There was a time when disagreeing with someone didn’t necessarily mean questioning their intelligence, morality, motives, upbringing, or preferred supermarket.
You could hold different political views, argue enthusiastically over dinner, and still share dessert afterwards.
These days, that often feels rather quaint.
Whether the subject is immigration, climate change, gender identity, taxation, Brexit, public services, housing, or whichever politician is currently causing collective exasperation, public discourse increasingly seems to demand allegiance to one side or another. Nuance can feel suspicious. Ambivalence is mistaken for weakness. The middle ground has become an uncomfortable place to stand, if it exists at all.
As a psychodynamic therapist, I often find myself reflecting on this shift through the lens of a psychological process known as splitting. It is a concept that helps explain not only what happens within individuals, but also what can happen within families, organisations, communities and perhaps even entire societies when anxiety and uncertainty become difficult to tolerate.
I am not suggesting Britain has collectively developed a psychological disorder. Far from it. Rather, I think many of the tensions we see around us reflect something profoundly human: our tendency, when faced with complexity, to seek certainty.
The difficulty is that life rarely cooperates.
Understanding Splitting Through a Psychodynamic Lens
In psychodynamic theory, splitting refers to a defence mechanism whereby people, experiences, ideas, or relationships are unconsciously divided into “all good” or “all bad” categories.
We all begin life doing this.
A young child does not have the psychological capacity to hold mixed feelings easily. A parent who provides comfort can feel entirely wonderful. The same parent who frustrates, disappoints, or imposes limits can suddenly feel entirely terrible. It takes time and emotional development to realise that both experiences can be true simultaneously.
As we mature, most of us gradually develop the ability to integrate these opposing perceptions. We learn that good people sometimes make mistakes. We discover that those we love can also disappoint us. We begin to tolerate contradiction.
In many ways, emotional maturity involves accepting that reality is rarely as simple as we might wish it to be.
Yet under stress, uncertainty, or threat, human beings often revert to more black-and-white ways of thinking. We seek clarity. We seek certainty. We seek someone to blame, someone to admire, and a narrative that makes sense of a confusing world.
Psychologically speaking, splitting reduces anxiety. Unfortunately, it often reduces understanding as well.
Why Britain Feels Increasingly Polarised
It would be difficult to think of a decade that has not generated significant anxiety, but recent years have certainly offered an abundance of material.
Political upheaval, economic instability, a global pandemic, rising living costs, housing concerns, rapid technological change, social shifts, international conflicts and an endless stream of information delivered directly into our pockets.
For many people, the background emotional atmosphere has felt uncertain for quite some time.
Human beings are not especially comfortable with prolonged uncertainty. When we do not know what is happening, what is coming next, or whom to trust, our minds naturally search for ways to restore order.
One solution is certainty.
Another is belonging.
Often the two become closely connected. If we can find a group, ideology, movement, or community that offers clear answers about who is right, who is wrong, and how the world works, uncertainty can temporarily soften.
The challenge is that complex social problems rarely have simple solutions. Nevertheless, certainty remains psychologically appealing because it relieves us of the burden of wrestling with ambiguity.
The Disappearing Art of Holding Two Ideas at Once
One of the things that fascinates me about modern discourse is how difficult it can sometimes feel to hold two truths simultaneously.
Increasingly, public conversations appear structured around either/or thinking.
You are either concerned about immigration or concerned about compassion.
You either support economic growth or care about the environment.
You either value tradition or believe in progress.
You either support one group or oppose another.
Yet reality rarely arranges itself so neatly.
Most meaningful human experiences exist somewhere within the tension between opposing ideas. We can value compassion whilst discussing practical concerns. We can embrace change whilst mourning what has been lost. We can acknowledge problems without condemning entire groups of people.
In therapy, this capacity to hold competing truths is often an important marker of psychological growth.
Many clients arrive feeling trapped because they are trying to resolve contradictions that cannot simply be eliminated.
They love a parent who hurt them.
They miss a relationship that was unhealthy.
They feel grateful and resentful.
Relieved and guilty.
Hopeful and frightened.
The work is often not about choosing one feeling over another. It is about recognising that both can coexist.
Societies, I suspect, need a similar capacity.
Social Media and the Psychology of Absolutes
Social media did not invent splitting. Human beings managed that perfectly well long before smartphones arrived.
What social media has done is reward it.
Algorithms tend to favour certainty over reflection, outrage over nuance, and confidence over complexity. A carefully balanced perspective rarely generates the same level of engagement as a strongly worded declaration that everyone else has lost their minds.
