baby that's learning to walk and they fall over and over and over again and keep getting up and keep getting up. And if we put in an adult that situation, I'd have about three falls and be like, I think I'll just lay here on the floor. My voice would kick in. Can you explain why this happens? Why do we do this to ourselves? It seems on some level extremely maladaptive, and yet I would imagine that most adults are trapped in this negativity in their minds until they wake up and start doing something about it. So how did we get here?
Dr. Paul Conti (00:25:32):
I think that's a great question, and it allows me to highlight what I think is an extremely important point, which is that I do not believe that we mean ourselves harm. It is not true that, oh, there's a part of our brains that can't stand us, that's against us and that we're split inside. There's a part of us that wants to take care of ourselves and a part of us that this is not true of people. I believe with all my heart and mind, 25 years of doing this and studying the psychology and the neuroscience behind it, that this is not how we are built to be and we don't know for sure, but likely what is happening is the hijacking of survival mechanisms. So if you think about this salience bias towards the negative, this links back to survival. The example I often give is imagine saying a hunter gatherer society.
(00:26:28):
A person is hungry and a person forages and say, finds a newberry and try some of it. And let's just say that it tastes good and it's nourishing and you feel better afterwards. It's good to remember that, right? Maybe a person remembers, goes and looks for it the next day, shows other people. It's good to remember that. But if you try that new berry and you get very, very sick, then you better remember that. Same thing with interpersonal interactions. If something goes well with a person, then okay, maybe that's a person one can collaborate with and we want to note that inside. But if something goes very poorly, someone is threatening or violent, we better remember that. So we have these survival mechanisms inside of us that highlight the negative, so to speak, in the service of our survival, but they can get utilized to highlight things that are negative but are not true about us, which is why trauma in childhood and childhood abuse is so tremendously impactful and it can be addressed, it can can be treated, but the most powerful negative lessons are sent to us in childhood because if we learn those lessons, we don't test them again.
(00:27:43):
So someone who learns, I'm not good enough, no one will love me, I can't control what happens to me. Imagine a child in a household where sometimes a parent or parents are in a good place. Let's say they're not using drugs, they're not using alcohol, they're not incredibly stressed out, and then if the child does something good, the child gets rewarded or gets a positive word, and if something negative happens, the parents demonstrate, okay, that's okay. But when things aren't going well, it doesn't matter then what the child does. So the child does something good, brings on something good from school and may get yelled at or insulted or hit, and then the child learns, I can't control any of this, and then the child ultimately takes in, I am bad or I am not good enough. These are lessons that we can get in adulthood and they can be very impactful, but so powerful when we learn them in childhood and we don't go back and look at that.
(00:28:40):
The one thing the computers have on our brains, our brains are far more powerful than any computer, but the one thing the computers have on our brains is that they'll reboot and they'll say, oh, is there new information? Is there new software? Let's integrate this. Let's integrate that. But we don't do this. We don't say, Hey, here I am a competent adult and I've been able to support myself and I've been able to live a decent life and to get myself by and be an upstanding person in the world, and maybe I can do better for myself. Maybe that lesson that I learned that said, I'm not good enough and I will never have. Maybe that's wrong. We don't automatically do that. It's not that we never do it, but on balance, it stays with us as a given. And here's where I talk about my math minor, that learning math was so helpful because you get these problems and they have givens, right?
Dr. Paul Conti (00:29:28):
X is three, then if you can't solve the problem, maybe you want to go back, right? I learned if I can't solve the problem, oh no, X was five, I wrote down three. That's why I can't solve the problem. But in general, don't do that. We don't automatically go back and look at the givens, but we can do that if we learn, oh, they're really important. What did I learn about myself in childhood? Did I learn negative things that I'm carrying forward to the future? It's just one example. But these are examples that can change our lives.
Mel Robbins (00:30:02):
I have two things I'd love to dig into listening to you explain all that. And the first one is this observation that I have, that it's just absolutely mesmerizing how complex and intelligent and incredible the human design is. And it's always struck me as just so sad that part of our design when we were little is that when something happens that is traumatic or dysregulate, disregulates your nervous system or sends you into a state of an alarm as a kid that our default isn't, wow, these adults are kind of screwed up. There's something wrong with me that we aim it back at ourselves.
Dr. Paul Conti (00:30:53):
Children are trying to understand, especially at the stage of life where there's so many connections forming and the child is growing and learning about the world around them that the child is trying to understand, but without the benefit of abstract thought
(00:31:11):
And of life experience. So if you or I enters a room of new people and let's just say there's five or six new people and they're treating us poorly, or there seems to be a randomness to emotion, then we can look at that through the lens of abstract thought of like, whoa, I just came in and didn't say or do anything. And why are people being so negative? Or why are they all over the map with their emotions? We can attribute outside of us because we have the ability to do that. There's a brain function involved in abstract thought. That's a complicated one. And there's life experience too to understand that people can act like this. We combine our life experience and our capacity for abstract thought, but in children, they're trying to make sense of things without those capabilities. So then the idea is it must be me because there's not the thud.
