The journey through inner conflict

Caitlin (0:03): So as we began the torn project and started to work through our now over 120

Caitlin (0:10): interviews, to our surprise, we started to realize that there was a general pattern underlying every inner conflict. There was something that felt broadly consistent that let us map out and trace the progress of inner conflict. We're calling this the torn journey. Have you ever felt torn? Experienced that inner struggle of clashing needs, yearnings and beliefs, not a fight with others, but a fight within yourself. It's confusing, it's painful, it's inner conflict. I'm Caitlin. I'm Susan. 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 inner conflict today is sort of an informal interview, but a real sort of skills building understanding episode where we are going to get Susan to talk us through this torn journey. We're hoping that our listeners really have a sense then of these distinct stages, and that there is a bit of a map that one can follow.

Susan (1:43): And I'm excited about this because it wasn't what I expected. I expected, and to some extent, it was true that every interviewee story, be that the lived experience story, or a specialist talking about the theory, I expected there to be significant differences. There were but there was an underlying pattern. And this was certainly new for us, and that applied not only whether a conflict was short or long or mild or intense, and whatever topic people were talking about, there was a pattern running through it?

Caitlin (2:23): Yeah, I think there's an advantage of our approach, which was quite research driven, and then using this kind of grounded theory of analyzing and processing what we were what we were hearing, and beginning to trace those themes and those patterns. I

Caitlin (2:50): So tell us, what is the torn journey? Exactly, what does this mean?

Susan (2:56): Yes, first, there seems to be an unconscious awareness, like there's something wrong here. One is not completely contented about it. There may be a sense of imbalance, but it's not clear.

Susan (3:08): Step two is that the inner conflict comes into consciousness. We know what the pull is. We know what the torn feeling is about most people, most situations, then go on to gather information. That's step three. And step four is actioning, that maybe trying things out or experimenting, looking at what's possible, much more generally. And then we have a tipping point, and it might be sudden, might be waking up one morning, or it might be a gradual realization that this is the direction you want to take in order to solve and resolve the inner conflict, then a possibility of a reversal. I mean, if you're mapping this as a journey, this is working out whether the journey is set or whether you need to do a quick detour, whether you need to reverse, maybe you need to go back and start again. And then finally, you get to a direction that is right for you, that feels right for you, and you're going ahead with your journey and moving on to whatever life holds for you. Amazing. It's really good to have that sense of how it begins, how it proceeds, how sometimes we turn back and have to, you know, make a bit of a loop in our in our journey, but that also, there is a sense of completion and meaning making. Tell us. Susan, why is it important to have this as a framework, this kind of journey map?

Susan (4:40): It's important because, as we know firsthand, or it may be with supporting somebody who's torn in a conflict, it's often confusing, it's often painful, it's often unclear what's going to happen in the future, and that's anxiety provoking, and having a journey gives you the. And I don't know you might say the checkpoints, the signals of reaching each stage and having a sense of, Well, what do I do next? And crucially, what do I do if I get stuck? Am I doing it right? If I'm not doing it right, what do I do about that? I guess the underlying message we're getting with the journey. If it is offering reassurance, you know you're not just walking in circles, or we're still not walking at all, it offers hope, and it offers a reassurance that a journey will have an end, you will be able to get on to the next bit of your life.

Caitlin (5:37): Have that sense of way finding, where am I in

Susan (5:40): this Oh, I like way finding. That's great.

Caitlin (5:43): We're going to jump into each of the stages of the journey in a moment. But one kind of rebuttal or question we might deal with is, Well, isn't this just about decision making? Isn't it just about choosing a or b? Why is it not

Susan (6:02): I get your point, and it is something that many people have said to us, and we're certainly not saying that decision making is irrelevant. In fact, we we pull in many of the decision making models in our torn project, but decision making can be done without emotion, whereas an inner conflict creates emotion, or the metaphor I often use, it's like making a decision. It's having three doors, two doors, opening each of them and finding out what's behind it. In a conflict, you open a door and it's got a brick wall behind it, and you open the second one, and that's a brick wall. You don't see a way forward, not because it's completely the wrong way, but because it's a balance of a good idea, but, and every part of it, every part of the conflict, be that two choices or 10, it's a good idea, but, and so it's, it's decision making plus, and therefore we need to track the journey very, very carefully. Yeah.

