Since the mid 1960s, neuroscience has had compelling evidence that each of us has two completely independent personalities, each with its own autonomous, independent stream and version or type of consciousness, set of values, preferences, likes, dislikes, belief systems, functions, skill-sets, and personal style. Each resides in its own hemisphere of the brain. For many of us, our “two” personalities are often in conflict with each other causing all sorts of personal and interpersonal problems. That inner conflict—or more precisely, intrapersonal conflict—and how to resolve it is what the information on this forum is all about.
One commonly accepted definition of inner conflict is when two parts of ourselves disagree or are in active conflict about how to proceed with the resolution of a problem. You could say it’s as if there are two people inside one individual, each with its own uniquely different viewpoint of, perception of, and solution for… the problem. The effect on the individual of this battle within, over whose solution is the “right” one, ranges from discomfort to severe torment—and no peace. Now, there is no ‘as if’ here. There ARE, LITERALLY, two people, personalities, within every individual, and neuroscience provides forceful evidence for their literal existence within each hemisphere of the brain.
Would you like to take the expression of your craft to the next level—to make a quantum leap in your effectiveness with a larger share of your clients? I know you would. Then you must learn about inner conflict, its functional basis in the brain, and how to facilitate your clients in resolving it.
I’m smiling. Did you notice my use of the word “must”—as we say in NLP, that’s a modal operator of necessity? And your meta-model challenge would be, “What would happen if I didn’t learn about inner conflict?” Well, if you don’t, you’re missing out. Fully one third of your clients are afflicted with it. With that one third, you can use many of your current NLP techniques, and they may “improve,” but the greater majority will not have a breakthrough OR improve. If you’re at all like me, that’s not good enough. The breakthrough that will be the difference that makes a difference with these clients is to integrate their conflicting hemispheres before you apply any other NLP technique.
In your client practice, if every third client of yours came into their session sneezing and sniffling with hay fever—every day, year-round, would that catch your attention? Would you consider that percentage—33%, and its frequency—every day year-round, significant? Would you think there was an epidemic of hay fever? That is the frequency of the incidence of problematic inner conflict among adults and teenagers in this country. But it doesn’t stop at our borders. It is pandemic, worldwide, in all of the developed countries, causing pain and suffering on an unimagined scale.
I received my master practitioner certification from John Grinder in 1988, from Richard Bandler in 1996, and have trained with and/or received certifications from Robert Dilts and others. From the start, I worked as an executive coach, and teambuilding expert, taught public speaking, sales, negotiation and leadership skills in seven countries—North and South America and Europe.
My LinkedIn business profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelblackstone
Of necessity and by determination, I became an expert on inner conflict. Of the nearly 4,000 people I have worked with one-on-one, significantly more than one third had inner conflict issues that would not resolve with any technique in my NLP repertoire, save one. More about that one in future pages here.
I first learned of this “dual personality” scientific evidence in 1993 when I discovered the mid-1960s work of Roger Sperry, and it immediately made enormous positive impact on my executive coaching. This evidence offers an amazing new view and understanding of inner conflict, and my clients have been awestruck and benefitted by it. They were moved deeply by understanding themselves and their inner struggles and turmoil in this completely new, non-judgmental way; and thus shedding their feelings of being defective, crazy, and all alone in their “flaw.”
Sperry and the neuroscientists who did the original research were themselves awestruck by it. But only some have come forward to champion a dual personality view, and none have made it well-known. Several have said that to do so would represent a significant personal and professional risk. Even so, Drs. Joseph Bogen, a member of the original research group, and Fredric Schiffer, M.D., a New England psychiatrist with ties to the original researchers, as well as others have reached the two-personality conclusion. So, I have some credible company in my interpretation. Yet the concept—the dual or two personality view— is still not known beyond a few, nor completely embraced by conventional neuroscience.
The implications of this new understanding of two completely independent personalities in every human being are utterly profound. One of the early researchers has said [if widely known and accepted] it would force a re-thinking of the cherished principles of many fields beyond neuroscience—philosophy, religion, education, criminal justice, politics, and more, and, of course, psychology.
When a person who is suffering from inner conflict finds out that there is a physical, structural, and neuroanatomical explanation and basis for their inner experience; when they learn from this that they are not defective, not crazy, and not alone; and when they learn that brand new ways—breakthrough methods—to resolve their inner conflict can emerge from within themselves, based upon this new, accurate, and inspiring self-understanding, they feel a dramatic, profound sense of relief. You could describe it as exoneration from the pain of being self-accused and believing they didn’t “belong.”
For them, that new understanding is a new beginning of inner reconciliation, building self-respect for “both of themselves,” and for building a satisfying new inner relationship that enables them to enjoy life and the creative opportunities it offers.
I invite you to join me in raising the public profile of intrapersonal conflict as one of the biggest obstacles to personal fulfillment, satisfaction, and enjoyment of life, and in creating a “common knowledge-base” of what it is, how it works, its symptoms, how to recognize it, and how to resolve it.