GUEST SERIES | Dr. Paul Conti: How to Understand & Assess Your Mental Health

Huberman Lab

Scicomm Media

Science, Health & Fitness, Life Sciences

4.8 • 26.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 September 2023

⏱️ 223 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is episode 1 of a 4-part special series on mental health with psychiatrist Dr. Paul Conti, M.D., who trained at Stanford School of Medicine and completed his residency at Harvard Medical School before founding his clinical practice, the Pacific Premiere Group. Dr. Conti defines mental health in actionable terms and describes the foundational elements of the self, including the structure and function of the unconscious and conscious mind, which give rise to all our thoughts, behaviors and emotions. He also explains how to explore and address the root causes of anxiety, low confidence, negative internal narratives, over-thinking and how our unconscious defense mechanisms operate. This episode provides a foundational roadmap to assess your sense of self and mental health. It offers tools to reshape negative emotions, thought patterns and behaviors — either through self-exploration or with a licensed professional. The subsequent three episodes in this special series explore additional tools to further understand and improve your mental health. For the full show notes, including articles, books, and other resources, visit hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/huberman Waking Up: https://wakingup.com/huberman Momentous: https://livemomentous.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Dr. Paul Conti (00:03:46) Sponsors: BetterHelp & Waking Up App (00:06:55) What is a Healthy Self? (00:10:41) Agency & Gratitude; Empowerment & Humility (00:16:13) Physical Health & Mental Health Parallels (00:20:21) Structure of Self; Unconscious vs. Conscious Mind; “Iceberg” (00:26:15) Defense Mechanisms; Character Structure “Nest”, Sense of Self (00:31:27) Predispositions & Character Structure (00:36:01) Sponsor: AG1 (00:37:27) Character Structure & Action States; Physical Health Parallels (00:46:20) Anxiety; Understanding Excessive Anxiety (00:53:12) Improving Confidence: State Dependence & Phenomenology; Narcissism (00:59:44) Changing Beliefs & Internal Narratives (01:06:04) Individuality & Addressing Mental Health Challenges (01:11:21) Mental Health Goals & Growth (01:17:32) Function of Self (01:23:00) Defense Mechanisms: Projection, Displacement (01:30:14) Projection, Displacement, Projective Identification (01:34:50) Humor, Sarcasm, Cynicism (01:40:41) Attention & Salience; Negative Internal Dialogue (01:45:02) Repetition Compulsion & Defense Mechanism, Trauma (01:58:55) Mirror Meditation & Self Awareness; Structure & Function of Self, “Cupboards” (02:04:57) Pillars of the Mind, Agency & Gratitude, Happiness (02:13:53) Generative Drive, Aggressive & Pleasure Drives (02:21:33) Peace, Contentment & Delight, Generative Drive; Amplification (02:24:18) Generative Drive, Amplification & Overcoming (02:33:00) Over-Thinking, Procrastination, Choices (02:42:20) Aggressive, Pleasure & Generative Drives, Envy (02:49:46) Envy, Destruction, Mass Shootings (02:55:38) Demoralization, Isolation, Low Aggressive Drive (03:02:50) Demoralization, Affiliate Defense (03:09:32) Strong Aggressive Drive, Competition, Generative Drive Reframing (03:20:02) Cultivating a Generative Drive, Spirited Inquiry of the “Cupboards” (03:26:06) Current Mental Health Care & Medications (03:35:33) Role of Medicine in Exploration (03:40:41) Zero-Cost Support, YouTube Feedback, Spotify & Apple Reviews, Sponsors, Social Media, Momentous, Neural Network Newsletter Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac Disclaimer

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Hubertman Lab guest series where I and an expert guest discuss science and science based tools for everyday life.
0:08.0	I'm Andrew Hubertman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
0:14.0	Today's episode marks the first in a four episode series all about mental health.
0:19.0	The expert guest for this series is Dr. Paul Conti.
0:23.0	Dr. Paul Conti is a medical doctor and psychiatrist who completed his medical training at Stanford University School of Medicine
0:30.0	and then went on to become a chief resident of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
0:34.0	He then went on to found the Pacific Premier Group, which is a collection of psychiatrists and therapists who are expert in treating all types of psychiatric disorders and life stressors.
0:44.0	Across the four episodes of this series on mental health, Dr. Conti teaches us about the structure of our own minds
0:51.0	and how to think about our own minds as a way to enhance our mental health.
0:55.0	He explains how our subconscious mind and our conscious mind interact to drive our emotions, our decision making, and our behavior.
1:02.0	And while any series about mental health requires that from time to time we discuss personality disorders and psychiatric challenges,
1:09.0	the main discussion in today's episode and in fact all four episodes in this series are about what it means to be mentally healthy and how to build one's mental health through specific practices.
1:19.0	Either done alone or with a therapist.
1:22.0	Today's episode addresses several key questions as well as provides protocols for you to address questions about your own mental health.
1:30.0	For instance, you will learn what constitutes the most mentally healthy version of yourself.
1:35.0	You will learn to assess and indeed you will learn protocols for addressing levels of anxiety, levels of your confidence,
1:42.0	how to think about your beliefs and internal narratives, how to think about your self-talk and restructure your self-talk.
1:49.0	We discuss common challenges such as overthinking, we talk about the role of defense mechanisms and other aspects of the conscious and unconscious mind interactions that can lead us toward or away from the healthiest versions of ourselves.
2:01.0	You'll notice that during the first five minutes or so of today's discussion, Dr. Conti describes a framework of what he refers to as the structure of self and the function of self.
2:11.0	And he describes several pillars for understanding what those are.
2:15.0	I'd like to highlight that while that short portion of our discussion does bring up a number of terms that are likely to be novel to you.
2:21.0	They certainly were novel to me.
	...

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