Amy Banks

We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their

good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Amy Banks, m d. She was an instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and is now the Director of Advanced Training at the Gene Baker Miller Training Institute at the Wellesley Centers for Women. Her new book is Four Ways to Click Rewire your Brain for stronger, more rewarding relationships. And here's the interview with Amy Banks. Hi Ami, welcome to the show. Thank you, Eric. I'm

very happy to be here. I'm happy to talk with you and excited to talk with you about your book, The Four Ways to Click, because it really talks about the importance of relationships in our lives and not trying to go things alone. And that's a lesson that I certainly have been learning over the years, and I think will benefit a lot of the listeners. I think that's a lesson that we're all learning. Yes, before we go into that, we'll start like we always do, with the parable.

There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?

And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do well. Not surprisingly, um, given that everything and my life tends to be references, reference back to the neuroscience of relationships. Um. You know what, what I think is that's a perfect kind of analogy parable for neuroscience and neuro plasticity. Right. I mean, it's literally the way are both our behavior and our brains and our

central nervous system change. Right. What we know is that the pathways that we that we feed, that we and for you know, for the neurons, feeding means stimulating the pathways that we feed are the ones that actually are going to manifest. So I think that's exactly it. And um, I think it's so important to think about, you know, both culture and individual and to think about how the

culture feeds us, which part does it feed? And I think one of the messages from my book, um, is that our culture that really focuses on standing on your own two feet and getting everything for yourself really feeds the you know, the hungry, the greedy, and the fearful,

and that's what is winning out. And I think, you know, my work, both my work and this is something that I really internalized personally is one of my am my feeding myself, right, and how do we catch how do we catch ourselves when we're feeding you know, the angry and the greedy, uh, and the fearful. And I think it's so hard not to in this culture. It is, I like that eyeing the idea of feeding the good wolf to feeding the you know, the better neural pathways

exactly exactly. You mentioned it there in the introduction a little bit, but in your book you you talk about a couple of approaches to life to therapy that are focused on us being strong enough to stand on our own two feet, you know, not needing anything from anyone, being okay with you know, anyway things turn out. And I think certainly there's been lots of points in my life that I thought that was kind of the ideal state,

that self sufficiency. Why from your perspective, is that not the ideal state for a human because it doesn't work for us. It actually makes us sicker, okay. And if you look at the literature, and one of my favorite

writers on this or it has been Dean Ornest. Do you remember Dean Orners who was the cardiac guy, and he spent his whole life talking about the heart and out of the Blue wrote a book called Love and Survival, and in it he really talks about them the power of isolation, the power of you know, being on your own, and how that leads to literally more sickness, right, more sickness, Uh,

increased incidents of death from all causes. Um. So you know, there's plenty of evidence that that way of being now is is really making us sicker, and that in fact, rather than teaching our kids from to get through that, the goal is to you know, kind of gather as much as you can, gather as much as you can so that you can be the strong one who kind of rises to the top. Right. Um. The the idea, I think is to really begin to help kids see

how interdependent they are from the get go, right. Um. And when you do that, you you change do you change what you're trying to do from building really individuals, right, the strong individuals, to building communities and relationships and uh, you know a sense of give and take and and ultimately, I mean it's interesting the wolf parable we were pack animals. Humans are pack animals. We're born in our whole neural physiology is built to work best and most effectively in

healthy connection, right. And I think the thing that is scary about that for a lot of people though, and I think what drives that idea of being strong, stand on your own two feet, um, not need anybody for anything, is that inevitably there is some degree of pain and disappointment that tends to come out of a lot of relationships. We tend to get hurt. So how in your model

do we deal with those things in a positive way? Well, So, the first thing, Eric, is that one of the things we have to really start thinking about is what is a healthy relationship? Right? And I agree with you all all relationships will run the gamut from you know, supportive to undermining right on on some level, because ultimately, relationships

are a negotiation. Right, I'm gonna put my needs out there, You're gonna put your needs out there, and we're going to figure out what works best for for for the relationship and sometimes it may be what works best for you and so, um, So the first step I think is really identifying what a healthy relationship is. So it's not always that oh, it's just better to be in any relationship, right. Um. And so a lot of people build their lives and don't have the skill to build

