Imprint: Triarchy Press
Format: paperback, ePub, Kindle
Extent: 268 pp.
Size: 216 x 140mm
Print ISBN:  978-1-913743-21-5 
List Price: £15.00  Use code to save 20%
Publication: 15th March 2021. Available direct from Triarchy now.

Tags: Organizational change, relationships, trimotive brain, threat brain, leadership, business psychology, social psychology, group psychology, relational psychology

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​Beyond Threat

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Being with Others is written for anyone who wants to gain a deeper understanding of how we behave with others, and the consequences of our relational beliefs and choices.  It provides valuable insights into our motivations and habits and why we become entangled in unsatisfying, destructive relationships, free from the psychological projections of our owns needs and fears. ​

Being with Others: curses, spells and scintillations
Nelisha Wickremasinghe
​

Being human is not easy.  The capabilities and qualities we have acquired in our long evolution are both a blessing and a curse.  Our ability to think and remember, and our propensity to care for each other and make sophisticated civilisations, can also work against us.  When they do, they show up in our lives as curses. 

For Being with Others, Nelisha Wickremasinghe (Associate Fellow at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School) has grouped them into 5 different curses. Specifically, she shows how we become cursed by:
consciousness; our memories; our own character; our family; and our culture.

​Recognising these curses, we all look for ‘magic spells’ that we believe will break the grip of the curses we live under. ​
How curses work
This book explores how these five curses are cast into and influence our lives,  and uncovers the spells we hope will break them. It shows that our most trusted spell -- the belief that a special Other can heal, protect and save us -- does not (and will not) work. Which invites the question: what will free us from our curses?

Curses work by triggering (over and over again) our threat brain emotions. Being self aware, remembering (especially back to our childhood), and being subject to the needs and dictates of parents, family and culture all trigger our ‘threat brain’. These are not wolves or snakes… but they might as well be because we respond as if they were. 

Where curses show up
Often we are not conscious of the impact these five curses have on our lives. We only notice them when, for example, we get ill, when our relationships fail, when we act ‘out of character’ or when life takes unexpected and unwanted turns.  But Nelisha shows how these curses are at work on us all the time:
  • If you experience debilitating anxiety when you miss a deadline or intense self-contempt when you make a mistake…. 
  • If you dread commitment or feel suffocated sometimes in relationship…
  • If you rage when you are criticised or have a horror of being thought to be dull or unintelligent…
  • If expressing anger or sadness is often impossible or standing up to speak in public makes your heart race and your body tremble…
…. these are all familiar ways in which consciousness, memory, character, family and culture and turn against us. If we were not cursed, these things would not cause such anxiety, fear or disgust.  When we are cursed, we experience the world as much more difficult, dangerous, hostile and punishing than it really is. 

How we look for spells to save us
One of the most compelling strategies for dealing with curses is to find someone who knows how to break them.  These special people become our Big Os – Others who can save us.  Although there are many potential Others to fascinate and seduce us, in this book we focus on the spells that lovers, children, charismatics, groups and our imaginals put us under.  In this state we can for a while pretend that our curses have gone away.  However, spells usually fade, our Others eventually disappoint us and we awaken to a reality that feels worse than before.

Being with Others shows us how to ask (and answer) the vital question:

‘Is this significant relationship (with parent, child, god, close group or lover) really based on reciprocal respect, trust and growth or on the desire to avoid responsibility for our own flaws and fears?’  

It suggests that we should pay more attention to -- and inquire further into -- those unconscious processes that compel us to act in certain ways.  In doing so, it invites us to travel inward to discover the scintillations of possibility and meaning that can illuminate and invite a different orientation to life and relationship.

Being with Others is an invitation to reclaim our imagination, intuition and bodies, which have become desensitized by the powerful emotions of our threat brain.  In doing so we will grow richer relationships with others and our own selves.