Caitlin (7:18): Let's begin with number one, unconscious awareness. What does that look like? Feel like?

Susan (7:23): Well, it often is a feeling, because imagining a picture or hearing yourself talk about it, no, that doesn't come quite then you have a conflict. You're not aware of it. It's not in awareness and that maybe it's too threatening to admit, or maybe you just haven't done enough. Thinking about it, your body is sending you signals that it's not happy. There might be a low level anxiety, or you're putting things off, or you're just generally uncomfortable. It's not just you that's noticing it. It may be others. You know, this may sail you. You're not on your game or Okay. And you may go, Yeah, I'm fine, but you know that there's some confusion, that there's some unease, and I think it's useful at this stage to introduce an example, and the example I'm going to choose is when you are making a choice based on dissatisfaction, and that's maybe you're doing a course, finishing a degree or an apprenticeship, and you're going, I'm not sure about this. I'm not sure it's done the job. Or maybe you're in a job and you're not happy with it. And so the unconscious awareness stage here is maybe you're missing things, maybe you're not focusing on the job or the course as you used to, you're not enjoying it as much as you used to, and slowly coming through. And this would be a sign that you're moving on to the next stage. You start thinking, Oh yeah, I'm really not happy in my job, on my course. And the the action here needs to be to notice the signals, not to override them, not to say, Oh, I'm fine. I'm fine. Be aware that something is not quite right, and then moving on to the next stage of finding out what's not quite right.

Caitlin (9:12): So just really tuning into those moments where you know in your body things feel off, tuning into the fact that others are holding up a mirror and saying, Hey, you're not quite on it. You're not quite right. What's up with you that is, is often our first sign in unconscious awareness. So let's move into conscious awareness. Next Susan,

Susan (9:37): this is where you know what's going on. You may not understand it, you may not know what to do about it. And of course, because you don't know what to do about it, you're going to get slightly more conscious emotion, anxiety, yes, some enthusiasm of, oh, you know, maybe I want to do something else, rather than this course or this job and the maybe, and. How do I put it? A side order of, Oh, for heaven's sake, this is ridiculous. You know, I like my job. There's going to be a strong feeling of being pulled, being torn, being conflicted. You normally know that you've done this when you're naming the conflict. And I want to at this point say this may not be a conflict between two things. It may be a conflict between, stay in the course, not stay in the job, not, and go to another course, go to another job, travel the world, decide to stop completely, take some time off, take a sabbatical. So there may be up to, I think the the most choices that I have ever worked with a client on was when they had 10 possible ways forward, but you're able to name them. There's another extra layer to conscious awareness, because consciously, you're starting to feel uneasy about being torn that society says, Oh for heaven's sake, carry on with your course, or overhead and sake, leave your job. And you may feel personal shame, or you may feel that you're being pressured from outside. Or, you know, they want me to do this. They want me to, you know, take that promotion. Or, you know, take this course in addition. But I'm not happy about that. The conscious awareness will often come at a point where you have to make a choice about your course or your job or any decision. So for the first time, we've got some conscious, labeled emotions, and you're starting to feel there's something wrong with that, and there's something wrong with you. Clearly, the to do list needs to include, let go the guilt. Be aware that everybody struggles, feeling torn is a universal experience, and to move back on to okay, there's a point to this. I'm moving on to a new place, I'm trying to find new and better options. So as we say throughout the project, being torn has a function, and it's leading to a better way of living amazing.

Caitlin (12:13): So let's keep the fact that you have named it and you've brought it to conscious awareness. Let's try to remove the additional layers of guilt and shame and all of that. You are not getting anything wrong. This is normal. This is human. This is part of our growth. From there, where do we go? Step three, information gathering.

