Essentials: Therapy, Treating Trauma & Other Life Challenges | Dr. Paul Conti

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. And now, for my discussion with Doctor. Paul Conti. Paul, thank you so much for being here today. Oh, thank you so much for having me. We could just start off very basic and just get everyone oriented. How should we define trauma? I think we have to look at trauma as not anything negative that happens to us, right? But something that overwhelms our coping skills, and then leaves us different as we move forward. So it changes the way that our brains function, right, and then that change is evident in us as we move forward through life. We can see it in mood, anxiety, behavior, sleep, physical health. So we so we can identify it, and we can also see it in brain changes. If trauma rises to the level of changing the functioning of our brains, then there is almost always a reflex of guilt and shame around the trauma that can lead us, it often leads us, to bury it. Right? To avoid it, which is exactly the opposite of what needs to be done. We need to communicate and put words to what's going on inside of us. And and very often a person knows, but they're not admitting it to themselves because they're afraid of it. Right? They don't know what to do. But if they start talking, then they'll they'll talk about the event or the situation. It could be something acute or it could be something chronic that really has been harmful to them. Right? And then they feel different afterwards. But that doesn't always happen. Sometimes it's a process of exploration, you know, through dialogue. Right? Whether whether it's written or whether it's spoken of of the person sort of exploring the changes inside of themselves. Maybe changes to their self talk inside, changes to their thoughts about the world and whether they can navigate safely and readily in it. And, you know, in anchors, as I talk about this, the example I'll use at times is the example of my own life where, you know, when I was much younger, in my early twenties, my younger brother took his life by suicide. And, you know, the response of guilt and shame and and hiding all of it inside of me was was it is very dramatic, but but I wasn't acknowledging it. Right? Because I didn't know what to do about it. And I felt guilty, and I felt responsible, and I felt ashamed. So there was a an avoidance inside of me. So so I didn't see that the change was in me, but I was taking care of myself poorly. Like, there was enough going on that was unhealthy that I couldn't avoid the realization …