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

Welcome to the huberman lab, guest Series, where I and an expert, guest discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman. And I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today's episode marks the first in a four-episode series, all about mental health, the expert guest for this series is dr. Paul Conte dr. Paul Conte is a medical doctor and psychiatrist. Who completed his medical training at Stanford University, School of Medicine,

And then went on to become chief resident of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. 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 across the four episodes of this series on Mental Health dr. Conte, teaches us about the structure of our own minds and how to think about our own minds as a way to enhance our mental health. He explains how our subconscious mind, and our conscious mind interact to drive our

Emotions are decision-making and our behavior. And while any series about mental health requires that from time to time, we discuss personality disorders in psychiatric challenges, 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, either done alone or with a therapist, today's episode addresses, several key questions as well as provides, protocols for you to address questions about your own mental.

For instance, you will learn what constitutes the most mentally healthy version of yourself. You will learn to assess and indeed. You will learn protocols for addressing levels of anxiety, levels of your confidence. How to think about your beliefs and internal narratives how to think about yourself talk and restructure yourself. Talk, we discuss common challenges such as overthinking. We talked 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

A theist versions of ourselves. You'll notice that during the first five minutes or so of today's discussion dr. Conte describes a framework of what he refers to as the structure of self and the function of cell and he describes several pillars for understanding. What those are, 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. They certainly were novel to me that as our conversation precedes, you will really come to appreciate just how simple and yet powerful that

Framework is it will help. You understand. For instance, the relationship between your conscious mind and your subconscious mind in ways that you can really apply toward enhancing your mental health in addition to that dr. Conte has generously provided a few PDFs, which illustrate, that framework for you and that are available completely zero cost by going to the links in the show notes captions. So you have the option to download those PDFs. And to look them over either prior to or during or perhaps after you listen to these four podcast episodes as a final note before.

Or beginning, today's discussion, just want to emphasize my sentiment, which I'm confident will soon be your sentiment as well, which is that dr. Paul County shares with us, immensely powerful tools for enhancing mental health. That at least to my knowledge. Have never been shared publicly before. In fact, is somebody who has done more than three decades of therapy, I've never before been exposed to a conversation about the structure of the mind, and the subconscious mind, as well as tools and protocols, for enhancing mental health, as powerful as these

For me, the information was absolutely transformative in terms of reshaping my thought patterns my emotional patterns and indeed several of my behavioral patterns. And I'm confident that the information that you'll glean from today's episode and throughout the series will be positively transformative for you as well. Before we begin. I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme. I'd like to thank

The sponsors of today's podcast our first sponsor is better help better help offers Professional Therapy with a licensed therapist carried out online. I personally have been doing weekly therapy for more than 30 years and while that Weekly therapy was initiated not by my own request, it wasn't. In fact, a requirement for me to remain in high school over time, I really came to appreciate just how valuable doing quality therapy is. In fact, I look at doing quality therapy much in the same way that I look at going to the

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That's fantastic. Or if you're somebody who's already a skilled and regular, meditator waking up, has more advanced meditations in Yoga. Nidra sessions for you as well. If you'd like to try the waking up app, you can go to waking up.com huberman and access a free 30-day trial. Again, that's waking up.com hubermann and now, for my discussion about how to understand and assess your level of mental health with dr. Paul Conti dr. Paul County. Welcome. Thank you. I'm very excited for today's episode.

And for this series because I like so many other people out there have a lot of questions about myself and themselves and not just about ourselves but how the different personality types out there the healthy types, the Narcissus, the, you know, all the things that we hear about these days gaslighting, all these sorts of things. What all of that really is perhaps. We can dispel some of the myths that exist during the course of the series, I'm sure we will sure you will.

Thank you. And also raise certain important questions that we should all ask ourselves in terms of trying to understand who we are and how we can be the best versions of ourselves, how we can experience the most happiness. Also, the most richness in life, because, of course, life isn't just all about being happy. So, to start off this question, I want to raise a parallel with something. I think for most people is more concrete, which is physical health. No, while there isn't an ideal.

