~ [[Talks]]

Podcast Information

• Author: Andrew Huberman
• Channel: [[Huberman Labs]]
• Guest(s): Dr. Paul Conti
• Applicable Areas: Mental Health, Psychology

LN 📘 Dr. Paul Conti on Huberman Labs

Structure & Function of Self

Structure of Self

What are the 5 Cabinets within the “Structure of Self”?

Your structure of self is composed of nouns; What are those things?

Unconscious Mind

Unconscious Mind: the unconscious part of your mind encapsulates all the bodily processes going on in the background that you’re unaware of.

In the iceberg metaphor, this is the part of your being that’s under the surface and it’s what enables the conscious part of you to remain afloat and aware.

• Think of your unconscious mind as the supercomputer that runs all your bodily processes in the background and allows you to engage with the world.
• There are millions of bodily processes that are going on intricately in the background without your conscious awareness (breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, endocrine/digestive system, hair/nail growth, release of neurotransmitters, etc.)
• Without all of these happening automatically, you wouldn’t be able to do much of anything.

Conscious Mind

• Conscious Mind: the conscious part of your mind are the parts of yourself that enable awareness of self.
• In the iceberg metaphor, this is the part of you that floats above the water and engages with the world.
• This is the part of you that provides agency and autonomy over rational decision making, thinking, and problem solving.

Defense Mechanisms

• Defense Mechanisms: behaviors learned from environmental stimuli enabled to protect the self and avoid unpleasant feelings or amplify pleasant feelings.
• Defense mechanisms can be healthy or unhealthy.
• A question that can help determine if they’re healthy or unhealthy is “How are you using them?” “Can light get through?”
• These are normally unconscious, but self-awareness can help bring awareness and take a closer look at our actions, thoughts, and behaviors and examine them more deeply to see what’s underlying there
• Defense mechanisms result in patterns.

Examples of common defense mechanisms:

• Projection: projecting an emotion outward (usually anger). When you attribute your emotions as someone else’s. Example: “It’s not me who’s mad, it’s you.” You’re attributing the anger to someone else (as if it’s their anger) but really you’re experiencing the anger (it’s your anger).

• Displacement: Satisfying an impulse (aggression, frustration) with a substitute object. Example: You feel frustrated at your boss, so you go home and kick your dog.
  • The dog isn’t the source of your anger, but you’re displacing it onto the dog instead of dealing with the source of that emotion (ex: your boss).
  • Finding the source of discomfort is the first step in addressing it. Ask yourself why you’re feeling angry and where it’s stemming from.

• Projective Identification: an expression of an emotional state inside of a person that becomes contagious. Example: I get super anxious, so everyone around me feels more anxious.

• Denial: a refusal to accept something as truth. Example: Despite the white powder on his face, he denies eating the powdered donut.
  • This happens when certain stimuli are blocked from awareness. Denial exists to protect the self from uncomfortable feelings because they are too painful or frightening to face.

• Repression: an effort to keep disturbing or threatening thoughts, feelings, impulses, or memories from conscious awareness. Example: A person who experienced a traumatic car accident as a child may have no recollection of the event but feels intense anxiety whenever they get into a car. The mind unconsciously represses the memory to protect them from distress.

• Rationalization – justification of behaviors with logical reasoning instead of acknowledging the true motive. Example: I failed the test because the teacher was out to get me, not because I didn’t study. In other words, when a person finds a situation difficult to accept, they will make up a logical reason why it has happened.

• Reaction Formation – expression of the opposite of the true feelings being felt. Example: treating someone you dislike overly kindly. Therapists often observe reaction formation in patients who claim to strongly believe in something and become angry at everyone who disagrees.

Regression – reverting to an earlier stage of development under extreme stress.

• Example: A college student, overwhelmed by exams, starts sleeping with a childhood stuffed animal for comfort. This return to a past behavior helps them cope with stress.

• Sublimation – the channeling of unacceptable impulses into a socially accepted activity. Example: A person with aggressive tendencies takes up boxing as a way to channel their anger into a controlled and socially acceptable outlet.

• Introjection: (also called identification) when the beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors of others are adopted as one’s own, often to feel safe or accepted. Example: If you are afraid of someone, you can partially conquer that fear by becoming more like them.

  • Identification with the aggressor is a version of introjection that focuses on the adoption, not of general or positive traits, but of negative or feared traits.
  • An extreme example of this is Stockholm Syndrome.

Character Structure

• Character Structure: this can be seen as an illusory role we inhabit that allows us to engage with the world. This is what we utilize to interface with the world, like a user interface.
• Example: Think of this as similar to you driving a car from Point A to Point B. The car is the thing you’re using to go there.

• Questions to better understand: How trusting vs suspicious am I? How easy do I make friends? How much do I act out when frustrated? How much do I rationalize?

• Self: Through the user interface, the self emerges and creates engagement within the world.

