There are no people without inner conflicts.
Life itself is imperfect in all its living and nonliving forms.
This generates one contradiction after another in our psyche:
individual vs collective
belonging vs autonomy
stability vs change
known vs unknown
finite vs infinite
letting go vs holding on
safety vs freedom
action vs waiting
pleasure vs meaning
present vs future
control vs trust
familiar vs new
function vs form
explicit vs implicit
order vs chaos
Ego vs Self
life vs death
part vs Whole
Self vs Other
body vs spirit
When left unresolved, a specific dilemma unsettles the soul, poisons the body, and tears the mind apart. And you can’t just brush it aside.
What do most people do? Right: “Well, at least something.” This means acting out an inner conflict in the outside world.
Sometimes this is acceptable, as in the case of a soccer championship. You go to a game, live through someone else’s drama, and life gets a little easier.
Some, however, choose a much worse form. This is when a person “for some reason” gets into a road rage confrontation, starts a family scandal out of nothing, or “reports” a business competitor to the FBI.
Read Greek tragedies or folk tales from around the world. How much suffering was inflicted on everyone involved in the conflict because the protagonists were not ready to figure themselves out in time.
And yet humanity has accumulated so many tools for exactly this:
active imagination and dream analysis
individual and group psychotherapy
dance and body practices
athletic challenges
religion and prayer
creativity and art
meditation
philosophy
rituals and retreats
an honest conversation with yourself, etc.
Sincerely yours,
-Alexander
As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.
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