Guest Series | Dr. Paul Conti: Tools and Protocols for Mental Health

If you think there's something that you can't bring up into consciousness because it's going to take over your mind or, as people often say, 'I'm going to curl up in a fetal position; I'm going to cry and never stop,' that is exactly the thing you must look at.

When you stop focusing outward and you sort of settle into an inward state, then things that are underneath the surface are going to come to the surface. And if there's something really bothering you that your brain is very upset about or very afraid of, what does it throw up to the surface? A panic attack.

Self-inquiry isn't always the right answer ... Self-inquiry is always the right thing to do if we want to understand ourselves better, unless we're in a place where it can bring real risk to us.

The unconscious mind is the place to start, because that's the deepest level of the structure of self. So, imagine sitting on top of a biological supercomputer the size of a house. That's what's going on inside of us—the unconscious mind is that biological supercomputer.

Don't make yourself special in ways that hurt you, and we tend to do that as humans.

If we stir up the pot of the unconscious and you put some new information in, it can do new things; it can figure new things out—which is why the process of self-reflection, for example, and often the process of therapy, is not always, and in fact often is not, a pleasant process. But then we take take away from that hard work renewed insights.

What is that phantom? Where did it come from? That's how we get rid of it ... How does it go away? It goes away through understanding. So, very common example that the phantom in the driver's seat is trauma that we have pushed in an unconscious place...

The life narrative can really help us establish the roadmap. And part of what the life narrative does is it guides us to the places to ask the questions.