The One You Feed - Amy Banks

Episode Date: September 29, 2015

Amy Banks, M.D., has devoted her career to understanding the neurobiology of relationships. In addition to her work at the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute (JBMTI), she was an instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is the first person to bring relational-cultural theory together with neuroscience and is the foremost expert in the combined field.Amy is the creator of the C.A.R.E. Program, an easy to use, practical guide that helps clinicians and laypeople assess the quality of their relationships and strengthen their neural pathways for connection. Amy also has a private practice in Lexington, MA, that specializes in relational psychopharmacology and therapy for people who suffer from chronic disconnection. Most recently, Amy has joined the core group of Harville Hendrix’s Relationships First, a small group of prestigious scientists and cultural leaders who promote the idea that “healthy relationships are non-negotiable in a healthy society.”Her latest book is: Four Ways to Click: Rewire Your Brain for Stronger, More Rewarding Relationships Our Sponsor this Week is Casper MatressesVisit casper.com/feed and use the promo code "feed" to get $50 off!!In This Interview Amy and I Discuss...The One You Feed parableHow feeding neurons means stimulating themHow culture can feed our bad wolfThe power of isolation & how it can lead to more sicknessHow humans work best in healthy connection & interdependence with one anotherThe importance of identifying and building healthy relationshipsThe "5 good things" that exist in a healthy relationshipHow boundaries in relationships are overratedThe 1 sign that you are at a 340% higher risk of premature deathThe 4 neural pathways that function in the relationship realmFor more show notes visit our websiteSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our culture that really focuses on standing on your own two feet and getting everything for yourself really feeds the hungry, the greedy, and the fearful. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. 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. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register

to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Amy Banks, MD. She was an instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and is now the Director of Advanced Training at the Jean 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, Amy. 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 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, given that everything in my life tends to be referenced back to the neuroscience of relationships, you know, what I think is that's a perfect kind of analogy parable for neuroscience and neuroplasticity, right? I mean, it's literally the way both our behavior and our brains and our central nervous system change, right?

What we know is that the pathways that we feed and 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 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 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 my work, both my work and this is something that I really internalize personally,

is what am I feeding myself, right? And how do we catch ourselves when we're feeding the angry and the greedy and the fearful. And I think it's so hard not to in this culture. Yeah, it really is. I like that tying the idea of feeding the good wolf to feeding the, you know, the better neural pathways. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. You mentioned it there in the introduction a little bit, but in your book, 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, any way 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 Ornish. Do you remember Dean Ornish, 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 the power of isolation, the power of being on your own, and how that leads to literally more sickness, right? More sickness, increased incidence of death from all causes. So there's plenty of evidence that that way of being now is

really making us sicker. And that, in fact, rather than teaching our kids from the get-go 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? The idea, I think, is to really begin to help kids see how interdependent they are from the get-go, right? And when you do that, you change what you're trying to do from building really individuals, right, strong individuals, to building communities and relationships and, you know, a sense of give and take. And ultimately, I mean, it's interesting, the wolf parable, we're pack animals. Humans are pack animals.

We're born and our whole neurophysiology 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, 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 relationships will run the gamut from, you know, supportive to undermining, right? On some level, because ultimately relationships

are a negotiation, right? I'm going to put my needs out there. You're going to put your needs out there. And we're going to figure out what works best for the relationship. And sometimes it may be what works best for you. And 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? And so a lot of people build their lives and don't have the skill set to build healthy relationships. And I'll actually name a couple of, like, how do you know if you're in a healthy relationship? And so that they're more often than not ending up being hurt or frustrated or, you know, 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, right? A healthy relationship versus just any relationship. And maybe I could I say a little bit about that? Sure. Yeah. So one of my mentors was Jean Baker Miller, who started the whole relational cultural theory many, many years ago 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 user-friendly. And she said, this is how you know if you're in a healthy relationship. You have five good things. And 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? And she called it zest, 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 of take on different problems, but also in the relationship.

