Do You Fight With Yourself?
Treat Yourself Series Part 2
Ever wonder why you sometimes feel like you're your own worst enemy? Imagine if you could just take action without having to fight yourself every step of the way! Let’s explore why people fight with themselves and how to change it.
If you haven’t read Part 1 yet click here. This section provides essential tools you will need as we continue this journey of improving your relationship with yourself.
Okay so hopefully over the last week you got out there and started practicing these 3 skills of reflective listening, open ended questions, and validation with other people in your life. “Now I get to apply them to myself right?” Not yet. First of all, how did it go? What differences did you notice in communicating with people in this way? Leave a comment and let me know. Second there are some concepts we need to understand before you start applying this stuff to yourself.
“Why the heck do I fight with myself? I mean it’s all just me right? Shouldn’t I agree with myself?” It can be incredibly annoying, infuriating, and even debilitating to constantly be fighting with yourself. It makes sense that you would be angry at the part of you that you are always fighting against.
The reason that we fight with ourselves is because the vast majority of people are fractured in some way. What this is means is that when we go through something really difficult in our life some part of us gets broken off, frozen in time, and continues to act on us as we continue to navigate our life.
Almost every human being on earth has gone through this process in some way or another. I know sometimes it can feel like you’re all alone with these kinds of problems but just know that it is completely normal.
The Council
Here’s a way to think about this. Imagine that there is a council table with a bunch of different versions of you. Ideally you should be sitting at the head of the table, but a lot of times what happens is that some external event happens that freaks out one of the members of your council. So they run to the head of the table, kick you out of your seat and say “Don’t listen to them, they don’t know what they’re talking about! Listen to me, I’ve been through this kind of thing before!” And thus you start to fight with yourself. And like we talked about in part 1, the fighting with yourself is ineffective. It actually just makes that other version of you dig their heels in more.
The first thing you want to do is to identify these different parts of you. Maybe you have a part that gets activated around the idea of money, maybe you have a part of you that gets activated around the idea of fairness, it could be anything.
Action Steps
Take out something to write with digitally or physically, whichever you prefer, and write down these different parts that you identify. Then underneath that write out this journal prompt “Where did these parts learn that thing” So for example, if there is a part of that gets activated around the idea of fairness “Where did this part of me learn to be so angry about unfairness?” Maybe growing up your brother always got better treatment than you did and it felt really unfair to you. So that part of you got frozen in an angry state about how unfair things are and now whenever something unfair happens he runs to the head of the table. In part 3 of this series we’ll go over what to do now that you have identified these different council members to help you achieve a more tranquil relationship with yourself.
I want to provide you the most valuable resources possible so let me know how you felt about this:
Help spread mental health. Think of 1 person that you think could benefit from this and share it with them
I’m always here to help
If you get stuck trying to map out your council, I’d be happy to sit down and help you work through it so that you can get a place where you don’t have to fight with yourself anymore. There’s no commitment or risk. Just a quick easy form to show you’re curious:
Regarding your first lesson, I recently discovered that listening better to others is not just hard, it’s really a huge shift. It’s like a whole change in consciousness.
Before I lived in the world in my head created by all my experiences. It worked fairly well but in working on my relationships in counseling, I began learning that others’ feelings and experiences is valid too. And like you say, if you don’t listen, you never acknowledge them fully.
It still takes work to shift my busy defensive mind, but once I remember what to do, I relax, I can stop fighting. And it is starting to apply to myself as well.
Thanks for your work, Sean.