healthy relationships. And I'll you know, I'll actually name a couple of like, how do you know if you're in a healthy relationship? But and so that they're they're they're more often than not ending being hurt or frustrated or you know, uh, some negative consequence of the relationship. And so when you start kind of raising the bar and teaching relational skills, then I think, you know, you're talking about a very different kind of animal if you will

write a healthy relationship versus just any relationship. And maybe I could I say a little bit about that. Yeah, so um. One of my mentors was Gene Baker Miller, who started the whole relational cultural theory many many years ago with a group of in a group of four women. And one of the things that I loved about her is that she was able to kind of distill complicated information into something that was really gives her friendly And she said, this is how you know if you're in

a healthy relationship. You have five good things and and we we came to call that the five good things of a growth fostering relationship. And the first is that you have that sense of energy, right that and she called it ze that that kind of really good feeling that you get actually when you're in a good interaction and you're being supported but offering support, you know, you really get that energy. The second thing is that you

have more ability to act. So that energy actually moves you into a sense of action both in the world to kind to take on different problems, but also in the relationship. So so that acting in relationship, maybe sharing with somebody when they're hurting you, right or when they're doing something that really is undermining to you as a person, and and and trusting in that relationship that that can be that that matters together people, that it can be

talked about, negotiated, understood together in a different way. So, um, a sense of energy and ability to act, more clarity about yourself, about the other person and the relationship. That would be the third thing. So rather than having these you know, kind of blurry I don't know where I start you end and all of that, there's really a lot of clarity. Okay, this is me in my life and my stuff and that's you. Um So there's more clarity,

there's a greater sense of self worth. Um So you really feel better about yourself because it's reflected in having somebody that is listening giving you feedback you know, good and bad, but who's really engaged in a process with you and in listening to you and you're listening to them. And then finally a desire for more relationships. So those

are the five good things. And when you think about it, and and part of the relational assessment that's in my book really encompasses these five good things that we're talking about, a very idealistic kind of relationship, right, something to strive for, and one that actually can really bear the tensions that most of us have to deal with in life. Yeah,

I mean, I agree. I think what's what's interesting? I like those five those are a very good, like you said, a simple way to gauge whether you are in a relationship that is good. One of the things that you say in the book, which is a fairly um, I'm sure you said it to be uh somewhat startling and provocative, is that boundaries are overrated. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, So let me say a little bit about that. I as that to be kind of provocative and to sort of introduce

that topic right from the get go. Because I think so much of the separate so so much of separate self. Models of human development really count on boundaries, right, Boundaries

are what protect you from others. And you know, if you have a good set of boundaries, then you're going to be able to grow sort of within your little tower, to be big and strong and powerful, and people are going to impinge on you and I and I think the problem with that is that it isn't at all realistic, right, um, and so what right from the get go, I want people to be thinking about boundaries as not being sort of these walls that get imagined right that I'm going

to set I'm going to set limits on you. I'm not going to let you into my boundary world. But really to see it as the richest, um most poignant interface between two people, right that that space in between two people. And you know, when a relationship is healthy, that space in between two people, that boundary is very porous, right because there's a lot of feedback good and a

lot of information going back and forth across that. Of course, when relationships truly are not safe, I think then you know the idea of putting up a boundary as the only way to stave off see you know, some kind of abuse or maltreatment, you know, certainly makes sense. And I've worked in the field of trauma for years, and in those situations, sometimes that's all you can do, right

the wall, that's the duck and cover. But I think when we encourage people to put up boundaries without understanding that it's at those spaces where they're putting up the boundaries where the richest relationship relational work is being done or can be done, that has the most potential for growth exactly. And you touched on it a little bit earlier about the variety of studies that talk about how being in good relationship up with other people is so

critical to our health. I was struck by the idea of those the blue zones. You know, people think about it is eating first, but then they go into all the important ways that the relationship is important. And you quote a stat in there that people who have poor social support have a higher risk of premature death. That

is donning. Yeah, it really is. Yeah, And that's that's one of the things or that I think is just so shocking, is that the statistics are out there, yet we're still not getting It's not registering in our society in a in a in a really crucial way, right, um.