So that acting in relationship may be 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 trusting in that relationship that that matters to the other people, that it can be talked about, negotiated, understood together in a different way. So a sense of energy, an 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 and you end and all of that, there's really a lot of clarity. Okay, this is me and my life and my stuff, and that's you. So there's more clarity. There's a greater sense of self-worth. So you really feel better about yourself because it's reflected, right, 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 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 in part of the relational assessment that's in my book really encompasses these five good things but we're talking about a very idealistic kind of relationship right something to strive for right 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 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, I'm sure you said it to be somewhat startling and provocative, is that boundaries are overrated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me say a little bit about that. I absolutely did that to be kind of provocative and to sort of introduce that topic right from the get-go because I think 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 aren't going to impinge on you. And I think the problem with that is that it isn't at all realistic, right? 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 boundaried world, but really to see it as the richest, most poignant interface between two people, right? 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 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, 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, you know, in those situations, sometimes that's all you can do, right?

The wall that's the ducking 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 relational work is being done or can be done, it 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 relationships with other people is so critical to our health. I was struck by the idea of the blue zones. Mm-hmm.

You know, people think about it as eating first, but then they go into all the important ways that the relationship is important. 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 340% higher risk of premature death. That is stunning. Yeah, it really is. Yeah, and that's one of the things, Eric, 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 really crucial way, right?

And that's stunning 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 and our schools and what are we setting up our organizations in our schools? And what are we teaching our kids? So that continues to feed into that, you know, 340% 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. Well, I'm not shocked. You know, given, you know, the obesity statistics are all there and all that stuff too. And, you know, not'm not shocked. neural pathways that 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 run through those briefly. And then I might want to dive into a couple of them more specifically. But you start off by the first one is the ability to be calm, and you reference something called the smart vagus nerve. Yeah, yeah. So what that is, you know, the original work was done by Steve Porges at the University of Chicago, and what he discovered is that there is a kind of evolutionarily new pathway to the autonomic nervous system. And it's called the smart vagus. So most people think of our autonomic nervous system as 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, really for a century, actually, we've been talking about the human autonomic or automatic response to the environment as being those two things, fight or flight or freeze. And apparently what's also developed in mammals and certainly in humans is an extra so that when you go into an environment, into a relationship that feels safe, your face kind of, you know, you tend to have pretty 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 this smart vagus nerve, 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 interview with amy banks And now back to the rest of the interview with Amy Banks.

You refer to something as having poor, vagal tone. Yes, yes, yes. And that's, you know, I think that is a term that poor... I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by.

Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel

might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeart system being composed of the smart vagus,

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, let me also add that what we know is that neuroplasticity tells us, the rules of neuroplasticity tells us that or the rules of neuroplasticity tells us that, you know, essentially the more we feed a pathway, the stronger it gets. And so in a culture that devalues relationship and really overstimulates everybody, right, with stress, whether it's balancing kids and work or poverty or what have you, what happens is the sympathetic

and even the parasympathetic can be disproportionately stimulated. And then you can have literally a weakened smart vagus, which means that you don't get the same kind of kick of 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, I wanted to talk more about when we get into the energy and the dopamine 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 disturbing. Really disturbing. But I think you're right. That captures it, right? So if you're imagining that, you know, every given moment you're feeding your nervous system, right? It's what you're feeding them. And if you're feeding your nervous system a steady diet of stress, that is going to

simply build up the sympathetic nervous system, and you're going to have less room there, right? It's going to push out, in a sense, some of this smart vagus. And so attending to that by either de-stressing, right, really actively restructuring your life or doing a meditation or exercise or, you know, any handful of things to, you know, double down and sort of help decrease the stress level. But also, you know, I mentioned some things to try to stimulate the smart vagus.

So what are some things that we could be doing? Well, so anything. So imagine things where you're making eye contact, where you're, and literally you can try, you know, try this. I have people in my workshops try this. If you imagine, I call it a positive relational moment, you can spend one minute, right, and think of an interaction with somebody

where it was warm and supportive and good. And what ends up happening is you can literally feel the physiology shift. You know, often when I sit there and I look out over a crowd that's doing this, they're 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, and you can just see the shifting in what people describe as their heart rate lowers. You know, and what's happening is, you know,

at least in part is the smart vagus is kicking in and settling down that sort of tension, nervous, and anxiety. So anything that sort of engages you in a face-to-face interaction with another human being that's safe, but you can also do this with essentially visualization. Just calling to mind positive relationship moments from the past. Yeah. We interviewed Rick Hansen and he talks a little bit about this. He calls it taking in the good, right? But it's rewiring those neural pathways by consciously choosing to recall a positive moment and linger on it. Exactly. And so what I add to that is it's, you know, not just the positive moments, maybe, you know, because I know, you know, the positive psychology movement certainly focuses on, you know, those positive moments. And what I really want to focus on is the 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 cingulate gyrus.

