Amy Banks > Quotes

“When you’re judging, you’re not listening. And if you’re not listening, you’re missing out on one of the best ways to stimulate your smart vagus pathway and turn down the volume of your stress-response system. But if you’re not judging, you can listen more and feel calmer, and this, in turn, will make interacting with others much easier and judging others less necessary.”
― Amy Banks, Four Ways to Click: Rewire Your Brain for Stronger, More Rewarding Relationships

“The science is clear. Social disconnection stimulates our brain’s pain pathways and our stress response systems, making it more likely we’ll seek out unhealthy sources of dopamine.”
― Amy Banks, Wired to Connect: The Surprising Link Between Brain Science and Strong, Healthy Relationships

“was struck by how easy it was to be with him. In the fantasy I had created about our meeting, there was no conversation, no laughter, just a frozen stare. I was entirely unprepared for how rich and resonant our connection felt from the start.”
― Amy Banks, Fighting Time

“the transformative power of relationships”
― Amy Banks, Fighting Time

“(For example, the neurochemicals produced by healthy relationships can help melt pathways for bad habits and solidify new pathways that are more desirable.)”
― Amy Banks, Wired to Connect: The Surprising Link Between Brain Science and Strong, Healthy Relationships

“Despite my medical and psychiatric training, I struggled to understand the intensity of my desire to meet this man. What could possibly explain it? Perhaps it is simply human connection—the thing I have been thinking and writing about for decades now. As humans, we are capable of unimaginable violence and deep kindnesses, as well as the capacity to feel one another, and in that feeling we are enlarged and improved, even in the deepest pain. In feeling another person, we are invited to become whole. Maybe in some cosmic, karmic way, a connection with Isaac would buffer the agony of losing the primal connection with my father.”
― Amy Banks, Fighting Time

“With laser focus and Herculean stamina, one can hover along a plane of what looks to the outside world like maximum functioning and appear remarkably accomplished. The fear of sinking into the quicksand of grief and terror fuels the velocity. Wake up, plan the day, make lists, check off when you have done something on your list, plan a trip, plan dinner, book the trip, buy stuff for the dinner you have planned, make the dinner, think about breakfast while you are eating dinner, book clients, see more clients, exercise, a lot, volunteer at your kids’ schools, coach their teams, play on your own team. There is no end to the creativity of velocitizing. It is the anti-meditation.”
― Amy Banks, Fighting Time

“The fiercest emotional pain has the power to swallow you whole if you are stationary long enough.”
― Amy Banks, Fighting Time

“When we are under pressure to be highly separate, intensely independent individuals, we are at risk for cutting ourselves off from one of the primary healthy sources of dopamine. But it is possible to rewire your brain so that it can get more pleasure out of relationships—to crave human contact instead of unhealthy substitutes. The key, as Louis Cozolino writes in The Neuroscience of Human Relationships, is to understand that “healing involves reconnecting our dopamine reward system to relationships.”7 With practice and an understanding of how”
― Amy Banks, Wired to Connect: The Surprising Link Between Brain Science and Strong, Healthy Relationships

“For twenty-five years, Isaac Knapper had lived in my mind as a troubled young man who had learned violence in the projects and had simply acted out what he knew. It was a naïve story line, but it had allowed me to stay distantly sympathetic to him and his family. I felt better about myself for that, but I had no idea that I was participating in the same process that had secured his fate in the first place.”
― Amy Banks, Fighting Time

“A relative named Isaac comes for Thanksgiving and I am fighting off memories of that night each time someone calls his name. My partner says she is taking a nap; there he is again, hands cuffed behind his back, an angry scowl on his face, pulling me into that deep, traumatic memory. It lives at the core of who I am, bubbling in my guts, squishing my lungs, choking me. The association can come so fast at times—rap, cap, nap, Knapper, father, murder, death. I run fast and furiously away; it will not get me, cannot get me, but it is always nipping at my heels ready to swallow me whole if only I stop. I do not stop.”
― Amy Banks, Fighting Time