Susan (12:39): Well, it sounds like the simplest step, I'll just, you know, I'll go, I'll do the reading, I'll chat to people, maybe watch a video. I'll log onto YouTube and see what's happening there. What we found was fascinating. What we found was people get stuck at the information gathering. And it's not just about emotions. It's about a general sense that if we gather information about any of our possibilities, we're going to have to commit to it. So there seems to be this, this barrier, this paralysis at the information gathering stage of I know I want to explore what's going on. If I leave my course, if I leave my job, but if I explore that, if I get more information about it, if I talk to people about it, if I admit it, then that means I'm going to have to go that way. And remember, this is an inner conflict. So the minute you start heading in one direction, all those parts of you which want the other bit? No, no, I want to stay in my job. It's great job. And, you know, I can't do without the money, or people would disapprove of me. Or, look, I've put three years into this course. I'm practically finished. Do I really want to leave and move on to something else? So this is the point where, without realizing that this is what's happening, you may find it starting to be quite painful as you flip between each option and explore it more. And the answer to that, it's not to block your emotions, but it's to make sure that you explore all the options. So if you put two weeks into looking at another course, we're not saying take two weeks to look at staying where you are and keeping on the same course, but we are saying that what seems to work, what we get from our interviewees, is to balance, not to put all the effort into exploring one option, however many you have, but to keep going on all options to avoid this sense of being stuck, being paralyzed because you are afraid that if you explore something, you're going to do it. And of course, it's an inner conflict. There are many parts of you. Don't want you to do it. So the the answer here is to balance and find information, gather information about every option you have.

Caitlin (15:09): It's almost like you're gonna have to coach the many different parts of yourself, the many different options that you're exploring. That says, if you if you explore one avenue, then you're neglecting the other avenue. No, no, no. You have to come in as your own personal coach to these many choices and parts and say, no, no, relax. I'm just gathering information. We need more information to understand all of the possible routes. And not only am I going to explore what new courses are here. I'm also going to explore what you're concerned about in staying in this course or in choosing something totally different. So make sure you have that sense of information gathering on all the axes that are important to you in this stage, so you don't feel trapped by one rather than another. Next stage, experiments and hypotheses number four, Susan, talk to us about this one.

Susan (16:11): So yes, next we move to hypotheses and experiments. And this is the action part, the first really solid action part, you need to get out there and start wondering, doing thought experiments. Maybe doing action experiments in terms of trying things out, going and sitting in on the lectures for another course, or maybe if you can spending a day with somebody who's doing the job you want, if it's very different from the one you're doing at the moment, talking to people actively and not just asking them to talk generally, saying, Well, hold on. What would that be like? What are you experiencing here? It's very focused. It's going to have the same sort of concerns as we had in information gathering of well, does that mean that if I explore this, I'm going to get trapped into it, something very interesting and very hopeful often happens at this stage, which is you start to feel an attraction to one option or another. And there's a positive sense. There's a body excitement. You find yourself talking to people more about one choice than another, and imagining one choice more actively and more enjoyably, getting a little more clear day by day, and also because you can start to see an end, you can start to see a resolution, starting to feel better about what you're doing, starting To feel better about your own process. The danger here is that that's the point where you start to make a choice, where the people around you will start to talk you into it or out of it. So you know the parent or the colleague or the partner who says, but look, you've been doing your training for four years. Why stop now? Or alternatively saying, Well, I never did agree with your decision. Why not change? Because when they see you get really focused and really animated and really excited about one option, and they see you heading towards the decision, they can't hold back. They need to step in. And their parts say That's all very well, but I don't think you should do that, or that's great. I definitely think you should do that. And the temptation there is to do something because other people want it, rather than because it's right for you.