And that's stunny to me, you know that people aren't like blown away by that and really taking pause to think, Okay, how are we setting up our organizations in our schools and what are we teaching our kids so that that contribute it continues to see into that you know more, you know, higher risk of death. I mean to me,

that's a game changer. Well, I mean, if you look at the culture, there's I guess I'm not that shocked, you know, given given you know, the obesity statistics are all there and all that stuff too, and and you know,

not a lot changes. Um. Your book really focuses around what you call four neural pathways, where you break down very complicated brain processes but into sort of four neural pathways that um really function in the relationship realm, and how when those things are not going well, what they result in, and how relationships can improve those neural pathways.

And so I thought we could spend a minute or two and and run through those briefly, and then I might want to dive into a couple of more specifically, But you start off by the first one, UH is the ability to be calm, and you reference something called the smart vegas nerve Yeah, so so what that is is, um, you know, the original work was done by Steve Porges at the University of Chicago, and what he discovered is that, um, there is a kind of evolutionarily new UH pathway to

the autonomic nervous system, and it's called the smart vegas. So most people think of our autonomic nervous system is the sympathetic nervous system that kind of fight or flight response, and the parasympathetic which is the freeze response. And so for you know, decades, um, really for a century actually, we've been talking about the human autonomic or automatic response to the environment as being those two things, either flight

or freeze. And apparently what's also developed in mammals and certainly in humans is an extra pathway that is all about relationship and and it also is working automatically, so that when you go into an environment into a relationship that feels safe, your face kind you know, you tend to have pretty um, predictable responses. Often you smile, your

eyebrows go up. You know, there's sort of an opening in your face and in your ears, those little muscles in your inner ear, and as that's all happening, it stimulates the smart vegus nerves, which which feeds back to your sympathetic nervous system and tells it to stand down and relax. So it's the way, it's one of the ways that healthy human connection can actually destress you. And now back to the rest of the interview with Amy Banks.

You refer to something as having poor vague tone. Yes, yes, yes, and that's you know, I think that is a term that Porges has used. And so if you imagine these now the autonomic nervous system being composed of the smart vegas, the sympathetic nervous system, and the parasympathetic nervous system, what's going to be most important is that you're able to read the environment and respond appropriately people who are in

chronic stress. And what we know, and they also add that what we know is that neural plasticity tells us the rules of neural plasticity tells us that, you know, essentially, the more we feed a pathway destroying er it gets. And so in a culture, that's that devalues relationship and over and really overstimulates everybody, right with stress, whether it's balancing kids and work and or poverty or what have you.

What happens is the sympathetic and even the parasympathetic can be um disproportionately stimulated, and then you can have literally a weakened smart vegas, which means that you don't get the same kind of kick a relaxation when you're in

healthy relationships. It doesn't register in the same way. Yeah, that's one of the things that I noticed in the book, and is you know, we I wanted to talk more about when we get into the energy or the dopamine uh section, is really how our culture and the way that we live can often be so strong that the normal ways of making some of these things happen the more subtle, you know, things that happen in relationship don't register to the same degree that they might once have,

which is really um yeah, disturbing, really disturbing. But I think that I think you're right that that captures it. Right. So if you're if you're imagining that, you know, every given moment, you're you're feeding your nervous system, right, it's what you're feeding them. And if if you're feeding your nervous sysm a steady diet of stress that is going to simply build up the sympathetic nervous system and you're

gonna have less room there. Right, it's going to push out in a sense, some of this this smart vegas. And so attending to that by either of these dressing right, really actively restructuring your life or doing in meditation or exercise or you know, any handful of things to you know, double down and and sort of help decrease the stress level. But also you know, I mentioned some some things to try to stimulate the smart vegas, So what are some

things that we could be doing well? So anything, So, so imagine things where you're making eye contact where you're and and literally you can try you know, trying this. I have people in my workshops try this. If you if you imagine, I call it positive religinal moment. You could been one minute, right and think of an interaction with somebody where you know, where it was warm and supportive and good and and what ends up happening. You

