What is the Torn Project and why?

Susan (0:02): Have you ever felt torn? Experienced that inner struggle of clashing needs, yearnings and beliefs, not a fight with others, a fight within yourself. It's confusing, it's painful, it's inner conflict. I'm Susan,

James (0:24): I'm James.

Caitlin (0:24): I'm Caitlin.

Susan (0:27): We are coaches with different areas of expertise and a shared passion for helping everyone understand and navigate torn feelings. Welcome to our podcast, where we share stories, resources and hope around all things in a conflict. You may be wondering, what is the torn project and why is it? Why exactly are we exploring and encouraging others to explore when we talk about inner conflict, listen on to find out. It was a few years ago that we first had the idea of exploring inner conflict because it interested us. Because in the midst of covid, we realized that everybody is torn sometime. We talked to friends to family to clients to media. We looked at literature and art and music, and we interviewed people, ordinary people and specialists, and I'm remembering each of us realizing that this was important. In my own working life, I have dealt with clients deciding to take the leap to have a child, or a client struggling to leave an abusive marriage and finding the courage to do so, or another client working through their lifelong struggle around feeling everlastingly guilty. And I'm interested, James and Caitlin, in you explaining what in a conflict means to you and what brought you here, what's brought you to the torn project.

Caitlin (2:22): For me, when you started to articulate the torn project and the idea that you had to help people understand and normalize and appreciate the experience of inner conflict, and that there are ways through I could immediately grasp the importance and the universality of this experience, and I really resonated with your ambition to sort of make this idea about inner conflict and the resources and support and the ways through part of the public discourse and part of the public knowledge. You said very early on, I would love for people to be able to be tapped on the shoulder on a high street. And if asked what is inner conflict, they had an answer in the same way that if we did that today on a high street and asked instead, what is emotional intelligence? Most people have an answer for that, because that concept has been around and in the public discourse for a period of time. And I thought, Yes, I want to be part of that.

James (3:43): Yes, me, too. I for a long time, I've had conversations with you, Susan, where the thing in front of us, because there are often conversations about technology, the thing in front of us seems to be a fairly straightforward decision or action, and yet we end up unpacking motivations and discovering, if I was clear minded about this, it would be a simple yes or no external action. But prior to that, I have defined all my different opinions and all my different beliefs, and I think this speaks more to my general state of uncertainty, which I think of as uncertainty, but I realized that it is a multitude of different opinions, all within me. I am not a single minded person.

Susan (4:49): I love your word multitude, James, that we are all a multitude. But what it leads me on to is the fact that. Society doesn't often recognize that. In fact, it punishes it. We're always being told, pull yourself together, make a decision, get on with it. Get a life. And there is this big message in society that if we are not single minded, if we are a multitude, then there's something a bit mad or sad or bad about that. I don't think it's bad. I agree with you, James, that it's useful. It's helpful. And being aware of our multitude and realizing that sometimes our multitude is in conflict, and that's the way to move forward. I think that's great. Are you two with me on that?

Caitlin (5:47): Absolutely. I mean, I also wanted to add that I think both James and I immediately felt like we understood what you were talking about when you described the project, and then when we went deeper in and started doing interviews and hearing people's real stories of inner conflict, we then got a real sense that, wow, this is totally universal, and there is something very meaty that we can explore here, because people experience inner conflicts in their day to day, what do I eat, what do I wear, what simple choices can I make? But they also experience life shaping, life altering, inner conflicts like, should I stay? Should I go, whether that's a location, a job, a relationship or they experience yet more complex inner conflicts still, like, do I choose myself, or do I choose my culture, my family, the environment around me, and even still, lifelong identity conflicts we began to unpack in these interviews, you know, issues of sexuality, identity, religion, and I think people were almost bursting at the seams to describe, at the invitation, to really articulate, What was that like for you, whether it's a small a medium or an absolutely huge and significant one, they live something very acutely inside, and don't often have a chance to articulate that in a space that is welcoming and curious and exploratory of what that experience is. So for us, we really wanted to make that a public conversation.

