André Duqum

I think when we assess the physical health of one's body, it's much more easy to observe.

You know, someone has a broken arm, they're in shape, you can measure their heart rate.

When it comes to our mental health, often it's way more ethereal, more subtle to assess and assert the status of one's mental health.

And so I'm just curious to start off, how do you think about

What is the effective way to assess one's current state of mental health?

Paying attention to your work over the past few years, it seems like there's this progression, at least with your new book, and...

the work of understanding, looking through the rear view and through reflection, what were the formative experiences that shaped our psyche, the unconscious, the subconscious, and then what can we focus on now that has this generative drive that's like what's going right and to examine that as well.

And so to start a bit more with the part of the iceberg that's under the water, so to speak, when we think of the self and we think of the psyche,

we're often speaking about the personhood, the personality we're looking at life through as if it's a lens.

And oftentimes, societally widespread, we don't really give time and weight to examine the experiences that shape that person that now we just assume is who we are and is our identity in which we engage with all life and relationships.

How do you articulate the differences between the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mind?

I think this has been getting increasing attention over the past five, ten years because people

you know, Jung is quoted, I believe, if until you make the unconscious conscious, it'll rule your life and you'll call it fate.

Right.

And it can be a painful realization to see the trajectory that our life was set out for before we were even able to consciously make that decision.

Now, when we're speaking about the unconscious and sort of the internal motives that are beneath our conscious level of awareness of having the ability to really articulate why we do what we do, we just feel this pull towards different things.

How much of that is shaped

before we even have conscious memory of it, you know, before the age of seven, how much in your experience has identity really formed in that early childhood state?

That word that you use, which is compassionate curiosity, I think is really important.

I think it's quite easy to look back into our past and the experiences that shaped us with a lot of shame, guilt, fear, regret, remorse.