Circle self that's been defined by the medical community. We know, for instance that there is a range of blood pressures that are considered healthy. Hmm. There's a range of body mass index that's considered healthy, although that's a little controversial because depends on how much muscle Howleen people are etcetera. But, you know, I think it's reasonable to say that the healthy individual is not going to get exhausted walking up a flight of stairs. They could bend down and lift an object without hurting themselves. They might even have some additional strength or

Darren's Etc. Within the physical health domain. All of that is fairly well, scripted and there are protocols that people can follow to improve their physical health. We've covered many of them on this podcast before when it comes to mental health and it comes to concepts of the self Things become much more abstract for people. In fact, I think most people including myself were kind of wandering around in the dark wondering whether or not we are the best versions of ourselves whether or not, we're thinking about ourselves and the world around us in the best way.

He's so to start things off, you tell us what is the healthy version of cell mean? What what, what should we all be aspiring to? You've worked with people who presumably are healthy and people who have severe pathologies of different psychiatric types, right? Bipolar narcissistic sociopathic, and everything in between. So, for me, and for the listeners, what is a healthy self? What should we be striving for healthy? Self approaches life.

Through the lens of agency and gratitude, if you look at happy people, you know people who like their lives, right? No matter what stage of Life, they're at right, and no matter what their socioeconomic status is, you know, race religion that there's so many things that we think matters, right? And and and and they matter to a lot of things. Do they matter to? Is someone happy or not, right? They are not factors. Write the factors that tell us is this person enjoying life? I think they take care of themselves.

A happy. They're here. Are they engaged productively in the world is agency and gratitude and if we have those two things then it is interesting. You almost never see someone go wrong, right? And even if their difficulties, even if there are the things happen in life that that can make some unhappiness, right? It doesn't take away the person's engagement in life, the person's enthusiasm for life. And I think if you look at even traditions of understanding, how our people happy, whether it's in,

Gayatri. Or it's through literature, or through a religious lens, it is always people who approach like through the lens of agency and gratitude.

Could we go a little bit deeper on agency and gratitude show when I hear the words agency in gratitude, I think agency and ability to affect the world around me in the ways that I want and I think gratitude being thankful and we did entire episode all about gratitude practices some of the neuroscience and neuroimaging and neurochemical changes that occur in the brain and body when people exert a gratitude practice. But I have a feeling that when you talk about agency in gratitude you might be talking about something.

Slightly or maybe even quite a bit different than the way that I'm defining it. Yeah, I would say, agency and gratitude are these amazing rewards, right? That sit on top of the highly complex brain function inside of us and the highly complex psychology in all of us. So if we think about a self, right, that identify a self, I'm in. I right if I'm going to approach the world with agency and gratitude that's sitting on

On top of a lot of healthy things, right? And the idea that okay, there ways in which we can be mentally unhealthy, right? But to start with like what is going on inside of us, right? And what does it look like when we're healthy? So there's a structure of the self, right? There's function of the self and we, if we look at the structure and the function and the parts, the components of structure and function, we can come to understand. Okay. What is going on in us? What might we change for the better?

How do we build empowerment, right? Is it empowerment is is the the the ability to navigate the world around us and to bring myself to bear in ways that are effective and from empowerment arises the sense of agency, right. I have agency because I am empowered and also from a healthy structure of self and function of self we end up with humility, right? We come through that with a sense of our place in

In the world and our power in the world to to navigate as we choose but also a sense of the world around us. That's far more complicated, right than just, we are extends Beyond us to other people to the climate around us to the health of the whole planet, right? We feel a sense of humility that I'm here and I can do good things. I'm fortunate to be here and I'm part of this bigger ecosystem, right? All the way up to the scale of the ecosystem of earth, right? And if we feel that humility,