Susan (7:52): I'm remembering, and I'm sure you both are the times we've interviewed people, and at the end they've gone, oh, that was so helpful. It's really helped me. And all we were doing with listening, all we're doing was saying it's fine to have an inner conflict. Now tell me about it. I think

James (8:11): we are conflict shy, obviously. So conflict itself is already a loaded term, and one of the things I am eager to reclaim is that that inner conflict is the genesis of creativity. I think all creative acts come from the internal work of experiencing different opinions within oneself and trying to put them together, we just have to look at the whole of sorry, the whole of history, the whole of art, the whole of poetry and prose and filmmaking. All these things are expressing the challenge of an inner conflict and the potential for resolution of that inner conflict. So we all know it deeply. However, I think an awful lot of us what's that word? Hand it off to Hollywood and TV for them to portray it, because we are told time and again in daily life that we shouldn't be wasting time internally. We should be being acting out in the world. We should be efficient. We should know our own mind. We should and this inner conflict is seen as a bad thing. It's seen as a weakness. And yet it is, for me, it is the weakness of a liquid rock like lava, out of which mountains are going to grow lovely, right? That's not a weakness that's in. Immense potential. And what if we were to learn to let it swirl and get hot and get messy and then start to form? That's my inner conflict.

Caitlin (10:15): Oh, my God, look at you, making crystals out of inner conflict and growing mountains. I love it. I love what you're saying though, James, that we recognize it, and we definitely do consume stories and art and poetry and painting that shows us the experience and the journey and the resolution through inner conflict. But we don't have this public vernacular, public discourse, nor a set of languages, straightforward stories with some understanding, frameworks, theories, etc, to help us through our own inner conflicts. And I guess that's what we're trying to bring, right we we want to bring a level of accessible storytelling and commentary and frameworks that are useful for people to really understand and get their hands around what inner conflict is all about.

Susan (11:21): And one of the important things for me is, and it took me a while to realize this, we don't only want to address people who are feeling torn right now. I think this is a much wider shift that we're looking for. Of course, we're hoping to help in our website, in our podcasts, in our Instagram, in the courses we're going to offer. Of course, we want to offer those who are torn the chance to work through it. I'm also interested in talking to people of supporting those who are torn. You know, if you're a partner, if you're a parent, if you're a colleague, and somebody close to you is struggling within a conflict, we want to help there. But it's even wider than that. It's if you're curious about this, if you want to find out more about this, we want to invite in anybody you know, specialist, yes, but our interviews, that's where our real basis of lived experience to not only help people get through in a conflict, and as you so beautifully said, James, swirl it to something creative, but also to see it everywhere and be happy about that. Speaking of seeing it everywhere, I just want to move on to getting your, uh, your thoughts about what do people recognize when they're in conflict? I mean, we're all coaches. We've we've worked with clients, we've also got friends, we've also got family, we've also got ourselves. Do we do we know we're in conflict? How do we recognize it?

James (13:11): Personally, I don't for ages, nice I and I think I am quite aware. I just feel that something's off, or I'm at one level, putting my mind to doing this thing, and yet I'm not doing it. I've I've decided, come on, James, let's do this. And yet I'm not moving towards it. It says there's just something that's quiet, not quite right, hangs around too long and I don't investigate it. It starts to get a little louder, and that's quite often slightly painful, and I feel my mood slipping into something quieter, potentially sadder, a bit more lost. So I, for me, there's quite a lot of stuff prior to identifying, oh, there's an inner conflict, all variants of, I'm feeling off somehow. I think that's fairly common, right,

