How Do I Make Decisions When Parts Of Me Feel Conflicted?

A lot of time people feel that they are crazy because of all of the conflict invoices and conflicting parts that are within their body. 

This can be a huge source of frustration as we try to navigate our life and make decisions that are best for us. The different parts of us play out in many many ways, but a common frustrating way it plays out is when we are wanting to make big changes in our life. 

These changes could be about stepping out in our career, leaving or starting a relationship, or it could be about stopping habit that is not healthy for us. Whilst one part of us is really keen for the change to happen, there can be other parts of us that are feeling scared about this change. This is whether in a conflict can arise. 

Very often, this conflict is between the “adult part” of ourselves and the “child part” of ourselves.

Simply because the child part maybe acting through a coping mechanism perspective that helped us to ‘stay safe’ when we were younger. That might be safety from taking a risk, for fear of failure. It can also be that when things feel overwhelming you want to run away and hide - and maybe that’s what you use to do as a child when things felt hard. 

I had a client recently who felt 2 conflicting energies over making a big decision to move countries that also involved her mother and sister. The client felt a pressure to make a decision quickly that would be in best interests for her family, but also felt she no longer resonated with this decision herself, and so was going against her intuition. After creating a safe space for both of these parts to be heard and asking what they need the client had an epiphany about her next steps. The pressure of the two conflicting parts had subsided. She still had some important decisions to make, but she had reached an inner clarity that was so much more helpful that the rush of conflicting energies within her.

Basically often we need to sit with each part, and ask it what is needs. Rather than ignore the uncomfortable confusion, and just hope it will all go away by itself. 

In  methodologies like Internal Family Systems and Compassionate Inquiry, we give voice and space to all of these different parts in the session so rather than them competing for space in your head, they can each have space to voice their concerns and it allows us to reach a level of clarity. 

Very often, we just feel we’re going crazy and we think we need to suppress these voices, but that isn’t always the best path. As the saying goes, whatever we resist persists. 

This is just one of many ways that we work together in the trauma informed mentoring sessions so that you can come to a point of clarity around big decisions, and things that you find challenging in your life, and feel more able to make decisions and take direction from your innermost self, rather than all of these different conflicting parts, creating confusion within you.