Why Therapy Works Quotes

“As discussed earlier, an important remnant of our evolutionary past, the amygdala, rests at the core of the brain. This ancient executive center has retained veto power over our modern cortical executive centers when it detects a threat.”
― Louis Cozolino, Why Therapy Works: Using Our Minds to Change Our Brains

“Like neurons, we send and receive messages from one another across a synapse—the social synapse.”
― Louis Cozolino, Why Therapy Works: Using Our Minds to Change Our Brains

“Successful therapists learn to be ‘amygdala whisperers’ by leveraging the social brain in order to help clients face their fears.”
― Louis Cozolino, Why Therapy Works: Using Our Minds to Change Our Brains

“What would Buddha do? “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment”, Buddha. Well, while Buddhism contains many valuable life lessons one of the most important is the difference between pain and suffering. Pain is woven into nature and is inevitable part of life: to desire results in disappointment, to love means you will experience loss and to be born naturally leads to aging and death. By contrast suffering is what our minds make up these experiences when they are not at hand. Suffering is the anguish we experience from worry of not getting the things we need or from loosing the things that we have. It is an anticipatory anxiety.”
― Louis Cozolino, Why Therapy Works: Using Our Minds to Change Our Brains

“Learning that we are more than the voices that haunt us can provide hope and serve as a mean of changing our life. As the language of self-awareness is expanded and reinforced we learn that we are capable of choosing whether or not to follow the expectations of others and the mandates of our childhoods and cultures. Thus much of our suffering can be traced back to our stream of thoughts: the voices in our heads and the stories we tell about ourselves.”
― Louis Cozolino, Why Therapy Works: Using Our Minds to Change Our Brains

“To establish a bridge of attunement, we rely on many neural systems that receive and send social and emotional information. We use all of this information to create theories about what is on the minds of others.”
― Louis Cozolino, Why Therapy Works: Using Our Minds to Change Our Brains

“In listening to our clients, we reflexively analyze their narratives for inaccurate, destructive, and missing elements. We then attempt to edit their narratives in a manner we feel would better support their adaptation and wellbeing.”
― Louis Cozolino, Why Therapy Works: Using Our Minds to Change Our Brains

“Don’t be surprised that our bodies react to criticism, rejection and social shaming the same way they do to physical threats. This is because our later evolving social systems were crafted onto preexisting structures dedicated to physical survival. This is also why pain medications and anti inflammatory decrease the pain of social rejection.”
― Louis Cozolino, Why Therapy Works: Using Our Minds to Change Our Brains