(00:32:07):
Oh, people can have issues of their own that can impact how they're responding. So in one sense, they're responding to me, but they're not really responding to me. They're responding to what's inside of their head. So if I say mom or dad, can I have something to drink? And the president says, just go in the other room or yells me. I didn't really do anything wrong. That person, my mom or my dad was in a bad place, they can't do that. So the attribution is tos self, which is why the lessons that we learn in childhood can be so, so difficult into the future because we don't have the capacity for the abstract thought. We don't have the life experience. So we attribute the negative things around us to ourselves. And this is where there's an English physician named Winnicott who wrote about the idea of raising children is so that the child can feel good enough.
(00:33:04):
And this wasn't an idea of limp over the line. That's not what good enough meant. Good enough means solidly good enough that I'm good enough to face what there is for me to face. If that's something negative, I can get myself through negative things. And also I can get myself to better places. I can find better for myself. If I get knocked down, I can get back up again. These are the lessons that want. And if we can get through childhood, and if we didn't get through childhood, so feeling good enough and there's aspects of not good enough, we carry along in all of us, then we can go back and look at that and we can change that later in life. But that would be the ultimate idea that when we're raising children, they come through childhood feeling, look, I'm good enough. I can bring myself to bear regarding whatever it is in front of me to face or to strive for.
Mel Robbins (00:33:58):
And of course, every single parent listening, including myself, just leaned into this microphone to go, Dr. Conti, how the hell do we do that? I feel like every other day I am doing something that I didn't mean to do that is going to screw them up and send them to therapy. And not that therapy's a bad thing, love therapy, kids love therapy, but it just seems like a minefield to navigate. And I was curious as you were talking, is there an age range when that skill of being able to have abstract thought or processing, I can't remember what you said, starts to develop in someone.
Dr. Paul Conti (00:34:44):
It comes along across time in childhood development. So there's no one stage where, oh, that comes online, but it starts off in very minor ways and then grows with the ability for full abstract thinking. If I could say something to what you had said about parents and leaning in because we want to be the best parents that we can be is the first step there starts with ourselves. And that's often what people don't want to look at. They want to look at, oh, how can I talk to my child differently instead of really zooming out to start with and say, look, am I taking care of myself because if I'm too stressed, if I'm tired, if I'm hungry, if I'm just stretched thin, then we don't have the time and attention to nurture those around us. It really starts with our self-care and whether we can bring our best selves to our parenting and then the choice of how we're interacting with the child. And also to be honest, if we make a mistake to say it or if we say something that we wish we hadn't or we snapped a little bit, again, I'm not talking about bad parenting here. These are things good parents do to acknowledge that to say, I'm sorry I was tired and I am trying to get more rest.
Dr. Paul Conti (00:35:02):
Leaning in because we want to be the best parents that we can be is the first step there starts with ourselves. And that's often what people don't want to look at. They want to look at, oh, how can I talk to my child differently instead of really zooming out to start with and say, look, am I taking care of myself because if I'm too stressed, if I'm tired, if I'm hungry, if I'm just stretched thin, then we don't have the time and attention to nurture those around us. It really starts with our self-care and whether we can bring our best selves to our parenting and then the choice of how we're interacting with the child. And also to be honest, if we make a mistake to say it or if we say something that we wish we hadn't or we snapped a little bit, again, I'm not talking about bad parenting here. These are things good parents do to acknowledge that to say, I'm sorry I was tired and I am trying to get more rest.
(00:36:07):
I can be the best parent I can be, and I'm sorry that it, it's good for us to know that we're human, to acknowledge that humanism, what it requires of us in order to be the best people we can in the world around us. And then also to think about our communication choices and how honest we're being as opposed to feeling ashamed that we snapped at our kid and then we look the other way instead of acknowledging it and saying, I'm sorry if that makes sense.
Mel Robbins (00:36:36):
It makes perfect sense. And it also applies to every relationship you have.
Dr. Paul Conti (00:36:42):
Yes,
Mel Robbins (00:36:42):
Your friendships, your romantic partnerships, your family, all of it. Because if you can't regulate your own emotions or your're not aware of how your subconscious mind and this repetition that you're talking about of this story you keep telling yourself at yourself, if you're not aware of that and what's trying to come to the surface, you're going to bring all that into every single interaction you have with any other human being. And so you're right, it does start with you. I wanted to share with you, because we asked our global audience knowing that you were coming on about the little voice in your head, and 95% of people said, yep, I know what you're talking about, and I want to read to you some of the responses of what the little voice was saying, because I noticed they fell into positive coaching, nudging type voices, and then the person with the sledgehammer in their mind bullying them.
(00:37:45):
So like positive nudges kind of sounded like take care of yourself. Hey, if you start doing that one thing, you might just live your best life, leave your husband, you can start another business even though the first one failed, it's time to get over your ex. You'd feel a lot better if you'd work out. And then there was this other category and this one, there were a lot more responses. And you can't do that. You're not going to make it. It's all bullshit. You're never going to be an Olympic athlete. Shouldn't even move to Canada. I am wrong. My anxiety is right. My fear is right. I can't do this. Am I enough? Am I ever going to be enough? I am not living to my full potential and I never will. Can you talk a little bit about that tenor and the content of the nudge versus that just almost like you're behind enemy lines beating yourself down.