can use and literally feel the physiology shift. You know, often when I sit there and I look out over crowd that's doing this there, often you know, they start out sort of meditative and then you know they'll get a smile on their face, they'll you know, some and you can just see the shifting and what people describe as their heart rate lowers there, you know, And what's happening is that, you know, at least in part as a smart vegas is kicking in and settling down that

sort of tension, nervous and anxiety. So you know, there is so anything that sort of engages you in a face to face uh, interaction with another human being that's face. But you can also do this with essentially visualization, just calling to mind positive relationship moments from the past. Yeah, we interviewed Rick Hanson and he talks a little bit

about this. He calls it taking in the good right, but it's rewiring those those neural pathways by consciously choosing to recall a positive moment and and linger on it exactly. And so what I what I add to that is

it's you know, not just the positive moments. Maybe you know, um, because I know, um, you know, the positive psychology movement certainly focuses on, you know, those positive moments, and I really want to focus on is a positive relational moment so that there you know, so it is in the context of relationship, and you can build these pathways and make them stronger. So the next one you call accepted, which is relating to the dorsal anterior singulate gyris. Did

I get that right? Yeah? Yeah, dorsal anterior singulate gyros, which really you know, it's not the name so much is as sort of getting it that that we have this little strip of brain, kind of in the medial aspect, deep in our in our brain structures that actually registers

the distress of both physical pain and social rejection. So this is work that's been done by Eisenberger and Lieberman and and they literally looked at what gets activated in the brain of people who have been socially rejected or left out, um, and they did experiments on this, and so what they find is this area is activated and literally it's the exact same area that you know that when you have burned your hand and you're distressed by that, right,

the feeling of ants that you have with a physical pain also lights up this area. So when essentially what that means is when we are accepted again, when we're within a community, when we're within a healthy relationship and sort of soul said area. It literally suthes our pain pathways. And there's been all sorts of kind of corollary studies that people who are in chronic pain feel more isolated, right because it's sharing this pathway. People who are isolated

actually register the distress of pain as as being higher. Right, They have higher pain if they're more insolated. So it's it's a really intriguing, uh kind of mix um. And again, you know what I what I really try to highlight in the book is what happens then when you have a culture that really is focusing on separating, right, and well, you know, one of the things that we do in that kind of a sure is that we don't work

with difference in any way. You know, we have a hard time bridging differences in other people, right, whether it's across race, or it's across you know, economic status or what have you. And so what happens is there's a whole lot of judging that we just do automatically, right, is that we see something different and we judge it and you know, we were up there down or we're down and they're up. You know, it depends on who you are. But I think we really keep this little

area of pain activated all the time. Do we activate that same area when we are doing judging? See? I think we do. Now. I haven't seen the studies of that. Okay, I don't think anybody has put put somebody in an MRI machine to see, Okay, that activating the same thing. My guess is is probably that what happens is that when you do the original judgment and you put somebody else down, my guess is you probably get a little bit of a hit of dopamine because you had that

little feel good. You've feel good just for a second, right, you're better than them? But then, you know, I think you know over time and that you're you know, it's not coming out of a place of accepted that you feel better. It's a brief hit of power over somebody, right, um, And you know, and I think it's a very tenuous, you know, place to be. Yeah. We've talked on the show a lot about this idea of comparison and how

dangerous comparison can be. And the thing that I've I've sort of noticed, and you know, listeners have heard me say this a bunch of times, is that the thing I've noticed about comparison is that you can always compare up. There's always somebody better than you, there's always somebody worse than you. But in either of those scenarios, you're not connecting with anyone exactly. That's exactly right. It's either way,

it's a disconnection, right. And and this area of the brain, the pain path and the disconnection is always painful on some level, right, Um, And you know this area of the brain can be soothed by not doing that, right and you know, getting out of that habit of chronically judging or you know, as you say, um, comparing. Yeah. Well, and I think that judgment very often, at least in my own life, comes from there's an initial fear of not being accepted. So I go into a judgment moment, exactly.