Then we approach the world through the lens of gratitude. So the idea that a healthy structure of self and a healthy function of self leads to empowerment and humility and then upon that, we are, we are sort of imbued with agency and gratitude and that leads us forth to happy lives. Okay? So it's clear to me why having agency in gratitude would be wonderful, perhaps even the goal state that we

Should all be seeking to achieve. And it also makes sense to me as to why empowerment and humility are important components that feed into our ability to have agency in gratitude. Yes. Right. Because all of that, at least to my mind sums to a very clear statement about having agency and gratitude is the best way to approach life. That all makes perfect sense to me. And yet, I've never really thought about it that way. And I think most people haven't ever been told this, right? I mean, what should we be?

Get agency in gratitude. Yes, so we've heard endless number of podcasts including this podcast about physical health. And we've been told by physicians and everybody else that, you know, we should seek to have a relatively low blood pressure. We should seek to have a relatively low heart rate that our cholesterol should be at a certain level Etc. So within the physical health domain, there are strong clear messages about what we should all be striving toward and in a similar way to

How we're discussing the self in Psychology, you know, I don't think anyone seeks to have low blood pressure or low heart rate because that's what they want per se. They want those things along with some capacity for endurance, the ability to, to, you know, lift an object. So some strength, Etc, because of the way that those metrics have health, allow them to move through the world in the best possible way. In other words, having some degree of endurance allows you to walk down the block, may be a lot further where to walk up several flights of stairs or to have some strength.

Easy to pick up objects in effectively move through life, right? You're telling us that having a sense of agency and gratitude and that agency and gratitude are undergirded by empowerment in humility. And that's the best way to move through life. The most effective happiest if you will way to move through life. Well then I think we have to ask ourselves. The same thing we would ask about physical fitness, which is what goes into, creating a sense of agency and gratitude, empowerment in humility. You know, what are the

Action steps because if I want more endurance, I know to get on an exercise bike or a treadmill or go out for a run, a few times a week or more. If I want to get stronger, I'm going to lift objects that are difficult to lift until they're easier to lift. I mean it's all pretty straightforward in the physical domain but in the, in the mental health domain and the psychological domain it does become a bit more abstract. I think in part because no one's ever told us certainly, no one's ever told me what you really need and is agency and gratitude in order to have the best possible life. So I very much

I appreciate that you're telling us this and I'd love for you to tell us what are the action steps that go into creating these things that were calling agency? Gratitude empowerment and humility? There's actually quite a strong parallel between the physical health dimension of the mental health Dimension. So, so, as you're saying, like, why do you put in the time to energy, the learning right to be physically healthy, right? It's a lot of effort and and we put so much of ourselves towards it. If we decide that we value,

Value that. Right? Why do we do it, right? Because as you said, it's the best way to approach life. Like there may be something that I want to do. I want to run a race, right? All right. You know, I want to climb a mountain, right? But ultimately, we take care of ourselves physically because we don't know what's coming next in life and we want to be prepared for it. Good. Bad. And otherwise, right? And the same thing is true of mental health. So I can feel grateful for something. I can feel grateful that I'm still breathing right now, right? I can exercise agency

I can pick up that cup and take a drink, right? But that doesn't mean that I'm living life through the lens of agency and gratitude which is consistent with every opinion. If you look psychologically through the lens of literature through the lens of Science of sociology and psychology agency, and gratitude make happiness right there, ways of approaching life and just like physical health is undergirded by by cardiovascular health, heart health.