Dr. Paul Conti (00:38:47):
Well, the positive voices just need an ally because the negative voices have so much of an advantage, and it is that human evolution anthropological bias towards the negative. So the negative tends to get louder over time. It tends to feed and foster itself more than the positive. So the positive requires nurturing just in the way. I think people who are very, very good at gardening recognize that the weeds grow faster than the flowers. So we need to be very, very attentive to nurturing the good things and to what are the negative things and where do they come from? So I'm very, very curious, where did those negative voices come from? And then we look at those and explore them. And if we're taking care of ourselves, then people just feel a sense of humility. This comes with feeling good, with recognizing, wow, there's a lot out there in the world that is difficult and it can be scary and that I cannot control, but I am taking care of myself, and I did that hard thing of leaving that relationship.
(00:39:59):
We're shifting that job to feel proud of ourselves. And humility, I think is a feeling state. And then when a person is in that feeling state, we approach the world through the lens of gratitude and gratitude being very, very active, where I can feel a sense that I'm grateful for myself, that I've strived to get myself to a certain place. And if something doesn't go well, I don't want to beat myself up for that. How do I make myself the best that I can be instead of beating up on myself and we can bring that to others, this sense of humility and then active gratitude where we start to become unshackled from the past. I'm grateful that I'm here and doing the best I can. And so if starts at home and I'm fair with myself, am I more likely to be fair with you?
(00:40:49):
And that's how what you said about our relationships with our kids goes to all relationships and settings and people in our lives including ourselves, and if we take care of ourselves, all that complexity on lower levels can reduce down to things that are actually much more simple. Good mental health is consistent with simplicity. It's just hard to get there. So we see that people get to the same places like people who get happier as they grow older, right? It's an interesting demographic of people. One would think, why would anyone get happier? We accumulate aches and pains and we might worry about our mortality, but people do get happier when they're taking good care of themselves. And we see these common factors of a sense of humility approaching the world through the lens of gratitude, a sense of being self-aware and being at one's best and prioritizing self-care. This is how people grow old healthily. And because those things are so common, we can learn from them and we can strive towards them. Amidst all the complexity in our own minds and in our own lives,
Mel Robbins (00:41:57):
I absolutely want to jump to how do we do this? But I want to first address something which is for so many people, the idea of turning inward and going toward those thoughts, particularly the ones that are scary or negative or intrusive or that are tied to very traumatic experiences that we'd rather try to forget or ignore. It's like staring at a dark tunnel.
(00:42:29):
And I'd love to have you speak to the why. What is in it? For somebody who I think about my mom, for example, and she literally just says, I'm sure I have trauma. I'm sure I have anxiety. Why the hell would I want to go talk to a therapist? What am I going to do? Find out I don't like my life. It's okay. There is so much resistance to looking inside and going there. So Dr. Conti, what if you're scared about opening up a can of worms or revisiting the things that you tried to forget?
Dr. Paul Conti (00:43:12):
Well, this is very, very natural. In fact, this is sort of the default is to become ashamed of what it is that we don't want to look at to become afraid of what it is that we don't want to look at. So then we hide from it and it grows. I find it remarkable that it's often the case that the answers to our problems are there in front of us, and imagine that the answers are inside of a room, but outside the room is there's scary goblins and go. So there's a bunch of things that make us, oh, wait, or maybe I'm too afraid to go in, but it's not anything that's going to hurt us. It is just fear inducing decoration around what it is that can change our lives for the better. Because things that are traumatic to us, including they could be dramatic things or they can be just feeling inadequate or not feeling so good about myself because of my health or my job or my relationship status or whatever it may be.
(00:44:19):
And then that creates, oh no, I can't go and look at that. And then it gets some special status where we're not looking at it. It's off over here where it gets to grow and fester, which is why what's called for. It's exactly the opposite. People will say, I can't go talk about that because I'll start crying and I'll never stop. Nobody starts crying and then never stops.
Dr. Paul Conti (00:44:43):
Or I'll just curl up in a fetal position. I'll never get up. That never happens either. It's fear of that that keeps us from shining the light around in our own minds and shining the light in the places that we need to go. It is actually quite remarkable. And trauma isn't a thing. It doesn't have a mind. It's not plotting against us. So why would I go look at the thing that scares me, that makes me feel bad? So it doesn't scare you anymore, so you don't feel bad about it anymore. But it's the reflexive shame and the reflexive fear that lead us to say, I'll look anywhere but not there, but not there is the only place that we need to look. It's always that way.
Mel Robbins (00:45:25):
Are you saying that we can't just not think about something or forget about something or shove it down and it's just, I'm not going to go there. It's not going to affect me. That just doesn't work, is what you're saying?
Dr. Paul Conti (00:45:39):
Absolutely not. No more so than, I mean, imagine that a toilet is overflowing in a house or in a building, and you say, I don't like that. That doesn't sound good. That's stressful. Oh my gosh, you know what? I'm just going to pretend that's not happening. I'm going to go do something else that doesn't work. That problem, which may at the beginning be mild, even though it's daunting, there's some water on the floor. If that problem keeps going and going, that problem can turn into a disaster. So yes, the examples of what's inside of us are far, far more powerful. I think that's an obvious example. So it's a good one to attach to, but the same is true, but the stakes are much, much higher when it's about what's going on inside of us. So we do need to look at our past. Another example that can be used is if we're not looking at our past, we're carrying the weights of the past around with us.