It's a defense. It's a defense against that you know, that non acceptance or not feeling part of exactly. And it probably does make sense physiologically, right, right, give yourself a little hit of dopamine. You feel a little better right in that moment, And so you're either going to go into the stress of feeling kind of excluded less than in in you know, in pain, or you know, or you get at least a quick hit of dopamine, but none of it's sustainable, right, because it's not It's

not about connection, about disconnection. Yeah, so let's jump in the interest of time, I'm gonna skip over the resonance, which is really the mirror neuron system. I think some people have probably heard a fair amount of that, and I like to go to the energy section and dopamine as a As a big fan of dopamine, I want to make sure we talk about it where we all love it. So tell me a little bit about um,

the the energy pathway in a relationship perspective. Well, so, so what I highlight first of all is that you know, dopamine is a is a prime kind of mover and shaker, if you will, in the brain. There's lots of different dopamine pathways, but the one that is really crucial to

relationships happens to be the dopamine reward system. And most people associate the dopamine reward system actually with all kinds of addictions, right because it's you know, some point in the last three years, research search has shown that the dopamine reward system is ultimately what causes the repetitive behavior addiction right, the craving, the you know, wanting that again and again and again. Um. But if you look at sort of the beginning of of of being a human being, um,

the dopamine reward system actually rewarded healthy growth, fostering behaviors. Right, So nurturings, being in a healthy relationship with a parent, and of the nurturings, the cuddling, the soothing, the sucking, all of that stimulates dopamine. Water does with production does? Um? You know, all of those things can uh stimulate dopamine. So essentially, when you have a community of people that are richly interconnected, those relationships can be your most uh,

most rich and dependable source of dopamine. And again, what happens. I think when we raise people to be suffered sell separate cells and we start, you know, even denigrating uh dependency, right that lea you know that you shouldn't be a whimp, you shouldn't depend on others, you should be able to stand on your on two thess, I think we begin to really unpair relationship with the dopamine reward system, right. And I think one of the things that we all

can relate to is the strong desire for dopamine. It just makes you feel better. And if you're not going to get it, and as I say in the book, if you're not going to get it from healthy relationship, you are going to get it from someplace else, right, Um. And you know that's someplace else, then can be any

addictive behavior. And I really look at kind of the list of ailments that we have in our country, from obesity to drug addiction to consumerism to you know that all people are out trying to get to dopamine hits right, They're trying to get more to feel better. Um. And it's a it's an endless cycle. Yeah, I was really Um. I was struck by that one for for a bunch of reasons. A. As a recovering addict, I'm familiar with

the dopamine chase for sure, um. And what what I thought was interesting is that you said that at a certain point, once you've stimulated your dopamine system enough via these other things, that the relationship, the normal, the right level, if you want to call it, that of dopamine that you would get from a relationship doesn't barely even register.

And I think that is something that unfortunately I have certainly noticed in my life at points is that, Um, the good feeling that should come there doesn't seem at points in my life strong enough. It's not, and so then you know, you go hunting elsewhere. The other thing that I thought was really interesting about that is I've done a couple interviews on here with people where we've

talked about a couple of different things. We've talked about addiction, and one of them, you know, there's they're starting to emerge in the addiction research field. You know that the core issue behind all addiction is lack of bonding. Yes, and which ties right to this. And then the other one, which is a different neurotransmitter but you talk about in

the book and is also tied to good relationships. Is there seems to be some studies, um, and I can't quote them quite like you can that show that oxytocin is an inhibitor to addiction. Yeah, exactly, Well, oxytocin. Oxytocin, if you think about it, is it's it's one of the you know, the strongest what they call neuro affiliated hormones.

