Grant H Brenner MD DFAPA

“A powerful, landmark book with a novel approach to dealing with developmental trauma and all the challenges it brings in cultivating true self-love and intimacy with another. The authors take you on an eye-opening journey where your most shameful vulnerabilities are explored and transcended in the process of 'making your crazy work for you.' A must read!”
- Diane Kirschner, PhD, international best-selling author of Love in 90 Days


By starting with self-compassion and… Show more

“A powerful, landmark book with a novel approach to dealing with developmental trauma and all the challenges it brings in cultivating true self-love and intimacy with another. The authors take you on an eye-opening journey where your most shameful vulnerabilities are explored and transcended in the process of 'making your crazy work for you.' A must read!”
- Diane Kirschner, PhD, international best-selling author of Love in 90 Days


By starting with self-compassion and psychological knowledge, Making Your Crazy Work for You lays the foundation for self-discovery, compassionate exploration of choices and identity, ultimately providing a roadmap to go from self-contradiction and unregulated conflict and emotion to self-integration, a great relationship with yourself and others, and a better way of living for a more satisfying, content future. Show less

Relationship Sanity is a roadmap to a thriving relationship. In their preceding book,
Irrelationship, Borg and his colleagues located relationship insanity in couples’ mutual fear of intimacy and all the ways they defend against closeness and vulnerability. In this book, to help couples face and transcend that fear, they make available a complex, rich, detailed, and ultimately simple and doable process that helps couples engage in a mutual process of giving and receiving that enables them to… Show more

Relationship Sanity is a roadmap to a thriving relationship. In their preceding book,
Irrelationship, Borg and his colleagues located relationship insanity in couples’ mutual fear of intimacy and all the ways they defend against closeness and vulnerability. In this book, to help couples face and transcend that fear, they make available a complex, rich, detailed, and ultimately simple and doable process that helps couples engage in a mutual process of giving and receiving that enables them to become present to each other, thus achieving and sustaining intimacy. Any couple will be enriched by using the myriad insights and exercises, and any therapist will be empowered to help couples by using them in their practice.
―Harville Hendrix, PhD and, Helen LaKelly Hunt, PhD, authors of Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples and Making Marriage Simple

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. Show less

Understanding avoidance, especially avoidance of awareness of the threat of intimacy, requires understanding how betrayal in childhood leaves its mark on adult relationships.

“The road to recovery is stated in user-friendly, self-help terms—discover the unrealistic song-and-dance both partners are playing, seek to repair it (by sharing responsibility for the problem), and thereby empowering each other to make changes (alternative ways of thinking and behaving) through a mutuality of experience that permits the expression of love in all its wonderful, vital, unpredictable, even downside forms, as the way to find continued growth and collaboration for both members of… Show more

“The road to recovery is stated in user-friendly, self-help terms—discover the unrealistic song-and-dance both partners are playing, seek to repair it (by sharing responsibility for the problem), and thereby empowering each other to make changes (alternative ways of thinking and behaving) through a mutuality of experience that permits the expression of love in all its wonderful, vital, unpredictable, even downside forms, as the way to find continued growth and collaboration for both members of the couple.” —Martin Bloom, PhD, Professor Emeritus, University of Connecticut

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 look at the behavioral "song-and-dance" routines repeatedly performed by couples in irrelationships. Readers will find a valuable framework for understanding their challenges with action-oriented tools to help them navigate their way to fulfilling relationships. Show less

By keeping our need and desire for closeness with others diffuse, migratory and superficial we are able to play out irrelationship dynamics in larger social circles and suspend—at least postpone indefinitely—our awareness of how safely secure we have protected ourselves from being realistically disappointed by people in our current lives.

Our specific song-and-dance routines—ways that we reverse caretaking role with our key caregiver(s)—become the basic blueprint the pattern of interaction we will develop to care for our key caregiver. These patterns can be called GRAFTS and the acronym describes—in a very basic broad stroke—some of the habits that can become part of our caregiving conditioning.

In Mad Men’s season six finale, Don Draper asks, “What is happiness?” He then answers, “It’s a moment before you need more happiness.” Substitute happiness for relief—or, perhaps, merely mistake relief for happiness, or satisfaction, or fulfillment—and you have yourself at the very eye of the hurricane of the whole irrelationship song-and-dance routine. Goodbye, Don.

Codependency may sometimes dovetail with irrelationship to the point that they’re not easily distinguishable. They may sometimes seem like kissing cousins; but at the level of purpose and of points of origin, they’re decidedly not identical twins.

Irrelationship is a shared defensive system that serves the purpose of shielding the participants from true connection. How might this be relevant for something as seemingly clear-cut as disaster response where responders and organizations trying to help are acting from altruistic motives? What can irrelationship tell us about care for the caretaker in disaster relief?

The Earth is our par excellence caretaker. The Earth is a source of care that—like any "sane" caregiving mature relationship—will only be able to offer and give care if the love and care that we come up with, offer, and implement as individuals, communities, societies, and as a planet constitute genuine reciprocal—we care for the Earth, the Earth cares for us—solutions.

Bring it or blow it. Can you stand the feeling of intimacy and closeness in a new business relationship? Does this throw you off your game and make you back off, or blow it? In this entry we address how it is that irrelationship can trigger old, and familiar anxieties, kick up old song-and-dance routines, and ultimately, cause you to fail in your entrepreneurial efforts.

Turning people—turning all things—into projects is a very effective defense against allowing them to have a life of their own. Irrelationship provides a place for our attention to be focused instead of on our fear of real relationship, real intimacy. The conclusion to this brief case study provides an exemplar for how we can recover from the irrleational defense—together.

