9 Months To Birth Your Play

Welcome to Workshop six on inner conflict, splitting and tolerating the middle ground. This workshop builds on workshop five on what happens when threat overwhelms the nervous system. In workshop five we explored the defensive fight, flight and freeze behaviours that we enact as defence mechanisms to protect ourselves from overwhelming feelings and to escape from threat. In this workshop we will discover another defence mechanism called splitting and how it is employed to defend against inner conflict. We will look at what defines inner conflict and how it features in playwrighting. 

Inner conflict is a type of inner struggle when we have feelings and thoughts that compete and conflict with each other. This is in contrast to external conflicts which usually involve struggling against something outside of ourselves like another person, war or nature. Inner conflict can feel particularly uncomfortable because it can feel like an internal fight and like we are at war with ourselves. Inner conflicts are also often struggles between our seeking and threat survival drives that we explored earlier in the programme.  

For example, we might have a strong desire to succeed at playwrighting but constantly procrastinate and then also experience defensive feelings of anger and shame about this. Or we might want to eat healthy foods but eat junk food when we’re tired or anxious. Two competing feelings and choices are in conflict – the desire and threat of eating a healthy meal versus the desire and threat of eating an unhealthy one. 

In playwrighting there are two types of conflict, external and internal which can be woven together. Writing characters with inner conflict contributes to a compelling story arc and the potential resolution of the inner conflict creates suspense. For example, when Hamlet is torn between his desire for revenge against his uncle for killing his father and his duty to the kingdom as future King. 

Activity 

Take 5 minutes to think of an example of inner conflict in a character in your own playwrighting and another play.  

What feelings, thoughts, beliefs or choices is the conflict between?  

Are there ways in which you could introduce more inner conflict to your characters? 

We’re now going to read an example of inner conflict being explicitly spoken in an extract from Parliament Square, a Bruntwood Prize winning play by James Fritz.  

Kat is about to leave her husband sleeping in bed and go out. She is planning to go to Parliament Square and set herself on fire as a protest about the state of the world. 

Consider the following questions as you read the extract: 

What feelings and thoughts is the inner conflict between? 

How does this inner conflict make the narrative arc more compelling? 

 

Maybe I should just wake him.  

No. 

Say something.  

Can’t just leave him without _

You have to. 

He looks so lovely. 

Tommy.  

My lovely husband.  

He’s drooling. 

He is! He’s drooling in his sleep!  

On his chin. 

Done that since he was a teenager  

oh bless him. 

Look at him. 

He’s so. 

Disgusting. 

Beautiful.  

Such a beautifully disgusting man. 

I love him so much.  

Do you? 

Yeah I do yeah I really do.  

Ok. 

God. I’m gonna miss him. I’m 

gonna miss you Tommy.  

Oh. 

You won’t. 

Come on.  

You think hanging around is 

gonna make it easier to go  

through with this? 

Should say goodbye. 

Don’t be thick. 

Stop saying that.  

He’ll know something’s wrong. 

How will he- 

He can sense things on you. 

I’m a good liar. 

 

How did you find that? 

One way of interpreting the inner conflict in the extract is that Kat is conflicted between her love and care for her husband and how much she cares about the state of the world. She is conflicted by her powerful seeking drive towards making an impact and at the same time to not be separated from her husband. This is an example of conflicting feelings of care.  

Kat appears to also be in conflict between feelings of love and hate for her husband who is both ‘beautiful’ and ‘disgusting’ And the extract is an example of an inner critic where Kat is fighting and at war with herself about which decision and action to take. 

The use of inner conflict adds to the narrative arc of the play by introducing tension and jeopardy about whether Kat will or won’t carry out her plan to set herself on fire. It also adds vulnerability, depth, and complexity to the character. 

Mixed and conflicting feelings and thoughts like the ones displayed by Kat can be very uncomfortable and threatening. If we think back to workshop three on our basic psychological needs, our central survival need is to seek certainty. The grey mix of conflicting feelings can feel very uncomfortable because it involves ambiguity, vulnerability, unpredictability and uncertainty. The following quote from Neuroscientist Mark Solms reminds us why uncertainty is so uncomfortable on a brain level 

“If things are going as expected, that’s good. If uncertainty prevails, that’s bad.”  

However, although we seek certainty, the reality is that life involves constant change and loss, and the conflict involved in this is the essence of drama. Buddhist Psychologist Tara Brach describes this in the following way: 

“Existence is inherently dissatisfying…We are uncomfortable because everything in our life keeps changing – our inner moods, our bodies, our work, the people we love, the world we live in. We can’t hold onto anything – a beautiful sunset, a sweet taste, an intimate moment with a lover, our very existence as the body/mind we call self – because all things come and go.”  