Caitlin (14:26): absolutely, right. We heard that again and again in our interviews, and we will go later on in our podcast series into the journey through inner conflict. But just to give it a very headline level, it begins with this kind of unconscious awareness, right, which can be experienced like you articulate James. It can also be experienced as physical symptoms. It can be experienced as a way that you are interacting differently with those or. Around you. Maybe some more projection of your challenging internal world is going on outside of you, but all of these things are sort of brewing away in the background. And I like your I like your volume analogy, or I feel like that's what happens, right? The volume just gets a little louder and louder and louder until whatever it is that you're experiencing becomes recognized and becomes conscious. And then you're navigating at a conscious level, something's wrong here. What is it that's wrong? And you begin to identify, maybe Susan you want to pick up from there. What happens? Yeah, you start

Susan (15:43): to identify and you start to look around for well, what can I do about this? And obviously, the the first point of recourse is to say it's not happening because it feels uncomfortable in the little chicken breaking out of the shell. It's not an easy task, but I think what we're offering here is what we found through interviews and our research and our talking to specialists, is that there's a lot you can do about it. You don't need to forget that you're in conflict. You can move forward to things like gathering information. It's much more crucial than I thought it was to emotional calming, you know, getting itself in a good state. And then there are all sorts of stop, think, try this out, maybe turn back on the journey, and do things slightly differently. But one of the things that's come through again and again in what we've been looking at is that when you know the resolution to an inner conflict, there's this moment that is sort of tipping point, and then I can only describe it as an out breath of, oh, that's what I need to do. And of course, it isn't as simple as that. In a conflict is almost always complex. I mean, maybe not. You know, do we go to the Indian restaurant or the Chinese restaurant? That's probably not complex. But the deeper ones about jobs or relationships or children, or do I stay, or do I go? It's complex, but there is still a moment, or a number of moments, where you go, okay, yeah, that that feels it's right for me right now, it's right for me to do that, and that feels, that feels really great.

Caitlin (17:42): Yeah, I wonder whether we say just a little bit about how we think inner conflict is different from simple decision making, because, of course, there is decision making sometimes baked into your inner conflicts, and yet it's more than that. Yeah.

Susan (18:03): And I think the issue here is that, although one of the many issues is in a conflict, is a conflict, it's not, let's list the pros and the cons. Yes, it's obvious, that's a decision, that's choice. But when we're looking at an inner conflict, it almost naturally involves a push and a pull. It involves some sort of questioning, it takes. It involves some sort of struggle. And I mean, I'm not being over dramatic here. I'm just saying that in a conflict, it's not simple. It can seem simple to outsiders, but it involves internal factors such as your values, your motivations, your past. You know, a lot of the interviews we've done, interviewees are talking about what I'm feeling now in this conflict is hugely influenced by what's happened to me in the past, what I've experienced. And it's also repetitive. You go round, you say, Yes, I'll do this. No, I'll do that. Yes, I'll stay. No, I'll go, Yes, I'll fight, no, I'll give in so complexity, emotion, intensity and questioning. I'm not saying that every inner conflict is painful, but it's certainly a struggle, beautiful, beautifully articulated,

James (19:41): just remembering working with teams in professional settings, that when you talk about information gathering, there can be a lot of data gathered in order to make a decision in an organizational setting. And so I. Uh, it's not to contrast simple decision making with complex inner conflict. Decision making is what I think of as external, and all the data is external, so I just need to go and get the reports. I need to do the analytics on all the stuff that's out there. And it may be a simple decision, it may be a complex decision, but that's what I think of as decision making. And the key piece for me of what we're framing as in a conflict is that a lot of that data is inside and is less tangible unless we go looking for it. And so you know, understanding that I I, who I am today, is influenced by my past, by my upbringing, by my schooling, by previous experiences. Those things aren't as easily quantifiable, and I think because of that, we tend to ignore them, and that's where we recognize the difference, right in the torn project, is that that stuff will enrich any decisions we make if we go there as well and spend that time, it's not just to be introspective for the sake of being introspective, it is still To be out in the world, but to be out in the world from a place of congruence and coherence, right, where I have brought all of the parts of me and all of the external data together to make the decisions, I got This

Caitlin (21:59): real sensation inside me to say and that internal information can be changing as as you are live in that inner conflict. In fact, that is often a really important component of having inner conflict that you yourself are going through some kind of transformation or development or evolution in who you are and what you're doing in the world, or what you value, or the parts of yourself you're allowing yourself to express and be in and and so it's not just I have to look inside myself and look inside my past, but it's Often I have to look inside myself and experience this urge and yearning to change, to grow, to experience something at the edge of myself that's taking me into a new direction, and that's complicated and A little scary.