(00:46:35):
So if I'm moving forward and I don't want to look back, well, maybe I'm carrying 20 pounds weight from this thing that happens, there's another 30 attached to me from that, there's five pound weight from three or four other things that happened. Now I'm trudging forward and I'm carrying all of that with me. It's not that if I don't look back, it's not there just like the toilet's still overflowing, even if I want to pretend it and I just want to go out of the house and do something else, it's all there. It's by looking at it that we can gain control over it and say, I am not going to drag around that 30 pound weight from that terrible thing that happened when I was younger. I'm not going to drag that weight around just because people bullied me or people told me that I wasn't worthwhile or because this really bad thing happened or because I was hurt or I was assaulted, or whatever the thing may be.
(00:47:27):
I don't want to lug that around and drag it around for the rest of my life. And by going back and looking at it, I can cut the rope to it so that I leave it behind me. And it is also so that we do not drag around with us the weights of the past and say, why am I not going anywhere? Right? Well, look at what you're dragging behind you, and if you don't go and look at that, then you will continue to not feel like you're moving into the future as you wish to be and continue to be baffled about it. So if I don't know, I'm dragging the weights, but I'm frustrated, I'm not moving into the future, well, what's going to come of that? Then I decide, well, what's wrong with me? I really can't do it. I'm a loser, right?
(00:48:07):
I mean, you see how it fosters more of the negative. So we need to look at the weights that we're dragging around with. We need to look at the traumas and the distress that's inside. It's exactly what we need to do. And the thought of why would I need to do that? I need to avoid that. That's the hijacking of those survival mechanisms. And if we let that win the day, we can stay fixed and rooted forever. But it absolutely does not have to be that way. And many people change. I mean, it's not pie in the sky where I'm picking out three or four examples where people change. No awful things come of the trauma we carry with us, like the man who was alive and pleasant and funny, who was sure that he was clinically medically dead. But wonderful things can come of looking at ourselves and making changes where there are countless stories of change where people look at what's going on inside of them, and guess what? The eighth relationship did go well because the eighth was different than the prior seven. That person did get a better job. They have a better relationship with their parents or their children or their friends. We do change, but we have to understand how to do it and then we have to actually do it.
Mel Robbins (00:49:26):
I have so much I want to say to you, first of all, I just think you're amazing. So thank you,
Dr. Paul Conti (00:49:30):
Thank you.
Mel Robbins (00:49:31):
And you have a real gift in your ability to go so deep and yet be very visual so that for those of us who do not have a degree in neuroscience, but have a lot of weight that we're carrying around, I just had this huge wake up moment where visually I could connect the dots between the weight that you are carrying away around from the things in your past that you have not processed or you carry shame around, which is why you won't face it if you won't face it. That right there is evidence that it's weighing you down
(00:50:10):
And that little voice that is following you around saying You're not good enough, it's never going to work out. You're not important. See? See, I'm right and pointing out that that is tied to the weight, and it's a way in which the weight creeps from your subconscious at the bottom of that iceberg all the way up and is chirping to your conscious mind. That's the thread that connects to that weight. And I can give an example, Dr. Conti from my own life, and I offer it only in the hopes that maybe one more story about the different layers of this would help somebody access a breakthrough as they listen. And so I remember a couple years ago there was this very kind of normal moment where I woke up, I was on vacation, and I was in this amazing place that I love to rent in the summer by the beach, and I had slept in, and I woke up and I rolled over and my husband Chris was gone.
(00:51:22):
And I looked at the clock and it was eight 30 in the morning and I immediately thought, oh God, I did something wrong. Someone's going to be mad at me. I slept in, oh, I rolled out of bed, I ran downstairs, and he wasn't there. The kids weren't there. The dogs were gone. And now that voice is going, you're in trouble. It's your fault. Chris is going to be mad at you. You didn't get up early, you didn't help with the dogs. Just this just beat down in the most normal circumstance in my life, and I noticed it. And that's what you're talking about going in like, oh, well, that's kind of weird. Why would I be trashing myself for sleeping in on a vacation? Why would I be making up a story that someone's mad at me? Where does this connect? This is the little voice coming from the dark ass scary tunnel connected to all the weight I've dragged around to the thing I don't want to process.
(00:52:31):
And so thankfully, I had a conversation with my therapist Ann a week later, and here's where we connected this. She started asking, well, when else have you had an experience where you thought, someone's mad at me, that you're in trouble? Like the first thing. And we were doing EMDR, and I could trace it all the way back to being in the fourth grade, and a very traumatic moment that I've shared about in my work where I had woken up in the middle of the night at a big family gathering and there was an older kid on top of me. And in the range of kind of sexual abuse experiences that people could have, this would be down at the one on a scale of zero to 10 in terms of how scary and awful, but still traumatizing. And the next morning when I woke up, I hid under the covers until all the kids left and in my body had this experience that I had done something wrong and someone was going to be mad at me.