The result is a cultural environment where certainty becomes increasingly visible.
And visibility can create the illusion that certainty is more common than it actually is.
Many people occupy far more nuanced positions than social media would suggest. They have mixed feelings. They recognise complexity. They can see strengths and weaknesses in multiple arguments.
Unfortunately, those voices often make for rather poor viral content.
As a result, we can begin to feel surrounded by extremes even when most people remain somewhere in the middle.
Why Certainty Feels So Good
There is something emotionally soothing about certainty.
Certainty reduces anxiety.
It simplifies decision-making.
It creates a sense of belonging.
It offers the reassuring feeling that we know where we stand.
This is not inherently problematic. Strong convictions are often important. Values matter. Principles matter.
The difficulty emerges when certainty becomes rigid and curiosity disappears.
One of the ideas I frequently return to in therapy is the importance of remaining curious. Curiosity keeps us psychologically alive. It creates movement where certainty creates closure.
Once we become absolutely certain about ourselves, other people, or the world around us, there is often very little room left for discovery.
Curiosity, by contrast, allows us to keep learning.
Not because we lack convictions, but because we recognise that reality may be more complicated than our current understanding.
The Emotional Cost of Losing the Grey Area
When societies lose their tolerance for ambiguity, there is often a psychological cost.
Conversations become harder.
Relationships become strained.
Differences become threats rather than opportunities for understanding.
People increasingly encounter one another as representatives of positions rather than as human beings with histories, fears, hopes and experiences.
This is something I occasionally see reflected in personal relationships too.
Sometimes couples become trapped in opposing positions where each partner feels entirely right and entirely misunderstood.
Sometimes families divide into competing camps.
Sometimes friendships fracture because neither person can tolerate the possibility that both perspectives contain elements of truth.
What is lost in these situations is not merely agreement.
It is curiosity.
And curiosity is often the bridge that allows us to remain connected despite our differences.
What Therapy Teaches About Complexity
One of the less glamorous truths about therapy is that it rarely offers neat answers.
People occasionally imagine therapists possess a secret manual explaining exactly how life works. I regret to report that no such document exists.
What therapy does offer is a space to think.
A space where complexity does not have to be immediately resolved.
A space where contradictory feelings can coexist without being forced into premature conclusions.
Over time, many people discover that emotional resilience is not about eliminating uncertainty. It is about increasing our capacity to tolerate it.
This is not always comfortable.
In fact, it can be profoundly uncomfortable.
Yet there is often something liberating about recognising that not every question has an immediate answer and not every problem requires a simple solution.
Reclaiming Curiosity in a Divided World
If splitting represents the movement towards certainty, then perhaps curiosity offers a route back towards balance.
Curiosity asks different questions.
Why does this issue matter so much to that person?
What experiences shaped their perspective?
What am I missing?
What might be true here that I have not yet considered?
Importantly, curiosity does not require agreement. It does not ask us to abandon our values or compromise our principles.
Rather, it invites us to approach difference with a degree of openness.
And in an increasingly polarised world, openness can feel surprisingly radical.
The Courage of Living in the Grey
The middle ground is often criticised as indecisive or weak.
I am not convinced.
Sometimes occupying the middle ground requires more courage than taking sides.
It asks us to tolerate uncertainty when certainty would feel safer.
It asks us to think rather than react.
It asks us to remain curious when anger might feel easier.
Most importantly, it asks us to remember that human beings are rarely reducible to a single opinion, belief, or identity.
We are all more complicated than that.
And perhaps the health of both individuals and societies depends upon our ability to remember it.
Counselling and Learning to Hold Complexity
Many people come to counselling because they feel caught between competing emotions, conflicting loyalties, or different versions of themselves. Therapy offers a space where those tensions do not need to be immediately resolved. Instead, they can be explored with curiosity, compassion and thoughtfulness.
If any of the themes in this article resonate with you, whether around relationships, anxiety, identity, family dynamics, loss, uncertainty, or simply feeling overwhelmed by the complexity of modern life, counselling can help create a space to think and reflect.
At Serenity of Mind Therapy, I can offer psychodynamic therapy both online and in-person at my therapy rooms in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, and Crowborough, East Sussex.
Sometimes the goal is not to find certainty. Sometimes it is to develop the confidence to live more comfortably alongside complexity, whilst remaining connected to yourself and the people who matter most. So, feel free to reach out and contact me here.