Internal conflict: unconscious conflict holding you back

Do you ever feel like you are on the verge of a big change in your life? That all you have to do is open some kind of mental door and step over that threshold to get something you've always wanted? But is this just not succeeding? If so, you may be suffering from internal conflict.

A subconscious conflict between two or more of your subconscious beliefs about how life works and how you’re supposed to function within it.

The idea of internal unconscious conflict

The idea of internal conflict is not new. As early as World War I, psychiatrists were already talking about the unconscious conflict causing their patients to suffer from such things as nervousness or even hypochondria[1].

I am always looking for my unconscious conflict, because I know by now that it helps me move forward in life.

When I was still giving sessions, it was very common for people to be unaware of their internal conflict. Their unconscious conflict.

You may be aware of this, but even then it is often a challenge to resolve.

But being good at conflict resolution changes the question from the conscious conflict, to the unconscious conflict.

Once I know what the problem is I can solve it fairly easily. This is because I have been doing this for 15 years now. But the question now is much more often, "What do I need to solve?" Because what I don't know, I can't solve.

You may be able to resolve what you are experiencing, but not if you don't know why you are experiencing it. That makes it very difficult.

Case example of unconscious conflict

For example, I once had a woman who wanted to lose weight, but nothing worked. She’d tried Sonja Bakker, Weight Watchers, and those shakes—because that was all the rage for a while. Eating nothing but lettuce. All kinds of things. She’d tried almost all of those things. She also exercised enough and didn’t eat any sugar.

You would say she was doing just fine and should lose weight.

But that didn't work out.

We were talking and then I asked her when it happened. It started in her childhood, but she didn't know why.

Then I asked if anything serious might have happened in her childhood. That was indeed the case. She had been a victim of sexual abuse.

When she was young, she was very slim and at seventeen she was raped.

There she decided, in that moment, that she would never let that happen again. That she would make herself so ugly that no boy would ever again take it into his head to do such a thing. Within a year, she was 30 pounds heavier.

She hadn't forgotten this whole incident, of course, but she had forgotten that decision. We found that out in hypnosis.

This was the unconscious conflict. She wanted to lose weight, but that meant she would be raped.

And what's worse? Simple. Being raped, so she stayed fat.

That’s not true. She’s much older now; she has many more ways to fight back. She no longer needs that solution, but her subconscious mind sees it differently.

That's the unconscious conflict, and if you don't resolve it? Does it stay that way.

Regression to uncover your unconscious internal conflict

So to track down her unconscious conflict, I asked about an intense experience in the past. Now with her this was immediately obvious where that belief came from, yet most people have more subtle issues in their childhood that create unhealthy beliefs.

You can identify these using regression. With the regression technique, you go back to the very first moment you sensed that something was blocking you from doing what you actually wanted to do—the first time it actually became clear that you were struggling with conflicting beliefs.

Generally these are moments in childhood, because that is the period in your life when you determine how life works and how you are supposed to function in it. As a child, of course, you don't have all the knowledge and therefore this can sometimes lead to internal conflict.

Fortunately, you can look back at this with your adult knowledge and that way you can do something with that moment that will help you resolve this conflict. That's what a hypnotherapist then helps you with, or if you can do hypnosis yourself and know what you're doing, then you can resolve this with yourself as well.

Survival, innovation and frustration

What you also see in this example is that there is a frustration somewhere to take a step forward in your life, even though you consciously take all kinds of steps. For example, for survival you want to be slim, for that you try all kinds of things (innovate), but there is something that frustrates that process.

This idea with very different issues is portrayed, for example, in the movie Crash[2], but it also shows that you are certainly not the only one with one internal conflict preventing you from moving forward.

You also often see that when changes occur in a company, people resist the change. They may not even be aware of this resistance. Humor can then be used to address that unconscious conflict and alleviate the frustration[3].

This is also something you can take advantage of with hypnotherapy. With hypnotherapy, we do this as well. For example, if you find out that you have an internal conflict with a belief that makes no sense at all, ridiculing that belief can already do a lot to stop being bothered by it.

For example, you can repeat the belief in a playful tone or while doing the Plopsa gnome dance. As long as you can laugh about it, it’s no longer a problem. This is something a hypnotherapist can also help you with if you tend to take yourself too seriously.

Internal conflict and the functioning of your body

The example of not being able to lose weight while doing everything that logically should help you lose weight shows that your unconscious thoughts can affect how the body functions.

This is also often seen with other problems. If you are aware that emotions cause certain physical reactions you often think this is normal, such as sweating with anxiety. But if you unconsciously suffer from something and your body acts weird, you often see this as a symptom of that something is wrong[4]. But then there is often always the question of whether something is wrong with your body or with your unconscious.

Vaginismus , for example, is a problem that can stem from a subconscious fear of pregnancy or the fear that childbirth will damage your body. So, on the one hand, you want a baby, but on the other hand, you don’t.

Hypnotherapy is therefore also often used when you have symptoms that have no obvious physical cause, as there is often an unconscious internal conflict.

Internal conflict and moving forward in your life

It’s not just your body that can be affected by this internal conflict; your personal development and what you’re able to accomplish in life can also be impacted by it. For example, many people have an unconscious conflict regarding money in their minds. This often prevents them from earning more money or becoming successful entrepreneurs.

Or this could be holding you back from finding that perfect partner and true romance.

You may have an unconscious trauma and over the course of your life, you can then attract people to live through that trauma over and over again until you resolve this trauma yourself.

The reality you have within yourself is often reflected in your life. An unconscious internal conflict can become visible that way, as you keep experiencing something you don't really want to experience at all, until you start looking at it in a different way.

This is something you can do with hypnotherapy. You then begin to de-hypnotize yourself, so to speak, from your old view of your issues and re-hypnotize with a view that actually does help you move forward.

You can use this for your way of attachment, discovering new experiences, your identity and your development in competence in certain things (such as if you want to be good at something)[5].

Be sure to listen to this podcast about the unconscious conflict as well:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4Z6qovLYhH6yRBIq9DdvHw?si=5809e82fe76041e3

Would you like to learn more about the hypnosis techniques mentioned and how you can use them to help yourself and others with unexplained physical problems or to resolve emotional issues? Then join us for the free online masterclass on hypnosis.

If you specifically want to help others, enroll in the HIN's training program.

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