(00:53:47):
And even though I had processed that trauma in therapy, I didn't realize that that singular experience, and then probably a million other experiences of waking up and telling myself that story, somebody's mad at you, you've done something wrong. Led to me, Dr. Conti, from that morning in fourth grade, all the way up to being a grown ass 50-year-old woman with multiple Ivy League degrees and tons of research under my belt and therapy and EMDR and MDMA, got it. All of this stuff had not connected. The little voice in my head that has beaten me up for years and decades saying, someone's mad at you to that singular moment, and I will tell you, going backward and digging into that again, even though I thought, I thought I had it all figured out, it was one of those massive weights that I was dragging around in my life that was tied to that voice. Someone's mad at you. And it wasn't until I saw that thread that I was able to do what you're talking about, which is I had a choice in that moment. I could see, wow, this is why I do this to myself, and I don't have to do this to myself
(00:55:33):
Because Chris wasn't mad at me. He didn't give a shit that I slept in. He was happy that I did. He was happily walking the dogs. He didn't even want me. As you have been so eloquently explaining to all of us that that little voice is tied to something deeper and figuring it out is the access to a level of freedom in your life and agency to create a different way of living that is hard to describe in terms of how liberating, it's
Dr. Paul Conti (00:56:06):
It an extremely powerful example, and thank you for sharing it. I'm sorry, of course that you went through that, but relieved that you were able to identify it and hopefully, I think definitely to at least some significant degree, maybe completely take the power out of it by bringing yourself to bear. I think there's so many aspects of that story that really capture this concept. So if you think about, it's from the beginning. You were young, so you're in fourth grade, you woke up with something happening to you. So clearly it is hard, but the brain can do it anyway to make you responsible for it, and you weren't even awake, right?
Mel Robbins (00:56:49):
Correct.
Dr. Paul Conti (00:56:50):
Yet somehow, this is how humans work. Your brain takes in a sense of shame and a sense of being at fault. And in part, shame. It's a reflex to trauma that it generates shame in us. So unless we look at that, wait a second, is this shame appropriate? Because sometimes we can do things we might feel a little ashamed of, and then we feel the shame and it can alter our behavior. So to assess, does this make any sense? But of course, you don't get to do that as a child. So the next morning you feel ashamed as if you'd really done something wrong, whereas actually the opposite, something has happened to you around which you deserve some support and some processing and some care and concern. So it stays in. You learn a lesson then, and the lessons of trauma that we learn as children, they may be false, but they're lessons nonetheless. And you learn that you may do things wrong. You're not even aware that they're wrong until you've done something wrong and that you should feel ashamed about those things, right? This is the lesson, and unless we unlearn it, unless we look at it and make ourselves unlearn it, we don't automatically unlearn it. So all of the life experience since then, all of the achievements and education, personal, professional achievements, all of that, that's been the case in your life. Didn't make that lesson go away.
(00:58:18):
No, your brain didn't reboot and go back and look at it and say, does that make sense? Probably because it's tied to survival that the reflex of shame tells you, Hey, you better remember that. It doesn't know that. Wait, wait. This is one that's not your fault. You didn't do anything to be ashamed about, but it links it in the high negative salience. It makes us remember things so that it stays with you until you have that sort of aha moment and you realize, wait, this is still in me and it predisposes me to have this reflexive shame, and what did I do wrong all these years later? I think it's extremely powerful because of one of the genesis of it, how long it stays with you, impervious to all the other things that happened in your life, but what is it not impervious to you going and looking at it and you really shining a light on it and deciding what is this? What does it mean and what does it not mean? That's powerful.
Mel Robbins (00:59:16):
Thank you. And what I can now is your word that because of the nature of the way that this little voice stays tied to these traumatic, dramatic, these change experiences, the way that that little voice stays tied to these things, what's interesting is the more you repeat it, the more it becomes not, did I do something wrong or I must have, but I have. It becomes the presumption and I can see how this affected me. Dr. Conti in social settings, always kind of feeling like on the outside looking in, it just is. It's everywhere in my life. And I love that you're also saying to us, we are doing everything but turning in. For me, I tried to outwork it, achieve it. As long as I was running and busy and doing and this and that, then I didn't have to look at it. Other people numb. We shove it down. And so I want to talk about how can we turn inward and start to hear this little voice and then do the deeper work to follow that thread to what the weight may be that you can process from your past to free yourself.
Dr. Paul Conti (01:00:47):
I think the starting place is always just a curiosity about ourselves. And a lot of times just as a person doesn't want to go look at the trauma, why do I want to go look at that thing that makes me nervous or that works very strongly against our curiosity about ourselves? And if we are sort of free to be curious about ourselves, it's not dangerous or threatening to be curious about ourselves. There's so much that we can learn. So just an example can be what is my self-talk like? What do I say to myself in quiet moments? What do I say to myself if I do something wrong? What do I say to myself if I drop something? What do I say to myself if I approach a new social situation or a new challenge? So we become curious about what we can become curious about what is going on inside of us.
