How The Torn Project began

It was during Covid when I realised everyone is torn.

It was obvious. Every day, from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night, everyone was challenged by which direction to take. Should I stay in or go out? See friends, be alone? Wear a mask, breathe freely? Break the rules, be obedient?

And through it all, knowing that to take a wrong direction might mean serious consequences. For ourselves and others – partners, family, friends, strangers. Our inner conflicts were literally a matter of life and death.

Of course, everyone's inner conflicts meant everyone taking different directions. Sometimes to an extreme. In the first panicked lockdown days, a colleague invited me to a house party with "only twenty other guests – we'll be fine". Two of my friends, husband and wife, spent three Covid years never entering “any building with a roof apart from our own house”. Everyone, it seemed, was resolving their Covid conflicts in their own way.

The good news for me was that I had time to think this through. I had time – perhaps too much time – to explore what it means to feel torn.

So in I dived to the research, looking back to find references to ‘inner conflict’ and its resolution. What I found was a treasure trove… problem was, little of it was on point. Decision-making for business wasn’t quite it. Deep trauma needing therapy was not what most people were experiencing.

So as well as reading the research, I started talking and listening. Conversations with friends, discussions with colleagues, endless emails and Zoom calls with people who were also recognising inner conflict all around.

The wisdom here seemed more accessible and more relevant. Nowhere more so than from those who were willing to share their own tales of feeling torn. I started collecting stories.

As the vaccines arrived and lockdown slowly eased, I understood three things.

… That likely every human being who has ever lived has experienced inner conflict – and not just when under threat of Covid. We've all regularly struggled to decide which direction to take – maybe day by day, maybe year by year, maybe for the whole of our lives. We’ve all been there.

… That any kind of inner conflict beyond the totally temporary and trivial is uncomfortable. Often hugely painful. And adding to the pain, society so often says it's a weakness, a fault, almost a sin. But, in fact, facing inner conflicts and working through them is so often a way to change, to grow. To thrive.

… That something needs to be done. It's crucial to bring inner conflict out into the open, explore it, understand it, discover how to do it better and less painfully. And, it's crucial to appreciate and approve rather than criticise and condemn.

When it came to taking action I was not in the least conflicted.

So I talked with James and Caitlin – friends and colleagues who shared my commitment to helping people be more effective and happy – and we decided we had to spread the word.

Not that we have The Answer to feeling torn. But we do want to collect answers, to get everyone’s ideas – from those conflicted, those who support the conflicted, and absolutely anyone who has ideas, opinions, resources.

We want to start a global conversation. We want to collect, curate, distribute and exchange all things inner conflict, worldwide.

Welcome to The Torn Project.