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Triarchy Press - Wickremasinghe Nelisha

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143 pages

English

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Description

Psychotherapist and business psychologist Nelisha Wickremasinghe shows how our brains and bodies are frequently 'in threat'; how hard it is to build healthy relationships in that condition; and what we can do about it.

Sujets

Sociologie, société et politique

Psychology

Informations

Publié par	Triarchy Press
Date de parution	15 mars 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781913743222
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0750€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Published in this first edition in 2021 by:
Triarchy Press
Axminster, England
info@triarchypress.net
www.triarchypress.net
Copyright Nelisha Wickremasinghe, 2021
The right of Nelisha Wickremasinghe to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including photocopying, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the publisher s prior written permission.
All rights reserved
A catalogue record is available from the British Library.
ISBNs:
Paperback: 978-1-913743-21-5
ePub: 978-1-913743-22-2
pdf: 978-1-913743-23-9
Printed by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall
For Anilal and Arunthathy
Early reviews of the book
a rounded look at the theory behind some of our ingrained patterns of behaviour and how these trigger our threat brain and negatively impact our relationships (the five curses). Highly readable, informative and helpful for both personal and professional life, this book resonates with the relationships in complex systems where power and control dynamics are not always healthy and relationships in your work family can be hard to navigate. A really useful read for leaders in organisations and commissioners of leadership development programmes.
Elizabeth Bradbury, Director, Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA)
This important book builds on Dr Wickremasinghe s highly acclaimed first book Beyond Threat . It brings together research from the fields of neurobiology, sociology, psychology and leadership to create a comprehensive hypothesis of the challenges of being with others and offers a path to more successful interpersonal relationships. This paradoxically starts with our ability to turn our attention within.
Dr Wickremasinghe identifies what she calls the potential curses of being human and explores in depth how each of these can and will trip us up through life when they stimulate our threat brain , unless we can develop high levels of awareness and perspective taking. These are foundational capabilities for effective leadership of oneself and others.
Liz Straker, Founding Director, TeenMatters UK
I have turned to Nelisha Wickremasinghe s writing at many points in my professional and personal life. Her ability to bring clarity at a time of challenge, confusion or when the stakes feel high is incredible. This book is thought-provoking and provocative, whilst being supportive and nurturing - a gift indeed. It builds on her earlier book Beyond Threat , which has become a central tenet in the thinking behind the Oxford Cultural Leaders programme. Being with Others has been a book to steer my thinking and understanding of myself and my relationships.
Lucy Shaw, Director, Oxford Cultural Leaders Programme
Contents
PART ONE: CURSES
Introduction
Curses
Blessings
The spell of the Big O
Submission
Doubt
Staying curious
Reading
1. Curses, emotions and threat brain
The consequences of an over-active threat brain
Behaviour starts in the body
2. The curse of consciousness
Self-reflection
Worry and rumination
Distraction and obliteration
Beyond consciousness
3. The curse of memory
Our vigilant brain
Memory and the unconscious
Memory and consciousness
Memory and learning
4. The curse of character
Nature, nurture and calling
Dependency and shame
5. The curse of the family
Relational dances
Disconfirmation
Double binds
Collusion
Parental projection
Affect, power and meaning
From the family to the cultural dance
6. The curse of culture
Culture as collective habits
Gendered beliefs
Rationalism and Descartes error
Individualism and the demise of context
Reflections on Part One
Venturing forth
PART TWO: SPELLS
Introduction
The neurobiology of spells
The Big Os
To submit or to dominate?
The ingredients of a spell
Compassionate awareness
1. Lovers
The parental imago
The misinterpretation of emotion
Projection - meeting our unconscious in romantic love
2. Children
Reproduction - a creative, transcendental act?
Thy mother s glass - parental projection revisited
Children as symbols of lost innocence
The construction of childhood
Children and the cultural curse
Big O love and overparenting
Disinterested love
3. Charismatics
What is charisma?
Charismatics as transference objects
Charismatics and alienation
Charismatics and the cultural curse
Charismatics and toxic drive
4. Groups
The impulse to sociability
Destructive affiliation
Collective narcissism
Herds
Hordes
Brilliant following
5. Imaginals
Belief as subjective reality
