Rewire Your Brain for Better Relationships
Dr. Amy Banks studies love. More specifically, she studies relational neuroscience. She recently published a book entitled, “4 ways to click: Rewire Your Brain for Stronger, More Rewarding Relationships“. A former Harvard professor of psychiatry, Dr. Banks cites her major findings in the realm of love:
1. It’s not actually as important to have a strong sense of self as it is to have a significant other.
2. The woman who ALWAYS chooses the wrong guy isn’t weak. A bad relationship reprograms your neuropathways to seek out similar relationships in the future. She needs to recondition her brain – not just to take a good hard look in the mirror.
Learn more about what Dr. Banks had to say about building better relationships in the highlights of our radio interview below.
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Sandy: You begin your book by saying that we need relationships, and that conventional therapy has done a disservice by making people too independent. Can you explain what you mean by that? Amy: We are in a culture that undermines relationships. We are well separated and individuated, which creates the illusion that we can be perfect alone, and that relationships are nice but not necessary. It’s a huge myth that undermines everyone’s pathways to relationship. Sandy: You point out that “our relationships live within us”—i.e., people enter into relationships with a long history of past relationships. If you haven’t had the healthiest past relationships, are you bound to repeat history? Amy: No relational template determines your future relationship. Identify the qualities of a healthy relationship and the qualities in relationships that you have right now. By doing the C.A.R.E. assessment in the book, you’ll see the stamp of your relationships. If your story has been, “I can’t trust” or “I have a hard time reading people”, that’s what you’ve attracted in the past. The pathways are flexible and you can change them with the right guidance.
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