If you give somebody oxytocin, And they've done this with people, but there's also done it with with animals, your anxiety level literally goes down, and you have you are drawn to other human beings. Literally. There was a company one of the things that I think was just hysterical, and I think it might have gotten cut out of the book, but there was a company in Florida that was making oxytocin under the title of Liquid Trust, and they were

using it. They were saying, you know, their advertisements was, you need to have people trust you at work or whatever. You be a better salesman. If you wear this oxytocin, people will breathe it and then they'll trust you more, right, Which is such a perversion of oxytocin. But but it's a naturally occurring hormone that you get when you have healthy relationships, and it's built into the relationships to facilitate

the ongoing supports. Right, yeah, yeah, What are some of the things that we can do if that energy pathway, the stimulation we get from good relationships is you know, it seems kind of weak on that energy pathway. What are some of the things we can do to strengthen that. You know, one of the things that I talk about in the book is, you know, always the first step is awareness, right, you know, I have people kind of take a take a look. Where are you getting your

dopamine stimulation? Right? How much? You know, how much of it is in these healthy relationships? And if you look at the assessment that you do, one of the things you want to do is choose a relationship that's high in energy. Right, So that's going to be and whatever it is. Maybe you have one friend that you just get a big kick out of. There's a lot of laughter. You know, it doesn't have to be you know, oh my god. We can always share the heavy, deep and reel,

but a real issues ship that's just fun. Right. And so begin to to notice, Okay, um, you know ten percent of my time I turned to that person you know when I'm when I'm wanting something, you know, when I'm wanting a fix or what have you. But I noticed that, you know, of the time I go home and I eat ice cream, or you know, I go and have three beers at a bar or you know whatever. So to really see how how you're stimulating the dopamine and then you can really make a plan around and

make a plan literally with this friend. There's so much around, um, you know, kind of mutual support systems that can be done, you know with that friend, can you set up uh contact? Okay, when I'm I really want to eat less ice cream at night, which just keep it simple. When I go to get you know, my pint of ice cream, I'm gonna reach out to you. Maybe I'll text you, maybe I'll call you. Maybe I'll say it's really bad tonight.

Can we meet for coffee? I mean whatever. But to really pull somebody into your mutual support system, and chances are they're going to have something that they're working on, because I think most people in this culture do other things to get dopamine then to turn to one another. Right, um, But so without awareness, I think you can really begin

to shape your behavior. Now if you're somebody that has a hard core diction, right you know, and Eric, maybe maybe that's you know, kind of where you were where you really you know, maybe it's alcohol, Maybe it's some big drug of addiction. I mean, you're really thinking about something like a twelve step program um that has all of the same elements in place, right, you get you know, ninety meetings and ninety days, so you've got that stimulation over and over again. You get a sponsor, you get

the group, you know, attached to the group. I mean a lot of that is doing the hardcore work of changing the brain chemistry right to try to rewire it to something else. Yeah, I find the subject of, at least for me, watching how a lot of the science starts showing up, you know, showing why, at least to me, a lot of the twelve step stuff works. I mean exactly, I certainly you know, I've been in that that program

is saved my life. I don't agree with some of the conclusions that they come to about why it works, but it's really fascinating to me to see the science supporting that. The oh yeah, the fact that there's the group and a sponsor and all, you know, all those things they all start to you can see you can step back and go, oh, I can see why that is effective because it's addressing all these various areas exactly

exactly it is, and you think about it. I mean, it's a you know, it's a kind of self identified non judgmental community. I mean, there's so much right about the self help groups, right um, and you know that a lot of people have criticisms and that it can be valid and it may not be for everybody. But but the basic premise of trying to shift into a more relational way of living your life I think is core to any healing from addiction. I would agree, and

it would agree what you're saying. You know that that that or whatever. The early bonding. So there's a few things in the book that you a few terms you use that I'd like to explore, some things that you recommend people doing. And one that I really liked was

relational delusion. Yes, yes, yes, relational delusion. Um. So you know this gets back to the relational assessment, right, and you know what I literally have people doing and you know I had, I had a lot of fun one day doing pie pie charts with people's the amount of time people spending relationships and if you think about it

just as a balancing act. If you have relationships, if you have three relationships that are not very safe based on your safe assessment um, and to that are you know, maybe moderately safe, right, But maybe those three relationships that aren't so safe happen to be taking up most of

your relational time. Maybe there are people at work, maybe once your spouse, right, so that they're actually because of how much time you spend in them, they're feeding these neural pathways the most, right, And so one of the things that you can do is literally back off and shift the time you spend with other people that are in stronger relationship. So that's what I refer to as relational delution, right, so that the overall proportion of what