Fantasies
Introjection
The Inner Critic
Reflections on Part Two
PART THREE: SCINTILLATIONS
1. Freedom
Utopia - freedom from
Re-orientating - freedom with
Scintillations and the growth of consciousness
2. Perception practices
Practice One: Returning to centre
Practice Two: Receptivity - noticing our scintillations
Practice Three: Hermeneutic inquiry
Practice Four: The inward turn
3. Being with others
Self-creating
Indifference
Beyond thou
Epilogue
Coda
Bibliography
Glossary
List of Figures and Tables
Fig 1: The Three Motivation Systems of our Trimotive Brain
Fig 2: All Behaviour Starts in the Body
Fig 3: All Behaviour Starts in the Body
Fig 4: The Imaginal and the Rational Realms
Fig 5: Hermeneutic Circle Diagram
Table 1: Abbott Family - Examples of Disconfirmation
Table 2: The Imaginal and the Rational Capabilities Compared
Man feels inferior precisely when he lacks true inner values in the personality, when he is merely a reflex of something next to him and has no steadying gyroscope, no centering in himself. And in order to get such centering man has to look beyond the thou , beyond the consolation of others and of the things of this world.
Ernest Becker: The Denial of Death
PART ONE:
CURSES
Introduction
Curses
Being human is not easy. The capabilities and qualities we have acquired in our long evolution are mixed blessings. Our ability to think and remember, our propensity to care for each other and our drive to create sophisticated civilisations, can also work against us. And when they do, the benefits of consciousness, memory, our own character, family and culture can each become a curse.
These five curses afflict us all, but the intensity and duration of the affliction varies and is determined by our particular experiences and the opportunities we have throughout life to learn, understand our inner conflicts and desires and form satisfying relationships with others.
The curses of consciousness, memory, our own character, family and culture, which we will be exploring in this book, work by overstimulating our threat brain. 1 Each curse can, in different ways, trigger the emotions (bodily reactions) we associate with basic threat brain feelings such as fear, anger, disgust and more complex threat brain feelings such as anxiety, shame and depression.
Take, for example, the debilitating anxiety I feel when I miss a deadline and the intense self-contempt I experience when I make a mistake. Or my terror of commitment, rage when I am criticised or a horror of expressing my feelings. These are all familiar ways in which consciousness, memory, character, family and culture can turn against me - and later we will learn how this happens. If I were not cursed in these five ways, then deadlines, making mistakes, committing, being criticised and showing emotions would not cause me too much anxiety or fear. When we are cursed, we experience the world as more difficult, dangerous, hostile and punishing than it probably is. Then our feelings, thoughts and actions are motivated by our threat brain , which carries the imprints of curses deep in its neurology. These imprints are like the channels of a river cut early in our life, and into which all new experience, if not intentionally re-directed, readily flows. 2 And thus our nervous system, responsible for providing the cues that trigger feelings, thoughts and actions, tends to grow into the shape it was first pressed.
We can form new channels or pathways - this is the beauty of neural plasticity - but it requires effort and practice. Mostly, we prefer what is familiar and so the habits we form in early life endure. They are honed and ossified through family and peer pressure, cultural conditioning and memory. If we have learned to experience the world as dangerous and hostile - which is what happens if our curses take root and flourish - our adult orientation to experience will be dominated by the fight-flight-freeze patterns of our threat brain response system. Another reason why early habits are hard to break is that our feelings, thoughts and actions are motivated by unconscious processes, making it difficult for us to notice, understand and interrupt our patterns. We will look at some of these processes, including projection, transference, introjection and denial, in Part Two .
When we feel the effects of the curses, the experience can seem very personal and particular to us. Our feelings, thoughts and behaviours, we believe, emerge from what has happened to us in the course of our lives. And when our threat brain triggers feelings of shame, inadequacy, fear and anxiety we associate these with personal and private experiences.
However, curses are both personal and collective. The shoulds that tell us how we ought to be and the shame we feel when we do not live up to those expectations, might feel as if they grew out of conditions created by our parents and teachers, but these people are only the messengers . The norms and values they teach are those that originate and perpetuate through our culture, which exists to civilise and control us. Culture is a shared curse which exerts huge influence in our life.
Equally, consciou