The Torn Podcast

Across this first season of  The Torn Podcast , we’ve explored what it means to feel torn between choices, identities, values, and the different parts of ourselves. In this bonus episode, we pause to reflect and respond directly to some of the questions that have come through from listeners along the way. From feeling stuck in indecision, to navigating conflicting desires, to wondering whethe...

In this final episode of the series, the Torn Project team step back to reflect on what they’ve learned across the season with particular focus on resolutions that help us move through inner conflict. Drawing on the stories, frameworks, and insights explored throughout the season, resolution is seen not as a neat ending, but as an ongoing, human process. Click the link below to access a downloadab...

Sometimes an inner conflict is not about preferences, careers, or relationships, but about survival itself. In this episode, we hear the story of a woman facing a life-threatening cancer diagnosis. She finds herself torn between two radically different paths: evidence-based medical treatment, or alternative therapies. But this is not a simple choice - there are many other elements which add to her...

What happens when a relationship to alcohol that once felt easy and enjoyable begins to feel complicated? In this episode, Richard shares his experience of becoming torn about alcohol and how he used  parts work  to think through and reshape his changing relationship with drinking. Following a health scare, Richard knew something needed to change, but stopping outright didn’t feel simple...

What if the parts of you that feel anxious, critical, or overwhelming aren’t problems to fix, but parts of you trying, in their own way, to protect you? In this episode, Caitlin is joined by  Alex , a London-based psychotherapist working with  Internal Family Systems (IFS) . For professional confidentiality reasons, Alex’s voice is performed by an actor, but the insights shared are very...

What happens when who you are feels unsafe to be known? In this episode of  The Torn Podcast , we share Ian’s story, which is a powerful, long-arc journey of inner conflict shaped by growing up gay in a time when homosexuality was illegal in the UK. Narrated by an actor to protect anonymity, Ian’s story traces decades of tension between inner truth and external danger: family expectations, re...

What really happens inside us when we’re torn? After analysing over 120 real stories of inner conflict, the Torn Project team noticed something unexpected: a shared pattern running through every account. In this episode, they introduce The Torn Journey, a seven-stage map that traces how inner conflict first stirs, how it intensifies, where we get stuck, and how resolution can become possible. In t...

In this dramatisation of a real-life experience, we step inside the mind of a mother facing an unimaginable choice. Told as a first-person monologue and voiced by an actor without any external comment, this episode navigates the private landscape of fear, love, faith, anger, and the weight of responsibility. Through an exploration of the fierce bond between mothe...

In this episode, the hosts turn the questions on themselves. Susan, Caitlin and James interview one another, sharing how The Torn Project began, what brought each of them to this work, and the personal experiences that continue to shape it. Together, they explore the threads that connect psychology, coaching, technology, and creativity, and reveal what inner conflict means to them, not just as pro...

What happens when the job you’ve worked your whole life to reach becomes a place of quiet harm? In this episode, an actor tells Emilia's story from the joy of being elected president of her national cycling federation to the slow realisation that she was facing a culture of undermining, surveillance and workplace bullying. After each chapter, Caitlin and James explore the inner conflict at the hea...

We all experience moments of inner conflict, from the small, everyday choices to the big, life-defining decisions. In this episode, Susan and Caitlin explore the many shapes that being ‘torn’ can take between duty and desire, past and future, self and others. Drawing on stories from The Torn Project and their own experiences, they uncover what these tensions reveal about who we are, what we value,...

Paul spent years pushing down his true desires, until one moment of honesty changed everything. In this episode, an actor shares Paul’s story and after each chapter of that story, Susan, Caitlin and James reflect on what his conflict reveals about choice, longing and courage. This is a story about the tension between 'wanting' and 'getting' and the possibilities and risks which open up when we fin...

We all know the feeling of being pulled in two directions at once. In this first episode, Susan, Caitlin and James introduce The Torn Project; why it exists; what 'inner conflict' really means; and how listening to real stories and learning from reliable resources can help us find balance. This process marks the start of an ongoing conversation about those messy human moments when our wants,...