Did I get that right? Yeah, dorsal anterior cingulate gyrus, which really, you know, it's not the name so much as sort of getting it, but that we have this little strip of brain kind of in the medial aspect deep 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 Heisenberger and Lieberman, and they literally looked at what gets activated in the brain of people who have been socially rejected or left out. 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, when you have burned your hand and you're distressed by that, right, the feeling of angst 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, it sort of soothes that area. It literally soothes our pain pathways. And there have 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 being higher, right? They

have higher pain if they're more isolated. So it's a really intriguing kind of mix. And again, you know, 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 culture 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're up, they're down or we're down and they're up, you know, 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 somebody in an MRI machine to see, okay, that activating the same thing. My guess 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, right? Because you had that little feel good, you feel good just for a second, right? You're better than them. But then, you know, I think, you know, over time 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 else. Right. Um, and you know,

and I think it's a very tenuous, you know, uh, 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, 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. Yep. Right. And, and this area of the brain, the pain pathway, and the disconnection is always painful on some level, right? 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, comparing.

Yep. 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 mode. Exactly. Right. 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. You give yourself a little hit of dopamine, you feel a little better in that moment. And so you're either going to go into the stress of feeling kind of excluded less than 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 going to 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'd

like to go to the energy section and, and dopamine as a, as a big fan of dopamine. I want to make sure we talk about it. We all love it. So tell me a little bit about the energy pathway in a relationship perspective. Well, so what I highlight, first of all, is that dopamine 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 some point in the last 30 years, research has shown that the dopamine reward system is ultimately what causes the repetitive behavior of addiction, right? The craving, the, you know, wanting that again and

again and again. But if you look at sort of the beginning of being a human being, the dopamine reward system actually rewarded healthy growth fostering behaviors, right? So nurturance, being in a healthy relationship with a parent, you know, the nurturance, the cuddling, the soothing, the sucking, all of that stimulates dopamine. Water does. Reproduction does. You know, all of those things can stimulate dopamine. So essentially, when you have a community of people that are richly interconnected, those relationships can be your most rich and dependable source of dopamine. when we raise people to be separate cells and we start, you know, even denigrating dependency, right? That we, you know, you shouldn't be a wimp. You shouldn't depend on others.

You should be able to stand on your own two feet. 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, right? 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? And, you know, that 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, all people are out trying to get their dopamine hits, right? They're trying to get more to feel better. And it's an endless cycle. Yeah, I was really, I was struck by that one for a bunch of reasons. A, as a recovering addict, I'm familiar with the dopamine chase for sure. And 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. Exactly. And I think that is something that

unfortunately I have certainly noticed in my life at points is that the good feeling that should come there doesn't seem at points points in my life, strong enough. It doesn't feel strong enough, yeah. 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 different things. We've talked about addiction. One of them, you know, they're starting to emerge in the addiction research field, you

know, that the core issue behind all addiction is lack of bonding. Yes, exactly. 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, and I can't quote them quite like you can, that show that oxytocin is an inhibitor to addiction. Yeah, exactly. Well, oxytocin, if you think about it, it's one of the

strongest, what they call neuroaffiliative hormones. If you give somebody oxytocin, and they've done this with people, there's also done it with with animals your anxiety level literally goes down and you have you are drawn to other human beings yep 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 in their advertisements was you need to have people trust you at work or what have you, you'd 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 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 support relationships, right? Yep. 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, 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 look. Where are you getting step is awareness, right? You know, have people kind of 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 real. But a relationship that's just fun. Right. And so begin to to notice, OK, you know, 10 percent of my time I turn 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 notice that, you know, 25% 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 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, you know, kind of mutual support systems that can be done. You know, with that friend, can you set up contact? Okay, when I really want to eat less ice cream at night, let's just keep it simple. When I go to get my pint of ice cream, I'm going to 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 than to turn to one another, right? Yep. But so with that awareness, I think you can really begin to shape your behavior. Now, if you're somebody that has a hardcore addiction, right, you know, and Eric, maybe... I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth.

Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir.

Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, really. No, really.

Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No, Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's, you know, kind of where you were, where you really, you know, maybe it's alcohol, maybe it's some, you know, big drug of addiction. I mean, you're really thinking about something like a 12-step program that has all of the same elements in place, right? You get, you know, 90 meetings in 90 days, so you've got that stimulation over and over again.

You get a sponsor. You get the group, you 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 12-step stuff works. I mean, I certainly, you know, I've been in that, that program has 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, 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. It's just kind of built in. Exactly.

It is. And you think about it. I mean, it's a kind of self-identified non-judgmental community. I mean, there's so much right about the self-help groups, right? And a lot of people have criticisms, and that can be valid, and it may not be for everybody, 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's sort of what you're saying, you know, 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 dilution. Yes, yes, yes, relational dilution. So, you know, this gets back to the relational assessment, right? And, you know, what I literally have people doing, and, doing, and I had a lot of fun one day doing pie charts with the amount of time people spend in 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 assessment, and two that are 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 they're people at work. Maybe one's 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 strong relationships. And that's what I refer to as relational dilution, right? So that the overall proportion of what you're feeding your brain and your nervous system is less toxic.

Right. Yeah, 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. ships is very, very daunting, particularly if you're in, you know, if you look at these various pathways you're talking about and they're all run down and beaten into the ground. That's right. 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, you feed the bad wolf a

little bit less. And that's right. And you then change as that happens and you become stronger and have a different perspective. Yeah. And it's right. You're stronger in a different perspective and then you may dilute a little more and dilute a little more, right? 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 so that's rarely recommended unless the person's frankly abusive, right? And that, in fact, bad relationships can sometimes really improve. I mean, it's something that I think people don't get often. And sometimes they can improve simply by you interacting differently and even less than them.

Right? Yep. 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 coined that term in his book, Getting Unstuck. And he uses it in a very specific way for obsessive 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 are bad. And so one of the things that I do have people do is, you know, for instance, if you're drawn to that 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 dopamine, 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 time someone 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 turn to when you need to get away from that negative, right, then you can relabel, okay, whatever it is, something coming up, that's my judging brain. 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, relabel, refocus, yeah. There's a lot I like in there. 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 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 65 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 beating ourselves up because we want, oh, I want that ice cream. I'm such a loser.

And like you said, relabeling 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 it's saying. And I would, I learned to stop and say, okay, well, what really, what, 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 in, well, I shouldn't want to drink.

Wanting to drink is bad. I can't drink. You know, recognize what's kind of underlying that. And that's why I really liked that relabel and refocus. Exactly. Yeah. No, 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 going to 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 what I'm referring to, again, this is a very thickly socialized value that I think we have in our culture, which is that thought, right? Thought, thinking, logical, linear thinking is, it 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, you know, we get these messages all the time that, you know, if you're too

emotional, that, 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. 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 what I'm trying to really get people to watch is where, you know, particularly in relationships, where that comes up for them. You know, when, you know, particularly in 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 or feeling into it, you know, people, you can see people's reaction. 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 right, the logical and the affective. And to be able to really bring those together, 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, Jean Baker Mill used to talk about communicating in feeling thoughts, you know, rather than thoughts or feelings, feeling thoughts, you know, that

they're there 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 starving part is to really notice it when it's happening in society and to, you know, kind of deconstruct it. 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 spend 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. But what I think is,

I was reading today a little bit more, I guess 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 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? Exactly. And then do the next right thing. And I think that sort of integrates all those things that you're talking about.

Cause I, 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 going to, 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, our 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. Yeah, exactly. No, I love that, actually. Right. I love that. I'm going to get that book, as a matter of fact. He got a lot of his thoughts from a Japanese psychotherapist called Morita. And, you know, I mean, let's face it, I mean, there are cultures that really value the integration and

the relationship in a different way. So I think we have a lot to learn from other cultures, actually, in terms of how to maybe live a more whole life. Yep, 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 hours here, but we're already at kind of a long episode. Well, I appreciate it, yeah. And I know you've got some children to take a look at. Exactly. They're not going to enjoy, but it'll be a quick look. I'll glance at them and then move on. 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 care. Bye.

Bye. you can learn more about this podcast and amy banks at one you feed.net slash banks