THE PROCESS OF INNER CONFLICT RESOLUTION

How the Higher Self can integrate our personality.

A developing Higher Self will include new, constructive beliefs about ourselves and the world. These new beliefs may conflict with older sets of beliefs (often learned during childhood). The resulting conflicts may generate anxiety. Resolution of those conflicts can occur as the new beliefs (or their "children") explain reality better--and make us happier--than the old beliefs. By "children" I mean deductions or conclusions based upon the higher beliefs.

A higher belief is powerful enough to integrate lower beliefs. The brain has

think that the cognitive brain will automatically pick the belief with the most power to predict the future.6

A more general or abstract belief will usually have greater explanation power than a more specific belief. For example, one 30 plus year old client had always wanted a happy marriage. His previous marriage had been a disaster--full of mutual screaming and yelling matches. His current four-year relationship had been much better, and he had counted on it resulting in marriage. He was devastated when she broke-up with him (even though he had not been happy in the relationship).

After exploring his feelings in depth, we found at the bottom a fantasy which had anchored him since childhood. His fantasy was of a happy family like TV's "Brady Bunch." That fantasy was like night and day to his own family. He had had a miserable family life and childhood--except for a few brief times when his family was like the Brady Bunch. He treasured those brief periods and longed to have a family where he could feel loved and happy. As a little boy, he had developed the belief that "To be happy I must have a happy, warm family" [like his "Brady Bunch" image].

What is wrong with this belief? It seems quite normal. However, he gave it too much importance. He had made a positive--but too limited a goal--an ultimate concern. He believed that he had to have a happy family to be happy. Yet, he was single. That fantasy had driven him to desperately seek relationships- -which always failed. The range of convenience of his goal was too limited. The idea that one must have a happy family life to be happy would seem to doom all single people to misery.

What he learned instead was an expanded belief that went something like, "Anyone can be happy in almost any situation, if they learn how to use the proper internal and external routes to achieving happiness." That belief has a much larger range of convenience and applies equally well to married or single people. His new beliefs removed the pressure of finding a relationship--he now saw that he could be happy single. That took some of the pressure off and he focused on learning how to be happy instead of how to get married. Once he was happier with himself, he eventually found a much better relationship.

The Higher Self as an Inner Observer utilizing Problem-Solving Skills. People who learn meditation techniques usually practice clearing their minds of all active thoughts so that they can just observe what thoughts, images, and feelings enter awareness. Meditation helps calm people. Other people write journals about their feelings and thoughts and then read what they have written. These self-observation methods help our inner observers or inner therapists learn about how different thoughts, images, and feelings are connected.

During psychotherapy, one of my primary goals is to help my clients

6 Kelly (1955) used the term range of convenience to mean how broad a set of inputs a category covers (discussed in chapter 7). The predictive validity of beliefs as measured by the natural feedback they receive is seen as a primary underlying mechanism for belief verification in many cognitive, learning, and neural network theories.

develop their own inner therapists. The inner therapist can become integrated with the Higher Self. In chapter 2 discussed the self-exploration and problem- solving methods for exploring our strongest emotions to find underlying issues, beliefs, and conflicts between subparts of ourselves.

An important part of keeping the Higher Self in control is to focus on the Higher Self during difficult situations, and let it remain above the situation. From its detached view, it can calmly observe other thoughts, images, and feelings as they are occurring. At first, it is best for it to remain simply an observer--not rushing to make judgments. Its goal is simply to observe and understand more until it is confident it has a good understanding and knows how to bring harmony and happiness to the situation.

Hidden inner conflicts can only be resolved as they are activated. I love my wife Sherry with all my heart, and I strongly believe in empathetically resolving conflicts. Yet, recently, when she was upset about something I had done, all I could do is defend myself by explaining my reasons for doing it. It never occurred to me to listen to her point of view and let her explain her point of view in more depth. At the time, she reminded me of what I was doing, and my inner conflict was obvious. My Higher Self was not in control of my actions; my old dysfunctional parts had taken control. But as soon as I tuned in to my Higher Self, my emotions immediately changed and I started listening. My shift immediately affected Sherry as well.

My Higher Self was in conflict with an older part that had to be right all the time. This is an example of an implicit (hidden) conflict. I was not aware of the conflict in this situation until Sherry pointed out the inconsistency to me.

Our overall system of beliefs has many implied conflicts that are not obvious until the beliefs are simultaneously activated. Implicit conflicts between the Higher Self beliefs and old beliefs can be discovered and resolved by using the Belief Integration Process described later.

When we first learn a new insight, we may become excited with its potential.

We begin trying to use this new insight in every situation where it has any chance of being appropriate. The new insight may conflict with older ways of coping those situations.

If the new belief seems to work better in a particular situation, then it will be validated (or reinforced) for that situation. We have reprogrammed that situation. If not, we may have to resolve the conflict by modifying the new belief or by just saying it doesn't apply to that situation.