Is You Is, Or Is You Ain’t Ambivalent?

May 11

Posted in News

You won’t find the word “prodivalent” in a dictionary. It’s my friend Malcolm’s word.

Malcolm found he needed a word for how you feel when you have several equally good options and you’d be genuinely happy with any one of them. (That tells you quite a bit about Malcolm right there.) He came up with “prodivalent”, because “ambivalent” has a negative connotation. It suggests that you’re struggling with a choice because there are benefits and drawbacks to all your options. Whatever option you choose, there’ll be a sense of regret about the ones you didn’t choose, and perhaps frustration with the non-ideal parts of the one you did choose.

photo credit: hans s

And yet, if you’re ambivalent about some decision right now, I’m going to tell you that’s good news. Here’s why.

What fuels ambivalence is an internal conflict where you teeter between two options. Typically, the problem with these options is that the closer you get to either of them, the better the other one looks. From a distance, each option is attractive, but close up you can see the cracks in the paint. So you turn around and head back towards the other, now more attractive, option, until you get close enough to that one that repulsion outweighs attraction, and now the first option is looking pretty good again… Back and forth.

photo credit: by Janine

That’s not the good news, of course. The good news is that if you’re ambivalent, you’re motivated to change. You just haven’t figured out how yet, or in which direction, because every time you make a move you end up reassessing that decision.

In their classic book Motivational Interviewing
, Miller and Rollnick remark, “passing through ambivalence is a natural phase in the process of change…Ambivalence is a reasonable place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.”

Sadly, we seem to be capable of living there for years.

Well-meaning friends or professionals may try to collapse the conflict for us by arguing for one or the other option. The problem with this is, we know the benefits of that option and we’ve considered them all many times. When our friend argues for them, in the interests of balance we bring up the arguments against them – the drawbacks of that option and the benefits of the alternative. Our friend responds by pointing out the flaws of that other option, which we also know well and have answers for. And so our ambivalence is not resolved; in fact, the likely result is that we’ve now convinced ourselves that the option our friend was arguing against is actually the one we prefer (since we’ve just been defending it).

photo credit: John Althouse Cohen

What drives this inner dynamic, though? Somewhere inside us is a part that, like our friend, favours Option A, and another part that favours Option B. Both parts are trying to help us. Both parts are trying to make us happy. But the strategies they’re adopting are working in opposite directions, at cross purposes.

The key question to ask is: What do I really want? Not “which of these options”, because that’s clearly the wrong question. If it was the right question, we’d have answered it already. What is the underlying thing that both parts of ourselves are trying to achieve?

Everybody who comes to see me in my hypnotherapy practice is ambivalent. Every single person. If they just wanted to change, they wouldn’t need me, and if they only wanted to stay the same, they wouldn’t want me.

They want to change, but there’s a part of them that is driving the behaviour (and the thoughts and feelings) that they want to change, and that part has some kind of legitimate agenda somewhere, however mistaken.

photo credit: neurmadic aesthetic

What I often do is encourage the parts to enter into dialogue with each other. That sounds odd, but most people understand and accept it immediately. It’s not that they have multiple personalities, of course, they just have multiple agendas, and they can speak for each of those agendas about why that agenda is important, helpful and positive for the person.

What I do then is encourage the client’s creative and problem-solving parts to come up with a new strategy, something that will satisfy both agendas in a way that the client will be comfortable with and can live out in daily life. With both parts in agreement, there’s tremendous power available for change, because instead of wasting energy pulling against each other they are pulling in the same direction.

photo credit: shaggyshoo

So what can you do if you’re ambivalent, right now? Here’s my suggestion.

Go over to the Decisionalyzer and figure out what factors are playing into your decision. (That’s a little tool I made as one of the monthly free resources I give the people on my mailing list.)
Put your mind into a calm, receptive and focussed state. You can use my free Blue Sky hypnotic induction, or if you want more in-depth instruction, my online self-hypnosis course Change Your Mind will show you step-by-step how to achieve this.
Ask the differing agendas to tell you why they are important (without arguing with each other, just stating the positives of their own goals). You may or may not be surprised at what comes up.
Ask the creative parts of your mind to come up with a better strategy than the ones you have been using.
Let yourself drift for a while, enjoying the peace. There’s no need to gnaw at the problem. Your mind will find its own solution in its own time.
At the end of a set time, say 20 minutes, return yourself to your everyday level of consciousness. (Set a timer if you don’t want to have to keep checking the clock.)
Allow yourself to move in a decisive new direction.