you're feeding your brain in your nervous system is less toxic. Right. And I really like that idea because I think for a lot of people, many many people, that idea of you know, being ready to sever any of those relationships is very very daunting, particularly if you're in you know, if you if you look at these these various pathways you're talking about, and they're all run down and beaten into the ground, it's very hard to have the energy, the vision, the will, any of that to make some

huge significant change. And that's what I really like about this idea is that you begin to change the balance a little bit, You start to put you know, you start to use the analogy of the show, right, you feed the good wolf just a little bit more, feed the bad wolf a little bit less, and and you then change as that happens, and you become stronger and

have a different perspective. Yeah, right, you stronger in a from perspective, and then you may delute a little more and delute a little more, right and and but I think the point is exactly what you named, which is, you know, it's too hard for most of us to just sever a relationship that we've been in for a long time. And and so that's rarely recommended unless they're the person is frankly abusive. Um. And and that, in fact,

bad relationships can sometimes really improve. I mean the thing that I think people don't get often and sometimes they can improve simply by you interacting differently and even less than them, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, So I like that one. The other one is relabel and refocus. Can you expound on that one for us? Yeah? I will. And I have to give credit to Jeffrey Schwartz, who I think

quite that term and is in his book, um, Getting Unstuck. Okay, And he doesn't he uses it in a very specific way for a sense of compulsive disorder, But it's sort of the idea of, you know, so much of what we do, our behaviors become us. Right, we don't have any distinction between our behavior and who we are, right,

and so if we're behaving badly, we aren't that. And so one of the things that that I do have people do is, you know, for instance, if you're drawn to if you're drawn to that, you know, three or four beers at the end of the day, to try to relax, to relabel that. Relabel it not as you know, oh I'm you know, I'm an addict, I'm a whatever, you know sort of I am defined by this behavior. But just relabel it as Okay, I'm trying to get

dopamine here, right, I'm trying to feel better. I'm trying to get open and trying to feel better, and then think about relabel, refocus what are other ways? Now, what I have people do is build what I call a library of positive relational moments, right, and I have people reflect on the fact that most people have a steady stream of negative relational moments that they're feeding their brain all the time, right, you know, the times some so and so broke up with me, or the flight at

the office or whatever. So it's not like, you know, so we're not It's not like we don't have these libraries. They're in there feeding us all the time. So if you can consciously build five memories that you can reliably um turn to when you need to get away from that negative, right, then you can you can relabel Okay, whatever it is, something coming up, that's my judging brain.

If you're if you're starting to judge yourself, or you know, you go into a crowd, a crowded room, a party, and you automatically start looking at people's clothes, looking at how their hairstyle is, and the judging starts, and to just say, okay, that's my judging mind. Refocus on something really more positive relationships that have been supportive. So it's that kind of you know I say, literally picking up your brain, your mind, your focus, your attention and putting

it on something more positive. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot I like in The thing I would add to that is that a lot of times, at least for me, when I've tried to do those, you know, change the direction of the brain, right, pick it up here, put it down over there, is that at least at first, it tends to pop right back to where it was, and then it has to be picked up and moved over again, and and to not you know, I think it's important to stick with that because those changes don't

happen automatically. It's not like you change your brain direction once and then it's over there. It's like it's kind of like when you're starting to meditate, you might have to come back to your breath or whatever your anchor is sixty times in you know, three minutes. But over time that gets a little bit easier to do. And the other thing I really like about that relabeling is stepping away from that. I'm just, you know, beating ourselves up because we want, you know, oh I want that

ice cream. I'm such a I'm such a loser, I'm such a instead of and like you said, we like billing it like, no, what I want is, you know, my system is telling me that I want more dopamine. I want to feel better. I learned to do that with with drinking. At one point, my instant reaction to stress was I need to drink. I need to drink. In my brain, that's what I's saying, and I would. I learned to stop and say, okay, well what really

what am I saying? What I'm saying is I feel overwhelmed. Okay, what can I you know, and finding a different way to do that versus just getting stuck and well, I shouldn't want to drink. Wanted to drinks bad, I can't drink. You know, recognize what's kind of underlying that, And that's why I really liked that relabele and refocus. Yeah, no, yeah,

