NYC Based Mental Health Trio Release 'Self-Other' Help Book: "Irrelationship: How We Use Dysfunctional Relationships to Hide from Intimacy"

NEW YORK, Oct. 20, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, DREAM Team mental health trio, Mark B. Borg, Jr., Grant H. Brenner, and Daniel Berry released their highly anticipated book "Irrelationship: How We Use Dysfunctional Relationships to Hide from Intimacy."

Irrelationship is a two or more person psychological defense system that affects people in every kind of relationship: marriage, friendships, workplace relationships, familial. The book explores how situations in early childhood relationships with caregivers teaches people to distance themselves from people well into adulthood. Case histories in the book illustrate how people previously trapped in irrelationship learned tools for building satisfying connections with others.

The DREAM Team is named for the recovery process the team employs when dealing with irrelationship. Though there is no one way to address irrelationships - as every relationship dynamic is unique - the DREAM Sequence is:

• Discovery
• Repair ("Interactive Repair")
• Empowerment
• Alternatives
• Mutuality

The authors call their approach "Self-Other help."  Unlike the popular self-help category in which self-examination is the focus, irrelationship addresses both (or all) individuals involved in irrelationship as each member plays her or his tacitly-agreed upon part. Like the process of establishing and maintaining irrelationship, recovery requires the participation of both--or all--involved. Hence, Self-Other help.

Praise for the book includes:

"Irrelationship crosses the frontier of 'self-help' into a new area that the authors call 'self-other help.'" The DREAM Sequence used for recovery from irrelationship is designed for couples to work together and help them reconnect with the wonderful chemistry and emotional connections that initially drew them to one another." — Diana Kirschner, PhD, best-selling author of Love in 90 Days

"Rarely, however, does anyone ever articulate the phenomenon with such simplicity or clarity and label it so tellingly - irrelationship. So this book arrives as a needed blast of fresh air, to advance everyone's understanding of how people can yearn for love, even make sacrifices for it, and still feel distant from a partner and deeply unsatisfied….you, readers, are in good hands." - Hara Estroff Marano, Editor at Large, Psychology Today.

"We came together originally to work on a project addressing what, at that time, we called the "human antidepressant", an adaptation in which, from early childhood, individuals had learned to "flip roles" with an emotionally distressed parent to meet that parent's emotional needs. However, the more we looked at this adaptation, the more we discovered in our own partnership as authors that elements of this way of relating were more interactive than we'd originally realized. That was the birth of the idea of "irrelationship." Learning how to work together, requires that we address our own dynamic in which each of us wanted to help the others,  while struggling with the difficulty we had accepting what the others had to offer. In other words, we were deeply mired in irrelationship ourselves! But that wasn't all: as we considered other relationships, we could see this dynamic at work in connections with spouses, partners, colleagues and others - and not as something we were doing to those individuals, but as a tacitly accepted dynamic we were acting out with them," explains the DREAM TEAM.

Irrelationship will be of particular interest to urban millennials in the twenty to thirty age range who want to avoid investing in the type of serial relationship failures they've witnessed among their peers and in their families. But the book also has a powerful message for middle-aged persons, gay and straight, partnered and not, with histories of multiple relationship disappointments, as well as unsatisfactory relationships with family, friends and in the workplace. Ultimately, anyone interested in learning to share life and create authentic relationships will benefit from this book.

The book is published by Central Recovery Press (ISBN: 978-1-942094-00-5 / E-book: 978-1-942094-01-2) and can be purchased at Amazon.com here for $16.95.  E-book release.

Who's Behind Irrelationship / The DREAM Team:

Mark B. Borg, Jr., Ph.D. is a community psychologist and psychoanalyst, founding partner of The Community Consulting Group, and a supervisor of psychotherapy at the William Alanson White Institute. He has written extensively about the intersection of psychoanalysis and community crisis intervention. He is in private practice in New York City. Dr. Borg attended graduate school at the California School of Professional Psychology, where he earned both his MA and PhD in a dual-track program in clinical and community psychology. While there, Dr. Borg served on a four-year community empowerment project that was developed in South Central Los Angeles in the wake of the 1992 riots. Also at that time, he conducted individual and group psychotherapy at the AIDS Services Foundation in Orange County, California.

Daniel Berry, RN, MHA has practiced as a Registered Nurse in New York City since 1987. He worked for almost two decades in community based programs and private care for HIV/AIDS and substance abuse populations. He is currently the Assistant Director of Nursing for Risk Management at a public hospital serving homeless and undocumented victims of street violence, drug addiction, and severe traumatic injuries. His work history includes employment at two of New York City's major medical centers and as a visiting nurse in the homes of some of the city's most privileged households as well as some of its most underprivileged housing projects.

Grant H. Brenner, MD is a board-certified psychiatrist in private practice, specializing in treating mood and anxiety disorders and the complex problems that may arise in adulthood from childhood trauma and loss. He completed medical school at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, psychiatry residency at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and holds Certificates in Psychoanalysis and in Organizational Psychodynamics from the William Alanson White Institute. Dr. Brenner serves as Vice President of the Board for the nonprofit organization Disaster Psychiatry Outreach. He is Assistant Clinical Professor at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, and is Director of the Trauma Service of the William Alanson White Institute. He is an editor of and author for Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience: Integrating Care in Disaster Relief Work, and the author of several papers and book chapters related to disaster response.

Where to find Irrelationship online:

Web site: http://irrelationship.com/ 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Irrelationship 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/irrelation / @Irrelation
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-irrelationship-group

Media Contacts:
DavEllePR
Michelle McQueen / [email protected] / 917-370-6016
Davina Coard-Martoral / [email protected] / 646-670-6673

SOURCE The Irrelationship Group

Related Links

http://irrelationship.com