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We are conflicted but we dream of peace

If you lost your memory would you still have a problem? No you wouldn't 

You are the sum total of your memories and of course this encompasses your experiences. But, many of your memories and experiences are ones of conflict!

Human history is really a catalogue of human conflict. Typically involving dominant men who are playing out their psychological conflicts and needs and using the rest of us as tokens in an endless game they cannot win.

Our own history is also one of conflict. Not actual physical conflict, unless the paragraph above resonates with you! No, it is a conflict between different belief systems and versions of reality. In fact, I will go so far as to say that all mental health problems are conflicts between competing internal belief systems or conflicts between different realities. 

The part of you that you call YOU, ME, I, is the victim. How does that make you feel? Like a helpless victim I would imagine, helpless, low in control and unsafe because you really don't know when the aggro is going to kick off again.

We are conflicted but we dream of peace.

Here are two examples of the conflict you experience. 

1. The conflict between the negative beliefs you have about yourself as a person or your abilities and the compensation strategy you use to prove to yourself and the world that this is not true. All internal.

2. The internal reality conflict between your deeply held suspicions that you are defective in some way and will be found and the external reality situation where you seem quite capable of doing everything you need to. 

All therapy has a substantial role in smoothing out these conflicts and making more space for peace in your life. I know that many of my clients yearn for more peace. They find this after doing some work on themselves. 

I am not going very far out on a limb when I say that everyone that does some work on themselves gains benefits. Taking an antidepressant is not the same as doing work on yourself, it is mostly making the conflict seem less intense.

Some conflicts are underground. They hide themselves from view but they rage below cognition. Conflicts are clever. They make it seem good sense to avoid thinking about or even acknowledging a problem. DON'T THINK ABOUT IT AND IT WILL GO AWAY...classic. Does it go away? Never is the answer. 

Deal with it later; tried and tested. It just means you suffer for longer. 

The cleverest conflict and the one that works best for dominant men, dominant belief systems and political systems, especially if you want to dominate the world is this. Make the victims, the population at large, the little person in the street believe what you tell them so they self censure anything that is not in line with your propaganda.

I have to illustrate this with an example because it bugs me every time it happens. President Trump tells a lie, and when he is called out on it he blames the media for fake news. His followers blame the media for fake news and he remains untouched from the act of telling a lie. But even more perniciously. The simple existence of the lie in the world gives it increasing validity and the patina of truth through mere exposure.

Now off my political high horse. The same principle applies to the negative beliefs you hold about yourself and the lies they give rise to that you tell yourself. The more you rehearse them and practice them the more true they will seem through the mere exposure effect. Hence your internal conflicts become more intense not less because you have greater difficulty in deciding what is actually true about you.

So do you want to know how to stop this internal conflict or are you content to carry on with it?

A war is a series of battles. A battle is a series of conflicts between opposing groups within the army. A battle is won or lost on the cumulative actions of a number of individuals. This is how we create peace inside you. We embark on a series of resolutions to internal conflicts as we gain victory over the individual conflicts these grow into the victory in the battle.  The process of victory is inevitable, but only if you fight because now you are not a helpless civilian you are now fighting for truth and justice and you are the beneficiary of every single bit of effort you devote to it.

Join Anxiety Wizard and journey to peace.