Susan (23:00): Well, the word that's coming to me as I as I hear us talk, it's the word reconciliation. What happens in a conflict is you may decide to go in a particular direction, and immediately you get resistance. So you go, okay, okay, I'll go in the direction though, the resistance is suggesting, oops, you get resistance to that too. And there may be many directions. We're not just talking about two of them so and in a conflict gets sorted, gets resolved, when you reconcile all the different elements, you used the word congruence earlier James, this idea that things fit together, and to get that fit, to get that reconciliation between all your needs and all your values that may be opposite or contradictory, certainly conflicting. That's going to be the secret, and it may take time, and it may not be easy, and

Caitlin (24:07): it may not ever land in a perfect sort of sense of completeness as well. Sometimes congruence is a level of acceptance and understanding and integration, but still holding a level of grief or sadness or, you know, uncomfort with how things land, alongside the acceptance.

Susan (24:33): I'm also aware that we're talking a lot about pain and struggle, and one of the things that I have most valued about working with this project is that we've discovered there are answers. There may not be answers to everything, as you just said, Caitlin, it may take time, and it may never get resolved some of the lifetime. Uh, in a conflict, they are with you for life and and it is a question of management, but there are answers. And I didn't know when we started that there were answers that you know our research is provided, our contributors, our interviewees have offered. And so and there are ways to feel better in the moment, but there are also ways to resolve in a conflict long term,

Caitlin (25:28): really. And I love that we are going to offer a lot of different ways to to understand that and experience that, and sort of choose your own adventure through inner conflicts yourself, because what we are saying is there's not one way through. There's not one answer. There are many and we want our listeners to feel some sense of affinity and understanding in the stories of many other people and their experiences and their ways through. We also want our listeners to pick and choose from the experts, from our own conversations, from some of the more creative endeavors that we are bringing to the podcast as well? Because it's not it's not one size fits all. We are all creating our own map and our own path, but we are here to give you lots of components and lots of ideas and lots of stories.

James (26:28): Love what you've just said, Caitlin, about strategies and find your own adventure, because it's important, I think, to recognize that when we say there is an answer to your inner conflict, it's your answer to the inner conflict. No one can say, How do I fix this? And be told, here's your here is your resolution. That's That's your business. That's only something you can figure out. So I think we the answers available are answers in terms of frameworks, in terms of maps, as you said, and guidance on how to read those maps and how to work those frameworks to find what is useful to you and what is not what brings things forward for you, or what helps you dredge more deeply, what helps you turn your shit into compost, all of that kind of stuff. These are answers, but they're answers that make it possible for you to figure out your resolution to you, for you to be the author of your work.

Caitlin (27:49): So I have a provocative question, does anyone, does anyone not have inner conflict?

Susan (27:58): Well, it's interesting. I mean, when I've done interviews, I have had people say, not worth my while doing an interview because I don't suffer internal conflict. But interestingly, when we explore it, what is happening is that they do, but they then have really good coping strategies that they've developed. I mean, maybe that they've developed from very young or maybe over time, and that's really interesting. All that said, I don't want to tell everybody that they have an inner conflict, because if that's not your experience, it's not your experience.