Function of Self

• What are the 5 Cabinets within the “Function of Self”?

• The function of self is composed of verbs; How are those things put into practice?
• Strivings (Hopefulness)
• Behavior
• Salience (Internal & External)
• Defense Mechanisms in Action
• These determine how we act towards stimuli. Do we act positively or negatively?
• Defense mechanisms result in patterns.
• Self-Awareness (”I”)
• Behavior change starts with awareness of self. You can’t change what you’re not aware of. This awareness of self can help us what’s underneath ourselves.

Drives

Generative Drive

• There are innate drives that are built into us; synonymous with our existence - if we exist, we must have a driven reason to exist, by definition.

• The definition of drive is to propel or force in a specified direction.
• How do humans behave when they’re not struggling? There’s a strong emphasis on learning, engaging with the world, and serving others. This is our generative drive in action.
• This drive imbues us with creativity and curiosity as to engage with the world in an effort to make it better.
• This drive exhibits propels us towards altruism and pushes us to think outside of ourselves. This leads to feelings of gratitude and humility.
• Our aggressive drive is what gives us a sense of agency.
• This drive gives us the ability to act on our desire to make the world a different place (can be violent, anger, hostility, but it doesn’t have to be).
• This can be seen as the driver that fuels us with a desire to act on things.
• If the drive is too low, it leads to demoralization. If this drive is too high, it leads to envy. Envy comes from the lens of bringing down someone else is similar to bringing up the self. Envy is extremely destructive.
• Our pleasure drive stems from the idea that we want things that feel gratifying, we want to feel good.
• This is our drive for relief. I would argue most of us wouldn’t want to be stressed out and in pain for most of their life.
• Our drive for sex, comfort, and food, is encompassed within this drive.
• In an ideal situation, both the aggressive and pleasure drives sub-serve the generative drive. This leads to a state of humility and empowerment.
• Empowerment is a state of potentials skewed in a good way, and we can create this state for ourselves if we take care of the pillars.

• Humility is consistent with truth. True humility is acknowledging the characteristics you have within yourself—good & bad.

• Affect is aroused in us from interoception, the internal sensations arising from within us (heart beats, blood pumps, stomach digests, etc. these are all sensations ongoing all the time that you’re mostly unaware of).
  • In other words, we don’t have control over the affect that arises within us in the immediate sense, but we can in the long term.
  • Example: Anger is an affect aroused in us. The body reacts—fight or flight—you don’t choose to be angry. But by taking better care of ourselves, or practicing mindfulness we can arouse less anger within us (our metaphorical fuse gets longer).
• Feeling is when we take that affect and relate it to ourselves. Feelings are a 2nd order effect - we take internal stimuli (physiological movement) in relation to ourselves
  • Example: I’m experiencing hunger (stomach is growling), so I must be hungry (interpretation of affect).
  • Or, anger is aroused in you, and you take that anger out on yourself because you interpret it’s because you haven’t gone to the gym yet.
  • By taking better care of ourselves, we get better at managing the anger that is aroused within us, we learn to release that anger in a healthier way. (ex: going for a run)
• Emotion is when we relate the affect and the feeling we interpret from it to others in the world around us.
  • Example: I’m not angry—you’re angry! Or, you feel butterflies in your stomach on a date and assume it’s arousal, but really you’re getting sick.
• The better we take care of ourselves, the better we cope with it as it goes up the ladder (self-I, you, we).
• Just like with physical health (lower blood pressure, higher endurance, more energy), as you go up the ladder with mental health, it gets simpler. (less stress, more self-awareness, understanding of self)

• Metaphor for exploring self: If the answers are in 5-10 cabinets, look in all of them. You might be creating a recipe; things from multiple cabinets coming together.
• What’s coming into my mind when it’s free & open?
• What’s winning out in a high-arousal state and a lot of competition for attention?
• Sometimes intrusive thoughts are simply a signal, a marker that it’s something to pay attention to (or a signal that it’s time to make a change)
• The vast majority of narcissism is rooted in the childhood trauma of __not feeling good enough__. People who suffer from full-blown narcissistic personality disorder (deep vulnerability issues) in a majority of cases, it is extremely difficult to treat these people. (usually in the context of something extreme is what manifests change)
• “Darkness always favors the oppressor.” - 18:55 (1:41:57 - 1:48:08)
• All the stuff that generally makes up a good relation is what we learned in kinder-garden: simple; generosity of spirit, kindness, letting things go, etc. 19:31 (2:19:50 - 2:21:37)
• Mentalization: ability to discern feeling states, intention states; in self & others. If we’re seeing clearly (absence of bias), we learn more about others.

Resources/Extras

• Illustration of the Iceberg Model

  ![[Huberman-Labs-Iceberg-Model.jpeg]]

• Illustration of Pillars/Structure of Self Model ![[Huberman-Labs-Pillars-Mental-Health.jpeg]]