Muscle strength, right? There is an undergirding of agency and gratitude and empowerment and humility, are ways of describing, okay? What arises right from understanding ourselves taken care of ourselves that then gives us the agency in gratitude? So we have empowerment. We have humility. But where does it all come from? Right. So just like, we have to understand the physical body and what to do to it in order to be healthy, right? We also have to

The mind, right? The self that wants to be healthier. And that comes to understanding the structure of the self. And we have enough science through the lens of neurobiology and Psychiatry to understand the structure of self. And then the function of self-righteous how we work. Wait, how we interface with the world so it's actually not more complicated than physical health. It's just that we don't spell it out that way, right? We come at it through the lens of pathology of what

Wrong and who has some diagnosis. And, you know, we're looking for the problematic instead of saying, like, what do we look like when we're happy, right? And then going and digging down into the mechanics of it, all right? And if we're not in that state, right to go and look at that and to make changes just as if you were very, very physically healthy, right? But, you know, your heart rate couldn't go up that much. Without you feeling very, very fatigued, we'd say, well, look, you're doing a lot of the right things, right? But let's work more on.

On your heart, right? We would go look at the specifics of it because that's how we understand it and we just don't apply the same science logic, common sense to mental health, as we do to physical health, but it's time for that to change because we have the knowledge and ability to do just that when we had dr. Andy Galpin on this podcast to do a series on physical health and fitness. Essentially, he said something that really

Stuck with me, which was at the number of different workouts that people can do out their bodyweight workouts work. With weights with machines, you can run far, you can run shorter distances more quickly, you can do planks, you know, sit-ups so many variations on exercise routines. But what he very clearly stated was that there are only a few core adaptations that the body can undergo that lead to these byproducts that we call lower blood pressure. Enhanced endurance in

Of strength improved, neuromuscular function, improve brain function for that matter. It sounds to me, like there are a lot of parallels in creating the healthy psychological self. So what are the core components that I and other should think about in terms of understanding, he described them as the structure of the self and the functions of the cell again, just to draw a parallel. We were talking about physical health. We'd say, okay, there's connections between nerves and muscle that allows us to move our limbs. If you apply a certain amount of resistance, you get a certain adaptation, which is the

The neuromuscular connection gets stronger, the muscle might get bigger or just stronger Etc flexibility you know you just push your range of motion just a little bit into discomfort you do that. We it's so happens to be the case that you do that for just a couple of minutes each day over the course of about a week or so you get a significant increase in flexibility. Okay so it's all very clear in the physical domain. In the psychological domain I hear you telling us that the action steps that we all should be taking in order to be the happiest version of ourselves by achieving agency and gratitude

is to explore the structure of self and the function of self. So if you can tell us about, what is the structure of self? Like, what goes into Andrew being, Andrew, and Paul being Paul and whoever The Listener is into being who they are, what is that? And what is the function of self? How, how does a psychiatrist think about that? How should we think about that? Okay, if I could start maybe to set the stage for that, right by pointing out that as we go up the hierarchy, right?

Of Health, right? Everything should get simpler right. Not more complicated, right? If you think about physical health, there's so much complexity on the initial levels, right? So we think about, you know, your physical health status versus mind, right? It's going to be different, right? We're gonna have different cardiac function and muscle function and pulmonary function, and if we're going to be healthy, we could do a lot of different things. Right there might be a whole set of choices that would work well for you. Different choices that would work for me and we can gauge intensity timing.

Frequency, right? It's a very complicated when we're on the lower levels of the hierarchy, as we get higher up, let's say you and I both do the right things, right, then? What happens? We both have endurance, right? We both have some strength, we're both robust, right? Things are getting simpler because we're approaching the unique idiosyncrasies in all of us, right? And we have to look at that and look at that in a very specific way. But what we're trying to get to is is something that's common for all

Of us. So stamina, for example, in physical health and endurance, right? And agency and gratitude in mental health, right? So then if we go and we look and we look at the structure of the self and the function of self, we find that there's more complexity but that it is also understandable. I mean there's tremendous complexity in the body just as there's tremendous complexity in the mind and we can understand what is the structure of self. What is the function of self? And we can look at that in

Assess that in the same way, we would physical health parameters. So that we arrive at the place, we want to be be it endurance or agency, or gratitude. So structure of self, right? We all have an unconscious mind, right? And we pay so, little attention to this part of us that really is the biological supercomputer, right? So millions of things are going on all the time like in every Split Second. So for example, I can say these words

It's right, you can listen to the words, you can say things back and I can listen right there, are millions and millions of things going on under the surface, much of which comes from either biological predispositions, right? Or habits over time, right? Thought process is patterns, right? So, this unconscious mind, this supercomputer is doing all of these things. Like, you know, at the speed of light, right there are electrical and chemical signals and, you know, multiple Pathways as common as complicated.