I agree, couldn't agree more. So we're near the end of time and I think I could probably do this with you all evening, but I'm gonna end with one question here and ask you to sort of elaborate a little bit more. You talk about starving neural pathways that

separate thought from feeling. Yes, yes, yes, So when I'm referring to again, this is a very um thickly social lies value that I think we have in our culture, which is that thought right, thought thinking, logical linear thinking is uh kind of trumps emotionality, right, and you know, the way to be in the world is to be

able to think your way through. And you know, we get these messages all the time that you know, if you're too emotional that uh, you know, the information that's coming out is out of control and it's you know, it's just basically seen as less valid. You know, there are ways that thought and feeling has been really gendered

in our culture. Um, but the basic message I think has been you know, part of being a separate self is being able to manage your affect and your emotions right and to be able to really think logically and linearly. And so I think, um, what I what I'm trying to really get people to watch is where but you know,

particularly relationships where that comes up for them. You know, when you know, maybe you're in a discussion at work and you know the conversation, if you're if you're bringing a little affect of feeling into it, you know, people you can see people's reaction and they start to shut down. That's not that's not the way you should be in the office, and what have you. But I think we have these messages all the time. And ideally, if you think about it, you know, what we want is an

integrated nervous system. And the integration is the left and the light, the logical and the affective, and to be able to really bring those together. But you know, both streams of information are transmitting really important data about your world, your inner world and what's going on right, and so to be able to value that and to be able

to do it in a balanced way. Again, Jeane Baker Milli used to talk about communicating in feeling thoughts, you know, other than thoughts or feelings, feeling thoughts, you know that they they're and together. And I think that's really a skill to bring to relationships that people need to practice and that they need to And again, the starting part is to really notice it when it's happening in society

and to you know, I mean deconstructed. Okay, there it is. Again, that's that message that says feeling and thoughts should be separate. I don't I don't believe that. I'm not going to take that in. You know, that's not going to feed me. Yeah. I spent a lot of time on the show and people I work with talking about doing the behavior that's important to you, regardless of the emotion. Um. But what I think is I was reading today a little bit more a guest to we had on the show called

David K. Reynolds. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him, but he wrote a book called Constructive Living, which I could summarize basically in three three basic steps. He says, you know, acknowledge the emotion you're feeling. Feel the emotion you're feeling. Now, think about what your purpose is, what is it that you want to do, and then do

the next right thing. And I think that sort of integrates all those things that you're talking about, because I tend to see, at least in my life and a lot of people I know, there tends to be extremes. It's either I am all thought and I just squelch all the emotion and I move like a robot, or I feel bad. And so the next thing is, I'm not going to go to work for three days and I'm gonna you know, watch Netflix in my pajamas, you know.

And you know, where is that? Where is that middle ground that honors both the thought you know, are conscious planning about who we want to be, how we want to act, how we want to show up, and the feeling, which is, like you said, valuable information exactly exactly. Yeah. No, I love that, actually right, I love those I'm gonna get that book. As a matter of fact, he got a lot of his thoughts from a Japanese psychotherapist called Marita.

And you know, I mean, let's say something. I mean, there are cultures that you know, really value, uh, the integration and the relationship in a different way, you know. So I think we have a lot to learn from other cultures actually in terms of how to how to maybe live a more whole life. You certainly can well, Amy, thanks so much. I really enjoyed the book. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Like I said, I could probably do another couple of hours here, but we're already at kind

of a long episode. So and I know you've got some some children to take a look at so exactly which they're not gonna they're not going to enjoy, but it'll be a quick look. I'll glance at them and then wrong. But I do appreciate your inviting me on. And yeah, thank you, thank you for the work you're doing. Yes, excellent. Well we'll talk again soon. Thanks, all right, take your bye. You can learn more about this podcast and Amy Banks at one new feed dot net slash Banks