People prone to irrelationship commonly make projects of fixing other people’s problems in much the way some people are drawn to the challenge of rescuing a foundering business. However, while saving a failing company is an exhilarating exercise for some, fixing another person’s life is usually attractive only to people who need to deflect awareness of their own anxiety.

Those in irrelationship tend to have complimentary histories that prep them for the roles they act out for one another. The Performer ceaselessly performs “routines” designed to make the Audience feel better. But the Audience’s apparently passive role is just as much a performance: The Audience’s part is to make the Performer believe that the “feel better” routines work.

From the irrelationship perspective, showing up for love with an open heart and mind—giving ourselves and each other a chance to set ourselves aflame one swipe at a time—might very well be among the most essential strategies for pulling a fast one on the psychological defenses that we use to keep ourselves distant from those who threaten our hearts with real relationship

Is your experience with early caregivers the last word? Are people in irrelationships doomed to a life of keeping others “at a safe distance” and never sharing an intimacy? Not necessarily. Developing an “earned secure attachment” is entirely in the cards for those willing to look at their histories and do the work of clearing away the confusion about ourselves and others.

It is possible that the ways in which we relate to people online can be very similar to how we relate to people in general. However, it is also possible that our healthy and necessary inhibitions cease functioning once we find ourselves in the online environment. Here are some ways that irrelationship dynamics may raise their heads online, and what we can do about it.

A truly intimate relationship is a deep, free, and responsive connection with another person who really matters to us. But when the other person matters a great deal to us, we also feel vulnerable to injury, rejection, and abandonment. Some people attempt to protect themselves from these experiences by forming what we call irrelationship.

Sharing our deep feelings is the way out of the isolation of loneliness. It creates a doorway into the practice of what we call compassionate empathy. Compassionate empathy is the key to getting out of an irrelationship. Compassionate empathy is built on the skill of sharing honestly with another. It makes isolation difficult to maintain, it undermines self-obsession.

We're in deep trouble as a planet, what can we do? We begin to look at a tangled and impossible subject, riffing on the "Top 10" style of popular contemporary blogs to open up a difficult conversation about Ferguson and other recent tragedies we can't quite get our heads around. Join us.

Many people come into psychotherapy because they repeatedly find themselves in stale, unsatisfying relationships. Why? Do bad relationships actually have something to offer? We began to investigate and found that relationships are sometimes the best place to hide from closeness and intimacy.

Does irrelationship underpin the entertainment industry? Are entertainers inherently Irrelationshippers? This is a question we want to consider with you, readers. Do many entertainers laugh with us, taking care of us at the expense of their own well-being? Do they play out aspects of their childhood deprivations by making us feel better?

In irrelationship, both parties are invested in using what looks and seems like a connection with another person to maintain a safe distance from intimacy—in short, to hide. Once they’ve agreed to the set-up, it’s locked in—we call this Brainlock. What the key players in irrelationship—Performer and Audience—do to maintain it is called their song-and-dance routine.

An irrelationship is a relationship used to hide from a…relationship! A truly intimate relationship is a deep, free, and responsive connection with another person who really matters to us. But when the other person matters a great deal, we feel vulnerable to injury, rejection and abandonment. Some people attempt to protect themselves from these experiences by forming what we call irrelationship.

http://www.irrelationship.com

It is becoming increasingly common for psychiatrists to be among the first responders when disaster strikes. More than 800 psychiatrists are believed to have responded to the 9/11 attacks. The first clinical manual on the best practices for helping those affected by disaster, Disaster Psychiatry: Readiness, Evaluation, and Treatment offers an explicit and practical discussion of the evidence base for recommendations for psychiatric evaluation and interventions for disaster… Show more

It is becoming increasingly common for psychiatrists to be among the first responders when disaster strikes. More than 800 psychiatrists are believed to have responded to the 9/11 attacks. The first clinical manual on the best practices for helping those affected by disaster, Disaster Psychiatry: Readiness, Evaluation, and Treatment offers an explicit and practical discussion of the evidence base for recommendations for psychiatric evaluation and interventions for disaster survivors.
Disaster is defined by the World Health Organization as a severe disruption, ecological and psychosocial, that greatly exceeds a community’s capacity to cope. This manual takes an “all-hazards” approach to disasters and has application to natural occurrences such as earthquakes and hurricanes; accidental technological events such as airplane crashes; and willful human acts such as terrorism.

The field of disaster psychiatry is more important than ever, in response to disasters such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Today, disaster psychiatry encompasses a wide spectrum of clinical interests, ranging from public health preparations and early psychological interventions to psychiatric consultation to surgical units and psychotherapeutic interventions to alleviate stress in children and families after school shootings, hurricanes, or civil conflict. Although disaster mental health is still a young field, research is gradually yielding methods for accurately identifying valid relationships among preexisting risk factors, postdisaster mental health problems, and effective interventions. Show less

Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience explores the interface between spiritual and psychological care in the context of disaster recovery work, drawing upon recent disasters including but not limited to, the experiences of September 11, 2001. Each of the three sections that make up the book are structured around the cycle of disaster response and focus on the relevant phase of disaster recovery work. In each section, selected topics combining spiritual and mental health factors are… Show more

Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience explores the interface between spiritual and psychological care in the context of disaster recovery work, drawing upon recent disasters including but not limited to, the experiences of September 11, 2001. Each of the three sections that make up the book are structured around the cycle of disaster response and focus on the relevant phase of disaster recovery work. In each section, selected topics combining spiritual and mental health factors are examined; when possible, sections are co-written by a spiritual care provider and a mental health care provider with appropriate expertise. Existing interdisciplinary collaborations, creative partnerships, gaps in care, and needed interdisciplinary work are identified and addressed, making this book both a useful reference for theory and an invaluable hands-on resource. Show less