Paul Conti, M.D.: How to heal from trauma and break the cycle of shame

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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Now, without further delay, here's today's episode.
I guess this week is Dr. Paul Conti. This is a name that may sound familiar to some of you as Paul was one of our initial guests back in September 2018 I believe it was episode number 15
Paul is a practicing psychiatrist and recent author of Trauma, The Invisible Epidemic, How Trauma Works and How We Can Heal From It, a book that brings his valuable insights about how we can collectively heal from trauma's effects to a larger audience. Paul's a graduate of Stanford University Med School, which is where we met. He completed his psychiatry training at Stanford and Harvard where he was appointed chief resident. He then served on the medical faculty before moving to Portland and founding a clinic. This episode and my conversation with Paul is focused primarily around trauma. And in that we discuss a number of things. We talk about Paul's upbringing and his experience and how that got him interested in studying medicine and ultimately psychiatry and trauma specifically. We look at the impact of trauma on the brain, patterns around trauma and how often people don't recognize the implications of trauma in their life. We talk about the lack of biomarkers in psychiatry and psychology, the misguidance around trauma in the mental health system, how we kind of treat trauma as a symptom as opposed to going after the problem and the importance of lowering the barrier around trauma so that people can begin to receive help. From there, we look at the shame that comes with trauma, how shame is often the thing that prevents people from getting help, and how we can start to change the stigma around that shame that comes with past trauma. We end the discussion with a conversation around psilocybin and MDMA and their potential in this space. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with my good friend, Paul Conti.
Paul, amazing to be back here in person with you.

**Paul Conti** (2:32)
Thank you.

**Peter Attia** (2:33)
Yeah, it's been way too long.
And the only thing I miss, well, not the only thing, but one of the things I missed the most about going to New York frequently was that we got to see each other constantly. And now that we don't really travel that much, it's mostly phone calls, but.

**Paul Conti** (2:49)
We get to spend so much time together and I do miss that too. And it's just really wonderful to see you. And I still appreciate you having me here and spending time with you and family. It's wonderful.

**Peter Attia** (2:59)
I mean, except to talk about your book, of course, but I think even though a lot of people have heard you on the podcast before, because we sat down probably three years ago, I'd probably take the assumption here that a lot of people are also hearing about you here for the first time. So let's tell people a little bit about who you are. What's your day job? What is it you do?

**Paul Conti** (3:19)
Sure. Trained as a psychiatrist and a big part of my day job is being a clinical psychiatrist. I also do some consulting work along the lines of understanding brain function and how brain function can impact us in personal or professional settings. But by and large, my work is really grounded in the clinical. And I do have a clinic about 15 really great people I work side by side with and trying to meet the needs of people who bring us whatever mental health question there may be, which sometimes is clinical care and sometimes it's just trying to understand themselves and the world around them better.

**Peter Attia** (3:56)
When is it in your journey of medical school and prior that you sort of had this inkling that you were interested in mental health?

**Paul Conti** (4:04)
I think around the time in the clinical rotation part of medical school, probably into the last year when I realized that you could like really be a doctor and understand medical things and how they impact people and really kind of be grounded in that aspect of like practicing medicine, but also trying to understand people's experiences of life. Like what people think and feel as they're going through their day and that you could combine these two things and then be grounded to all the things one learns about life, just going through it and really help people in that way. And that just had such tremendous appeal as a sort of widely encompassing way of approaching trying to be of help.