Skated, as super highway systems that then could consolidate and communicate with others, right? And then what comes up from all of that? Is the conscious mind. So imagine an iceberg, right? And it's a really, really big Iceberg, right? And and we see the part above the surface, right? That's the conscious mind, right? But there's a huge part of this Iceberg, maybe 95% of it. That's underneath the water right there. There's this hulking mass that we don't see that's the

Unconscious mind, right? And it's feeding up to the conscious mind which is a much smaller part of our brain function, right? But it's the part that we're aware of, right? It's sitting on top of all the unconscious things which are extremely important. But then we become aware so that we can engage in the real world. In order for us to have this conversation, the millions of things per second have to be going on underneath the surface. So that you and I as conscious eyes, right? As conscious selves can

Ride Along on top of it. So that's the part of the iceberg. That's above the water, it's the conscious self. Then imagine that the conscious self is girded by by a set of you know long tendrils that come out from under the water, right? That their defense mechanisms that are unconscious to us that sort of GERD the conscious mind. So do we rationalize automatically? Do we avoid automatically, do we

Doubt automatically are these things in Us in ways that we can observe and change. But that are there to try and protect the conscious mind from the the slings and arrows of the world around us, right? So if you imagine, there's the big part of the iceberg under the water, the unconscious mind the conscious mind is riding on top of it, but the conscious mind that part sticking out of the water is vulnerable, right? So imagine that there's a defensive structure then that arises from the part of the iceberg. That's

Underwater that is there to defend and protect the conscious mind. So when you say to defend and protect when you say that, the conscious mind is vulnerable, what do you mean? Do you mean that it's vulnerable to physical attack or that it's vulnerable to us realizing that we're just a bunch of neurons that are clicking away underneath, but in other words, where does the vulnerability of the conscious mind really reside? Not physically. Where does it reside? But you know, what am I so worried about in

Of my safety. I mean, right now, we're in a room. I feel pretty safe. I don't think you're going to attack me verbally or physically. I suppose. It's possible. That could happen, but it seems like a very distant possibility. So when you say that these defenses, are there to protect us from some sort of awareness, what awareness are we trying to avoid? So, the vulnerability of the of the conscious mind is to fear confusion despair. There's so many things that we can fear, right? Some people are afraid of snakes.

Snakes or spiders, some people are afraid of death. Some people are afraid of health issues that could come to them or to people. They love, we can get confused and not know what decisions to make, and how to navigate the world and how to be who we want to be to ourselves and to others, right? We can feel tremendously, vulnerable and despairing. If we lose others or we know we start to see things happening in the world around us that that we don't like. But we start to feel like what will happen to the planet we live on. Will there be War where I live when my children?

Be safe, right? There's so much that we need to protect ourselves against so that vulnerable part of of us, write the part of the iceberg sticking out above the water, needs a defensive structure around it, to protect it against the vulnerability of fear confusion despair, right? And because the conscious mind is sticking out of the water with a defensive structure around it, right? It is the the raw material from which we

beitar character structure. So, the character structure is all of that. The part under the water, the part above the water, the defensive structure. So, imagine like a nest around all of that and that's the character structure that we utilize to interface with the world, right? So the character structure is, it's like, the thing that I'm using, right? It's like if you're driving somewhere in a car, right? The car is the thing that you're using to go there, right? The character structure is the thing that we're using to interface with the world? So for

Sample, how trusting a my versus suspicious, right? How readily do I come to make friends with people, right? How, how much do I act out if I'm frustrated, right? How much do I, you know, exclaim something - right as opposed to holding it inside of me. How much do I rationalize? If something isn't going well. Do I want to look at it and maybe see that it is so that I don't have to face it, right? How much do I avoid problems in the world around me? How much do I?