(01:01:37):
And now we start to put words to things. And sometimes we can do that. We can do it sometimes just by thinking, but what we think can kind of go over and over again, sometimes in our mind without being super productive, is not always like that. But when we put it outside of us, it's different. Which is why if we're talking to someone that can make a difference, a trusted other about, Hey, I was thinking about, I'm saying this to myself over and over. I realize this has been going on to me for years. Or can we say that to someone else or can we write it, writing it down? Journaling can make a big difference in that way. And the talking to another person can involve a therapist. I think if someone having of course thoughts that they don't want to be alive anymore or thoughts that start to be quite severe, then that person should get help because we want to understand and make sure that we're maintaining safety.
Dr. Paul Conti (01:02:31):
So there is a place where professional help is important and is needed in many situations. Say it's not to that level of severity where it's needed for safety, but it can dramatically help us inquire with ourselves. So there's another person who's trained to help us introspect, help us inquire about ourselves, which is why I go to therapy. I don't miss therapy unless there's no choice about it. I'm out of town. I just simply have no two ways because even though I can help other people do this as a trained therapist, I can't do it for myself.
(01:03:09):
So when people think, I mean, I can do some of it for myself. I can introspect, I can think about myself, talk. I can write, but I can't do for myself what someone outside of me can do because I lack the impartial perspective of self. I'm impacted by what's going on inside of me as I'm trying to think about what's going on inside of me. So thinking, writing, or the therapy process can help us understand ourselves so much better. And the change rides on the back of understanding, we're trying to polish the hood instead of looking underneath at the engine. I believe that we are capable of understanding ourselves so much better than we do now. The world kind of collaborates with the shame in us and the fear that says, oh, just look the other way. And it's really the opposite of what leads us to health, which is part of why you and I are talking about it today and part of why it's so important.
Mel Robbins (01:04:05):
Well, and it's also why I want to take a highlighter and make sure that as you were listening to Dr. Conti, you had two, maybe three super important takeaways from what he just said. Number one, that just thinking about this can sometimes lead to you spinning in circles. And so there's an enormous benefit to you getting those thoughts out of your mind and onto paper or speak them out into the world. The second thing that you said is if you can have access to therapy, that's a fantastic thing because just like the example that I gave earlier when I was saying our daughter was telling herself, I'm never going to find anybody and I'm not this, and why does everybody, and I'm not good looking and I'm not that and I'm not. The other thing that when you're outside and your objective, you have this perspective that the person that's living with this little voice doesn't have.
(01:05:04):
And so there's something beautiful about speaking it out of your mouth so that you can now analyze with somebody else. But you also said something and you wrote about this in your book, and I think it's super that just talking about it with a friend or a loved one and having somebody that you feel safe with, that you can share your experiences with, that it normalizes, it makes you feel that sense of relief. And that can be helpful to somebody if you can't afford to go to a therapist. And so don't do this on your own because talking to a friend or a loved one about the little voice in your head and how you see the dots starting to connect can provide you the insight and self-awareness that you really deserve.
Dr. Paul Conti (01:06:02):
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
Mel Robbins (01:06:06):
Is there anything else that you would add to that?
Dr. Paul Conti (01:06:09):
Well, I think we can get perspectives from outside of us. So imagine in the example where you were citing your daughter saying, no one wants to talk to me, or I'm not good enough or attractive enough. And imagine when a person, if a person feels that way, we can very rapidly start making self-fulfilling prophecies without being aware of it. So someone who feels that way is often dnt, their head is down, they're behaving in ways that may make them much, much less approachable. Then no one does approach them. And then they find confirmatory evidence that they're not good enough and then they're looking down more next time. They're more avoidant next time. And this can get people into places that can at times be hard to get out or get out of or to understand because we're often not aware of what's going on inside of here affects how we present ourselves in the world around us.
(01:07:03):
That person who keeps having a negative experience with a boss over and over and over again, may not realize that they're inadvertently fostering exactly that they're behaving in certain ways that are different or that are avoidant. And then there's a repetition. So we can look across life situations, but we're not necessarily the best at observing ourselves of how am I in the world? And I mean, how many times have I heard a person say, oh, no one wants to talk to me, or I'm not good enough, or I'm not attractive enough, or this or that. And then when you get a little bit more information, oh, since that breakup two months ago, every time they go out, they're kind of like this.
(01:07:43):
And their friends see that, but maybe people haven't talked about it. And a lot of times that's the case where people around someone haven't talked to someone about something that's very clearly evident. And if we start being more curious about ourselves talking to trusted people around us, it's remarkable how much we can learn about ourselves. Someone who will tell me that they feel very ashamed of themselves and they've done something terrible, but they have been assaulted. So they're kind of like the example that you gave, which throughout life. And you would say, well, what might you say to another person? Or there's another person coming in who was sleeping when they were assaulted. Can you stay around and tell them just how awful they are? And it's a way of getting out of ourselves because we make ourselves special in ways that are not good for us.