Caitlin (28:35): Yes, I also found in my interviews that there were a few, not many, but a couple of examples of people who felt that they didn't experience inner conflict in a very deep or challenging way. And what was really interesting was that they had a really confident relationship for how they would work through their inner conflicts. Giving you just an example or a spread. One person may have a really robust set of logic that they work through, and that suits them very well, and another person may have a strong sense of spirituality or value system that they really rely on in order to navigate their inner conflict, and therefore sure it's possible that for some people, they feel relatively unburdened and very happy with their coping strategies.

James (29:33): So my take out from Does anyone not have internal conflict is to make a request and say, if you are one of those people that doesn't have internal conflict, we would really love to hear from you. Don't, don't turn off because I don't have internal conflict. That is information that we want. That is, as the other two have said, that's likely you already have a framework, and we're very interested. Interested to learn about that.

Susan (30:03): I want to add that we're actually very interested in anything you want to tell us about your thoughts and feelings on in a conflict. Perhaps you're feeling torn right now, and want to give us an anonymous interview about that. Perhaps, perhaps you've supported, or are supporting, someone who's conflicted, or you have a specialism that might be relevant, such as psychology or therapy, or you work in a field that involves a great deal of inner conflict, like medicine or the law. We talked a lot about our reasons, our passion, yes, our passion for engaging within a conflict. But, but what have we done so far? Well, we started by doing a big research role through arts and sciences and philosophy in psychology to find out what's already been done back through history. We've also talked to specialists who know about or are helping people through inner conflict today right now. Crucially, as we mentioned, we've also interviewed more than 120 people who've movingly told us their real, lived experiences of inner conflict. We've learned more by using all this in our work with our own coaching clients and in our teaching. So I guess the next question is, well, how are we offering all this through the project we began in December 24 with an Instagram account that offers simple understandings, insights, guides for coping when you feel torn. We launched our website in September 2025

James (31:54): on the website, we will be having, obviously, the archive of all the podcasts and their show notes and transcripts, and they will be linking to more in depth articles and resources, guides that you can work through by yourself for particular aspects of this inner conflict.

Susan (32:18): And now our podcast Caitlin tell us about the podcast side, sure.

Caitlin (32:25): So in our podcast, we are going to use real life stories of inner conflict as part of the backbone of what we're offering people. So these are originating from our interviews, but with all kind of identifying details removed, and they've actually been read by actors. And in these stories, we're going to be providing our commentary around the the narrative arc of lots of different types of inner conflict. And as we provide our our commentary, we're going to give you tools and tips, and try to dissect what it is that's going on in this person's inner conflict journey towards resolution. We're also going to be providing expert interviews, some kind of creative interpretations via dramatization read by actors, some exciting things that we we want to bring forward. James, very early on in the podcast, said, You know, this is, this is often in the remits of the artists and the poets and so on. So we want to bring, actually, the resources from those fields as well. We are also offering live courses as we develop our online and in person courses. So hopefully that will be coming down the pipeline with some virtual courses and in person courses later in 2026

James (33:51): and obviously, both the website and Instagram offer you opportunities to get in touch with us one way or another. I think Instagram is a really good way to see our little summary snippets of what we've been playing with and discovering, but it's also an opportunity if you want to start to have a conversation with us. We're all about the conversations.

Susan (34:20): James, that is such a wonderful way to summarize what we're doing, and in fact, it's a wonderful way to bring things to an end. So this podcast may well have left you thinking not only about your own inner conflicts, but about the inner conflicts of those around you and the place of inner conflict in the world. I mean, how do we feel about it? How do we think about it?

You may well be interested in knowing more, and if you do, then check out the show notes for this episode, which has a transcript and links to helpful resources on our website, thetornproject.com. And please also follow us on Instagram @thetornproject for regular stories, resources and hope for all things inner conflict.

The Torn Podcast is created by Susan, Caitlin Cockerton and James Knight. Thank you to our podcast producer Finn Kinsella of Flume Creative, to our music composers Michal, Mikolaj and Bolek Błaszczyk, to our team of actors and to all those who have contributed their lived experiences, specialist knowledge and professional support.