When Different Parts of You Are in Conflict

Sometimes feeling stuck isn’t about not knowing what we want. It’s about different parts of us wanting very different things, for reasons that make sense once we understand them.

Have you ever felt like you are locked in an internal tug-of-war? You make a decision, change your mind, change it back again and end up more confused than when you started. Or perhaps you know exactly what you “should” do but find you can’t bring yourself to do it.

You might desperately want connection but pull away when someone gets close. You might want to rest but push yourself to keep being productive. You may repeatedly tell yourself that you’re leaving a relationship or job, only to keep putting it off and making excuses.

It can feel internally chaotic. We may struggle with our indecision, inconsistency or even self-sabotage without understanding why we keep getting stuck in the same cycle.

One way of making sense of this is through the concept of multiplicity of self. Rather than seeing the mind as a single, fixed and completely unified entity, multiplicity recognises that we can experience different parts, self-states or aspects of ourselves, with different feelings, beliefs, needs and ways of responding.

Understanding Parts and Polarisation

Working with different parts of the self has a long history in psychotherapy. Gestalt Therapy pioneered the use of dialogue between different parts through chairwork, and several therapies have since developed their own ways of understanding and working with parts.

At Lucent Psychology, we draw particularly from Schema Therapy and Internal Family Systems (IFS). Schema Therapy describes different states as modes, while IFS explicitly understands the mind as naturally made up of parts. Both can help explain why we sometimes feel so conflicted.

In Schema Therapy, mode dialogues use chairwork to give our different modes a voice. By moving between chairs, we can explore what different modes are feeling, thinking and trying to achieve rather than experiencing them as one confusing internal struggle. The Healthy Adult mode can then listen and respond to these different modes in different ways depending on what each needs.

In IFS, polarisations occur when parts become locked in opposing positions. Sometimes there are two parts in conflict; at other times there may be two teams of parts, with alliances or coalitions forming around each position.

Common polarisations might include:

• a Self-Sacrificing Part that continually puts others first and a Frustrated or Angry Part that resents it;

• parts pushing us to work harder and parts desperately wanting rest and relaxation;

• parts that avoid relationships and vulnerability and parts longing for connection;

• parts wanting to stay in a relationship or job and parts wanting to leave;

• an Inner Critic demanding that we change and parts using food, alcohol, substances or other behaviours to escape the distress.

These parts do not operate independently. They react to each other.

The harder one part pushes, the harder the other may fight back. For example, the more your Inner Critic demands that you eat healthier, exercise more and always follow its rules, the more another part may want to let go, feel good and eat whatever you want because “you only live once.”

This can create a polarisation cycle, with each side inadvertently making the other more extreme. Let’s say you follow all the “shoulds” of your Inner Critic around food and exercise, but then “slip up” by saying yes to a slice of birthday cake at the office. The Critic jumps in with criticism about how undisciplined you are and how you can’t do anything right, leaving another part of you feeling intense shame.

Because that shame is so distressing, another part jumps in to help get rid of it as quickly as possible: Stuff it. I’ve broken my diet anyway. I may as well eat that chocolate when I get home.

After eating the chocolate, the Critic jumps back into the driver’s seat and admonishes you for having no self-control. The shame held by our vulnerable part becomes stronger, and the part trying to provide relief may respond with even more comfort eating. And so the cycle continues.

Understanding the interaction between parts can make behaviours that previously seemed irrational or self-sabotaging begin to make much more sense. This is particularly relevant to addictive cycles and disordered eating, where one group of parts may impose increasingly rigid rules, criticism or control while other parts seek relief, escape or soothing. Each reaction then strengthens the other.

Getting to Know Both Sides

When we dislike what a part is doing, our instinct is often to try to get rid of it.

We want the Procrastinator to stop procrastinating, the Inner Critic to shut up, the Avoidant Part to stop avoiding or the part using an addictive behaviour to simply make better decisions.

The problem is that we have already taken sides.

Imagine a company where the CEO only listens to certain employees. Other employees are dismissed, criticised or treated as though they are the problem. This probably won’t make them quietly disappear. They may become increasingly frustrated, disruptive or extreme because they have learned that this is the only way they will be heard.

Our parts can respond in similar ways.

Getting to know a polarisation involves becoming curious about both sides.

How is each part trying to help? What are the intentions of each part? What does it believe would happen if it stepped back?

IFS offers a particularly useful question:

What are you afraid would happen if the other side won?

Sometimes this reveals that parts using completely opposing strategies are actually trying to protect us from something similar. They may even be protecting the same vulnerable younger part in different ways.

A Perfectionistic Part, for example, may focus on doing everything correctly, checking repeatedly for mistakes and making sure no detail is missed. It may believe that if you get everything right, you can prevent other people from seeing you as incompetent or, ultimately, a failure.