(01:08:32):
These things don't make yourself special in ways that are not good. If anyone else would be off the hook for something or gosh, we would've sympathy and compassion, we want to bolster that person. Why am I the exception? So we can look at ourselves through a fair and equitable lens if we come at it that way. That's the basic premise behind it. But that's part of the premise of inquiry and therapy. And also what it is if we're just talking to someone trusted around us, is I don't want to go tell someone, here's my story of why I'm so bad, but here's a story of how I can really think that and that can go over and over again in my head. If I'm curious about it, boy, that conversation is likely to go well because I'll learn from me while I'm talking. Right? And if I'm talking to you, boy, I'll probably learn from you too, and I'll open up also for you to talk to me maybe than you talk to me about yourself and that's good for you. And there are ways that we can, through trusted communication and communication in the service of understanding and helping, we can be so much help to one another in ways that we just often aren't, often not because we don't want to be, but because the opportunities aren't there for it. Nobody raises something. It's just not talked about. I mean, it doesn't have to be like that.
Mel Robbins (01:09:54):
When you start to identify that little voice and the weight that it's tied to, how do you train your mind to default to something else?
Dr. Paul Conti (01:10:06):
There's a lot of answers to that. Potential answers depending upon the person, their underlying mental health, what that thing is, how pervasive it may or may not be in their lives. Is it reflection? Is it writing? Is it a therapy process? I mean, there's a lot of answers to that. And often the answers also include behavioral change.
(01:10:31):
So if I think I'm a loser because I'm not healthy enough, some aspect of that is behavioral change is realizing I can get myself out of bed 20 minutes earlier and go for a walk around the block. I can do that, and then getting myself to do that, which then bolsters me. So there's behavioral change and there's what goes on inside. But I think an important thing, an extremely important thing to say about the question you asked is that when something has been with us for a long time, it doesn't change overnight because we are also creatures of habit. So I give this example a lot that if you and I just chose a word and we decided let's choose a word and say it a thousand times, right? Then you'll be thinking about it this evening. I'll be thinking about it this evening too.
(01:11:15):
If we say it 5,000 times, it'll be on our minds in two days. So we have to understand that these negative pathways, they will atrophy, they can and will atrophy over time, but they don't go away all at once. And because we live in a world that often wants rapid gratification and a medical system that is like no matter what's going on with you in many scenarios, you get 10 sessions of a certain kind of therapy and everyone's supposed to be better afterwards. So this drive towards rapid gratification and these expectations that we're just supposed to be able to change things, which I think also come from how the mental health systems that allegedly are treating us and often don't do a good job of it, approach us, create a sense of disappointment of why am I still thinking that after I've already been through three weeks of therapy about it?
(01:12:04):
Well, the answer might be because you've been thinking about it for seven months or seven years, or in some cases seven decades. So we have to have a framing that's realistic because it may be that a 20% change in the frequency of saying that negative thing to oneself over a couple months might be an amazing achievement, and that achievement is leading towards that thing going away. But we get so impatient and we don't have a framing of what should this require of me? How long should this take? What are these neuronal mechanisms that are forces of habit, that guides so much of what goes on inside of us that can be changed but not rapidly? So I think, again, understanding is of such importance and having rational expectations. So I very often will want people to understand we can change this, but it's going to take us, I'm not sure, I might say it is probably going to be in the four to six month range. We can really get our arms around this, and I want and hope that things can start improving a couple weeks down the road, but it's a several month process. Let the person know that because so often there's just a reflex that says, Hey, somebody threw a medicine at you, and that medicine's supposed to make you better, let alone if it's a couple therapy sessions and that's supposed to make a person better, we need a rational framing for what's going on inside of us and to plot out how do we actually get to change.
Mel Robbins (01:13:31):
Well, I think that's good news because good, because if you have a level of patience that you bring to this process, you're giving it room to work. And I will share personally that even just identifying the fact that this was a reflexive habit of mine to tell myself someone's mad at me. Even just identifying it like, oh, there it is again. Oh, interesting. Oh wow. There it is again. How could the person in front of me in the line at the coffee shop be mad at me? I haven't said anything outstanding. You know what I'm saying? Just, oh, there it is again. And so the process alone of starting to see this is rewarding in and of itself.
Dr. Paul Conti (01:14:28):
I think I want to highlight, when we talk about having the courage to look at ourselves and how hard it is, you think about the example that you gave. You could have felt bad about feeling bad. Why am I feeling this way? I wake up and no one's here. I feel this way. Or my saying feeling bad things about them, that my husband would feel that way about me. Think about how many ways you could just feel bad about that and have shut it down. So it takes courage and curiosity to not do that. And I just think that part is so important to emphasize and that we can start doing that. We can start feeling better, doing better, emboldening ourselves just by doing small nice things for ourselves and for other people. And it may sound trite, but it is not to a good hand.
(01:15:16):
Say if you're in that line of the coffee shop and somebody drops something to pick it up for them and to give them a smile or do something nicer for ourselves, because we often self punish. And if I don't feel bad about myself, I'll just walk that distance in the rain instead of putting an umbrella up. We do a lot of these things to ourselves where we could just in the moment, just be nicer to ourselves, more considerate to ourselves and to others. And that starts empowering and emboldening emboldening us to do that, to see there's enough good in me that I can give somebody a smile. I can give somebody a helping hand, or I can even be a little nicer to myself. And it may sound small or trite, but I promise that it is not. And it's often that that gets the ball rolling towards something maybe more difficult, looking at something that I know is on my mind a lot, but I've been scared to look at. So I think we can start in simple ways, simple goodness to self and others.