Sighs altruism, right? These are all the ways in which we are engaging with the world around us and this determines the self. Imagine that the self. Then grows out of this Nest from the, the character structure that we used to interface with the world. And the decisions that we make so far, character structure is its the thing through, which we engage with the world, then we're enacting but what is inside of us, but what we've determined through our unconscious mind or

Just mind our defense mechanism. There's a certain us that the comes at the world in a certain way and if we're more or less trusting, more or less avoidant, we rationalize more or less, these are the factors that determine like, where do our lives go, right. Because on top of all of this, imagine that the nest of the character structure around all of this grows from it, the self write the product of the feelings inside the things that we know about ourselves, and don't know about ourselves the decisions that all

Love it leads to. So I may choose to be for example, more trusting and that may bring an opportunity to me that I wouldn't have otherwise had right. I may choose to be more trusting and it may bring risk to me that I wouldn't otherwise have had. So we want to be as healthy as we can as knowledgeable of ourselves in the world around us so that it's safe for us to have a healthy character structure through which we can engage in the world around us with a sense of prudence, right?

Reasonable risks right? Not too little so that we shut ourselves down and maybe end up despairing, not so much that that scary things can happen to us and we end up fearful, right? But the idea that if we know ourselves well the character structure is healthy right? Because it's built upon a structure of Self in a function of self that are healthy and out of it is coming empowerment, right? And empowerment and humility, write that then lead us to agency and gratitude, right, the idea

In here is that this is the character structure that we create that can then interface with the world in a way that's good for us and good for the world around us that leads us to be able to live in much more Harmony inside of ourselves and outside of ourselves. So if I understand correctly defense mechanisms that grow up out of this portion of the iceberg that we're calling the unconscious mind, they protect our conscious self in ways that can be adaptive.

Or they can be maladaptive. In other words, defenses can be healthier, they can be unhealthy. Yes, and perhaps in a few minutes, we can get into what a healthy versus unhealthy defense. Looks like, but the way you described character structure, sounds to me like an array of contextual dispositions, I don't want to add unnecessarily complex language, but it sounds to me, like, a bunch of dispositions like like if I'm walking into the office.

I swear I know everybody and I see familiar faces. There's no reason for me to be on guard if I trust those people, but if I'm walking down a street at night, that I'm not familiar with and I'm starting to get the sense that, you know, this neighborhood might not be the best. It makes sense for me to be on relatively high alert, so different dispositions depending on different conditions. I can't help but mention my Bulldog Costello, who had basically three dispositions. It was a sleep but in all seriousness, the second one was

Um got a board, the Bulldog face of cardboard or if something was given to him that he liked or if we were doing something, they like Delight, he busy at three dispositions as far as I could tell, I think one of the reasons we like dogs so much or that many of us like dogs so much. Is that their decisions are very predictable, take him to the park. He's happy unless you happen to be ill that day which was rare, you know, feed him he's happy right. There wasn't a lot of I don't like this particular meal or I don't like this particular Park.

Or this Bijon, Frise doesn't smell so good to me, you know, there's a, it was so simple and yet, people are very complex, right? I can look at myself and say, okay, what like, what is my character structure, character structure, is certain things. I like certain things, I dislike certain things really irritate me certain environments and people, I just delighted, okay, so is the definition of a healthy character structure, one in which the dispositions match the context perfectly. I mean, I don't know how any of us.

