Substack Live Re-Air: What Lady Gaga’s Psychiatrist Thinks Is Making Us All Sick

**Mayim Bialik** (0:04)
Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik.

**Jonathan Cohen** (0:05)
And I'm Jonathan Cohen.

**Mayim Bialik** (0:06)
And welcome to our Breakdown. Today we're so excited to share something very special that was previously only available on our Substack page.

**Jonathan Cohen** (0:14)
This is a sneak peek into what it's like during the lives that we traditionally only do for our Substack community members. This conversation covered the episode with Dr. Paul Conti.

**Mayim Bialik** (0:27)
Dr. Paul Conti is a psychiatrist and he's the author of What's Going Right. He's an expert in trauma. He's the clinician, the psychiatrist who was called in to assess Lady Gaga during her psychiatric crisis. This episode we did with Dr. Conti brought up so many topics that we couldn't wait to share with our Substack audience. But we want to share it with you here now. Some of the topics we covered include what happens when a diagnosis becomes your soul identity and how your brain will actually reinforce it and potentially keep making you worse.

**Jonathan Cohen** (1:00)
We also cover his clinical framework for redirecting attention towards what is working and why that reorientation affects real mental health and physical health as well.

**Mayim Bialik** (1:13)
One of the things that Dr. Conti talked about, which we explored in depth with our Substack audience is more than half of the physical complaints that people bring in to a general practitioner's office actually originate in the mind, not as a fabrication, not as some psychosomatic symptom that we shouldn't pay attention to, but it's the body's honest response to unprocessed psychological overload. And we go deep into figuring out how we can change that.

**Jonathan Cohen** (1:38)
We also cover the dangers of self-diagnosis over the internet, how social media labeling can actually lead you astray, and what actual clinical criteria there are for knowing when something needs professional attention.

**Mayim Bialik** (1:52)
When Jonathan and I do lives over on Substack, the conversations are always fun, always playful, but in many cases, like this one, we really get to do a deeper analysis of some of the things that often don't get fleshed out in the episode. It's a really special conversation.

**Jonathan Cohen** (2:06)
If you want to join these lives and participate in the Breaker community, you can do so over on Substack Mayim Bialik's Breakdown on Substack.

**Mayim Bialik** (2:14)
We do these lives every week, so please come over and be part of the community. We hope you enjoy this conversation and we will see you over on Substack.

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**Jonathan Cohen** (2:51)
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**Mayim Bialik** (2:54)
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**Jonathan Cohen** (4:05)
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Let's talk about our minds and our bodies. Mayim, tell us why focusing on what's wrong with you can actually keep you stuck. It sounds counterintuitive. A lot of people think, if I just figure out what's wrong, explain to us why that's actually an approach that can really be devastating and keep you in a cycle that you don't want to be in.

**Mayim Bialik** (4:34)
Paul Conti's notion is there's actually a lot that goes right, and you can start as small as you want.