It’s not rare to have a conflict with another person. Some serious conflicts have no apparent solution; others could likely be resolved if we put our minds to it and strive toward cooperation.
But what about conflicts that don’t involve others? How can that even happen? Here’s a possibility: Think of your wants as pictures. Envision all of those people and beliefs and things that you associate with being satisfied, joyful, contented.
Do any of those pictures conflict? That is, if you satisfy one picture, is there another picture that now can’t be satisfied?
For example, perhaps I want a close, friendly relationship. However, I also want my free time to be my free time, with no burdensome obligations that require me to spend time with anyone. Those two wants are not really compatible, are they?
In “Choice Theory,” Dr. Glasser brings up a common example of another internal conflict. He discusses someone who wants to maintain a consistent healthy weight but who also wants to eat whatever she wants. You can spot the incompatibility there.
How about wanting a high-power career with money, power, recognition, and subordinates catering to your every wish? But perhaps you also want no responsibility, to take on no risk, and to not be bothered by people. Those wants are probably incompatible, aren’t they?
Maybe you want well-mannered children: stellar students, ambitious but not overly ambitious, leaders but not bossy, admired but also humble. However, you don’t want to spend time or energy to help them develop those traits, or even to model them yourself. There’s a possible incompatibility.
And of course, there are the usual examples that involve money and how it, or the lack of, can conflict with other wants. We might want a healthy savings account. But wait, we also want a nice resort vacation, nice house, nice car, nice dinners; etc. Thus the well-known “can’t have your cake and eat it too” incompatibility.
These are essentially internal conflicts, what Glasser might refer to as “false conflicts.” Why? Because they can be resolved. “By whom?” one might ask. We both know the answer.
Just because Dr. Glasser used the label “false” doesn’t make them any less real or less painful. We can work ourselves into anxieties, depressings, resentments, and other unhelpful emotional states with our internal conflicts.
While I don’t suggest that there are any magic solutions, here are a few questions that might help put you on a path toward resolving some internal conflicts.
Is your conflict the result of competing wants? Do you have control over those wants? Do some wants have higher priority than others? Does timing matter? That is, can you put off pursuing one of your wants and concentrate on the other for now? For example, in the case of raising well-mannered children, timing does play a role.
My next question may be puzzling, but here goes: Are your wants really your wants, or have you adopted someone else’s? For example, are you comparing your life with others and thinking you should want what they have? Or even more? Consider what you really want, unblemished by what other people have. Does that change things?
Do your wants stem from unhelpful fears, such as fear of embarrassment? If there were no embarrassment involved, would you still want the same things? A follow-up question: do you really want to be afraid of embarrassment?
Finally, can you enlist help? Even a conversation with a trusted friend can bring the conflict out of your head and into the sunlight, where you may find it’s manageable after all.
Do you have internal conflicts? How do you handle them?
