IRRELATIONSHIP: How we use Dysfunctional Relationships to Hide from Intimacy

IRRELATIONSHIP: How we use Dysfunctional Relationships to Hide from Intimacy
Author: Mark B. Borg
Publisher: Central Recovery Press, LLC
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2015-09-28
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1942094019

No matter how committed two people are to being together, why can't they get away from feeling something is missing? In this important and transformative guide, three experienced practitioners identify the widespread dysfunctional dynamic they call "irrelationship," a psychological defense system two people create together to protect themselves from the fear and anxiety of real intimacy in a relationship. Drawing on their wide clinical and life experience, the authors examine behavioral "song-and-dance routines" repeatedly performed by couples affected by irrelationship. Readers will find a valuable framework for understanding their challenges with action-oriented tools to help them navigate their way to fulfilling relationships. Mark B. Borg, Jr., PhD, is a community psychologist and psychoanalyst, and a supervisor of psychotherapy at the William Alanson White Institute. Grant H. Brenner, MD, is a board-certified psychiatrist in private practice, specializing in treating mood and anxiety disorders and the complex problems that may arise in adulthood from childhood trauma and loss. Daniel Berry, RN, MHA, has practiced as a Registered Nurse in New York City since 1987 and has worked for almost two decades in community-based programs.

Relationship Sanity

Relationship Sanity
Author: Mark B. Borg, Jr., PhD
Publisher: Central Recovery Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2018-11-20
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1942094825

A vital guide to overcome the barriers to achieving intimacy and meaningful connection. People in resilient relationships are co-owners, experience reciprocity, and are better prepared to meet challenges authentically and effectively. In this sequel to the best-selling Irrelationship, the authors use examples from their clinical practice to review the concept of irrelationship and expand the DREAM Sequence, a tool used by affected couples to address perennial relationship issues. By mutually and mindfully viewing the relationship as a third entity, separate from each individual, couples will learn how to live in and with the ambiguity of empathy, intimacy, vulnerability, and emotional investment and view relationship sanity as a deliberate and joyful undertaking to maintain and deepen connection.

Making Your Crazy Work for You

Making Your Crazy Work for You
Author: Mark B. Borg
Publisher: Central Recovery Press
Total Pages: 163
Release: 2022-02-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1949481549

From the authors of the Irrelationship series comes an insightful guidebook for enhancing the most vital relationship in every person's life—the one they have with themselves. Making Your Crazy Work for You adopts the irrelationship model to present a step-by-step program for self-understanding and catalyzing change. Our "crazy" refers to our unique reaction to our own pain, fear, and anxiety brought on by isolation from others and ourself. This unrecognized isolation can occur even when we are surrounded by other people in our daily lives. However, by learning to listen to our craziness, we can use it as a tool for ending isolation and opening up to love. Drawn from the authors' personal experience and clinical practice, each chapter features new case studies, exercises, and tools to help readers to reverse unhealthy behavior patterns learn to access their genuine emotions, needs, and ideas create better relationships

Belonging Through a Psychoanalytic Lens

Belonging Through a Psychoanalytic Lens
Author: Rebecca Coleman Curtis
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2020-12-29
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000331652

Watching people protest, one hypothesis is that underlying these actions for specific justifiable causes is a sense of wishing to belong, of wishing not to be alone. Recent knowledge from patients and empirical research shows the importance of belonging to groups to both psychological and physical well-being. The problems of many students, minority group members, immigrants, terrorists, and lonely people are linked to an insufficient sense of belonging. Whereas psychoanalytic theory has focused on the need for a secure attachment to a primary caretaker, it has failed to note the importance of a sense of belonging to the family group, a friendship group, a community, a religious group, a nation-state, etc. This book demonstrates the difficulties faced by those who immigrate, those who never feel a sense of their true selves as belonging in a family or a cohesive professional group, and the difficulties of psychoanalysts themselves in knowing where they belong in patients’ lives. The problems of breaking up marital and professional relationships as well as our relationship with the Earth are also discussed. Freudian theory rejected the idea of a sense of "oneness" with humanity as being infantile. Recent developments regarding the similarities between meditational practices and psychoanalysis have questioned Freud’s idea. This book shows the importance of an interpersonal/relational psychoanalysis focusing on real relationships and not simply one that examines inner conflicts. It will be useful to psychologists, other mental health practitioners, social scientists, and anyone with normal struggles in life.