Be like that. But is is that sort of the ideal much in the same way that you know, we could probably arrive at at an ideal degree of stamina that one could have. I mean some people want Run, ultramarathons, 100 miles or more. Somebody want to run a marathon, some people like me, don't really desire to run a marathon but I want to be able to run a mile if I need to without being completely exhausted and injured. So you know, when we when we ask ourselves about character structure

Are we asking ourselves about context-driven dispositions and how do we start to evaluate that for ourselves? I think, because we're more complicated. I think it's not dispositions as much as its predispositions, right? So, so in the example that you gave right, you of a certain predisposition to be either trusting or weary right? And and you and that's healthy in you, right? So when you come into a setting where there's not a good reason to feel mistrustfully,

I feel anxious to feel vulnerable, right. Then you feel at ease, right? So you walk into the work, setting their people, you know, the people you like everything is, okay, right? You have a different predisposition when the context is different, right? So if the context, could bring a lack of safety, then you respond accordingly with the lack of safety, right? But but it's possible, certainly those predispositions, it can be in unhealthy places, right? So for example, you might have been traumatized in a certain way or

You might approach the world in a certain way because of Prior experience that you may not register it as trauma. But it may be that within you, is a predisposition to be Miss trustful. So you could walk into a room of people that, you know, of people who've never meant you any harm and still feel unsafe right now. This happens most often after trauma but there are other ways people can get to that. Where the predisposition isn't so healthy, the converse is true too. Right there are people who can have too much of what's called an omnipotent.

Defense, and then they don't recognize danger when danger is around them. So, the idea that character structure that Nest, right? That's built around the defensive structure, and the conscious mind that sitting on top of the part of the iceberg. The unconscious mind underwater, right? It's that Nest, that is interfacing with the world, through a whole set of predispositions. I'd like to take a brief break and acknowledge one of our sponsors. A G1 H G1 is a vitamin mineral, probiotic drink that meets.

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Training or authority, right? Was it? That person is great. They're super nice persons a jerk. It's literally like, weird, you know, etcetera, Etc. I think very few of us are familiar with assessing our own character structure, right? And I have to presume that some of what happens when somebody comes to you as a psychiatrist or to a psychologist, is that certain questions are asked and certain narratives are told that start to reveal to the clinician the character structure.

And perhaps from there, some of the possible defense mechanisms and, you know, structure of the person's unconscious mind and conscious mind that obviously are unaware to them, but would be cleared by a clinician much in the same way that if somebody goes into the doctor and says, you know, I don't feel well, they can start probing with questions or they going to put, you know, take a take a listen to their breathing right there, Heart Right? Amazing out the stethoscope and figure it out of the pros. Whereas that the psychiatrist or psychologist uses words and language to probe, yes,

What are the sorts of aspects of character structure that we can be aware of in ourselves? You know, in other words, should we be asking what type of character do I have dependent on one circumstance or another? Should we ask ourselves what sorts of defense's we have? And maybe this would be a good opportunity to address this issue of what are healthy versus unhealthy defenses. Because it sounds to me, if I understand correctly, that

At the defense mechanisms are very strong component in determining. What our character structure is MHM. Right? Because the defense mechanisms are unconscious and the character structure that Nest around the defenses, in the conscious mind through, which we interface with the world, right? Is very, very complicated. So there is many character structures as there are human beings, right? So it's very, very complicated. But there are factors that are consistently relevant across people and get identified as such. So

One example would be isolation versus affiliation, right? So it does a person tend to group with others, right? Or does the person tend to avoid grouping, right? And, and go about thoughts tasks, approaches to life in a more singular manner, right? So it's just one element, I'm making value judgment about it because it can be good or bad on either end of the spectrum, right? So we're just saying, what are the factors? So am I more affiliative or do I tend to isolate and be more a singular?

That's just one example, right? Another example could be things like, for example, use of humor, right? It does a person use humor. And in what way, right, is a person use humor to deflect, discomfort and negative situations is a person use humor in order to belittle others, or to be little themselves or does the person not use humor, right? So the these aspects of character structure and so much research has been done on this over the years to determine what is most Salient right in this.