An Avoidant Part may respond to the same fear in almost the opposite way. It might discourage you from challenging yourself, taking new opportunities or putting in too much effort. Its logic might be: If I don’t really try, then I can’t really fail.

Despite using completely different strategies, both parts may be trying to protect the same vulnerable younger part that carries painful experiences of failure, criticism or being punished when you didn’t live up to other people’s expectations. One tries to protect that part by making sure you never fail; the other tries to protect it by making sure you never have to find out whether you might.

Different strategies, but similar fears. This brings us back to the Gestalt idea that apparent opposites can sometimes be understood as different sides of the same coin.

From Internal Chaos to Internal Leadership

Understanding our parts does not mean that we let them do whatever they want.

If our internal world were a company, good leadership would involve listening to employees, taking their concerns seriously and making sure different perspectives had an opportunity to be heard. It would also involve having someone capable of making the final decision.

A company where the CEO ignores most of the employees would be chaotic. A company where every employee could take over whenever they felt strongly enough would probably be equally problematic.

IFS uses the concept of Self to describe a wise inner leader characterised by qualities including curiosity, compassion, calm, clarity, confidence and courage. In Schema Therapy, the Healthy Adult mode helps us understand and respond to our different modes, care for vulnerable parts, set limits and make choices that better meet our needs.

Other therapies use different language, and while the concepts are not exactly the same, they offer similar ways of creating enough separation from our immediate thoughts, feelings and impulses to consider different perspectives without automatically being taken over by one of them.

This involves listening and validating without necessarily agreeing. It means recognising that a part may have a very good reason for feeling the way it does without assuming that we therefore have to do what it says.

It also means looking for the wisdom in each position. An Anxious Part may see a genuine risk. An Angry Part may recognise that a boundary has been crossed. A Perfectionistic Part may care deeply about doing something well because it’s important. An Exhausted Part may know that what we are asking of ourselves is unsustainable.

Each part can have useful insights, but that doesn’t mean its strategy is helpful or that it knows the best way forward.

Parts as Advisors

One way of approaching this is to invite the parts in conflict to become almost like advisors or consultants to the leader of our system. This may be Self in IFS or the Healthy Adult in Schema Therapy.

This fits well with the company analogy. A good CEO consults people with different perspectives before making an important decision. They want to understand their recommendations, their concerns and what they believe might happen if another course is taken.

But consulting everyone does not mean everyone gets to run the company.

Our parts can have a seat at the table. They can tell us what they are afraid of, what they want us to understand and what they think we may be overlooking.

When they repeatedly experience being listened to and taken seriously, they may no longer need to become increasingly extreme to get our attention. Over time, this can also help them develop greater trust in our capacity to lead and handle situations differently.

Many of our parts developed their roles when we were much younger. They may still respond as though we are the child or adolescent we were when their strategies first became necessary, without recognising how much our circumstances, resources and capacities have changed.

A 16-year-old employee might have some excellent ideas and make very valid points about what the company should do. We would still probably hesitate before appointing them CEO. In the same way, we can take a younger part seriously, listen to what it knows and value its contribution without asking it to carry the responsibility of leading our whole system.

Then we still have to choose.

Ultimately, therapies such as IFS and Schema Therapy aim to do more than simply help us manage competing parts. Therapy can help us heal the vulnerable parts carrying longstanding pain and help protective or coping parts loosen roles that may no longer be necessary.

But this takes time. Particularly in the earlier stages of therapy, our parts may still feel frightened, angry or strongly opposed to the choices we make. Internal leadership can mean acknowledging those reactions, continuing to listen and remaining connected to our parts without automatically changing course simply to make their discomfort disappear.

This is where courage becomes just as important as compassion.

Rather than asking only, Which option makes me feel less afraid?, we can begin asking:

What matters to me? What do I want to stand for? If I considered the long-term rather than only the short-term consequences, would that change my decision?

The aim isn’t to get rid of our conflicting parts or make every part agree. It is to understand why the conflict exists, become more aware of the intentions, fears and wisdom on both sides, and create enough internal space to make a choice rather than continuing to be pulled from one side to the other.

Sometimes simply recognising, Oh, there are parts of me and they are in opposition, can be the beginning of making sense of an internal battle that has felt confusing for a very long time.

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Author’s note: Sheena is aware that IFS and Schema Therapy are distinct therapeutic models and that Self and the Healthy Adult are not theoretically interchangeable constructs. Her AuDHD wiring would like this distinction formally recorded, as would her Perfectionistic Part and Inner Critic. These parts are currently polarised with several others who believe that, after spending far too long making sure this post is technically correct, Sheena should just publish it and relax. After listening to both sides, she has chosen to publish the post with this disclaimer, and all parts feel heard.