Caitlin (18:41): People will always project their images and their ideas of what they think is right for you, onto you, but I think what you're saying is that we have to return to that feeling in ourselves. Does this really feel like my path or not? And metaphor, the image that comes up for me here is that you're out in the wilderness and you're on a path, and there comes a crossroads, and it points in five different directions. At this point, you don't have to go all the way down each of those paths, but what happens if you take three steps along each of those paths and go, Hmm, is this path the one that feels right for me? Or Okay, I'm going to circle back and go back to that crossroads. I'm going to try another one and step a few, a few steps along that path. And what we're saying here is be sure in this mode of experimenting, of trying, of actioning a bit to be tuning into what you want, what feels right for you, what feels like your authentic path, the one that you want to travel, rather than listening to everybody else who's saying, travel that path. Travel that path. Great. So that was step number four. Let's go now into step four. Five the tipping point. Susan, talk to us about this.

Susan (20:04): You can imagine that the tipping point is a sort of Eureka moment, the aha moment. And I have had clients who have literally woken up one morning and gone, yep, that's what I'm going to do. And then, not just on jobs, obviously, but on relationships or family, or, you know, anything that you're conflicted about that can be this magic tipping point, but just as valid and just as useful is when you go through your day getting these tiny, tiny intuitions of, oh, yeah, I really like that. And it's almost like you're gathering evidence, and the evidence stacks up. And almost literally, it can be you're building a tower of evidence for one particular choice, and then the tower gets so big that you just cannot ignore it. So it can be a gradual realization, or it can be one incident or one point where you go, yeah, that's the one. I think it's important to honor that, but also check it because enthusiasm and an image that may not be quite true can lead you down a path of, yes, it's definitely that. And then you wake up the following morning, it's not so be wary of it. And the other thing that happens with a tipping point is it's quite an emotional experience. Very often you go, Oh, that's what I didn't realize, that's what I have to do. And it not only feels exciting, but it can also feel a little bit unstable. The whole issue of that's solved or it seems to be solved, can be euphoric.

Caitlin (21:55): I love what you're saying there, Susan, and the image that comes to mind for me is the sense that when you are when you are experimenting and information gathering in the stages that come before, you know, the wheels are turning kind of slowly. It's kind of like the it's grinding a bit, right? And you get used to being in this mode where it's like you feel really the intensity of feeling torn. You feel, Oh, if I were to give it an expression, right? But then you get to the tipping point, and you go, ah, and all of a sudden, the gears just slot into place, and things move with much more speed and ease that can be thrilling and wonderful, but also kind of unsettling, quite interesting. There's one other thing about the tipping point I wanted to touch on, which is that sometimes that tipping point really comes from within, but equally, sometimes a tipping point is a missing piece of information of something that happens in the outside world that all of a sudden makes things clear. Can you say a little bit about that distinction, what to be mindful of in the tipping point?

Susan (23:07): I think it's a lovely distinction. And we've learned from the interview, it's very, very true. You can be caught up in your own process, you know, keen to solve it and get clear, and then all of a sudden somebody says something. I mean, I remember with one client, it was having her partner say, and if that doesn't work out, you can always do something else. And that worked for her on two levels. It was true, and she hadn't realized it, and it was he was giving her permission. He was saying, and yeah, you can turn back. And much is in the same way as you need to be careful when you're gathering information and when you're carrying out your experiments, not to be too influenced by other people. A tipping point influenced by somebody else can be dangerous, but it can also be the missing piece, and so it's important to keep listening and looking and being open to what comes from the outside as well as what comes from the inside, in order to Get the tipping point that is right for you?

Caitlin (24:23): Yeah, exactly. And it may be a person, but it may also be an opportunity that reveals itself, you know, a missing piece of the puzzle that just all of a sudden presents itself and then everything slots into place. That's great. Let's move now to step six. Our penultimate step forks in the road. What's happening here?

