Topic
Work-Life
Now more than ever before relationships are the life-blood of commerce and the key to professional success. Inability to achieve intimacy in professional relationships leaves one stranded. Understanding these challenges and working together to build better relationships helps us all to reach our goals and aspire to higher ones.
Irrelationship is a jointly created unconscious defense system that enables two or more persons to protect themselves from awareness of the anxiety that surfaces as they become close to one another. Irrelationship provides a hiding place from the vulnerability driving this anxiety — specifically, from empathy, intimacy, emotional risk and emotional investment. Irrelationship is often seen in people drawn to one another romantically, but can as easily affect friendships, the workplace, and even international relations.
Irrelationship: Using Dysfunctional Relationships to Hide from Intimacy explores how disquiet in early childhood relationships with caregivers teaches us to distance ourselves from those close to us even as adults. Case histories illustrate how people trapped in irrelationship learned tools for building satisfying connection with others.