One key way in which we attempt to defend ourselves against such uncertainty, change and loss is through a defence mechanism called splitting. With splitting we split off from the messy uncertainty and loss of inner conflict by feeling and thinking in black and white all or nothing and divided, polarised terms. We go to two extremes of a spectrum such as good versus bad, perfect versus disastrous, right versus wrong or us versus them. For example, thinking ‘my parents are always trying to control me’ or swinging between feeling intense love for someone quickly followed by intense feelings of hate. 

Mindful awareness of the defence of splitting and developing skills to counter it could be beneficial for playwrighting. It could be that you are less able to write complex fully rounded, flawed, realistic and compelling characters because you feel split about them. For example, it might be difficult not to defend ourselves against the discomfort of a character who is violent by judging them as all bad or evil. 

Take a couple of minutes to think of examples of either characters in plays or people in your life that you have had split feelings about, either idealising them as perfect or feeling that they are completely wrong or monstrous. Jot down as may examples as you can think of. 

If the uncertainty of the middle ground is so uncomfortable, and sometimes painful, how do we reduce our impulse to try to defend ourselves by splitting and controlling our experiences? 

One way of countering our tendencies for splitting is by attempting to occupy more of a middle ground. By walking more of a middle path we can reconcile conflicts and opposites to some degree. So rather than “my parents are always trying to control me” we might say “my parents don’t let me do whatever I want AND they also care for me.” In this statement, two opposing things can both be true. We can feel and think in both/and terms more than either/or. 

One skill set that can help us not to impulsively split away from this middle ground is distress tolerance. Distress tolerance enables us to tolerate a range of uncomfortable and distressing emotions without becoming too distressed about the distressed and therefore entering a downward spiral. It involves being able to tolerate uncomfortable feelings without trying to defend ourselves too much. 

Building on mindfulness that we explored in workshop one, a skill for distress tolerance that can be particularly helpful is the STOP skill. The STOP skill incorporates the power of the pause that we explored in workshop one and the importance of letting go of control and not trying to do something in reaction. Like the high altitude pilots letting go of the controls, we suspend activity, no longer moving towards a goal. We use the front of our brains to put the brake on the accelerating emotional reactions of our lower brains.  

The STOP skill consists of the following sequence: Stop, take a step back, observe and proceed mindfully.  

• Stop: do not react. Freeze yourself in the moment before you react. 

• Take a step back: take a break, let go, take a breath. 

• Observe: What’s happening in and around you? What are you thinking and feeling? What are others doing? 

• Proceed mindfully: moving forward, act with awareness. Remember your goals- what will help you get closer to them? What actions might move you further away from them? 

 

Another skill for tolerating walking the middle path of overwhelming and conflicting feelings is radical acceptance. Radical acceptance is about accepting your entire situation as it is in the moment without judgement and not fighting with reality. It means feeling sadness and pain without resisting. It means feeling desire or dislike for someone or something without judging ourselves for the feeling or feeling driven to act on it. 

“By accepting absolutely everything, what I mean is that we are aware of what is happening within our body in any given moment without trying to control or judge or pull away.” 

Tara Brach 

Radical acceptance can be mistaken for passive resignation or approval. But radical acceptance is not the same as approval. And it is not the same as resignation. Wise action can come from acceptance. As psychologist Carl Rodgers highlighted, the paradox is that once we accept things, then they can change. 

Home Practice 

Before the next session, try to notice when you and your characters have inner conflict and when you and your characters demonstrate splitting as a defence against this. Practice distress tolerance, the STOP skill and radical acceptance in your daily life and whilst writing and notice any differences it makes to your writing and your wellbeing.  

In our next workshop we’ll be exploring shame and the inner critic and developing skills in self-acceptance and mindful self-compassion. 

About Anna Webster…

Anna is a Coaching Psychologist, Wellbeing Coach and Psychotherapist in Training. She specialises in coaching psychology workshops and 1:1 programmes informed by emotion neuroscience, neuropsychoanalysis, and dialectical behaviour therapy.

Anna works for The University of Salford on SPECIFiC; a 7-session therapeutic psychoeducation coaching programme on the neurodevelopmental condition FASD, the first of its kind in the UK. She co-wrote the manual, co-delivers the programme and leads on Public Involvement. She was a member of the Steering Group on the UK’s first FASD prevalence study and was consulted as an expert by experience for the NICE Guidelines on FASD. She is also a Health and Wellbeing Coach for the NHS.