Susan (24:48): What's happening here is you start off in the direction, you sign up for the new cause, you do an application for a new job, and you start to have doubts, and it. Is important to remember that a doubt does not mean it is the wrong thing. It just means that you need to check your evidence and make absolutely sure that the way you are heading is right for you, and that can be an uneasy stage as well, in the same way, replicating the unease you felt at the beginning of the journey of what's happening. So you might go back to being confused, but there's difference. You thought you'd work things out, and therefore there may be a feeling of failure, but I thought this was sorted, but at the same time, you need to remember that you would never walk from A to B every single time, correctly. I mean, one of my parallels, and this may say something about me, is, if you go into a new department store, you don't know where the department you're looking for. You don't know how to get to it, so you go towards one escalator, or you go towards a lift, or you ask somebody, that doesn't mean you failed. It just means that you don't have a map of the forks in the road stage. You have a map much more clearly than you did the very beginning. So don't get wobbled here. This simply means that every part of you is is making the decision a little clearer, tweaking it, making sure that it's working better. Almost the important thing is, don't panic if there's a fork in the road, but the road's still there. Or even if the road has different distinctions, different directions, but you roughly know where they are. It's absolutely fine. This is just improving your direction, not negating it.

Caitlin (26:48): Yeah, I love that. I think there's a piece here for me that comes up in the context of taking bigger leaps, which is, you know, you always have to build a picture in your mind, up of where that big leap might take you, what it might look like, what it might feel like. And then when you do take the big leap, let's say you move country, or you move job, or you know, you decide you're going to leave a relationship, and you cross that road, and you decide to take that path, and then you end up walking that path, and the path turns out to be a bit bumpy. The path turns out to be to actually present a series of its own new challenges that you couldn't see because they exist around the bend, and they only become visible by by walking there and here at the forks in the road. You're you're either, you know, coming to terms with what exists in this path and trying to walk that with integrity and understanding and greater and greater clarity and or you're deciding, okay, well, maybe there is a little veer off in this direction. And I'm still, I was still right to have taken this course, but now I know I need to pivot just slightly to make it really even even more right, even more better for myself. If that makes sense. That's always sort of how I see it at this stage, and that there is even the possibility in the forks in the row that you could decide to circle back and choose another path, and remember that if you do decide to circle back, if you do decide that that leap, that choice, that direction, wasn't quite right for you, that's okay. Maybe that had to happen as part of the process for you realizing the path that really does feel right for you.

Susan (28:37): I think there's an interesting general point here, which is, we always need to remember that an inner conflict is a way through to a better life. This is not a sign of failure, a sign that you've got things wrong. It's a sign that you're trying to improve things. And I think that's particularly relevant to the forks in the road stage, wonderful.

Caitlin (28:59): Let's move to our final seventh stage. So here we are integrating and making meaning. Tell us what's happening here.

Susan (29:08): Susan, you found a job, you found a cause that is right for you. And there's maybe been a few forks in the road where you've not been sure, or you've had to tweak things. You've had to alter something about the cause or ask for a new focus for your job. But there's this sense, and that might be sudden, or it may be gradual, of this is right for me. This is what I'm supposed to be doing. This is a choice that is right for me to make. There's a sense of relaxation. I mean literally, maybe if you've had symptoms, you haven't been sleeping too well, you suddenly start being able to sleep very deeply, because your body is going, Yeah, it's fine. I don't need to signal to you anymore that you need to do something about this. You've stopped questioning yourself in. Same relentless way you've stopped looking at all the options and thinking that they are all hopeless, that none of them are going to work. And this wonderful thing we found in interviews, which is, at that point, you can go back and find find a kind of meaning, not only Oh yes, I understand, but also sense, well, actually, this was meant to happen. This was the right decision. I'm going in the right direction. And that means that often you lose completely, and sometimes in just in a moment, the sense of unease and shame about having had the inner conflict in the first place doesn't always happen, not saying it always happens. You forget the pain of the inner conflict and the meaning of what you're doing is that you made the right choice. You worked it through, you improved your life in small ways or big ways. And it's not that all's right with the world, but on that issue, you are congruent, you're complete, and you can look at the road ahead and walk down it in confidence. Great.

Caitlin (31:16): Yeah. I mean, it always makes sense in the rear view,

Susan (31:21): right? Oh, I love it. I love it.

Caitlin (31:24): It's easier to see that path in the rear view.