Mel Robbins (01:16:08):
That example of putting an umbrella up was so poignant because I think of how many times I've had an umbrella and I've just been like, no, it's okay. I carry the umbrella. I walk a couple blocks, I pop my collar, I start a hunch down and I take the drops. And that moment where you stop and put up the umbrella, it is important. And I keep thinking about this visual of the raindrops being like the negative beat down. I like that. And the act of popping up the umbrella as a way to just have yourself not have to hear it.
Dr. Paul Conti (01:16:55):
Yeah, I really do love that because sometimes we'll say I the hell with it, but the idea, I get the umbrella out. But to hell with it, no, no, that's actually to hell with me.
(01:17:06):
So we want to stop and think, well, if I'm thinking to hell with it, what am I really thinking? To hell with me? I'm not worth getting the umbrella out. And it is awareness. I know I'm going to stop and I'm going to do that. I'm not going to say the hell with it to hell with me. I'm going to make some protection, makes even make a little bit more pleasantness or anything positive for myself. And I love that way of then the umbrella is shielding us from the negativity because we've had the wherewithal inside of ourselves to do something small but meaningful for ourselves. Yeah, I think that's a powerful way to move that example forward. I like that.
Mel Robbins (01:17:40):
It's beautiful. Dr. Conti, you are a gift. Thank you so much for being here with us, for sharing so much, for giving us so many tools. You're
Dr. Paul Conti (01:17:50):
Very welcome.
Mel Robbins (01:17:51):
I'm so happy to know you. Welcome. Thank you.
Dr. Paul Conti (01:17:53):
You're welcome. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Mel Robbins (01:17:57):
I don't think I'll ever forget that umbrella example because I do that to myself all the time. So, and what I hope you took away from this conversation is that you don't have to, just because you're used to letting that little voice pummel you day in and day out like I used to, doesn't mean that you have to do that for the rest of your life. You now have the tools, you have the perspective, you have the context, you have the wisdom, and you have the support of Dr. Conti, and you've got the support of me. So please, whatever it is that inspired something in you to take control, to lean toward what that voice is saying and getting curious, please do it. Because I really believe more than ever that the rest of your life and your happiness depends on you finding the courage to do exactly that.
(01:18:49):
And just know your friend Mel Robbins is going to be here twice a week. On Mondays and Thursdays, I'll have my hand on your back and we'll do this together. And in case nobody else tells you, I want to be sure to tell you, I love you. Screw that voice in your head. Mel Robbins loves you, and Mel Robbins believes in you and your ability to tell yourself a different story, to tell yourself what you want to hear and what you deserve to hear. Because when you start doing that, according to Dr. Conti, that's how you're going to create a better life. Alright, I'll see you in a few days and thank you, thank you. Thank you for being here on YouTube. Please, please subscribe to this channel. It really helps a show like ours. And more importantly, if you love this, I got a recommendation. Go straight here with this interview with the amazing Dr. Nicole Lala where we dig into all kinds of topics, including why do I have no childhood memories? Check it out. You're going to love it.
Key takeaways
When you let the negative voice run unchecked, it drags you down, but when you get curious about what’s really going on, you open the door to freedom.
You may not notice it, but your self-talk creates the limits of your future, so stop dragging the weights of your past and decide what story you’ll live.
If you never challenge the reflex of “I’ll never succeed,” it becomes your truth, but when you face it, you gain control over how you see yourself..
The story you repeat—“I’m a loser, I’m not enough”—becomes your reality, but you can reject that broad brush and choose a fairer picture of yourself.
Real change isn’t an overnight fix; those old neural pathways atrophy slowly, so bring patience and persistence if you want to rewrite your life.
Guests Appearing in this Episode
Dr. Paul Conti, MD
Dr. Paul Conti is a Stanford trained psychiatrist, bestselling author, and mental health expert dedicated to helping people heal from trauma and build emotional resilience.
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Book: Trauma
Imagine, if you will, a disease―one that has only subtle outward symptoms but can hijack your entire body without notice, one that transfers easily between parent and child, one that can last a lifetime if untreated. According to Dr. Paul Conti, this is exactly how society should conceptualize trauma: as an out-of-control epidemic with a potentially fatal prognosis.
In Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic, Dr. Conti examines the most recent research, clinical best practices, and dozens of real-life stories to present a deeper and more urgent view of trauma. Not only does Dr. Conti explain how trauma affects the body and mind, he also demonstrates that trauma is transmissible among close family and friends, as well as across generations and within vast demographic groups.
Resources
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- Walden University: Positive self-talk makes you happier and more productive
- Nature Journal: Effects of positive and negative self-talk on your brain
- Brainz Magazine: Using curiosity to stop negative thinking
- Psychology Today: Curiosity is key to well-being
- Psych Central: Is learned helplessness a response to trauma?
- The New York Times: Journaling improves your overall health.
- American Psychological Association: How to cope with traumatic stress.
- Stanford Report: Your powerful, changeable mindset.
- Springer Link: Subjective consciousness: what am I?
- National Library of Medicine: The role of self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Harvard Health: Gratitude can make you happier.
- Frontiers: Kindness toward others reduces stress and symptoms of depression.
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