Imprint: Triarchy Press
Publication: Winter 2021
Format: paperback, ePub, Kindle

Tags: Organizational change, leadership, business psychology, organization development

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About the author
​Beyond Threat

Readership

Being with Others takes us towards a new understanding of how to cultivate and sustain relational resilience at home and at work. It is written for people who want 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.

Being with Others shows us an alternative possibility of living and working together that  emerges from indifferent love -  an orientation to others that is rooted in respect, appreciation and curiosity and 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 work against us.  And so we become cursed by consciousness, by our memories, our own character, our family and by our culture.

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 work. Which invites the question, if being with Others does not free us from our curses, what, if anything, will?

A curse is an invocation of ill fortune or harm or, more generally, an unwanted, unpleasant experience, and it works by stimulating the emotions of our threat brain.  Being self aware, remembering, and being subject to the needs and dictates of parents, family and culture are some of the most powerful curses that can burden and harm us throughout life. 

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, our relationships fail, we act ‘out of character’ or life takes unexpected and unwanted turns.  However, curses are influencing us all the time.  They are involved in the anxiety we feel when we miss a deadline and the self-contempt we experience when we make a mistake.  Or in our fear of commitment, our anger when criticised, our aversion to showing feelings or our intolerance towards people who are not like us.

If we were not cursed, deadlines, making mistakes, committing, being criticised, showing emotions and difference would not cause us 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. 

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 O’s – the Other 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 gods put us under.  In this state we can for a while pretend that our curses have gone away.  However, spells usually fade, our Others often disappoint us and we awaken to a reality that feels worse than before.

Being with Others explores whether our significant relationships are based on reciprocal respect, trust and mutual growth or the desire to avoid responsibility for our own problems, 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 that light up our ‘darksome psyche’ and to begin to wonder how these small sparks of possibility and meaning can illuminate further reaches of consciousness that invite a different orientation to life and relationship.

Being with Others is an invitation to reclaim our imagination, intuition and bodies from the grip of culture and family and from the legacy of experiences that have sensitised our thoughts, memories and feelings to the powerful emotions of our threat brain.  In doing so we will grow richer relationships with others and our own selves.