Caitlin (31:41): I want to turn us towards just a couple of final details in order to make sense of the torn journey. Susan, so at the beginning, you said that there's an emotional charge in the torn journey. Tell us a little bit about what we need to be watching out for and sensing in our emotions throughout this journey,

Susan (32:02): the emotional load here is something that we often underestimate, and I want to go back to an original metaphor that I used at the start of this episode, which is of opening a series of doors, each one representing a possibility, and there's brick wall behind it. Now, if that happened in real life, horror, you opened every door in a room, and none of them gave you a way forward. Of course, you would be frightened that strangely, or maybe not so strangely, there's a parallel with this. There can be a real sense of almost panic. There is no way out. And the sort of metaphors or interviews they've been using are very visceral. They're very panic based. And the one what they're hearing in the head, what they're saying to each other, it's really quite dark sometimes. So don't be worried. If emotion is high. Do all you can to calm yourself, and that usually means putting effort into thinking and doing and experimenting and information gathering. But don't think that this is the end of the world. This is a process, and it's an emotional process, because it's important, and emotions are motivating you to get it sorted. But also don't give yourself a hard time if emotion is high, and if you are supporting somebody who is resolving and in a conflict, don't be thrown if their emotion is high. It's part of the process, and it may come through strongly, it may come through in a lower level, but feeling emotional about this is almost always What happens

Caitlin (33:48): and what happens if you feel stuck at some point in this journey.

Susan (33:53): This is very, very typical. A GPS is a wonderful way to drive to where you want to go, but sometimes it gets it wrong. Walking on foot is a wonderful way to get to where you want to go. Are you on the right street? Have you taken the wrong turning particularly with a new situation? Most inner conflicts are a new situation, because if they weren't, you would know what to do, by definition, getting stuck in that way, not knowing which way to turn, recognize it. Go, oh, that's what's happening. Also realize that there are ways through, as we were saying earlier about the forks in the road. You can turn back, you can go right the way back to the beginning, and gather emotion and work things through the journey. And we do give much more detail about this on the website, the journey gives you signs to notice. But also, there are many ways forward. There are many things you can do to get unlost. You can have new tools. You can buy. A new map, you can change your situation, or you can ring road rescue, or you can ask a passer by. In other words, you can get other people's help, other people's resources, whether that's somebody you know, it's a friend, or somebody you're close to, or professional help,

Caitlin (35:19): yeah, and I think the journey itself is a reminder of some of the stages that you can deliberately put yourself into. So you can deliberately say, I need to gather more information, or I need to actually make some new hypotheses and new experiments in order to move this process along. I also want to just mention that some inner conflicts are so challenging that it does take years, maybe decades, maybe some inner conflicts live with us forever. So we are not saying that this is a foolproof journey applicable in all circumstances, but it really does stand the test of many, many different types of inner conflict that we have researched and seen over over the course of our work.

Susan (36:12): Well, my final thought takes us right back to the beginning of this episode, our research interviews, and the way we found a commonality in the journeys, and I found that so hopeful, and there was something else hopeful, that once you've made the journey on one in a conflict, the next one, even if it's totally different, even if, even if it's not about changing a course or finding a job, but about starting a relationship or having a child, that's going to be easier, that the next inner conflict will often be easier to resolve, because you know far better how to read the map. You not only get more skilled at navigating, you get more confident in your ability to navigate, to make different journeys more complex ones, more important ones, and so you make them more effectively and confidently. A final point your journey, or the journey of someone you're supporting, it will always be individual, personal, uniquely yours, uniquely theirs. But there is a commonality. This journey is one we all make in our various ways, which means that we can learn the route from each other, and we can all help each other learn the route you

Caitlin (37:43): i this podcast may well have left you thinking about your own torn journey or the journeys of those you know and love. If you're interested in knowing more, the show notes offer you not only a transcript of the podcast, they also help give you some exploratory questions that help you think more deeply about the torn journey, and there are further deeper notes about each stage of the journey, which you'll find on our website, the torn project.com Please do also follow us on Instagram at the torn Project for regular stories, resources and hope for all things inner conflict.

Caitlin (38:32): The Torn Podcast is created by Susan, Caitlinockerton and James. 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.