I Don't Know What to Believe

I Don't Know What to Believe
Author: Ben Kamin
Publisher: Central Recovery Press, LLC
Total Pages: 109
Release: 2016-02-01
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1942094051

Americans—especially young people—are more un-churched and less affiliated with organized religion than at any other time in our history. I Don’t Know What to Believe addresses that decline and presents an insightful examination of authentic spirituality for those who desire answers, guidance, and perspective regarding an important aspect of their lives: their beliefs, and relationship to, a higher power. Rabbi Ben Kamin addresses questions he has received from real people over the thirty years of his ministry, such as: Why does my parents’ religion have to define me? Am I God’s child even if I don’t go to religious services? Does scripture include me in its ideology regardless of how much scripture I know? How do I follow my own spirituality while still respecting my parents’ traditions? Ben Kamin is the award-winning author of ten books and is a scholar on the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He has led congregations in Toronto, New York, Cleveland, and San Diego since his ordination in 1978.

Don't Be A Dick

Don't Be A Dick
Author: Mark B. Borg
Publisher: Central Recovery Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2019-11-19
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1949481034

The single book therapists everywhere will recommend to all of their patients, because at some point or another, we all behave like dicks. Why this book? Because you might be a dick: a mean-spirited, self-focused individual who thinks and acts as though everyone else in the world can only be understood—and whose only importance is defined—in terms of their relationship to you. Being a dick might feel powerful in the short term, but it is not helping you in the long term because this flawed character trait is exactly what’s keeping you from attaining what you may want most: personal fulfillment, satisfying work, a loving committed relationship, and lifelong friendships. Anyone, at any time, can be a dick. Yet Don’t Be a Dick is especially for people who have noticed how their own behavior tends to backfire, leaving them feeling isolated and unsure why their seemingly justified actions consistently yield such poor results. If you’re constantly using the refrain, It’s not me, it’s them whenever something goes wrong, Mark Borg is here to tell you that it is, in fact, you. The good news is there is something you can do to reverse these behaviors and live a happier, more fulfilling life.

Self-Hypnosis

Self-Hypnosis
Author: Synthia Andrews, ND
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2014-11-04
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1615646310

Discover the benefits of hypnosis for yourself, and by yourself! Your mind is a powerful force filled with awesome possibility. With your mind, you can choose a direction and make it happen. Self-hypnosis is a proven technique that can have many physical and mental benefits—quit smoking, recover from surgery, or shut down your phobias! Practitioners will learn the powerful healing that comes with this positive relaxation method, empowering you to create the life you want to live. From licensed naturopathic physician Synthia Andrews, you will learn how to master this key therapy for mental, physical, and spiritual healing. The steps are easy, and the results are remarkable. Idiot's Guides: Self-Hypnosis offers simple-to-follow steps and techniques for anyone who wants to relieve stress, anxiety, self-doubt, addictions, and bad behavior. An exploration of past-life regression and sample hypnosis scripts are also included. This book is the only resource you need to confidently begin your self-hypnosis practice.

Love In Abundance Second Edition

Love In Abundance Second Edition
Author: Kathy Labriola
Publisher: SCB Distributors
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2024-11-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0937609951

Beyond the basics of polyamory lies a complex web of negotiations, agreements, pitfalls and rewards. Kathy Labriola, a relationships counselor who has worked for many years with singles, couples and groups in polyamorous and open relationships, sets forth some of the realities of alternative lifestyles: dealing with some of the common relationship-disrupters, managing jealousy, choosing compatible partners, combining BDSM with polyamory, distinguishing between sex addiction and polyamory, and much more.

Learn to Love

Learn to Love
Author: Thomas Jordan
Publisher: Bookbaby
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-12-08
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9781543987874

Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life is a book about learning to improve your love life. After 30 years of clinical research and treatment of patients with unhealthy love lives, I now recognize that most people are not in control of their love lives. Why? Because most people don't know what they've learned about and from the love relationships in the course of their lives. Love relationships that started in their families of origin the moment they were born. If you don't know what you've learned about love relationships, then what you've learned is in control of your love life, healthy or unhealthy. If what you've learned was healthy, no problem. Chances are you'll simply replicate what you've learned about love relationships. If what you've learned was unhealthy, you could be unwittingly making the same love life mistakes over and over again because of what you've learned. Learn to Love will show you how to identify what you've learned about love relationships, how to unlearn what is unhealthy, and practice something new, healthy, and the opposite of what you've learned, now as a corrective in your adult love life. This simple learning formulate has helped many of my patients begin taking control of their own love lives, as well as helping me improve my own love life. Learn to Love will help you learn how to take control of your love life. Dr. Thomas Jordan